The mystery of a woman whose decapitated body was completely bled and dumped in a California vineyard nearly 13 years ago has finally been solved, police announced last week.
Police named Ada Beth Kaplan, 64, as the naked, battered and partially decomposed body that was discovered in March 2011 in the town of Arvin, according to the Kern County sheriff.
Kaplan was completely unrecognizable. In addition to decapitating her wife and draining her of her blood, the killer had even taken the time to cut off her thumbs before laying her face up on the first road.
“This person took his time to pull into this dirt driveway, remove the body, place it on the ground and pose it in a way that I would consider sexual and he wanted the body to be found like that,” said Homicide Sgt. David Hubbard told KGET.
Although they couldn’t identify Kaplan, detectives were clear they were looking for a murder victim.
Ada Beth Kaplan, in an old photo, was identified as the decapitated body found in a California vineyard in 2011. DOE DNA PROJECT
However, the DNA they were able to extract proved useless: There were no hits on any indexes of missing persons, crime scenes or convicted persons, the sheriff’s office said.
The case remained cold for nine years until the Medical Examiner’s Office contacted the DNA Doe Project, a nonprofit organization that specializes in identifying John and Jane Does using investigative genetic genealogy.
This time, Kaplan’s DNA returned multiple hits and connected researchers to several distant cousins spanning eight generations.
Researchers connected their Jane Doe to a rich Ashkenazi Jewish ancestry and combed through hordes of records from Eastern Europe to build a family tree.
Kaplan was never reported missing, making it difficult for police to identify the body. KGET
After comparing his DNA to that of two possible family members residing on the East Coast, the team finally found a match.
“Our team worked long and hard for this identification,” Missy Koski, team leader of the volunteer group, said in a statement.
“Ashkenazi Jewish ancestry is often complicated to unravel. “When we hired an expert in Jewish records and genealogy, that made a big difference.”
Interviews with Kaplan’s family revealed why it had been so difficult to identify her: No one ever filed a missing person’s report.
Police said Kaplan’s body was placed on the ground in a “sexual” manner. KGET
However, the disturbing events that led to her death and the person who killed her remain a mystery.
Kaplan lived nearly 80 miles north of where her body was found, although police do not believe she was murdered at the vineyard.
The deranged killer or killers seemed “pretty comfortable committing this crime,” leaving officers baffled and uncomfortable that they could still be on the loose.
“I’ve never seen anything like this in my life,” Pruitt said earlier.
“I’ve seen some pretty gruesome crime scenes and this one was just… it was creepy.”
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Source: vtt.edu.vn