On November 10th, 1979, a farmer in Caledonia, New York was surveying his corn fields when he spotted a glimpse of red. Believing he’d caught a poacher, the farmer made his way over to where he had seen the hint of color, and found instead that he had discovered the dead body of a young woman.
The victim was completely clothed and did not appear to have been raped, though she had been killed by two shots from a .38 caliber handgun: one to the back and one to the temple. It appeared that her killer had shot her in the head first, dragged her into the corn field, and then shot her again in the back to make sure she was dead. He had then turned out her pockets and taken whatever he found within, presumably to forestall her identification.
The young woman was believed to be between thirteen and nineteen years old, with brown eyes, and wavy light-brown hair that was frosted in the front. Because she had prominent tan lines, investigators speculated that she was not local, and had recently arrived in New York from a much warmer climate. Later pollen analysis would confirm this suspicion, suggesting that the girl had been in Florida, Arizona, southern California, or northern Mexico shortly before her death.
At autopsy, her stomach was found to contain potatoes, canned ham, and sweet corn, and this finding corroborated the testimony of a waitress at a nearby diner, who told police she had seen the girl eating there with a man the day before her body was found. This man was described as being around five-foot-nine-inches tall and wearing black, wire-rimmed glasses. The witness also claimed that he and the girl had left the diner in a tan station wagon.
The victim remained unidentified for thirty-five years, known only as Caledonia Jane Doe, or Cali Doe for short. Then, in the early 2010s, a woman in Brooksville, Florida was searching social media for an old school friend named Tammy Jo Alexander. Unable to locate her, the woman contacted the Alexander family, who gave her the shocking news that Tammy had run away from home on numerous occasions, and that no one had heard from her since the late 1970s. Though the family claimed they had filed a missing persons report back then, police had likely not taken it seriously because of Tammy’s history as a runaway. They filed a new report in 2014.
A year later, the identity of Cali Doe was confirmed through DNA as sixteen-year-old Tammy Jo Alexander of Brooksville, Florida. According to her half-sister Pamela Dyson, Tammy would often escape from their unhappy home, which featured a drug-addicted mother who was prone to violent fits of anger.
Tammy worked as a truck stop waitress, and sometimes got rides around the country with truckers, any one of whom may have been responsible for eventually killing her. Pollen found on Tammy’s remains suggested that she had likely traveled from San Diego through the Sierra Nevada mountains and on into Reno before subsequently arriving in the area of New York where she was murdered. Investigators are also looking into three men whose DNA was found on Tammy’s clothing.
Ever since the victim was identified in 2015, detectives have been working tirelessly to bring a resolution in the case, and hope that Tammy’s killer will soon be found.
Crime Immemorial 