(Trends Wide) — Forty-five years after an Ohio woman disappeared somewhere on the West Coast, her two surviving relatives—nieces—now know what happened to their Aunt Dolly.
Unidentified human remains found in October 1978 inside a garment bag in a remote area of Imlay, Nevada, have been identified as that of Florence Charleston, of Cleveland, Ohio, according to Nevada State Police.
Advanced forensic DNA testing of Charleston’s remains and a genealogy search led to his identification several decades after his death, authorities said.
Diane Liggitt, one of Charleston’s nieces, was about 18 when her aunt disappeared.
Liggitt told Trends Wide she remembered Charleston, who she and her cousins called Aunt Dolly, going to Portland, Oregon, with a man in the early 1970s.
“She met this guy and went to live happily ever after, or so she thought,” says Liggitt, who lives in Lisbon, Ohio. “My uncle could never locate her.”
“Every time he called, she was either too sick to get on the phone or (there was) one reason or another that she couldn’t talk to him,” added Liggitt, whose father was Charleston’s brother.
Investigators created a facial reconstruction of the unidentified woman in the early phases of the case. (Credit: Nevada Police)
His uncle’s efforts to find his sister using a private investigator were also unsuccessful. The last the family knew, according to Liggitt, was that Charleston was in Reno, Nevada, sometime in 1978.
“They found her in the middle of the state,” Liggitt said.
Nevada State Police said in a news release Tuesday that its Investigative Division is continuing to look into Charleston’s death and is seeking information from the public about the case.
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Advances in DNA help identify the woman
On October 26, 1978, the Pershing County, Nevada, Sheriff’s Office found unidentified remains near the small town of Imlay, 133 miles northeast of Reno, inside a bag that also contained clothing. woman, according to a news release from the Nevada State Police.
The remains were badly decomposed and the autopsy did not reveal a cause of death or information about the identity of the woman, who was Caucasian and at least 40 years old, according to the statement.
The woman had been dead six months before her body was found, according to a May 1980 Nevada State Journal article, which became the Reno Gazette-Journal in 1983.
The following year, the sheriff’s office enlisted the help of the Nevada State Police. Although the case was entered into the National System of Missing and Unidentified Persons (NamUs), the authorities’ investigation found no significant leads.
In March 2022, researchers worked with Othram, a US company specializing in forensic genealogy for law enforcement, to perform advanced forensic DNA and genealogy testing on the woman’s remains.
“About a year ago, NamUs began directly funding some unidentified persons cases in the hopes that it could take advantage of new technologies, like Othram’s, to identify people,” David Mittelman, Othram’s CEO, told Trends Wide.
RTI International, the organization that manages NamUs, coordinated the delivery of the case evidence to the Othram laboratory.
“That’s how we started,” Mittelman said.
“They Found Aunt Dolly”
The evidence led to several new leads in the case, including Charleston’s identity.
After wondering for decades what had become of his aunt, Liggitt was leaving his house one day when he received a call from a detective. There had been a DNA match.
“I had obtained my DNA from a body found in the desert. Me and (my cousin) are the only two living relatives,” Liggitt said, referring to her cousin, Donna Taylor.
“I said, ‘My God, they found Aunt Dolly,'” she recalled.
The family plans to send Charleston’s remains to Ohio for burial once the investigation into his homicide is concluded, according to Liggitt.
