The body of Lisa Coburn Kesler has been identified in North Carolina, 33 years after she went missing.Photo:Orange County Sheriff’s Office - North Carolina/ The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children; Orange County Sheriff’s Office - North Carolina/Carl Koppleman
Orange County Sheriff’s Office - North Carolina/ The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children; Orange County Sheriff’s Office - North Carolina/Carl Koppleman
A 33-year-oldcold case in North Carolinahas been solved, following a local sheriff’s announcement Wednesday that the remains of a Georgia woman, whose body was found in 1990, have been identified.
According to thepress releasefrom the Orange County, North Carolina Sheriff’s Office, investigators have identified the remains of Lisa Coburn Kesler, a resident of Jackson County, Georgia, who went missing more than three decades ago at the age of 20.
“Throughout the decades, some of our finest investigators kept plugging away," Orange County Sheriff Charles Blackwood said per the press release.
Local law enforcement, who believe the victim was strangled and her body dumped, spent years attempting to identify the woman’s remains using traditional methods. Officials even made a bust of Kesler using forensic facial reconstruction techniques modeled from her skull.
Orange County Sheriff’s Office - North Carolina/ Carl Koppleman
“When you can’t close a case, it gets under your skin,” Sheriff Blackwood continued. “You might set the file aside for a while, but you keep coming back to it, looking to see something you didn’t notice before, or hoping information gathered in ensuing cases has relevance to yourcold case.”
ABC11reported that, according to investigators, Kesler’s family didn’t know she was missing at the time of her disappearance, noting that the victim left Georgia willingly to go to Michigan. When Kesler left Michigan, her family there believed she left willingly to return to Georgia.
An earlier digital illustration from 2017 also failed to turn up any leads in the cold case from 1990.Orange County Sheriff’s Office - North Carolina/ The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children
Orange County Sheriff’s Office - North Carolina/ The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children
In 2018, updated technology allowed investigators to circulate a digital illustration of the deceased in the hopes of identifying her, although despite their best efforts, Kesler’s identity remained a mystery.
“Investigators also monitor new techniques and technologies in the field,” Sheriff Blackwood explained, “which is what eventually led to the breakthrough in Ms. Kesler’s case.”
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In 2020, following two decades of the victim remaining unidentified, forensic investigators took over and began working with the North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation to solve the case. Updated technology allowed for a degraded hair fragment from the victim to be used forDNA extraction, which investigators were able to link to a paternal cousin of the victim using genealogy databases.
According to theOrange CountySheriff’s Office, investigators requested DNA from a second maternal relative to Kesler, with analysis of this genetic material providing additional confirmation.
While the case remains open, authorities in North Carolina are now hoping further DNA analysis will allow them to identify Kesler’s killer.
Sheriff Blackwood concluded, “I am very happy we solved the three-plus-decades-old mystery of this young woman’s identity, and I hope it provides solace to her family members. We are grateful to the many investigators, passionate volunteers, and talented professionals who assisted with this effort. I believe we collectively demonstrated the value of dogged determination, which we will now apply to the task of identifying her killer. There is no statute of limitations on murder, and no time clock on justice.”
source: people.com
