Crime Immemorial

The last known contact Amy had with her family occurred in the late summer of 2008. She telephoned her mother from Beloit and asked for a ride home. Amy’s mother, who was living in northern Illinois, was unable to arrange transportation for her because of what authorities later described as extenuating circumstances.

Amy’s family never heard from her again.

No official missing-person report was filed at the time, although authorities have emphasized that Amy’s relatives continued searching for her themselves and hoped she would eventually contact them.

Exactly what happened after that telephone call remains unknown.

On the morning of November 23rd, 2008, three deer hunters were walking through private property along Skyline Drive in the Town of Ashford, in southeastern Fond du Lac County, when they discovered human remains in a shallow creek near an abandoned farm.

The location was remote. The creek ran through a wooded area hundreds of feet from the roadway. By late November, freezing temperatures had encased portions of the body in ice. Investigators had to carefully break through the ice to recover the remains, while divers searched the creek for evidence.

The woman was already badly decomposed, making visual identification impossible. Investigators believed that she had not died recently. Forensic entomologist Neal Haskell examined insects associated with the remains and compared their development with historical weather conditions. His analysis suggested that the body had been decomposing for approximately two to four months before its discovery, potentially placing the woman’s death or disposal sometime between July and September 2008. That evidence is consistent with Amy having died during the summer or late summer, possibly in August, although law enforcement has never publicly established a precise date of death.

The location immediately raised suspicions. Investigators did not believe that the young woman had simply wandered into the creek and died there. FOX6 reported that detectives believed the body had been placed or dumped at the location, and authorities ruled out suicide. The case consequently came to be investigated as a suspected homicide, even though decomposition made it impossible to determine exactly how the woman had died.

Without a name, investigators had to build their case around Amy’s physical characteristics and the few possessions found with her. She was initially estimated to have been between approximately fifteen and twenty one years old, standing somewhere between about four feet ten inches and five feet four inches tall, with a weight estimated between roughly 110 and 135 pounds. Her hair was light brown to dark blond and approximately shoulder length, with variations in shade that suggested it may have been highlighted. Investigators also noted an overbite and evidence that she may have been somewhat pigeon-toed or knock-kneed.

She was wearing blue jeans and a black strapless top with pink trim and a pink bow. Investigators traced some of her clothing to Family Dollar stores and determined that one item had been distributed during the summer of 2008; another small piece of evidence suggesting she had died relatively soon after the clothing entered circulation.

No shoes or socks were found with the body. That detail added to investigators’ suspicions that the creek was not the actual site of her death.

A small St. Benedict medal was later recovered from the water during a search, although investigators could never establish with certainty that it belonged to the victim.

The condition of the remains presented a far more serious obstacle. Months of decomposition and immersion in water had destroyed soft-tissue evidence that might otherwise have revealed scars, tattoos, injuries or other identifying marks. It also prevented the medical examiner from conclusively determining a cause of death. Toxicology testing was conducted, but the results were not publicly released.

Investigators therefore faced an unusual problem: they believed a young woman had likely been killed and concealed, but they did not know who she was, how she died or who might have wanted her dead.

The unknown woman became known throughout law enforcement and missing-person circles as Fond du Lac County Jane Doe.

Her dental information and DNA were entered into databases, and the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children assisted investigators by producing facial reconstructions based on her skull. The images were circulated publicly in the hope that someone would recognize her. The reconstructions produced numerous tips but no identification.

Investigators compared Jane Doe with missing young women from across the country. Some possibilities attracted considerable attention before DNA eventually excluded them. The continuing uncertainty demonstrated one of the greatest difficulties in unidentified-person investigations: without knowing where a victim came from, authorities may effectively be searching the entire country.

After three years without an identification, Jane Doe was buried on December 7th, 2011, at Cattaraugus Cemetery near Waupun, Wisconsin. She was laid to rest without her true name, but investigators did not abandon the case. Technology was advancing, and detectives hoped that someday science would provide an answer that traditional investigative methods could not.

That opportunity arrived several years later. In 2016, investigators again consulted specialists with the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children. The case was reviewed in light of forensic techniques that had either improved dramatically or did not exist when the body was discovered.

On April 26th, 2018, Jane Doe’s remains were exhumed. Investigators collected samples of bone, teeth and hair and sent them to laboratories around the country for advanced testing.

Among the techniques employed was isotope testing, which attempts to identify geographical regions where a person may have lived by studying chemical signatures retained in teeth and bones. Testing initially suggested that Jane Doe may have spent significant portions of her life in the American Southwest and had lived more recently in the Midwest. The results provided investigators with new avenues to explore but still did not give them her name.

DNA eventually proved far more important. A usable genetic profile allowed researchers to employ investigative genetic genealogy, comparing portions of the unidentified woman’s DNA with profiles capable of pointing toward biological relatives. Genealogical research gradually narrowed the possibilities until detectives located people believed to be members of Jane Doe’s family.

Investigators then collected DNA from Amy Yeary’s mother and sister. The results matched.

Dental X-rays provided additional confirmation. After nearly thirteen years, Fond du Lac County Jane Doe finally had a name.

On November 23rd, 2021—exactly thirteen years after the body was discovered—Sheriff Ryan Waldschmidt publicly announced that Jane Doe had been positively identified as Amy Marie Yeary.

The identification transformed the investigation. For thirteen years detectives had been trying to discover who the dead woman was. Now they could begin reconstructing the life she had been living immediately before her disappearance.

That reconstruction revealed disturbing circumstances. Detectives determined that Amy had been a victim of sex trafficking and had been moving between Beloit, Milwaukee and Chicago during the weeks preceding her death. Her final known contact with her family—the telephone call from Beloit asking her mother to take her home—suddenly became one of the most important moments in the timeline.

Where Amy went afterward is unknown. So is the identity of whoever ultimately transported her more than a hundred miles north toward the rural area of Fond du Lac County where her body was discovered.

Despite the enormous breakthrough provided by her identification, the central mystery remains unsolved. Authorities have not publicly identified a suspect or announced an arrest. They have also not established a definitive cause of death. The physical condition of Amy’s remains robbed investigators of much of the evidence normally used to distinguish between strangulation, stabbing, shooting, overdose or other causes.

Nevertheless, investigators have consistently treated the circumstances as suspicious. Amy was found in an isolated creek near an abandoned property, without shoes or socks, months after she had vanished from contact with her family. Investigators said early in the case that they did not believe she had reached the location on her own and ruled out suicide.

Her history of trafficking also raises important investigative questions without providing simple answers. People subjected to trafficking can encounter traffickers, customers, acquaintances and other individuals capable of exploiting their vulnerability. Amy’s trafficking history therefore gives detectives a potentially significant network of people to examine, but it does not, by itself, establish who killed her or even prove that the person responsible for her trafficking caused her death.

The Fond du Lac County Sheriff’s Office continues to describe Amy’s case as an active investigation. Detectives particularly want to hear from anyone who knew Amy in 2008, encountered her in Beloit, Milwaukee or Chicago, knows what happened to her during the final days of her life, or can explain how she came to be in southeastern Fond du Lac County.

More than seventeen years after Amy’s death, her ultimate fate and the identity of her possible killer remain unknown.