Placer County Jane Doe identified as missing Sacramento woman after nearly four decades

The family of Patricia Ann Rose spent over four decades not knowing where she had gone after she vanished from Sacramento — until a genetic genealogy research company extracted enough DNA from a Jane Doe’s bone sample to identify her this year.

Texas-based company Othram Inc., which works on cold cases, announced in February that they had provided authorities with a potential family tree for a Jane Doe whose bones were found in 1985, leading law enforcement to a female relative living in Oregon. The woman, who told authorities she had a sister who disappeared at age 20 in 1980, provided her own DNA sample for testing to help identify Rose. The Placer County Sheriff’s Office has now reopened the case.

“The work that we put in throughout the days is very impactful with helping families get some sort of closure, return identities to people, get them into their final resting place with a gravestone with their name — and not John, Jane, or Baby Doe,” said Michael Vogen, Othram’s director of accounts management. “Everybody deserves to have their name, and to actually get justice if someone does something wrong to them.”

Rose was originally born in Massachusetts, and she lived in Washington state when she married John Bowden in 1977 at age 17, according to marriage license records. Rose had moved to Sacramento with him sometime after the marriage.

A news release from the sheriff’s office stated that Rose had separated from Bowden by the time she went missing. Rose’s son with Bowden, who was 18 months old when Rose was last seen, recently told investigators that his father told him that his mother left him at a hotel before she vanished, according to sheriff’s office spokesperson Elise Soviar. Rose’s younger sister advised law enforcement that she believed the toddler was discovered by a maid, but the sheriff’s office found no associated case numbers out of Placer or Sacramento counties determining how he was located, or indicating that an infant was found alone at a hotel. Bowden, who died in 2013, took custody of his son after Rose vanished.

Soviar said that to the office’s knowledge, Rose was never entered into the Missing and Unidentified Persons System. Her known pseudonyms, married name, and maiden name are not listed in California’s missing persons database, and archived local news articles from the time do not name her as a missing person. Records show that two years after Rose was last seen, Bowden filed for divorce.

Vogen said that many of the cold cases that Othram works on involve people who were never reported missing or searched for when they first disappeared.

“Most of these people are unidentified, but have people missing them, right? Even if they weren’t reported missing, the family could think they just haven’t heard from them,” Vogen said.

The skull that was recently identified as Rose’s was discovered in January 1985 by two hikers amid thick shrubbery in Applegate, a rural Placer County community.

When Rose’s skull and nearby bone fragments were sent to a Chico State anthropology lab for investigation in 1985, no cause of death or identification could be determined due to the state of her remains. But 21st century advances in DNA sequencing technology have helped investigators across the country solve hundreds of decades-old cold cases, as companies like Othram can now identify upwards of millions of DNA markers from old or degraded genetic samples. Individuals may upload their own DNA profiles into genetic genealogy companies’ databases, allowing laboratories to find affinities between unidentified deceased people — or unidentified suspects — and living relatives.

Othram uses its own DNA database to find genetic links between the unidentified individuals and potential family members, who are most often distant relatives. Vogen said the company “reverse-engineers” family trees for people by tracing the distant relatives’ genealogy to closer relatives like Rose’s sister, using news articles, obituaries, and family records.

Police have called the circumstances surrounding Rose’s disappearance “suspicious.” The Roseville Press-Tribune reported in 1985 that Rose’s scattered bone fragments bore animal teeth marks, indicating that animals had dragged them from the original site where her body may have been discarded. No clothes or items that may have belonged to Rose were found in the area where her bones were discovered.

Though it is sometimes difficult to determine suspects when degraded skeletal remains are the only samples available, ‘giving a name’ to former Jane Does like Rose often helps loved ones gain more clarity. Project Justice, an organization dedicated to helping solve cold cases, funded Othram’s investigation of Rose’s remains.

“Even when we haven’t had cases that have been adjudicated, I still think that the answers that are provided to the families are still important when that’s the most that they’re gonna get,” said Justin Woo, co-founder of Project Justice. “And if there was a murder or something like that, hopefully they can get whatever type of justice that they can get.”

As the investigation continues, the Placer County Sheriff’s Office has asked that anyone with information on Rose’s disappearance to contact law enforcement at the email PCSOTipLine@placer.ca.gov.