AUSTIN, Texas — It was a cold case that seemed virtually impossible to solve. It took the work of thousands of people spanning four decades to finally put a real name on an artist's sketch, including two women who drove out to a cemetery on Wednesday night in celebration.
For 40 years, she was known only as "Orange Socks." In 1979, a body of an unidentified woman was found in a ditch along Interstate Highway 35 near Georgetown. She had been strangled and was found wearing only a pair of orange socks – and that would become her name for decades.
On Wednesday, the Williamson County Sheriff's Office solved the mystery. DNA confirmed the victim was 23-year-old Debra Jackson, who had run away from her family home in Abilene in 1977.
There were many different departments and organizations that helped make this happen, including DNA Doe Project, which has employees working to solve John and Jane Doe cases.
Missy Koski and Lori Hausenfluke work for DNA Doe Project as volunteers. They have been working on this cold case for about a year-and-a-half.
"We had a big task in front of us," Koski said.
"We work on analyzing the information we have, find patterns and find most recent common ancestors," Hausenfluke said. "You could call it reverse engineering of a family tree."
They are a part of the 50 volunteers across the country who worked this cold case.
"It took a while for us to get good DNA that was usable that we could submit for analysis," Koski said.
Both these women said the big break in the case came from the sketch Natalie Murry made in July, which led to tips about who this woman could be.
"It was the picture in this instance that changed everything," Koski said. "The final closure was the DNA that we were able to confirm. Today, we can look at it and say, 'This is Debra.'"
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