Gruesome Crime Rocks Gateway City

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This vacant apartment building, which has since been razed, was home to one of the most shocking, horrific crime scenes ever to rock St. Louis.

In the winter of 1983, two men searching for a metal pipe to fix their car made their way into an old, dilapidated apartment building in the heart of St. Louis.

When the men reached the dark and dreary basement of 5635 Clemens Ave., one of them flicked their cigarette lighter to help them navigate the dank, musty, labyrinthine hallways, littered with garbage and refuse from years of desolation and abandonment.

Though it was only 3:30 p.m., it might as well have been midnight in the dark bowels of the abandoned tenement.

As they made their way through the heaps of trash at their feet, the men looked down -- and immediately realized they were standing in the midst of one of the most ghastly crime scenes their city has ever known.

Lying face down in the furnace room, her pants removed, hands tied behind her back -- and her head nowhere in sight -- is how the two unsuspecting scavengers found the body of a young, African-American female on February 28, 1983.

Frightened and beyond mortified, the men ran from the darkness out into the street, calling the cops from the first phone they could find. Though police quickly swarmed the area, her killer would evade them.

Investigators never could have imagined for just how long.

Responding officers initially thought the victim might have been a local prostitute. That is, until they turned the body over and realized it was a pre-pubescent girl. From their estimates, she was anywhere from 8 to 13 years old.

More than a quarter-century has since passed, and to this day, cops can't wrap their minds around who would commit such a deplorable crime.  Not only was the young girl beheaded, but cops say she was sexually assaulted and strangled before that final repulsive act.

What chills detectives even more than the crime itself is the fact that after all these years, not a single person has come forward to identify the young, defenseless victim at the center of this tragedy.

Retired Lt. Col. Leroy Adkins, who was Commander of the SLMPD Homicide Unit at the time of the discovery, found himself at the Clemens Ave. crime scene that day. In all his years on the force, he considers this case the most memorable.

"The reason is...the child has never been identified. It's heartbreaking.  In any murder case, the first thing you do is identify the victim -- and then work backwards," he said.

Only this time, they didn't know where to start.
 

Decades Later, Detectives Relentlessly Seek Answers

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In the cavernous darkness, investigators search this filthy basement for clues. This is the precise location where two men found the headless body of St. Louis Jane Doe on February 28, 1983.

Ever since that frigid February afternoon in 1983, thousands of man-hours have been spent by the City of St. Louis to try to bring this case to a close. 

Dozens of detectives have poured over the files, searching for clues they might have missed.

Joe Burgoon, a retired St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department detective, arrived at the crime scene shortly after the body was discovered. 

He conducted hundreds of interviews and ran down thousands of leads -- all to no avail.

When Burgoon left the force in the mid-1990s, he passed the baton to SLMPD Homicide Det. Tom Carroll.  He works this case whenever he finds a spare moment, in between the newest homicides that come his way.

Between Detectives Burgoon and Carroll, they've run the gamut as far as trying to publicize this case and drum up new leads. Burgoon's gone on several television shows, hoping to find a new development or two, but he never found the clue he's so vehemently sought.

Det. Carroll has presented the case before groups of investigators in Miami, Fla. and Scottsdale, Ariz., hoping that their expertise would lend him new investigative tools to help crack the case.

While he learned a great deal, the status quo remained unchanged.

In the years he's worked this particular Jane Doe case, Det. Carroll has become a virtual encyclopedia of missing African-American girls across the country.

There are few names he hasn't heard before in his quest to unearth Jane Doe's identity.

"We've accounted for all kids in the St. Louis public school system, as well as throughout the nation," he said. As a matter of fact, Det. Carroll has investigated virtually every African-American girl reported missing "from five to ten years before [1983] to five to ten years after," he said.

To this day, the St. Louis Jane Doe case still lingers in a tragic limbo. "We'd love to get out of the starting gate and begin an investigation into her murder -- but we're firmly cemented in mud," says Det. Carroll.

Cops Hope Timeline, Details Produce Leads

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When detectives found St. Louis Jane Doe's body, there was no retrievable evidence left behind by the killer. All that remained on the girl was this rope and bloody sweater, which had the tag cut out.

Detectives do have the girl's mitochondrial and nuclear DNA on file, and they hope that as technology improves, it will yield answers. Unfortunately, they were unable to salvage any of the killer's DNA from neither her body nor the filthy shirt adorning her torso.

Investigators know the young girl was an African-American, 8 to 13 years old, born between 1970 and 1975. She's believed to have stood at 4'10", and weighed approximately 70 pounds.

Her fingernails were painted in two coats of red polish.

She had been sexually assaulted, and though she was decapitated, that's not what killed her.  According to the autopsy report, her cause of death was a result of a lack of oxygen in her lungs.

Between that finding, and the bruising on her chest, they believe she was strangled to death before her grisly decapitation.

The killer bound her hands behind her back with red and white cross-stitched nylon rope at some point before, during, or after the brutal attack. But that attack, they believe, took place elsewhere.

Once the blood had drained from her body, cops believe her killer dragged her from the unknown murder site, down to the basement of the abandoned apartment building on Clemens Ave.

In order to determine how long she'd been there before her discovery, lab technicians looked to the mold growing on her open neck wound for answers. They were able to recreate the same type of mold in a controlled environment, with their tests revealing that it took approximately four to five days to grow the same amount found on her corpse.

In the days and weeks following her discovery, cops hoped that her parents or family members would come in to identify her.

Tragically, her body was never claimed.

For nearly ten months, her body lay in the city morgue, until detectives helped pay for a proper burial in St. Louis' Washington Park Cemetery.

Though the cemetery is in dire straits, with a highway currently dividing it in half, detectives try to maintain her grave site as best they can, clearing it of brush and overgrowth.

The epitaph on her tombstone reads: "The saddened hearts were healed in knowing the pain of life is over and the beauty of the soul revealed."

In time, so will be her identity, as well as that of the sick, depraved human being responsible for her murder.

If you know anything about St. Louis Jane Doe or the vile person who killed her in February 1983, you've got to call our hotline right away at 1-800-CRIME-TV.

-- By Justin Lenart, AMW Staff