It was July 22nd, 1990, and some teenagers were exploring an area of Monroe Township, Pennsylvania, about three miles south of Interstate 80. They had just passed under a small railroad trestle when they noticed what they initially thought was a dead deer, lying in a shallow stream. But as they grew closer, they realized the body was actually that of a young woman, face down in the mud.
The victim was white and thought to be between fifteen and twenty-two years old, but possibly as old as forty. She was about five feet tall, weighed between one-hundred-five and one-hundred-twenty pounds, and had long, dark brown hair. She also had near perfect teeth, though she still had baby teeth behind her adult ones that hadn’t fallen out. She also had one tooth that was chipped, and one that was rotated nearly one-hundred-eighty degrees.
It was believed she had been murdered between one to two months prior to being found, and the cause of death was blunt force trauma to the right side of the head. She had also suffered a broken leg.
She was clad in a black, button-down shirt, a vest with a floral pattern, and Gitano brand jeans, though she had no bra, shoes, socks, or jewelry. Because she was found with one penny in each of her two jeans pockets, she was eventually christened Penny Doe. It was never established whether the pennies had been placed in her pockets deliberately by her killer as some sort of message, or whether the coins had perhaps just been left there after he had rifled through her pockets for valuables.
Authorities were doubtful that the woman was local to the area, but they were convinced that the assailant almost certainly was, due to the isolated location where the victim was found, which would indicate a killer with an intimate knowledge of the terrain. Then again, since the remains were discovered close to a railroad trestle, there was still a slim possibility that the perpetrator had reached the location by train.
Because there had been an outdoor music festival held fifteen miles away from the dump site over the previous Memorial Day weekend—which would have jibed well with the time Penny Doe was thought to have died—there has been speculation that the victim traveled to the area to attend the concert and met with her killer there, though this scenario is simply conjecture at this point.
In the summer of 2002, twelve years after the body was found, police received an anonymous letter referring to the Penny Doe case. Though law enforcement encouraged the letter writer to contact them again with more details, this never came to pass. But interestingly, the letter arrived at police headquarters right around the same time that authorities had reopened the case of missing person Barbara Miller, a thirty-year-old woman who had vanished after attending a wedding in Mifflinburg, Pennsylvania back in late June of 1989. It has been hypothesized that Barbara Miller was murdered for being a drug informant, and though her body has yet to be found, some investigators believe that Penny Doe may be Barbara Miller.
As of 2023, results of DNA tests have not yielded any matches, and Penny Doe’s identity remains unknown.
Crime Immemorial 