The authorities, for almost 45 years, remained unaware of the name or life of the woman they found shot dead on the left side of a logging road in Massachusetts.
However, advanced genetic testing has helped them solve the mystery and they recently found out that the victim was Patricia Ann Tucker, who was aged 28 and was a mother to a 5-year-old son when she was murdered without her family having any knowledge of the tragedy for decades.
The office of the district attorney in Massachusetts announced that the investigators had found out that the murder victim was Tucker who was known to many as the “Granby girl”, which was a nickname given to her based on the area where her dead body was found.
As per the police information, the assailant shot Tucker in the temple after which she was dragged by her neck before her decomposed body, buried under a stump and leaves, was found by the loggers on November 15, 1978.
Later, her dead body was buried in a grave marked “unknown”. Tucker’s son who is now 50 years old, Matthew Dale, said that he spent his childhood in North Carolina without being sure about the reason for her mother’s disappearance.
He added that, in his 30s, he had believed that she was dead, and hence, he had submitted his DNA to a database, if the authorities ever find her.
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Dale’s assumption, about his mother being dead, started getting confirmed about two years ago. The local authorities were helped by the forensic laboratory in acquiring the Granby girl’s DNA profile, which led them eventually to a relative in Maryland, said a prosecutor with the north-western Massachusetts district attorney’s office.
The investigators were connected with Dale through that relative. Dale said that he handed a file with his digital DNA profile to the investigators, and in hours, he got a call from them as they informed him that there was a clear genetic match between his DNA and the Granby girl, who they finally concluded was his mother.
(With inputs from agencies)
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