Marcia King (Buckskin Girl)

Case background and investigation

On April 24, 1981, the body of a young woman was found in a ditch beside Greenlee Road in Miami County, Ohio, near Troy and about 20 miles north of Dayton, according to FOX19 and KATV. She was fully clothed in jeans and a distinctive fringed buckskin jacket, but was barefoot and carried no identification. The jacket gave rise to the name by which she was known for decades, Buckskin Girl.

KATV reported that the cause of death was strangulation, along with blunt force trauma. The DNA Doe Project states that she had been dead for only a day or two when she was found. Fingerprints were taken but matched no records, according to the organization's press release.

Investigators returned to the case repeatedly as forensic methods advanced. According to the DNA Doe Project, a nuclear DNA profile was developed in 2001, the case was entered into the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System in 2008, and mitochondrial DNA was submitted to the FBI's CODIS database in 2009. Pollen analysis of her clothing and isotope testing of her hair suggested she had spent time in the southwestern United States and in northern Texas in the year before her death. None of this produced a name.

The case became one of the first taken on by the DNA Doe Project, a nonprofit founded in 2017 to apply genetic genealogy to unidentified remains. A blood sample preserved since 1981 was processed and the profile uploaded to the GEDmatch database. According to the organization, its volunteers found a candidate within about four hours on March 29, 2018. The identification was confirmed on April 9, 2018, by comparison with a relative's DNA, and was announced by the Miami County Sheriff's Office that month.

The victim was Marcia Lenore King, born Marcia Sossoman on June 9, 1959, in Arkansas. She was 21. According to the DNA Doe Project, she often hitchhiked and had left home in Arkansas in 1980, after which her family did not hear from her. The organization's press release notes that her mother kept the same home and telephone number throughout the 37 years in the hope that she would return.

With a name established, the sheriff's office said it would go forward with the homicide investigation. FOX19 reported that detectives were concentrating on the last month of King's life and on connections to Pittsburgh and Louisville, Kentucky. No suspect has been publicly identified, and the Miami County Sheriff's Office has continued to ask for tips.