Fort Worth Does Identified

On Monday, February 24, 1986, at about 7.30 a.m. on the 1300 block of Kuroki Street, not far from East Magnolia Avenue and near Hillside Park in south-central Fort Worth, a woman driving her children to school noticed what looked like a body under a brown blanket.

Not entirely sure if her eyes had deceived her, and because she didn't want her kids witnessing it if they hadn't, she dropped them off at school and drove back past the scene.

The woman confirmed it and hurried home to call the police.

Officers and detectives arrived at Kuroki Street shortly thereafter.

The body belonged to a white female, approximately 35 to 40 years of age, and was lying near the street curb in the driveway of a vacant lot.

She was about 5 feet 3 inches tall and weighed 120 to 130 pounds.

The woman's eyes were green and her hair shoulder-length, wavy, and brown.

She had a small scar on the bridge of her nose and another V-shaped scar on her upper left arm.

Though the body was unclothed other than a white bra, articles of clothing thought to be hers were found inside the blanket that partially covered her.

No identification of any kind was found on the scene, and in fact, evidence there, or lack thereof, led police to believe that the deceased woman had died elsewhere and was subsequently placed where she was discovered.

An autopsy was performed the same day the body was found, and the Tarrant County Medical Examiner determined that the woman had been manually strangled to death.

Although the pathologist told a Fort Worth Star-Telegram reporter that he was awaiting test results to decide whether the slain woman had been sexually assaulted, that information remains publicly unknown.

In an earlier episode covering victims of what the press began referring to as the February Slangs, Gone Cold called the unidentified woman Hillside Jane Doe because of the proximity of her discovery to the park of the same name.

However, she was never mentioned alongside the other women in this series of crimes, which began in 1967 with the murder of Mildred May.

Despite detectives' efforts during the initial investigation, the woman's identity remained unknown.

Years became decades.

Then, sometime in the mid-2000s, previously stored evidence from the case was located and submitted for STR DNA analysis.

Investigators were able to develop DNA profiles from that evidence, but there was still a problem.

They had no investigative lead pointing them toward a possible identity, and therefore no person against whom the profile could be compared.

Her case was eventually entered into NamUs, the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System, a centralized national repository and resource center for missing, unidentified, and unclaimed person cases throughout the United States.

And there, the case of Hillside Jane Doe remained until July of 2025.

That month, the Tarrant County Medical Examiner's Office submitted evidence belonging to the woman to Othram Labs for advanced DNA testing and forensic genetic genealogy.

Scientists at Othram successfully developed a DNA extract from the evidence and constructed a comprehensive SNP profile that, unlike STR DNA, which is the standard for CODIS, can be used for a forensic genetic genealogy search.

A team at Othram then began building family connections from that profile, eventually generating new investigative leads that were provided to law enforcement.

Their genealogical research pointed toward members of the family name McLaren as possible relatives of the unidentified woman.

On Monday, February 24, 1986, at about 7.30 a.m. on the 1300 block of Kuroki Street, not far from East Magnolia Avenue and near Hillside Park in south-central Fort Worth, a woman driving her children to school noticed what looked like a body under a brown blanket.

Not entirely sure if her eyes had deceived her, and because she didn't want her kids witnessing it if they hadn't, she dropped them off at school and drove back past the scene.

The woman confirmed it and hurried home to call the police.

Officers and detectives arrived at Kuroki Street shortly thereafter.

The body belonged to a white female, approximately 35 to 40 years of age, and was lying near the street curb in the driveway of a vacant lot.

She was about 5 feet 3 inches tall and weighed 120 to 130 pounds.

The woman's eyes were green and her hair shoulder-length, wavy, and brown.

She had a small scar on the bridge of her nose and another V-shaped scar on her upper left arm.

Though the body was unclothed other than a white bra, articles of clothing thought to be hers were found inside the blanket that partially covered her.

No identification of any kind was found on the scene, and in fact, evidence there, or lack thereof, led police to believe that the deceased woman had died elsewhere and was subsequently placed where she was discovered.

An autopsy was performed the same day the body was found, and the Tarrant County Medical Examiner determined that the woman had been manually strangled to death.

Although the pathologist told a Fort Worth Star-Telegram reporter that he was awaiting test results to decide whether the slain woman had been sexually assaulted, that information remains publicly unknown.

In an earlier episode covering victims of what the press began referring to as the February Slangs, Gone Cold called the unidentified woman Hillside Jane Doe because of the proximity of her discovery to the park of the same name.

However, she was never mentioned alongside the other women in this series of crimes, which began in 1967 with the murder of Mildred May.

Despite detectives' efforts during the initial investigation, the woman's identity remained unknown.

Years became decades.

Then, sometime in the mid-2000s, previously stored evidence from the case was located and submitted for STR DNA analysis.

Investigators were able to develop DNA profiles from that evidence, but there was still a problem.

They had no investigative lead pointing them toward a possible identity, and therefore no person against whom the profile could be compared.

Her case was eventually entered into NamUs, the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System, a centralized national repository and resource center for missing, unidentified, and unclaimed person cases throughout the United States.

And there, the case of Hillside Jane Doe remained until July of 2025.

That month, the Tarrant County Medical Examiner's Office submitted evidence belonging to the woman to Othram Labs for advanced DNA testing and forensic genetic genealogy.

Scientists at Othram successfully developed a DNA extract from the evidence and constructed a comprehensive SNP profile that, unlike STR DNA, which is the standard for CODIS, can be used for a forensic genetic genealogy search.

A team at Othram then began building family connections from that profile, eventually generating new investigative leads that were provided to law enforcement.

Their genealogical research pointed toward members of the family name McLaren as possible relatives of the unidentified woman.