Jane Doe found in Mississippi River identified more than 50 years later
Cheryl Lynn Edwards (Credit: Clinton County Sheriff's Office)
CLINTON CO., Iowa - Authorities in Iowa have identified a woman whose body was found in the Mississippi River more than 50 years ago, marking the end of the state's longest-unidentified "Jane Doe" case.
The backstory:
According to the Clinton County Sheriff's Office, fishermen discovered the body of an unidentified African American girl in the Mississippi River on April 11, 1975. Investigators estimated she was between 12 and 23 years old, and an autopsy determined she had been shot in the head.
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She was also approximately 10 weeks pregnant at the time of her death. Her death was ruled a homicide, but despite years of investigation, her identity remained unknown.
Dig deeper:
After decades of investigative work and the use of forensic genetic genealogy, authorities identified the victim as Cheryl Lynn Edwards, who was born in San Diego in 1959 and was living in Waukegan, Illinois, when she disappeared in 1975.
Edwards was 15 years old at the time of her disappearance.
The identification was made through a partnership between the Iowa Department of Public Safety, the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children and the DNA Doe Project.
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In October 2025, a team of 16 volunteer investigative genetic genealogists from three countries worked on the case during the DNA Doe Project's annual gathering in Texas.
Within hours, the team traced Edwards' family to Louisiana before connecting them to the Kenosha, Wisconsin, area. Researchers later found records showing Edwards was born in a U.S. Navy hospital in San Diego and disappeared from public records in the 1970s.
Investigators presented Edwards as a possible match to the Iowa Department of Public Safety, which contacted a family member who confirmed she had disappeared decades earlier. Follow-up DNA testing ultimately confirmed her identity.
What's next:
Authorities are now working to reconstruct Edwards' final days and determine what happened before her death, hoping the identification will generate new leads in the homicide investigation.
The Source: This story is based on information released by the Clinton County Sheriff's Office, the Iowa Department of Public Safety and the DNA Doe Project. This story was reported from Los Angeles.