Unraveling the mystery of a murdered half-sister they never knew about

Emotions for three sisters in their 60s and 70s who grew up in a small rural Utah town ranged from disbelief to denial to confusion when they found out they had a sibling they never knew about.

They were more shocked — even sickened — to learn their half-sister was the victim of infamous serial killers in California decades ago.

They felt sorry about whatever circumstances led to her tragic death. They tear up thinking about what she went through. Maybe things would have been different had they known her. She should have just been their annoying little sister. They don’t even know her name.

The three women, who don’t want their names divulged for now, find themselves absorbed in a mystery police and forensic genealogists have spent years trying to unravel.

“None of the half-siblings were aware of the fact that they had a half-sister. I can’t even begin to imagine what goes through your head when you get that call. But they’ve been cooperative. They want to see that person identified. They want to see us be able to do so, so we can give her name back,” said Calaveras County sheriff’s Capt. Tim Sturm, who heads the Calaveras Cold Case Task Force.

The phone call came in September 2024.

“Are you missing a sister?” forensic genealogist Joe Barrus asked one of the sisters. She said no, that she had already had plenty of sisters, to which he replied, “Well, maybe you are.”

Barrus explained that DNA shows their late father had a child in the early 1960s, and he along with police in California are working to find her family, particularly her birth mother. The cold case task force calls her Wilseyville Jane Doe — reflecting the community in Calaveras County where her remains were discovered — until investigators can track down her real identity.

The biological father is deceased (as is his wife) but police are withholding his name and haven’t shared much about him.

“At this point, we’re hoping to get leads without doing so,” Sturm said. “We don’t know the circumstances of the birth of that child. We certainly don’t want to put out any information that we don’t know to be factual regarding that.”

It’s conceivable the birth mother is still living. Investigators don’t know if she raised the girl as a single mother or with a spouse or placed her for adoption.

Investigators believe someone might remember a daughter, sister or friend from Sevier County in central Utah or other areas in the state, including Salt Lake City, who disappeared during the 1960s to 1980s. They don’t know how she came to be in California.

Stories from the crypt

In a rare case of serial killers working together, Leonard Lake and Charles Ng brutally murdered at least 11 men, women and children and possibly as many as 25 in 1983 and 1984. The pair buried their tortured bodies in shallow graves outside a remote cabin near Wilseyville, about 150 miles east of San Francisco.

Police arrested Lake on unrelated charges in 1985. He swallowed a cyanide pill sewn into his clothes and died four days later. Ng fled to Canada, where he was eventually arrested and returned to the U.S. to face trial. A jury convicted him on 11 counts of murder in 1999 and he is on death row in San Quentin prison.

After Ng’s conviction, authorities placed the victims’ remains in an above-ground crypt in the People’s Cemetery in San Andreas, believing they wouldn’t ever be able to identify them.

The inscription on the crypt reads:

In Wilseyville we found you, our lost loved ones. Though taken in darkness, you will forever live in light. Rest in peace. Victims of the 1984-85 Wilseyville mass murder.

Wilseyville Jane Doe’s remains were among at least 1,000 bone fragments, strands of hair, teeth and other minute body parts the task force exhumed from the crypt two decades after they were placed there. Advances in DNA technology and the emergence of forensic investigative genetic genealogy has allowed investigators to reexamine unidentified remains outside traditional police work.

Barrus and police have used DNA, online genealogy platforms, public records, newspaper articles, and interviews among other sources to piece together a profile of Wilseyville Jane Doe.

Who is Wilseyville Jane Doe?

Here’s what cold case task force knows about her:

• Her remains were found in June 1985.
• DNA/forensic genealogy shows she was likely born between 1960 and 1965.
• She had strong family ties to Sevier Valley, Utah, through both her mother and father.
• She may have had blue eyes, medium to dark hair, and a pale to medium skin tone.
• She may have gone missing in the early 1980s.
• Investigators have confirmed her birth father through DNA.

Through Barrus’ forensic genealogy work, the task force has returned the remains of one known victim, Brenda Sue O’Connor, to her family and identified the body of Reginald “Reggie” Frisby, whose remains had gone unidentified for 40 years.

The task force hopes to do the same for Wilseyville Jane Doe.

“We recognize that nobody’s name is Jane Doe or John Doe. We believe that everybody has the right to have their name restored, especially in death. It’s just absolutely the right thing to do,” Sturm said.

Not your father’s police work

After consulting with experts in forensic genetic genealogy, the Calaveras task force obtained a court order to exhume the remains, not knowing the degree of degradation investigators would find in the crypt.

The task force has a forensic anthropologist examine the remains and select a batch, typically about 50 fragments, for testing at Resolve Forensics, a private laboratory in Salt Lake City. It has tested over 300 pieces to date. The nonprofit task force has spent over $275,000 in donated funds on the processing of those remains as well as on other cold cases.

“You get one shot at processing a piece of human remains. It’s potentially consumed during the processing,” Sturm said. “We want to make sure that we’re staying on top of technology. You pay for good service.”

The results go to the renowned Identifinders International where forensic genealogists — like Barrus in this case — start looking for family connections.

“Once you have a (genetic) match, you have to use traditional genealogy to find out the family tree, and the descendants, and add how the DNA is shared between the people,” Barrus told the Calaveras Enterprise.

“We’re genetically close but we could be circumstantially far away. I have been working on this case for over a year … DNA matches provide momentum. It’s a matter of time and hurdles. … Mostly it requires patience, which is something I have a lot of. Genetic genealogy is the key; especially with this case, it is the major component.”

Investigators have also contacted The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which has a vast collection of genealogical records, and have tried to obtain adoption records, though Sturm noted adoption records do not require the name of the father.

A proper burial

While Wilseyville Jane Doe’s half-sisters would like to have her remains, Sturm said the law precludes turning over the remains without a death certificate, which police don’t have at this point. And the sisters are not the family who raised her.

Barrus told the Deseret News that the three sisters are highly invested in the case, and he wouldn’t have gotten as far as he has without their help.

“It’s interesting how this puzzle came together,” Barrus said.

But it’s still incomplete.

The sisters have called distant relatives to glean information. Some were receptive, some were not. They want to know the rest of the story. Their gut feeling is that they’re close.

One thing that has frustrated them is “pedigree collapse,” where a family tree has fewer unique ancestors than it should because some appear in multiple places in the same tree. It happens when people marry within a limited social, geographical or cultural group. In this case, the Danish community in Sevier Valley.

Whether it’s with them or with the family who raised their half-sister, they want to find her a home. They didn’t have the opportunity to support her in life. They want to support her now. She needs rest.

“We’re just trying to give her a place to be buried,” one sister said. “The thought of her sitting in a box for eternity is not what we’re wanting.”

Anyone with information, can call the Calaveras Cold Case Task Force anonymous tip line at 209-754-6030 or the office at 209-754-6500.