Dana Lynn Dodd (Lavender Doe)

Case background and investigation

On the evening of October 29, 2006, two men target shooting on an oil lease off Fritz Swanson Road near Highway 31, outside Kilgore in Gregg County, Texas, discovered the body of a young woman lying face down on a burning woodpile, with a gas can nearby. The victim carried forty dollars but no identification. Investigators estimated she was between roughly 17 and 25 years old, about 5 feet 3 inches to 5 feet 5 inches tall, and 96 to 120 pounds, with reddish-blonde to light brown hair. She still retained two baby teeth, a detail examiners considered distinctive. Because of the lavender sweater she was wearing, she became known as Lavender Doe. Semen recovered during the forensic examination indicated she had likely been sexually assaulted before her death.

The case remained open for more than a decade while the woman stayed unidentified. Joseph Wayne Burnette, a Longview man and registered sex offender, emerged as a suspect as early as 2007 but denied involvement at the time. In 2013, investigators exhumed the remains and released a digital facial reconstruction, but no identification followed. Dana Dodd had never been reported missing, which made traditional matching against missing-persons databases fruitless.

The break came in 2018 through two separate tracks. In July 2018, Felisha Pearson, a Longview woman who had been living with Burnette at the Contessa Inn, was reported missing; her body was found days later near Birdsong Street in Longview. In August 2018, Burnette confessed to killing both Pearson and the still-unidentified Lavender Doe. According to investigators, he said he had met the young woman while she was selling magazine subscriptions at a Walmart in Longview and persuaded her to get into his vehicle; he said he did not know her name but thought it might have been "Ashley." An indictment stated that he strangled both victims with a rope. He was indicted for Lavender Doe's murder that month.

Meanwhile, the Gregg County Sheriff's Office had partnered with the DNA Doe Project, a nonprofit that uses investigative genetic genealogy, beginning in July 2018. Volunteer genealogists determined the victim had Czech ancestry and traced a first cousin once removed living in East Texas, about 30 miles from where the body was found. A tentative identification was announced on January 29, 2019, and on February 11, 2019, the sheriff's office officially identified the victim as Dana Lynn Dodd of Jacksonville, Florida, born September 6, 1985 — 21 years old at her death. Family members said Dodd had a difficult upbringing, left home as a teenager, and around age 18 joined a traveling magazine-subscription sales crew; relatives last heard from her in the summer of 2006.

On December 15, 2020, Burnette pleaded guilty in Gregg County's 188th District Court to the murders of Dana Dodd and Felisha Pearson, along with a sex offender registration charge. He received three 50-year sentences, to run concurrently, and becomes eligible for parole after serving 25 years. He told the court he pleaded guilty to spare the families a trial, according to local news coverage. The case is frequently cited as an early success of forensic genetic genealogy in identifying homicide victims.