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In 1983, a Young Girl Was Assaulted and Decapitated. Police Still Don't Know Who She Is.
By Denise Grollmus in cold cases, homicide, missing persons, unsolved
Wednesday, Nov. 4 2009 @ 10:00AM
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St. Louis police say the young girl's murder is the worst they've ever seen
​St. Louis is the kind of town that will quickly turn any rookie cop into a case-hardened veteran. The city has continually been ranked amongst the top three "Most Dangerous Cities in America" by the Morgan Quinto report. In 2006, the study ranked it number one. And, according to FBI statistics, St. Louis has one of the highest per-capita crime rates in the country -- and a murder rate triple that of the national average. 

But despite the nerve-numbing number of violent crimes, St. Louis investigators still can't shake the details of one particularly gruesome murder case from 1983...

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The girl's body was found in this abandoned building. Her identity still remains a mystery
​It was winter time. Two men were wandering through one of the city's many abandoned tenement buildings, digging for scrap in its dank, dark basement, when they stumbled across a scene straight out of a horror movie.

At their feet lay the body of a young black girl. She was face down, her hands tied behind her back, her pants -- nowhere to be found. The men quickly ran from the building and called police, who swarmed the area. 

Initially, police dismissed the body as that of a local prostitute. But when they turned the body over, they discovered a young girl who could have been no older than 13 -- but more likely only 8 or 9-years-old. She weighed 70 pounds. Two coats of red nail polish had been painted on her little hands. The girl had been brutally raped, strangled, and then decapitated before her body was dumped in the abandoned basement -- where it lay for more than four days before the men found it. 

Retired Lt. Colonel LeRoy Atkins -- who was head of the city's homicide unit at the time -- told America's Most Wanted that it was the most memorable and most disturbing case of his career. "The child has never been identified," he said. "It's heartbreaking."

But the girl's anonymity is no fault of law enforcement efforts. For over twenty-five years, St. Louis police have poured thousands of man-hours into the case. Hundreds of interviews have been conducted. The case has outlasted three different detectives, whom all appeared on television shows, hoping to drum up leads in the case. One particular detective, Tom Carroll, has even investigated every report of a missing African-American girl in the country between the years of 1973 and 1993. "We're firmly cemented in mud," Carroll said. 

The girl's body lay in the city morgue for more than ten months after she was found. Police hoped family and friends might come to claim it but they never did. Instead, detectives paid to have the girl buried.

To this day, police officers maintain the girl's grave, paying for its upkeep and keeping it free of brush. Her tombstone reads: "The saddened hearts were healed in knowing the pain of life is over and the beauty of the soul revealed." 

If anyone has any information about the case of the missing Jane Doe, please call Detective Carroll at 1-314-444-5371. "We'd love to get out of the starting gate and begin an investigation into her murder," he said.

Tags: Missouri