BALTIMORE COUNTY, Md. — The Chief of Police in Baltimore County called the development a 'major break' in a cold case dating back three decades: investigators announced they'd learned the identity of a Jane Doe.
Leoria Smith, aged 20 at the time, disappeared in 1984, police said. Investigators learned Smith has a surviving daughter and granddaughter.
"It's something I wanted answered for a very long time," Tierra Ashby, Smith's daughter, told reporters on Thursday afternoon. "But I was caught by surprise because I wasn't expecting it to happen at the time that it did."
Ashby, 40, was an infant when Smith disappeared, and explained she never truly knew her mother.
"It would have been nice to know who she would have been," said Kierra Merton, Smith's granddaughter and Ashby's daughter. "It would have been nice to have a grandmother to call."
"Since her identification detectives learned Leoria went out to celebrate her birthday at the club 'Underground' in November 1984," Cpl. Donna Carter said. "This is possibly the last time she was seen alive. That club was located on Edmondson Avenue in Baltimore City at that time."
Carter, an investigator with the county's Cold Cases and Missing Persons squad, said a collaboration, including a forensic genetic genealogy investigation with DNA Labs International began in April 2021. That, plus further police work, led investigators to a positive identity.
“In partnership with DNA Labs," Carter said, "basically, they obtain a specific type of DNA sample from there they input it and through private companies obtain a 'family tree.'"
"From there," Carter continued, "they provide us with leads and we have to conduct additional interviews, and additional testing in order to see, basically, break down that tree and get to where we need to be to identify someone who may be related to the deceased individual.”
Smith had been missing for about 12 years when workers in northern Baltimore County off Falls Road found her remains in 1996. Smith, then unidentified, came to be known as the 'Falls Road Jane Doe.' Detectives went for decades without much to go on, until about four years ago, when their forensic collaboration began.
Investigators view learning Smith's identity as the 'first step.'
"Without knowing who she was, we wouldn't know where she had been or who she may have been with, at the time she passed away," Carter said. "That's why we're asking anybody who knew her at all or may have seen her out at that club, every, not only that night that she went out celebrating her birthday, to please contact us."
For Ashby, there are mixed emotions: glad to know detectives are still working to find out what happened, and sadness that she never met her mother.
"I want the world to look high and low to see if they have anything in reference to her," Ashby said. "To know what happened, so she can have justice all the way through. The person who did this should not still be walking around like nothing happened."
If you knew Smith, have knowledge of her whereabouts, or have pictures you can provide to police, please call 410-887-3943. No detail, police said, is too small.
Family of Leoria Smith wants "Justice all the way through"