Editor’s note: This story includes an image that some readers may find disturbing. The image is provided to help identify a murder victim.
Mark Twain once said, “The report of my death was an exaggeration.”
Dorothia Diaz of Texas might say the same thing.
Dorothia was unaware until late February that she was the subject of a cold case search by a San Bernardino County coroner’s team that thought she had been murdered half a century ago. She lives in Bowie, about 150 miles northeast of Abilene.
Dorothia, 76, assured a reporter on March 5 that she had not been murdered.
DNA obtained from the remains of a woman found dead in an abandoned mineshaft in the Mojave Desert in 1976 sent retired San Bernardino County coroner David Van Norman on a genetic safari to identify the woman. By process of elimination, he concluded the murder victim was most likely Dorothy Riddick, whose family was from the Wichita Falls-Henrietta area.
An article about his search in the Wichita Falls Times Record News connected Van Norman to a Henrietta family. That connection in turn led him to Dorothia, his missing link who was still alive and well and living in Bowie.
She had been born Dorothy Riddick in Henrietta and placed for adoption. The small town is about 160 miles northeast of Abilene.
“She gave me away when I was 7 months old,” Dorothia said of her mother, who died at age 34.
Despite being adopted, Dorothia stayed in close contact with her mother’s family for years.
“I knew all my family, her brothers and sisters and my grandmother and my grandpa,” she said.
Those grandparents had 10 children, which means the family gene pool has been spread wide and far and convinces Van Norman he’s on the right DNA trail despite going down the wrong rabbit hole.
Despite being a likely close cousin to the murdered woman, Dorothia hasn’t a clue to who she might have been.
“I have no idea,” she said.
Ironically, Dorothia was living in California at the time the woman was killed.
who is Jane Doe? San Bernardino County investigators seek help solving 1976 desert murder
After 16 years there, she returned to North Texas and worked at a variety of jobs in Wichita Falls before moving to Bowie.
She will provide DNA to the San Bernardino County team searching for the murdered woman’s identity.
“We want to get to the bottom of it and put her to rest,” Dorothia said. “If any of my other family members know anything or have anything to tell, tell it. It’s not fair for this girl to lie there and not be known.”
Dorothia said two of her uncles moved to the San Diego area in California years ago. That’s where Van Norman will now concentrate his search.
The mystery woman’s body was found by hikers on May 30, 1976 in the Barstow area. She was dressed only in a bathing suit and had been shot in the back with a shotgun.
The San Bernardino County Sun reported debris had been thrown on her body in an attempt to hide it. The newspaper reported the old mine was so remote it took investigators 45 minutes to drive the six miles to it from the closest road.
Van Norman said anyone with information can contact him at dvannorman@sbvol.org.
The family tree from which the mystery woman descends will not die off anytime soon.
“I have six kids, 19 grandkids and 31 great-grandkids,” Dorothia said.
This article originally appeared on Wichita Falls Times Record News: Word of her San Bernardino County murder surprised a Texas woman who is alive and well
Reporting by Lynn Walker, Wichita Falls Times Record News / Wichita Falls Times Record News
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
