Cowlitz County has identified a woman who died in a 1991 Interstate 5 crash near Kalama as Mary Ellen “Mollie” McCullough. For 35 years, she was known as Helen Doe. McCullough was 34, originally from Ohio and living in Indiana; her remains have now been returned to her family.
Identification After Decades
The Cowlitz County case file records that the woman was a passenger in a semi-truck that caught fire in the 1991 crash. FOX 13 Seattle reports that Washington State Patrol identified her as Mary Ellen “Mollie” McCullough, born March 26, 1957, in Cambridge, Ohio.
The crash occurred May 14, 1991, on southbound I-5 near Kalama, killing both McCullough and the truck’s driver, 26-year-old Lester Harvel of Missouri, according to the county’s account. Investigators later found that the trucking company had no record of an authorized passenger. They believed Harvel may have picked her up as a hitchhiker or at a rest stop.
A Cold Case Reopened, Then Reopened Again
Investigators revisited the unidentified-person case in 2014. FOX 13 Seattle reports that Trooper Stacy Moate and investigator Greg Wilcoxson worked on it, and that McCullough’s remains were exhumed so investigators could seek DNA from her bones or teeth. The Puyallup Tribe of Indians helped fund that effort.
The DNA profile developed from the exhumation did not match anyone in the FBI’s CODIS database. A KOIN report at the time described the case as unresolved. The Cowlitz County coroner later sent a bone sample to forensic genealogy lab Othram, which developed a more advanced profile in May 2022. FOX 13 Seattle reports that analysis indicated European ancestry, with further analysis suggesting Scottish, Irish and English roots. The profile was uploaded to FamilyTreeDNA, where users can opt in to law-enforcement matching.
Tracing DNA Leads to Relatives
FOX 13 Seattle reports that genealogist Renee Kerr helped trace relatives and build a family tree, while Moate made at least 60 or 70 calls to follow leads. On August 6, 2026, Moate reached Michael McCullough, Mollie’s brother, and asked whether he knew of a female relative who had gone missing in the 1990s…