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1992 — AND 1999 —
Two of the county's open files are not about finding a killer. They are about finding a name.
Tabetha Ann Murlin: On May 15, 1992, a construction worker renovating a vacant house at 3512 Reynolds Street found a woman's body in its flooded basement, in eight to twelve inches of water. She was too badly decomposed for the coroner to determine how she had died, or even her age and identity; the autopsy established that she had been pregnant. She was buried on May 21, 1992, in Lindenwood Cemetery, as Mary Jane Doe. The case rested for a generation. A NamUs file was created in 2016; in March 2017 her body was exhumed, and a DNA profile was recovered from a femur at the University of North Texas Center for Human Identification and entered into CODIS. Genetic genealogists at IGGnite DNA took the case up, and in January 2024 their work identified her father. On February 12, 2024 — thirty-two years after she was found — the Allen County Coroner's Office announced that Mary Jane Doe was Tabetha Ann Murlin, 23, of Fort Wayne. Her name is restored. How she came to be in that basement, and how she died, remain undetermined on the public record, and this section states both halves of that standing: an identification solved, a death unexplained.
The man in the creek: On April 22, 1999, the remains of a man were found in a creek in Fort Wayne. More than twenty-five years later, he is still unnamed. The Allen County Coroner's Office carries his case as 99C000196, and he is entered in NamUs as UP4843. The coroner's office has published photographs of the clothing and effects recovered with him — among them a cord necklace with a crucifix — in the hope that someone recognizes them and can say who he was. Identification work continues: genealogical testing has been reported under way, complicated, the reports say, by contamination of samples collected earlier. Until it succeeds, the county's record holds him the way it found him: a date, a case number, and a set of belongings waiting for a name.
Sources:
- Allen County Coroner's Office, news release of February 2024 (identification of Tabetha Ann Murlin), as reported by the Journal Gazette, "Who was Tabetha Ann Murlin? Mary Jane Doe identified after 30 years" (February 21, 2024), and WPTA (February 2024) — the 1992 discovery, the 2017 exhumation and DNA work, and the February 12, 2024 identification.
- NamUs case UP4843 and Allen County Coroner case 99C000196 (the man found April 22, 1999), with the Doe Network's Allen County John Doe (1999) page — the discovery, the published photographs of his effects, and the reported state of the genealogy work.