Eklutna Annie

Case background and investigation

On July 17, 1980, workers discovered the badly decomposed remains of a young woman in a shallow grave along a power line in a heavily wooded area about one mile south of South Eklutna Lake Road, near the village of Eklutna outside Anchorage, Alaska. Some records, including the Doe Network case file, give the discovery date as July 21, 1980. Investigators nicknamed her 'Eklutna Annie' after the place she was found. An autopsy determined she had been killed by a stab wound to the back, and investigators believe she died months before she was found, most likely in late 1979. She was estimated to be between 16 and 25 years old, petite at roughly 4 feet 11 inches to 5 feet 3 inches tall, with light brown to strawberry-blond hair. Examiners believed she was likely white, possibly with some Native American ancestry.

She was found with distinctive clothing and jewelry that investigators have long publicized in hopes of identification: a brown leather jacket, blue jeans, red knee-high boots, a hammered copper bracelet with turquoise stones, a beaded necklace with a turquoise shell and heart charm, gold hoop earrings, a ring with a white stone, and a Timex wristwatch. Alaska's News Source reported that some of the handmade jewelry appears Native American in origin.

The case broke open in 1983, when Anchorage police and Alaska State Troopers connected local baker Robert Hansen to a series of assaults and disappearances of young women, many of them dancers and sex workers, after a kidnapping victim escaped and identified him. On February 18, 1984, Hansen pleaded guilty to four counts of first-degree murder — for Sherry Morrow, Joanna Messina, Paula Goulding, and the woman known only as Eklutna Annie — and in a plea agreement confessed to killing 17 women in all, later pointing out grave sites to investigators from the air. He told investigators that Eklutna Annie was his first murder victim, saying he picked her up in downtown Anchorage and believed she may have come from Kodiak; according to cold case investigator Randy McPherron, Hansen claimed she was a sex worker he met in Anchorage, 'and that's about all we know of her background.' Hansen was sentenced to 461 years plus life without parole and died in prison in August 2014.

Despite the conviction, the woman herself has never been identified. Over the decades investigators have released multiple forensic facial reconstructions, including a revised composite produced by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children in September 2020. Several missing women, including Megan Emerick and Roxane Easland, have been considered and ruled out, according to case files compiled on Wikipedia. Her remains are interred at Anchorage Memorial Park Cemetery under a marker reading 'Jane Doe / Died 1980.'

In October 2021, genetic genealogy allowed troopers to identify another long-unnamed Hansen victim, 'Horseshoe Harriet,' as 19-year-old Robin Pelkey — leaving Eklutna Annie as the only one of Hansen's recovered victims who remains unidentified. The Alaska State Troopers' Cold Case Investigation Unit has said it is working with genealogical research labs to build a DNA profile and family tree for her, the same approach that identified Pelkey. The case is listed in NamUs as unidentified person case UP10217 and remains open.