UPDATE: What We Know About the Dismembered Jane Doe Found in North Fairmount

A dismembered head found earlier in January is a confirmed match to the torso of a woman found in North Fairmount in November, Hamilton County Coroner Lakshmi Sammarco announced during a Jan. 11 press conference.

The coroner and Cincinnati Police still don’t know the identity of the woman who was found dismembered in the woods off Baltimore Avenue near Beekman Street on Nov. 5, but forensic investigators are starting to know more about the Jane Doe since her head was found nearly two months later.

What we know

While investigators now have a positive match between the head and the torso, the possible age range of the victim has widened.

“We have been consulting with a forensic anthropologist and a forensic odontologist since the head was discovered,” Sammarco told reporters. “There’s a little bit of a debate over her possible age. We’re increasing the age group that we’re looking for from late 20s, early 30s to maybe early 50s, although I still feel like she’s probably on the younger end.”

Other descriptions of the victim first provided in November are unchanged: She is believed to be a Black woman, about 5 feet tall and weighing around 120 pounds. Sammarco said the woman likely sustained at least one pregnancy in her lifetime, possibly in the past three years. Her time of death is still estimated to be sometime during the evening on Nov. 3 or the following morning.

Other new details include confirmation that additional items “related to body parts” have been recovered from the area and that some body parts are still missing, but Sammarco declined to offer specifics.

Sammarco said her office has a “pretty good idea” of the cause of death, but said she won’t share that information with the public until more testing is done.

“I think it will be critical to discovering who this might be,” she said.

With still no fingerprints, tattoos or scars to help identify the victim, Sammarco noted the victim’s health appeared to be good prior to her death.

“She seemed like someone who had been taking care of herself,” she said. “As far as physical condition of the body, we felt that she was in very good health.”

How DNA is being used in the investigation

While the coroner's office has had the victim's DNA since her remains were discovered, Sammarco said finding a match isn't as simple as one might think.

"The DNA database basically has approximately 10 million people in it right now. We have over 400 million people in the United States alone," she said. "The information is put in and then [as DNA is processed from other cases], if something hits in a similarity or a match, it'll pop up."

Why it took two months to find the head

Cincinnati Police Captain Stephen Saunders said CPD is continuing the investigation in collaboration with Cincinnati’s FBI office, who were the ones to discover the missing head on Jan. 3. Saunders said the head was located “a couple blocks away” from where the torso was found by a passerby on Nov. 5, but declined to be more specific about the location.

Sammarco addressed a question about why it took two months to find the nearby head.

“The head was found one more street beyond where the initial search widening had stopped,” she said. “The plan was always to go back and continue to widen the search, along with CPD and FBI and the Buckeye Search and Rescue and the other law enforcement partners, the timing was such that, you know, with the holidays and the weather, just to try and get the whole team out there again was a little difficult, and that’s why there was some time in between when we were trying to figure out where to widen the search.”

Despite having decomposed outside for two months, Sammarco said the head was in good enough condition to get “a lot of information.” She said CT images will be provided to a forensic artist to create a digital mock-up of her face.

“Hopefully in the next few weeks we’ll have maybe a digital image of a woman that we could share with you that somebody would be looking for,” Sammarco said.

Investigators are encouraging anyone with information related to this case to contact CrimeStoppers at 513-352-3040.