On November 16th of 1987, a pair of hunters patrolling an area near Shaw Creek in Eureka, South Carolina stumbled upon a disturbing scene, one that in hindsight may have been the first inkling of a possible serial killer prowling through the forest.
The dead woman had clearly been there for some time, probably between one and five years; there was little left of her but a skeleton, and tree roots had grown through some of her finger bones. She was discovered lying face down, perhaps even posed, in a very shallow grave with no clothing or belongings of any kind. The only item found alongside the body, in fact, was the brass casing from a shotgun shell.
The victim, eventually dubbed Aiken County Jane Doe, was an African-American woman between the ages of seventeen and thirty, standing about five-foot-nine and weighing around one-hundred-fifty-five pounds. She had several teeth missing, and a very prominent overbite. Other identifying features included a healed injury to her right knee, and a healed broken nose. Because the hyoid bone was also found to be missing, authorities speculated that she had perhaps been strangled. Later analysis of the victim’s hair tested positive for cocaine.
The woman has so far never been identified, and her killer is likewise a mystery, though as the years went on, other dead women would turn up in the same area, leading some researchers to believe that a serial murderer is responsible for the slaying of Aiken County Jane Doe and at least two more victims.
Crime Immemorial 