Other Details
Police believe the murder weapon to have been a .38-caliber handgun. Investigators located a spent slug in the dirt underneath the unidentified girl's body, which they compared forensically to hundreds of other bullets fired from confiscated weapons. Despite the efforts of investigators to trace weapons from the United States, Canada, Europe, and Mexico, the slug has not been matched to a specific gun.
Truckers interviewed by police reported having seen the girl hitchhiking and catching rides prior to her death. One trucker stated that he saw Caledonia Jane Doe trying to hitchhike to Boston, Massachusetts the night before she died. As Caledonia, New York, sits a driving distance of approximately 75 miles (121 km) from the United States–Canada border via the New York State Thruway and Interstate 90, the possibility remains that Caledonia Jane Doe may have been Canadian rather than American or Mexican. Interstate 90 also runs from coast to coast within the United States, beginning in Seattle, Washington and ending in Boston, Massachusetts.
Because she could eventually be identified by a match between her living relatives' DNA and her own, Caledonia Jane Doe's body was exhumed for purposes of DNA extraction. The University of North Texas Center for Human Identification was able to produce nuclear STR (nucDNA) and mitochondrial (mtDNA) profiles of her DNA via forensic DNA profiling. Her DNA profiles are stored in the Combined DNA Index System (CODIS), a database that allows United States public crime laboratories to compare and exchange DNA profiles in order to identify criminal suspects and crime victims.
The case has received national attention, appearing on such television shows as America's Most Wanted. As of 2012, Cali Doe remains unidentified.
Read more about this topic: Cali Doe
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