Cold cases are typically the most difficult cases for law enforcement agencies to solve.
No leads, no new evidence, limited resources, just boxes and boxes of old files that authorities have been trying to make sense of for years.
It’s a daunting task, especially with new cases to investigate every day, but that hasn’t stopped the Charles County Sheriff’s Office from trying.
In recent years, their Cold Case Unit started an initiative they call the Pursuit of Justice, to gain more attention and media coverage for their cold cases. They also created a page on theirwebsiteto highlight the cases.
The unit is comprised of a team of dedicated, passionate investigators looking for answers. Dateline spoke withDetective Chris Shankster, Detective Sergeant John Elliot, Deputy Director of Forensic Science Noelle Gehrman, and Forensic Science Supervisor Shreya Kamath, all from different backgrounds withvarying areas of expertise, united in a common cause.
And just last year, a 25-year-old Jane Doe cold case came one step closer to being solved. They learned her name. Now they want to find out who killed her.
ABANDONED
According to the Charles County Sheriff’s Office, on June 18, 1998, at approximately 3:00 p.m., a local business owner was walking her dog with her associate on an abandoned farmhouse property in Bel Alton, Maryland. At the end of a dirt road, near a vacant house, they smelled a strong odor.
They walked over to a pile of brush along the driveway where they determinedthe smell was coming from. They discovered human remains in that brush. They immediately returned to the business and called the Charles County Sheriff’s Office.
“Detectives and crime scene technicians responded to the area of 9390 Irving Road, Bel Alton, Maryland. It’s in the area of Crane Highway or Route 301, just a few miles prior to the 301 bridge, and on the other side of the 301 bridge is Virginia,” Det. Shankster told Dateline. “The house that was there was a little dilapidated and vacant and had been for a while. When investigators get there, they find a pile of brush that had been gathered from the area around the body and they found the remains of a decomposed female.”
Shankster said the body was in poor condition due to the warm weather. “The female was completely nude, had no tattoos or markings that would be identifiable on their own. No jewelry, no clothing, nothing,” he noted.
The body was then transported to the office of the chief medical examiner in Baltimore, where an autopsy was performed.
According to the Charles County Sheriff’s Office, the cause of death was blunt force trauma to the face and head and possible asphyxia.
“At the scene, crime scene technicians collected insects on and around the body. Those insects were sent to the Entomology Laboratory at the National Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C., and tests indicated that the body had been at the crime scene for approximately one week,” Shankster said.
“As part of the initial crime scene investigation, members of the Southern Maryland Criminal Justice Academy-- the students and staff -- came out to assist with the search of the property. They conducted line searches directly on that property, on the adjacent properties, looking for any evidence related to the crime,” Det. Shankster said. “They were unable to find any evidence that they believed was directly related to her person at the scene, as far as clothing or jewelry or identifiable items. They also searched the abandoned house.”
The sheriff’s office did not have much to work with. “We did have her remains available to us for testing, but in 1998, DNA testing was in its infancy,” Deputy Director of Forensic Science Noelle Gehrman told Dateline. “So we had to wait to get to where we needed to be with DNA testing.”
In the meanwhile, authorities would use other methods to try to figure out who their Jane Doe was and what had happened to her.
A CHALLENGING INVESTIGATION
“It was fingerprints and other investigative methods, but DNA was not a common technique for trying or attempting to identify unidentified remains,” Detective. Sgt. John Elliot explained.
However, because of the advanced state of decomposition, investigators’ options were limited. “We were only able to obtain three fingerprints from her. So those fingerprints were, at the time, run through the database that was available to us,” Gehrman said. “Any time a missing person came up, her fingerprints were run against,and compared to,the missingperson’s fingerprints. Unfortunately, no matches were ever made.”
Officials also checked with surrounding jurisdictions for reports matching their Jane Doe, but there were none.
Detective Sgt. Elliot noted that getting the word out to the public about their Jane Doe was also more challenging than it would be today.
“Rewind back to 1998. There’s no internet… emails, flip phones were probably considered more advanced at the time. The information sharing compared to what it is today —even among law enforcement in 1998 — was nowhere near what it is today,” he said. “The information sharing and then getting that information out to the public was even more limited. Maybe a news story or, actually, if it appeared in a newspaper where somebody physically had to pick it up and read it if they saw the interest in it.”
There was one thing they could do in the hope someone might recognize the JaneDoe: create a facial reconstruction.
“The victim’s skull was sent to the FBI laboratory under the supervision of the curator of the Department of Anthropology, Smithsonian West Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C.,” Det.Shankstersaid. “A forensic artist created some images for us. We had an idea of what this female may have looked like,” which enabled them to go public with something more than they’d had before.“Pictures of the facial reconstruction, the articles documenting the investigation were published in numerous newspapers in an attempt to develop information regarding the identity of the victim,” Shankster said.
