St. Louis Jane Doe (Precious Hope)

On the afternoon of February 28, 1983, two men searching for scrap metal in the basement of a vacant Victorian apartment building at 5635 Clemens Avenue in St. Louis, Missouri, discovered the body of a young girl. The child was lying face down in the furnace room, naked except for a yellow long-sleeved V-neck sweater, with her hands bound behind her back with red and white nylon rope. She had been decapitated, and her head was never found. An autopsy determined that she had been sexually assaulted and died of strangulation; her head was severed after death with a large blade, possibly a carving knife. The victim was an African-American girl estimated to be between 8 and 11 years old, and she wore two coats of nail polish, red over purple, on her fingernails.

Investigators concluded she had not been killed where she was found, as there were no blood traces at the scene, and mold testing indicated she had died within roughly five days of the discovery. The missing head severely hampered identification, ruling out dental comparisons, but police were able to collect fingerprints, footprints, and later DNA. A medical examination noted spina bifida occulta of the sacrum, a condition that may not have produced visible symptoms. Detectives compared the child against reports of missing girls, and several potential matches were ruled out over the years. According to case summaries, forensic isotope analyses have produced differing indications of where she grew up: one analysis suggested the southeastern United States, while bone chemistry analysis reported by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children pointed to midwestern and mid-Atlantic states such as Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Indiana, or West Virginia.

After ten months without identification, the girl was buried at Washington Park Cemetery in the St. Louis area on December 2, 1983. Local residents came to call her "Hope" or "Precious Hope." In 2013, authorities sought to exhume her remains for advanced DNA testing, but the grave's location had been lost due to poor cemetery record-keeping. Investigators used videotape recordings of her 1983 funeral and mapping techniques to locate the burial site, and the remains were recovered in mid-2013. Her DNA profile was developed and entered into national databases, and her case is listed in NamUs as unidentified person case #3199 and with the FBI's ViCAP program. She was reburied in the Garden of Innocents section of Calvary Cemetery in St. Louis.

Over the decades, investigators have examined possible suspects. Vernon Brown, who was convicted of murdering two children in St. Louis and executed in 2005, was considered by some investigators as a person of interest, but he was never charged in this case and did not confess to it. The St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department's cold case unit, formed in 2019, has continued to work the case, reportedly maintaining a room dedicated to the investigation, and a 2022 documentary, "Our Precious Hope Revisited: St. Louis' Little Jane Doe," renewed public attention. Despite modern DNA technology and public genealogy databases, no identification has been made, and both the girl's identity and her killer remain unknown. Anyone with information is asked to contact the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department or NCMEC.