Kelly (El Dorado Jane Doe)

Case background and investigation

On July 10, 1991, a young woman was killed in Room 121 of the Whitehall Motel in El Dorado, Arkansas, according to Wikipedia's account of the case. Wikipedia reports that the cause of death was a fracture of the cervical spine and that she was shot after she had died; a 2022 AY Magazine feature describes a single gunshot wound to the head. The motel has since been demolished.

The woman had lived under a series of names, including Mercedes, Cheryl Ann Wick, Cheryl Kaufman, Kelly Lee Carr or Karr, and Shannon or Sharon Wiley, according to HuffPost, InsideHook and Defrosting Cold Cases. InsideHook reported that she gave different accounts of her background to different people and had spent time in the Dallas area, Louisiana and Arkansas before arriving in El Dorado. Because none of these names proved to be her own, she was known for decades as El Dorado Jane Doe.

Her ex-boyfriend, James "Ice" McAlphin, was charged in her death. Wikipedia lists the charges as first-degree murder and second-degree battery; HuffPost reported in 2019 that he pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and served close to 15 years in prison. According to Defrosting Cold Cases, he did not reveal who she really was.

El Dorado Police Department officer Cathy Phillips worked on the identification for many years, HuffPost reported. In January 2019 HuffPost described a genetic genealogy breakthrough: the woman's DNA had been uploaded to the GEDmatch database through the DNA Doe Project, producing a match to a second cousin in Alabama and pointing to a particular family line.

On May 24, 2022, forensic specialist Yolanda McClary announced that the woman had been identified through forensic genealogy, according to Wikipedia and Defrosting Cold Cases. Only her first name, Kelly, was released, and her surname was withheld at the request of her family. AY Magazine reported that McClary's team traced her biological father to one of two brothers in Virginia, and that both sides of her family asked for privacy. Wikipedia gives her birth year as 1968 and her birthplace as Virginia, which would make her 23 at the time of her death.