March 14, 2019:
The Josephine County Sheriff’s Office has announced that they’ve uncovered the identity of Annie Doe, whose body was found at Cave Junction in Oregon on August 19, 1971. A man and his son were mushroom hunting when they came upon the scattered skeletal remains of a female who remained unidentified until this year.
Annie Doe has been identified as Anne Marie “Annie” Lehman of Aberdeen, Washington. The identification came as a result of the work the DNA Doe Project has done on the case. The organization, which is a donation-run non-profit, is volunteer-led and works to analyze the DNA of John and Jane Does and compare them to potential matches – or “DNA-cousins” – through GEDmatch, a public genetic genealogy database.
The organization took on Annie Doe’s case in 2018 and were able to develop her family tree upon finding her fifth cousin, who is from New Zealand. In February 2019, they discovered a potential match with a sister who was still living in Washington. With the help of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, Detective Ken Selig on the Josephine County Sheriff’s Office was able to contact said sister and obtain a DNA sample, which proved to be a match.
Anne was just 16 years old when she went missing in either the winter or spring of 1971. According to her sister, she was seen one day packing luggage. When asked where she was going, she motioned to a slightly older woman and responded, “With her.” Upon the woman being tracked down, it was learned that Anne was possibly taken to San Francisco, California and sold into the sex trade.
The circumstances surrounding her case, as well as how she ended up in Oregon, are unclear. The cause and manner of her death still remains unknown at this time. While some believe her to have been a runaway, others believe the story about her being a victim of human trafficking to be true.
Those with information regarding Anne Lehman’s disappearance and murder are being asked to contact Detective Selig of the Josephine County Sheriff’s Office at 541-474-5123, reference case #71-940.
Stories of the Unsolved will update this post as more details emerge.
Image Credit: KDRV
Stories of the Unsolved 