In addition to searching the area where the body was found, investigators expanded their search into the surrounding community. “The initial investigators checked all the surrounding businesses around this farm,” Det.Shankster said. “There were some tow truck-related businesses in the area and at least three hotels, motels, and a liquor store. So they made contact with the business owners at those motels and got a listing of all the vehicles in the parking lots and all the tenants at the businesses at the time. So they had a place to start or to go back to.”
Officials interviewed people who worked at those businesses or were staying in those motels in an attempt to locatewitnesses. “They were unable to find any persons that saw people going in and out of that [area],” Det. Shankster said. Henoted that even though the area was abandoned, there had been some construction on the property over the previous year and it was not unusual for vehicles to be on that roadway. The area can also be accessed from the nearby highway.
Shankster said the evidence at the scene indicated their Jane Doe was killed elsewhere. Authorities believe she was brought there and then covered up with brush, in an effort to conceal her.
Jane Doe’s case went cold.
A NEW PRIORITY
In 2020, the Charles County Sheriff’s Office made it a priority to bring greater attention to their cold cases via social media. They began tohighlight cases on theanniversarydates of each case. That was more difficult in this Jane Doe case, since they had no photos and no name. All they had were the pictures of the facial rendering they had made years earlier.
“We published that onto our social media website and on our CCSO page, our website and our social media pages like Facebook, Instagram, and even Twitter,” Shreya Kamath said. “And we did start getting quite a bit of attention. We would get a lot of shares, comments.”
In 2023, Charles County Sheriff’s Office Public Information Officer Diane Richardson reachedout toNBC Washington.They agreed todo a story on the 25th anniversary ofwhen the Jane Doe’s body was found. The report included the few details she sheriff’s office had on the case and showed pictures of the forensic artist’s rendering of the victim.
Shortly after that story aired, Noelle Gehrman got a phone call. “So it actuallygot started with a text message from an acquaintance of mine who I actually worked with at another job. And she asked if I had been on the news about a Jane Doe case,” Gehrman said. “She said that her mother had showed her the Jane Doe sketch and they believed it was their cousin.”
Gehrman asked her former co-worker some questions about her cousin. “We went back and forth over, you know, ‘Tell me a little bit more about your cousin, tell me about their features, tell me about teeth, hair, tell me about their lifestyle,’” she said. “And the more she spoke, it just felt right. Everything went into place with it. It was just --it put me back a little bit, because I didn’t expect the call to come from someone I had worked with 10 years ago.”
Theco-worker sent a photo of her cousin. Gehrman found the facial features --specifically the gap in herteeth --to be extremely similar to Jane Doe’s. “You put them side by side and it was uncanny. It just all fell into place,” she said.
THE MISSING PUZZLE PIECE
The Charles County Sheriff’s Office then made contact with the potential family of their victim and determined that the timing of their loved one’s disappearance lined up with the discovery of their Jane Doe, according to Detective Sgt. Elliot.
So, onJune 30, 2023, Gehrman and another lieutenant from the department went to meet with two men who might have been brothers of their Jane Doe to obtain DNA samples. The results were a match.Their Jane Doe had a name: LaQuanda Denise Williams, known to her loved ones as “Niecey.”
According to Det. Shankster, the family said they had last seen LaQuandain June of 1998. The family also told authorities that in 1998, before her death, the 31-year-old had told her family someone had threatened to kill her, and provided a name to the sheriff’s office. That name has not been released.
LaQuanda’s family declined Dateline’s request for comment, however they did provide a statement to the Charles County Sheriff’s Officein2023.
“We are both saddened and grateful for this step toward closure. LaQuanda, fondly known as Niecey was our beloved daughter, sister, niece, aunt and friend. She was a compassionate giver who always served others with a smile. Though cut short, her life was a testament of grace and perseverance.
We would like to thank everyone who prayed for Niecey and our family over the years. A special thank you goes to the Charles County Sheriff’s Office for their efforts to ensure Niecey did not remain unidentified. We would also like to thank our local media outlets for reporting on her cold case.
As we seek justice and full closure, we join the investigation team in asking anyone with information about Niecey’s death to please come forward.
We appreciate your ongoing support and prayers as we continue to heal in private at this time.”
Identifying LaQuanda was a huge step forward in the investigation. Getting justice for her is the next hurdle. The Charles County Sheriff’s Office is actively investigating leads and asks if you know anything about LaQuanda’s homicide, that you please contact Charles County Crime Solvers at 1-866-411-TIPS, or submit a tiponlineon their tip form.
If you have a story to share with Dateline, pleasesubmit it here.
Anna Turning
Anna Turning is an Associate Producer with Dateline NBC.
