‘Marin County Jane Doe,’ whose body was found in Tiburon in 1966, has been identified

Dorothy Jean Williams, whose married name was Dorothy Jean Vaillancourt. (via DNASolves)

A body found on a cliff near Paradise Beach Park in 1966 has been identified using stored DNA samples and advanced testing by a Texas laboratory.

The middle-aged, red-haired woman was about 5-foot-2 and 105 pounds, wearing a red-cotton dress, an off-white trench coat, white loafers and a Westclox wristwatch with a yellow band on her left wrist. She wore no rings and had a pack of cigarettes and a scarf in her pocket.

For the past six decades, she has been known only as National Missing and Unidentified Persons System No. UP12018, or “Marin County Jane Doe.” Now she’s known to be Dorothy Jean Vaillancourt, nee Williams, who was originally from Tasmania.

The cause of death could not be determined, and authorities at the time said there were no signs of foul play. She was buried at Mount Tamalpais Cemetery and Mortuary in San Rafael before her identification, according to a March 19 press release from Othram, which specializes in forensic genealogy to solve cold cases, via its DNASolves platform, a crowdfunded DNA database that works with law-enforcement agencies.

“From the perspective of the family of this woman she just disappeared, and they may have thought they’d never know where she went. But now, almost 60 years later, they know the truth,” Kristen Mittelman, Othram’s chief development officer, said in a press statement.

Vaillancourt’s body was originally spotted on Dec. 18, 1966, about 25 feet below the 3400-3500 block of Paradise Drive by 15-year-old Michael Hunter O’Hara of Paradise Cay, who was shooting his BB gun in the area, according to a Daily Independent Journal of San Rafael article the following day. The Ark could not locate O’Hara by press time.

Authorities at the time believed she had been in the underbrush for at least eight to 10 weeks.

Tiburon Peninsula Fire District firefighter Thomas Murphy quickly came forward to say he saw her at the Trestle Glen fire station, at the corner of Paradise Drive, about three or four months before her body was found, according to a Dec. 20 Daily IJ report. Murphy said she was walking by when she approached him and said she had no money for a taxi. She asked if she could spend the night at the fire station.

“Refused, she asked to borrow his automobile. Refused again, she walked off toward Tiburon Boulevard,” the article said. Thomas said he then notified the Sheriff’s Office, but deputies couldn’t find her.

After Vaillancourt’s body was found, no other agencies responded to a statewide bulletin for missing person matching her description. Authorities initially traced a report that a woman fitting the description had recently stayed at the Tiburon Lodge hotel and had been a patient at Langley Porter Neuropsychiatric Institute in San Francisco, though by January 1967 the FBI had ruled that out.

Marin County Sheriff’s Office spokesperson Sgt. Adam Schermerhorn said his agency submitted information about the case to the California Department of Justice about 20 years ago, but the technology wasn’t in place then to be able to identify the woman. He said with the rise of genealogy sites that allow people to submit their DNA, like Ancestry.com, there is more data available to solve cold cases.

DNASolves announced that in 2022, the Sheriff’s Office, working with the state Department of Justice, submitted evidence to Othram, which developed “an ultra-sensitive DNA profile using forensic-grade genome sequencing” that led to relatives of the woman.

Schermerhorn said the coroner’s division of the Sheriff’s Office has been in touch with the family, which said it sought to stay out of the media. However, at least one family member posted about the case online.

“The coroner has told me today that the woman in the ditch is in fact my mother, Dorothy Jean Williams, identified by a DNA match. I am in shock right now,” a user on cold-case site Websleuths posted Dec. 19, three months before Othram publicly confirmed her identity.

One of the woman's identifying characteristics was a stainless or silver medical implant in her eye socket, which drew online speculation of abuse, but the Websleuths user said their mother had been in a car accident and had surgery.

The user did not respond to requests for comment by The Ark’s press deadline.

Public-safety reporter Naomi Friedland contributed to this report. Reach Executive Editor Kevin Hessel at 415-435-2652. Note: This story was updated at 12:45 p.m. March 21 with comments from Othram and the Marin County Sheriff's Office.