CA Woman Missing Since 1973 ID'd Thanks To New DNA Test

NEVADA CITY, CA — The remains of a Nevada City woman who disappeared more than 40 years ago have been identified, the Nevada County Sheriff's Office said in a news release Monday. DNA testing helped determine that a skull found in 1993 belonged to Joanne Dolly Burmer, who was reported missing in March 1973, when she was 25 years old.

A man found a portion of the skull in May 1993, the Sacramento Bee first reported, while cutting firewood off Chalk Bluff Road east of Nevada City — near where Burmer had gone missing 20 years earlier. An analysis by a laboratory at California State University, Chico determined that the skull belonged to a young or middle-aged white female, but the lab wasn't yet conducting DNA testing at the time.

Starting in 2002, the sheriff's office began collecting DNA profiles from Burmer's relatives, but wasn't able to match the DNA to any known human remains.

Finally, in August 2017, investigators discovered that the skull found in 1993 "had never been returned to the Sheriff’s Office Property Unit, entered into the State or National Databases for unidentified remains or submitted for DNA testing."

That same month, the skull was sent to the California Department of Justice’s DNA laboratory in Richmond, where investigators were able to extract a DNA profile from the skull. That profile was later matched with those of Burmer's relatives.

According to the news release, Burmer was first reported missing on March 8, 1973. Nine days earlier, on February 27, her friends had dropped her off at Highway 20 and Excelsior Road, east of Nevada City. She was last seen making a 3-mile walk in snowshoes to another acquaintance's house at the end of Excelsior Point Road.

At the time, officials searched the area where she was last seen and considered her disappearance suspicious, but it became a cold case after they were unable to establish any leads.

Burmer's relatives have been notified of her discovery, the sheriff's office said.