Jane Doe no more: PBSO learns woman's name 36 years after a dog walker found her remains
More than three decades after a woman's skeletal remains were found in The Acreage, Palm Beach County Sheriff's Office investigators have learned her name.
Now they want to identify her killer.
PBSO said Tuesday it has launched a homicide investigation in the death of Pati Lisa Rust, the agency's most recent cold-case victim identified through the use of forensic genealogy. A dog walker found her remains on Dec. 20, 1987, in a stand of trees near the intersection of 130th Avenue and 72nd Road North, about a mile northwest of Acreage Community Park.
For more than 30 years, her identity remained a mystery, even after her DNA was entered into the FBI's Combined DNA Index System, or CODIS, in 2005. But the sheriff's office credited its partnership with the Texas-based laboratory Othram and a 2023 state grant to its Cold Case Unit with helping to uncover Rust's identity.
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DNA technology used to match unidentified victims to relatives
The technology has been credited in recent identifications of other cold-case victims, with forensic genealogists matching the DNA samples of unnamed victims to relatives.
PBSO in December announced the identities of two men in separate cold cases, including a man whose remains were found buried in a shallow grave near Greenacres almost four decades ago.
PBSO identified the man as Terry Ketron, with deputies saying they believed he traveled to South Florida from Kentucky in the 1980s with a woman known only to investigators as Connie or Bonnie. They still are trying to learn her identity.
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Investigators extracted DNA from Ketron's bones and matched it with that of a distant relative. An investigative genealogist then built out the relative's family tree and found the branch that linked the family to Ketron.
The other case involved a man whose remains were found floating near the Boynton Inlet in 2003.
PBSO identified the man as Donald H. Kirk and said he took his own life by boarding a cruise ship and jumping overboard.
Who was Pati Lisa Rust? PBSO is eager to learn more.
As for Rust, investigators believe that she lived in the area of Lauderdale-by-the-Sea in Broward County in the late 1980s.
A PBSO statement released Tuesday did not give her age. However, preliminary estimates by the Palm Beach County Medical Examiner's Office when her remains were discovered placed it in her 20s to 30s.
PBSO is asking anyone with information about Rust to call Detective John Cogburn at 561-688-4063, or email to cogburnj@pbso.org. Tips can also be submitted to Crime Stoppers of Palm Beach County at 800-458-TIPS (8477).
Julius Whigham II is a criminal justice and public safety reporter for The Palm Beach Post. You can reach him at jwhigham@pbpost.com and follow him on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, at @JuliusWhigham. Help support our work:Subscribe today.
This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: PBSO uses DNA technology to identify woman in 1987 cold-case homicide
