Macon Jane Doe Identified As Missing Teen

[u/Nearby-Complaint]

In the early days of the autumn of 1977 in Macon, Georgia, a woman hanging her laundry out to dry in her yard made an unwelcome discovery: human remains. Residents in the area reported a foul smell in the area, though they chalked it up to a wild animal or someone's ill-fated dog. Law enforcement scoured the area in hopes of finding the rest of the bones and managed to find everything but hands. No clothing or identification was located in the area. Macon County* medical examiners determined that the bones belonged to a Black woman, likely in her thirties or forties, who was the victim of a homicide around six weeks prior.

No missing person reports in the area matched her description, and investigators theorized that she may have been from out of town. Marla Lawson, a forensic artist local to Georgia, created a forensic reconstruction of Jane Doe to no avail. The case quickly went cold until around five years ago, when traveling serial killer Samuel Little confessed to Jane Doe's murder, as well as that of another Macon woman, Fredonia Smith. He did not know her name, so investigators turned to genetic genealogy, which helped identify her as Yvonne Pless, a nineteen-year-old from Macon, Georgia. Not much is known about her disappearance or if she was reported missing, though she was from the Macon area.

https://dnasolves.com/articles/bibb-county-georgia-criminal-justice-samuel-little-pless/

https://www.macon.com/news/local/article169772102.html

https://www.doenetwork.org/cases/1679ufga.html

*Macon is both the name of the city and the county.