Rare test sought to help ID transgender woman in Lake
Tamara Dale feels like she knows “Julie Doe.”
The Lake County Sheriff ’s Office sergeant has been investigating the 30-year-old cold case for about two years — but has yet to learn Julie’s real name.
Dale’s interest in the mystery spiked after the remains were tested again as part of a statewide initiative to revisit unsolved cases.
Advances in technology revealed the victim in the 1988 case was not a woman who officials originally thought had given birth to multiple children, but instead a transgender woman who was born biologically male.
Dale, 37, said the bizarre mixup sent them back to square one.
But so far nothing has led to the woman’s identity or why she was found dead 30 feet off County Road 474 in a rural area of southern Lake County in be-
tween State Road 33 and U.S. Highway 27.
The person found had breast implants and was taking hormones, which led to the misidentification. She is estimated as being between 24 and 33 years old.
“It’s a whole new case for us,” Dale said. “She has spent the last 30 years in a lab. This is a new chance to solve this case.”
She said they’re now hoping a rarely used procedure, called a familial DNA test, will help reveal Julie’s real identity.
“I don’t think she had an easy life with being transgender in the 1980s, and she obviously died without any sort of respect,” Dale said. “I think she deserves a break and her family needs to know what happened to her.”
She asked the Florida Department of Law Enforcement to run the familial DNA test in mid-June. The process runs the victim’s DNA profile through a database that will look for partial matches, which could help locate family members. The procedure is fairly new and only a handful of states, including Florida, allow the tests.
The process has been controversial, especially when it is used to make an arrest. Many opponents say the practice raises privacy and civil rights concerns.
Lake County has used familial DNA testing on several occasions, most recently in a case last year to help identify Melvin Kort, whom deputies say had been buried by his two daughters in the yard of his home.
The tests have helped lead to arrests across the nation, including in notorious cases like that of the “Grim Sleeper” serial killer in Los Angeles. Lonnie David Franklin Jr. is now on death row after a familial DNA test helped connect him to at least 10 murders over several decades.
The American Civil Liberties Union says the popularity of the tests raises concern.
“It’s quite a powerful tool but it can also be ineffective or dangerous,” said Michael Risher, a senior attorney for ACLU.
Risher said the tests lead law enforcement to family members, which then widens the net of innocent people who fall under suspicion and are investigated by authorities.
He said the practice is also racially discriminatory because there are more people of color in DNA databases, which leads to hits on minorities more often than other groups.
Dale said she doesn’t plan to use the test to arrest anyone, especially since a medical examiner’s report was inconclusive as to Julie Doe’s cause and manner of death.
“In a perfect world this test might lead to a suspect, yes, but my first priority is figuring out who she was so her body can be laid to rest,” she said. “Of course, I would love to figure out what happened to her, but that comes after giving her family some peace.”
The FDLE has received 21 familial DNA search requests from across the state since about 2012. Of those, 19 were accepted and four led to results, which were passed along to law enforcement, according to data provided by the agency.
The department lists guidelines before a search is done, including that detectives have to exhaust all other means before the DNA is run through a familial test. It also lists that the case “must involve a violent crime against a person” or be a “critical public safety concern,” according to the FDLE’s familial DNA search police.
Risher said Dale’s chances of getting approval to run a familial test are small because of the strict protocols.
Dale said she has had the victim’s DNA run through several other databases and also had all of her evidence checked for foreign DNA. She is hoping to have an isotope test done at the University of South Florida later this year that would test the victim’s teeth, hair and bone.
The test could help figure out where the victim grew up and lived just before her death.
“Part of me really thinks that she didn’t live here in Central Florida, so getting this information could really help us figure out where we should be looking,” Dale said. “Because right now, her whole story is a complete mystery.”