Katherine Ann Alston (Bedford Jane Doe)

On October 6, 1971, the badly decomposed body of a woman was discovered off a logging road in a wooded area of Bedford, New Hampshire, near the Route 101 bypass and not far from the Everett Turnpike, roughly 20 miles north of the Massachusetts border. Forensic examination indicated a white female between approximately 20 and 40 years old, between 5 feet 1 inch and 5 feet 5 inches tall, with brown hair. She was wearing a maroon pullover blouse with a lace neckline and short hip-hugger denim shorts, and investigators estimated she had been dead for one to three months. Because of the advanced decomposition, the medical examiner could not determine a cause of death; based on the circumstances and the location of the remains, authorities have treated the death as a homicide.

For more than five decades the woman was known only as the Bedford Jane Doe. No missing person report matching her was ever connected to the case, and traditional investigative methods failed to produce an identification. In February 2020, after exhausting other leads, the New Hampshire State Police referred the case to the DNA Doe Project, a nonprofit that uses investigative genetic genealogy to identify unidentified remains. The lab work proved complex and ultimately required a second bone sample to develop a usable DNA profile, which was uploaded to the GEDmatch database. According to the DNA Doe Project, a sibling of the victim had taken a direct-to-consumer DNA test and uploaded the results to GEDmatch, but a 2019 policy change had defaulted profiles to opt out of law enforcement matching; after GEDmatch revised its policy in January 2021, the key match became available and genealogists were able to build out the family tree.

On January 9, 2023, the New Hampshire Attorney General's Office announced that the woman had been identified as Katherine Ann "Kathy" Alston, who was approximately 26 years old at the time of her death. Alston was born in 1945 in Chelsea, Massachusetts, the eldest of several siblings, and spent much of her life in the Boston area. She graduated from Dorchester High School in 1963 and attended Boston University, where she met Ralph Lawson Garrett Jr.; the two married in Newton in 1967 and later divorced. According to investigators, at the time of her death Alston was living on Beacon Street in Boston with a male roommate. In the late summer of 1971 her parents and younger siblings relocated to Texas, and Alston was supposed to meet her family at Logan Airport to join them but never appeared. No missing person report appears to have been filed at the time.

With the identification made, the New Hampshire Cold Case Unit turned to determining who killed Alston and how she came to be in Bedford. Investigators publicly asked for help locating her former Beacon Street roommate, David Cormier, and asked to hear from anyone who knew Alston or her associates in Boston, Dorchester, or Somerville between 1963 and 1971, including Boston University students from that era. Authorities have not named any suspect in her death. Attorney General John Formella said the state was "determined to stay on this case" and would follow any leads that might help determine who was responsible. The homicide investigation remains open and unsolved; anyone with information is asked to contact the New Hampshire Cold Case Unit at (603) 271-2663.