A pregnant woman who was found dead in 1992 in a northeastern Indiana basement has been identified through forensic genetic genealogy and DNA provided by her father, authorities said Thursday.
The woman was identified as Tabetha Ann Murlin of Fort Wayne, who was about 26 weeks pregnant at the time of her death, said Allen County Coroner Dr. E. Jon Brandenberger.
“This is Tabetha’s day, and you’ve been waiting to have a day for her for all this time,” the coroner said at a news conference attended by some of Murlin’s relatives nearly 32 years after her body was discovered.
Brandenberger said Murlin would have been 23 when a construction worker found her decomposed body wrapped in a blanket in May 1992 in the flooded basement of a home being renovated in Fort Wayne.
Investigators estimated the then-identified woman had died between late 1991 and early 1992.
The case eventually went cold, but efforts to solve her death were renewed in 2016 when her case went into the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System, CBS affiliate WANE-TV reported .