11 Years Later, This Jane Doe Found In Pacifica Has A Name

SAN MATEO COUNTY, CA — More than a decade later, the remains of a woman whose body was found badly decomposed off a trail in Pacifica have been positively identified. 'Jane Doe 06-03' is Christine Martell Kuhn.

Kuhn's body was found on June 6, 2006 along a service trail off Highway 1 by a passersby, according to the San Mateo County coroner's office. Her identity and cause of death could not be determined at the time, nor for the next 11 years. And though continued efforts were made to find an identification match for the remains, the process never returned a positive match — until now.

It was back in 2006 when coroner's officials first submitted DNA and a Jane Doe profile to the federal Combined DNA Index System (CODIS) and the California Department of Justice. The California justice system turned up a match within six months, but that lead soon fizzled out.

"On November 30, 2006, Jane Doe 06-03’s fingerprints were matched to an arrest record from January 27, 2006 handled by CHP-San Francisco," a coroner's report states. "The name on the arrest record, 'Sam Smith,' was an alias and suspected to be fictitious."

Coroner Robert Foucrault told Patch that following the fingerprint match and subsequent dead end, other profiles in CODIS turned up as possible matches, but nothing ever panned out.

"We had many hits on this case throughout the years, but there was never a positive match," he said.

That all changed this week, when a hit in CODIS was indeed a positive match.

It turns out that in 2014, Kuhn's daughter went looking for her long-missing mother, who hadn't been seen since 2005 in Washington, D.C. when she was 41. The daughter submitted her own genetic sample "and a mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) profile was completed and submitted to CODIS," the coroner's office said.

"She had no idea where her mom was so she reported her missing, and part of that process is to submit a DNA sample," Foucrault said.

Fast-forward more than two years. A match.

"So our DNA sample was in the system back in 2006, but [the daughter's sample] was not there yet," Foucrault said, adding that it's taken since 2014 for the Department of Justice to compare all the DNA samples and make a match.

On Tuesday, the San Mateo County coroner's office was notified of the association between Christine Martell Kuhn's missing person's profile and Jane Doe 06-03.

Foucrault said family members were saddened to learn where their loved one had been, but also thankful for the closure.

"[Kuhn's husband] was surprised and saddened and also relieved that now he has closure; he knows now that his wife is deceased," the coroner said.

While we know now Jane Doe's true identity, the details as to how Kuhn came to be in California will likely remain a mystery, along with how she met a tragic end off a Pacifica service trail.

"We will never know [how she died]," Foucrault said.

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IMAGE: Kuhn is seen in this 2006 arrest record photo, in which she provided a factious name CREDIT: Provided by the San Mateo County coroner's office