The District detectives last year figured out the identity of their only unidentified cold case victim, but they still are looking for information to solve her 1990 slaying.
For 19 years, police didn’t have a clue as to the identity of a woman whose body was found in a trash bin behind an apartment in the Riggs Park area. On Aug. 12, 1990, a person scavenging saw her legs sticking out in the back parking lot of 5120 Sargent Road NE and initially thought she was a mannequin.
Had she not been spotted there, police said, she likely would have ended up in a landfill, never to be seen again.
DNA and fingerprint tests failed to identify the woman and she was known simply as Jane Doe. But detectives got a break last year from the Department of Homeland Security’s Biometric Support Center.
Authorities there ran the U.S. immigration database of nearly 100 million fingerprints against a new Department of Justice missing-persons database and got a match: D.C.’s Jane Doe was Audrey Palmer, a 26-year-old mother of two from Bermuda who went missing in 1990.
Palmer’s fingerprints were taken in 1989 when she was arrested in Brooklyn, N.Y. D.C. cold case detectives discovered that sometime after her arrest, Palmer left New York with some men from the D.C. area.
The last time anyone heard from Palmer was when she sent a birthday present to one of her children in August 1990.
D.C.’s Chief Medical Examiner ruled that Palmer’s death was homicide due to asphyxia by smothering, a stab wound to the neck, and blunt force injuries to the head and face.
The brutal nature of the case suggested that there could have been multiple perpetrators involved. Police would like to find out the identities of the men who traveled with her from New York.
Palmer was clad in torn bleached denim jeans over shorts, and a black T-shirt with flowers that said, “Voo Doo Beach Body Glove.”
She was 5 feet 2 inches and 108 pounds, with cropped hair. She was black with a light to medium complexion.
Anyone with information on the case can contact police at the new tip line at 888-919-2776 or through a text messaging number: 50-411.
