The Brief
- Using forensic genetic genealogy, Washington State Patrol detectives identified a woman known for 35 years only as “Helen Doe” after she died in a fiery 1991 semitrailer crash on Interstate 5 near Kalama as 34-year-old Ohio native Mary Ellen “Mollie” McCullough, the agency announced.
- Detective Sgt. Stacy Moate, who reopened the cold case in 2014 and spent 12 years pursuing leads, solved the mystery after advanced DNA profiling by Othram pointed to European ancestry rather than Native American heritage, leading her to contact McCullough’s brother, Michael McCullough, on Aug. 6.
- The identification brings long-awaited closure to McCullough’s family, who had never heard from her after she left Florida to catch a ride in 1991 and now plan to return her cremated remains to her birthplace in Cambridge, Ohio.
KALAMA, Wash. – For 12 years, Washington State Patrol Detective Sgt. Stacy Moate kept a sketch of an unidentified woman on a bulletin board in her office. The woman had died in a fiery truck crash on Interstate 5 near Kalama in 1991. Investigators knew who was driving. They knew what a witness remembered about the passenger. For decades, they knew her only as Helen Doe.
A witness remembered a woman with long brown hair, high cheekbones, a vest and a feather earring. Those details helped Forensic Artist Natalie Murray develop a sketch. The witness also thought the woman might be Native American, a possibility detectives considered for years.
Then, on Aug. 6, Moate reached a man named Michael McCullough. She asked him a question she had put to other people while working her way through a family tree built from DNA matches.…