East Haven Cold Case: Murdered Teen Jane Doe Identified After 48 Years

EAST HAVEN, CT - Her body was found bound, gagged, wrapped in a tarp, and dumped in a drainage ditch on the side of Interstate 95 in East Haven in August 1975.

East Haven police tried, unsuccessfully, to identify the murdered young woman. The town would ultimately bury her body in an unmarked graveside in an ancient Hamden burying ground.

For decades, Jane Doe, as she was dubbed, went unidentified, until a few years ago when two East Haven police investigators reopened the long-cold case.

East Haven’s oldest cold case was taken over by police Capt. Joseph M. Murgo and Capt. David Emerman three years ago. They were determined to put a name to the face of the young murdered woman, and hopefully, bring closure to a family who’d been searching for her.

Last week, after exhuming her remains and having DNA tested in a year-long process, scientists found a match.

Now, the young woman long referred to as Jane Doe has been identified after 48 years. Police shared the news at a media briefing Monday.

Patricia “Tricia” Meleady Newsom was born on June 20, 1957 in Idaho Falls, Idaho.

Her sister Maryann Newsom Collette, who began a search for her near half-century missing sister with a Facebook page, was notified by East Haven police last week that they’d identified her remains. Newsom Collette, who lives in Tennessee, came to East Haven for the announcement.

The discovery and the decades-later exhumations

In August 1975, a trucker found a body bound and wrapped in plastic in a Frontage Road drainage ditch in the area now home to CarMax. The woman, who was believed to be white or Latina, was somewhere between 18 and 28 years old, with a slight build. She'd been murdered. Her cause of death was asphyxiation; she was likely strangled to death.

She was never identified. But there have been people over the years who were devoted to finding out who she was, including sleuths retired police officer Tony Griego and Amy White. Both were on hand for the announcement.

At the time, the town paid the East Haven Memorial Funeral Home $600 to handle her burial. And with nowhere to bury her, the State Street Cemetery in Hamden was chosen as it was home to a number of indigent burials.

With Murgo and Emerman dedicated to identifying her, in July 2022, they decided to have her body exhumed. But first, they’d have to find it in the 225-year-old, time-worn, and abandoned Hamden burial ground. The plan was to exhume her body, and use DNA and other technologies to finally put a name to the face that’s been buried on the edge of a tangled fence. They dug, and found a grave but, it wasn't her.

Three weeks later, in mid-August 2022, with East Haven police and the Office of the Chief State Medical Examiner at the ancient State Street Cemetery, a second exhumation was done. Once the casket was located and opened, Murgo said the next step was to make sure the body of a woman inside was their Jane Doe. As she had been autopsied, was without a pubic bone, and was unclothed and in a body bag, "We confirmed it was her."

For Murgo and Emerman, that moment was hard to describe.

"It was an overwhelming sense of relief," Murgo said. "Just to know we're one step closer to hopefully telling a family she's been identified."

Emerman also described a sense of relief but also, a determination.

"A big sigh of relief that we were in the right place, the right grave and the right victim," he said. "I’m also very optimistic that hopefully we can give some closure to a family. We weren't going to give up. And we don't want to give up on the criminal case either, but determining who she is, that was the goal."

Murgo and Emerman said the two years they've worked on the case involved a team of investigators. Det. Molly Perry, who was the lead detective, Det. Sgt. Joe Finoia, Det. Monique Colbert, Det. John Fraenza, Det. Nick Adams and Det. John Trinh. "They all deserve recognition" the police captains said.

Then, the process of extracting DNA to identify her would begin, starting at the state laboratory with extraction and sequencing to be sent for genealogy testing. For months that work was attempted but it would require more sophisticated scientific work than the lab was equipped for.

So East Haven police working with Dr. Colleen Fitzpatrick and the groundbreaking Identifinders International, which employs the "science and art of forensic genetic genealogy," provided the testing.

Meanwhile, her sister Maryann was on a mission. She started a Facebook page, “Find Patricia Newsom.”

"This page is for help in finding my sister, Patricia Meleady Newsom who disappeared in around 1974. Please share it if you can because these days the internet can do things that couldn't have been done before. I have looked on and off for years, and in that time the internet has grown up. I was nine when Trisha disappeared. No one has ever heard from her in the intervening years."

Hundreds joined in to help. The search extended onto social platforms like Reddit where sleuths worked to help locate Patricia. For a time, Redditers thought she was perhaps the Lady of the Dunes, though she was not. Maryann appeared on a true crime podcast in another effort to spread the word.

But no luck anywhere.

Though East Haven police had shared her photo decades ago and local media published stories about the woman found murdered on the side of the highway, there was no response — no one contacted East Haven police to claim her.

Then, in 2022, her photo was shared in local, and national media including CNN, during the exhumation process, but still, no one made the connection.

“We’re very hopeful that somebody somewhere will have seen her and will help us. All it’s gonna really take is one person (who knew her),” Maryann said on the podcast.

Last year, she would have her DNA put into a national missing persons bank, NamUS, and it was that move that led to genealogists to just last week make the connection. Maryann and Patricia were sisters.

At Monday's press briefing, Newsom Collette spoke about the search for her sister and thanked East Haven police, the community and everyone involved.

What happened to Patricia?

She was born in Idaho but would move with her family, including two brothers and a sister Maryann, many times. Her mother died from cancer, and her father remarried and would remarry again. While living in New Jersey, she was sent to a boarding school in upstate New York, and in around 1974 she’d run away from and never be heard from again. She's been identified and now, police will work to find out who killed her.