Patricia 'Trisha' Meleady Newsom (East Haven Jane Doe)

Case background and investigation

On the morning of August 16, 1975, a truck driver making a delivery behind the Bradlees department store on Frontage Road in East Haven, Connecticut — near Interstate 95, on land later occupied by a CarMax dealership — discovered a body in a drainage ditch. The victim, a young woman, had been bound at the wrists and ankles, gagged, and wrapped in a canvas tarp. The medical examiner ruled her death a homicide by asphyxiation. Investigators at the time estimated she was a white or possibly Latina woman of slight build, roughly 18 to 28 years old, and believed she had been dead for several days before she was found. With no missing-person report matching her description, she became known as the East Haven Jane Doe. In 1976 the town paid for her burial in an unmarked grave at State Street Cemetery in neighboring Hamden.

The case sat cold for decades until around 2020, when East Haven police captains Joseph M. Murgo and David Emerman reopened it, assigning Detective Molly Perry as lead investigator and partnering with Identifinders International, a forensic genetic genealogy firm. Recovering usable DNA proved difficult. A first exhumation at State Street Cemetery in June 2022 turned up the wrong remains — those of a young male — because of inaccurate cemetery maps. A second attempt in July 2022, aided by ground-penetrating radar, located the correct casket, and a DNA sample was extracted for genealogical analysis.

The break came from the victim's own family. Maryann Newsom Collette of Tennessee had spent years searching for her sister Patricia, creating a 'Find Patricia Newsom' Facebook page, entering her sister's information into the NamUs national missing persons database, and uploading her own DNA to GEDmatch. In April 2023, genealogists matched the exhumed remains to Collette's profile, and East Haven police publicly announced that the East Haven Jane Doe was Patricia 'Trisha' Meleady Newsom, born June 20, 1957, in Idaho Falls, Idaho — making her 18 years old when she was killed.

According to her family and police, Patricia's early life was unsettled. Her mother died of cancer in 1968, her father remarried, and the family moved frequently before settling in New Jersey around 1972. As a teenager Patricia was sent to a boarding school in the Monticello area of Sullivan County, New York, from which she ran away around 1973 or 1974, reportedly with a friend and with the aim of reaching Maine. Her family never heard from her again, and the roughly two years between her disappearance and her death remain largely unaccounted for. Police have asked anyone who knew her during that period — in New York, New Jersey, Maine, or Connecticut — to come forward.

In July 2023, Patricia's remains were exhumed a final time from State Street Cemetery, cremated at no cost by East Haven Memorial Funeral Home, and returned to her family in Tennessee for interment. While the identification closed one half of the mystery, her murder remains an open, active homicide investigation by the East Haven Police Department. No arrests have been made, and her killer has never been identified.