True-crime podcast features 25-year-old unsolved Beaufort County murder case
Almost 25 years after a woman was found dead in a drainage ditch off I-95 in Yemassee, her identity and the events that led up to her death remain a mystery.
There was little evidence at the crime scene on May 24, 1995.
No weapon.
No witnesses.
And no identity for the woman who would be known for more than two decades as the “Beaufort County Jane Doe.”
An Atlanta-based true-crime podcast, The Fall Line, premiered the first of two episodes on the woman’s cold case Wednesday. The podcast typically features cold cases of marginalized communities in the southeast, according to its website.
This is one of a few Jane Doe cases it’s covered. “Jane Doe,” or “John Doe” for males, is a name used by law enforcement for victims whose identities are unknown.
“We’ve not yet covered a Doe which got so much individual attention from law enforcement,” one of the show’s creators, Brooke Hargrove, told The Island Packet.
Hargrove and co-creator Laurah Norton traveled to Hilton Head months ago to interview Beaufort County Sheriff’s Office Maj. Bob Bromage about the case. Bromage, who has been with the Sheriff’s Office since 1990, is head of the cold case investigations.
“As days go by, the solvability decreases. We know this,” Bromage said in the introduction of the podcast. “In cold cases, sometimes time is your friend... the patience.”
The victim was found face down in a ditch on Cotton Hall Road around 1:15 p.m. on May 24, 1995, by a state employee mowing grass. The only piece of clothing she was wearing was Leonisa underwear, a brand manufactured only in Colombia and sold in South and Central America at the time.
She was believed to be in her late 20s or early 30s, around 5-foot-2 or 5-foot-4 and weighing around 118 pounds. She had brown eyes, shoulder-length curly hair dyed red, and a light brown complexion.
In 2007, biogeographical DNA helped investigators establish that the woman was possibly from a Caribbean country or South America.
The autopsy and other tests determined the woman died by ligature strangulation, and bruises on the woman’s body indicated she was beaten. During the autopsy, the coroner collected DNA samples, dental records and fingerprints from the woman.
The podcast explores developments in the case throughout the years as new science, DNA testing and data-keeping became available. The Sheriff’s Office kept the woman’s DNA, which was collected in 1995.
With the new technology and tests, new leads and tips trickled in over the years, and Bromage has been on the case for every one of them since Sheriff P.J. Tanner began the department’s cold case initiative in 1999. Bromage has seen the case develop and used multiple databases to cross-reference whatever could turn into a clue about who Jane Doe is or who she may be related to.
It’s connected him to many people in many places.
At one point, Bromage reached out to producers of a Univision show that broadcast information about Jane Doe’s case all over the U.S. and Latin America. He hoped that getting Jane Doe’s face in front of more people, especially those in the Caribbean, Central and South America, where the woman may be from, could lead to answers.
Some tips from the U.S. and abroad came in that seemed strong, he said, but they led to dead ends.
“Again you got a door slammed on you,” he said in the podcast. “You have to pick it up and say, ‘OK, what can I do better what can I do different to illuminate this case so people are paying attention?’”
Bromage is pushing on.
“The most important thing we could do for this victim and her family is identify her, and moving from that we’ll find that the suspect is someone that was very close to her” based on how she was killed and other evidence, he said in the podcast.
Bromage told The Island Packet that the combination of the woman having no drugs or alcohol in her system and having bruises at the time of her death led investigators to believe she was probably in a volatile relationship.
The second and final episode on the Beaufort County Jane Doe case will be released Wednesday. It’ll talk about the latest suspect, who Bromage interviewed after the supposed serial killer confessed to the woman’s murder and many others along I-95.
The podcast is available on the show’s website, the Apple Podcasts app iPhones, Spotify, and other streaming services.
This story was originally published February 18, 2020 at 4:00 AM.
