A woman’s remains were found in 1978 in Nevada. Police now know the identity of the victim from Ohio

By Ashley R. Williams, CNN

(CNN) — Forty-five years after an Ohio woman went missing somewhere along the West Coast, her two remaining relatives – the woman’s nieces – now know what became of their Aunt Dolly.

Unidentified human remains found in October of 1978 inside a garment bag in a remote area of Imlay, Nevada, have been identified as Florence Charleston of Cleveland, Ohio, according to Nevada State Police.

Advanced forensic DNA testing of Charleston’s remains along with a genealogy search led to her identification several decades after her death, authorities said.

Diane Liggitt, one of Charleston’s nieces, was about 18 years old when her aunt went missing.

Liggitt told CNN she recalled Charleston, who she and her cousins called Aunt Dolly, heading to Portland, Oregon, with a man in the early 1970s.

“She just met this guy, and went off to live her happily ever after, or she thought,” said Liggitt who lives in Lisbon, Ohio. “My uncle couldn’t get a hold of her ever.”

“Every time he called, she was either too sick to come to the phone or (there was) just one reason or another why she couldn’t talk to him,” added Liggitt whose father was Charleston’s sister.

Her uncle’s efforts to find his sister using a private investigator were also fruitless. The last the family had heard, according to Liggitt, was that Charleston was in Reno, Nevada, sometime in 1978.

“They found her up in the middle of the state,” Liggitt said.

The Nevada State Police said in a news release Tuesday that its Investigation Division continues to investigate Charleston’s death and seeks information from the public on the case.

DNA advancements help identify woman

On October 26, 1978, the Pershing County Sheriff’s Office in Nevada found unidentified remains near the small town of Imlay, 133 miles northeast of Reno, that were inside a bag that also contained women’s clothing, according to a news release from the Nevada State Police.

The remains were heavily decayed, and an autopsy did not reveal a cause of death or identifying information about the woman, who was found to be a Caucasian at least 40 years old, the release stated.

The woman had been dead for six months before her body was found, according to a May 1980 newspaper article from the Nevada State Journal, which became the Reno Gazette-Journal in 1983.

The sheriff’s office enlisted the help of Nevada State Police the following year. Though the case was entered into the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System (NamUs), the authorities’ investigation found no significant leads.

In March of 2022, investigators worked with Othram, an American company specializing in forensic genealogy for law enforcement agencies, to perform advanced forensic DNA testing and genealogy testing on the woman’s remains.

“About a year ago, NamUs started directly funding some cases of unidentified persons in hopes that they could leverage new technology, like Othram’s, to identify people,” Othram’s CEO, David Mittelman, told CNN.

RTI International, the organization that manages NamUs, coordinated the delivery of the case’s evidence to Othram’s laboratory.

“That’s how we got started,” Mittelman said.

‘You found Aunt Dolly’

The testing resulted in several new leads in the case, including the identity of Charleston.

After wondering for decades what became of her aunt, Liggitt was leaving her home one day when she received a call from a detective. There had been a DNA match.

“He had gotten my DNA from a body that was found in the desert. I and (my cousin) are the only two living relatives,” Liggitt said, referring to her cousin, Donna Taylor.

“I said, ‘Oh, my God, you found Aunt Dolly,’” she recalled.

The family plans to ship Charleston’s remains back to Ohio for a proper burial once the investigation into her homicide ends, Liggitt said.

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