Six years after her remains were found by a hunter, the DNA Doe Project has identified Rural Hall Jane Doe as Maria del Socorro Medina Trejo. Medina was only 42 years old when she died, and she had been living in the Winston-Salem area at the time of her disappearance.
On Sept. 10, 2019, a hunter discovered a portion of a human skull in a wooded area behind an RV dealership in Rural Hall, North Carolina. A search of the area led to the recovery of additional bones believed to be from the same person, a woman aged between 33 and 46 years old. There was no indication of trauma to the bones, and a cause of death was unable to be determined. The bones were examined by a forensic anthropologist who estimated they had been in the woods for approximately seven months.
The Forsyth County Sheriff’s Office later brought this case to the DNA Doe Project, whose expert investigative genetic genealogists work pro bono to identify Jane and John Does. A DNA profile was generated for the unidentified woman and this led to the discovery that she was Hispanic, rather than Caucasian as had been initially assumed…