Susan Lund ("Ina Jane Doe")

Case background and investigation

On January 27, 1993, two young girls playing along a wooded roadway inside Wayne Fitzgerrell State Park, near the small community of Ina in Jefferson County, Illinois, made a gruesome discovery: the severed head of an adult woman. No other remains were recovered nearby, and the woman carried nothing that could identify her. Investigators estimated she was an adult, and early examinations suggested she may have had a condition affecting the tilt of her neck.

The victim became known as 'Ina Jane Doe.' Despite composite drawings and repeated appeals over the years, no one connected the remains to a missing person, and the case grew cold. She remained unidentified for nearly three decades, one of Illinois's longstanding Jane Doe mysteries.

The case was revived through modern forensic science. Beginning around 2021, a team including anthropologist Dr. Amy Michael and forensic laboratories worked to extract a usable DNA profile from the decades-old remains. Astrea Forensics helped develop the DNA data, and Redgrave Research Forensic Services uploaded a profile to the GEDmatch database in February 2022. Investigative genetic genealogy pointed to a family, and comparison with a sibling's DNA confirmed the identity.

On March 6, 2022, authorities announced that Ina Jane Doe was Susan Lund, born in November 1967. Lund had last been seen by her family on Christmas Eve 1992, when she left her home in Clarksville, Tennessee, and did not return. She was a mother of three young children at the time of her disappearance, and for years her family did not know what had become of her. The identification confirmed she had been the victim of a homicide and that her remains had been found in Illinois roughly a month after she vanished in Tennessee.

While the identification restored Susan Lund's name and gave her children long-sought answers, it did not solve her killing. Investigators with the Jefferson County Sheriff's Office continued to treat the case as an open homicide, asking anyone with information about her death, or about how she came to be in southern Illinois, to come forward. As of the case's public updates, no one has been charged.