The death of a woman dubbed the “trunk lady” – after her remains were found in a case in the woods – has been a mystery for 53 years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But now, one of the most infamous cold case victims has been identified through DNA.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Her name was Sylvia June Atherton, police confirmed in a statement this week.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Ms Atherton’s body was discovered by two police officers on Halloween 1969.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The corpse was inside a black case, wrapped in a large plastic bag, in the Florida city of St. Petersburg.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Ms Atherton was a 41-year-old mother of five from Tucson, Arizona, police said in a statement on Facebook.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Following the breakthrough, police have launched a fresh appeal for anyone with information regarding Ms Atherton’s death or the whereabouts of two of her daughters, who have not been located.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“The victim had visible injuries to her head and had been strangled with a man’s Western-style Bolo tie. She was partially clothed in a pajama top,” police added.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Witnesses said two white men left the case in the area after they carried it from a pickup truck, according to St. Petersburg Police’s Assistant Chief, Michael Kovacsev.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Over the years, police tried multiple times to identify the victim – even exhuming her body from an unmarked grave in 2010 – but samples of teeth and bone were “too degraded”.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
That was until this year, when a sample of the victim’s hair and skin taken during the original post-mortem was found and tested.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Detective Wally Pavelski contacted the victim’s children, including Syllen Gates, of California, who was nine years old at the time of her mother’s disappearance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Ms Gates told police that her mother left Arizona for Chicago with her husband, Stuart Brown, five-year-old daughter Kimberly Anne Brown, son Gary Sullivan, daughter Donna and her husband David Lindhurst.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The death of a woman dubbed the “trunk lady” – after her remains were found in a case in the woods – has been a mystery for 53 years. But now, one of the most infamous cold case victims has been identified through DNA. Her name was Sylvia June Atherton, police confirmed in a statement […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6920,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[220],"tags":[2736,2733,2734,1419,2735,1635],"class_list":["post-6919","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-53-years","tag-arizona-woman","tag-death","tag-florida","tag-identified","tag-police"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/miaminewsnetwork.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6919","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/miaminewsnetwork.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/miaminewsnetwork.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/miaminewsnetwork.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/miaminewsnetwork.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6919"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/miaminewsnetwork.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6919\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6921,"href":"https:\/\/miaminewsnetwork.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6919\/revisions\/6921"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/miaminewsnetwork.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/6920"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/miaminewsnetwork.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6919"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/miaminewsnetwork.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6919"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/miaminewsnetwork.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6919"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}