It was the morning of Sunday, September 25th, 1988, and a man was driving along Highway 474 in Lake County east of Orlando, searching for a perfect cypress tree to cut down and make furniture out of. Spotting a promising specimen, the man pulled over, but then began to notice a terrible smell wafting out of the woods.
After police arrived on the scene, they discovered the partially skeletonized remains of a woman lying face up in the long weeds. She was clad in an acid-washed denim skirt and a blue-green tank top, and her pantyhose had been rolled down to her knees, suggesting that she had possibly been sexually assaulted.
Though a cause of death could not be conclusively determined, the case was investigated as a homicide, as it appeared that someone had dragged her to the spot where her body was found. Initial post-mortem examinations concluded that the victim was white, between twenty-two and thirty-five years old, standing around five-foot-ten and weighing approximately one-hundred-seventy pounds. The coroner also initially surmised that the woman had given birth to at least one child.
Dubbed Julie Doe, the victim also had a few other unique characteristics. Her naturally brown hair had been bleached blonde, for example, and she had had a nose job and breast implants that had been put in prior to 1984. She also had several previously healed fractures, including one to her cheekbone, one to her nose, and another to one of her ribs.
Public appeals over the ensuing years failed to identify either the victim or her possible killer, and the case subsequently went fallow. But in 2015, Julie Doe’s DNA was reexamined as part of a push to solve cold cases in Lake County, and it was then that investigators got something of a surprise: Julie Doe was a transgender woman who had undergone gender reassignment surgery.
It turned out that the pits on the pelvis that the initial autopsy demonstrated were evidence of childbirth were not as clear-cut an indication as had once been believed. Further testing also established that Julie Doe had probably been undergoing hormonal treatment for several years prior to her death.
Because gender reassignment surgery was much more unusual in the early 1980s, it is almost certain that Julie received it in either Miami, New York City, New Orleans, Atlanta, or Los Angeles. Isotope testing suggested that the victim hailed from south Florida, indicating that perhaps her surgeries had taken place in Miami, though other possibilities are being explored.
Authorities are hopeful that this new information will eventually lead to Julie Doe having her true name restored and her killer being brought to justice.
Crime Immemorial 