Woman identified over 40 years after she died in SC hospital, Richland County coroner says

Noah Feit
·3 min read

After more than 40 years, a woman who died in a hospital in Columbia has finally been identified, according to the Richland County Coroner’s Office.

The Jane Doe who died in 1982 was recently identified as Virginia Higgins Ray, Coroner Naida Rutherford said Tuesday at a news conference. She was a Wilkesboro, North Carolina, native, according to FHD Forensics, a genealogy group that played a pivotal role in identifying Ray.

Ray never provided her name to the staff or physicians who treated her when she was admitted into the women’s ward of the former state hospital on Bull Street and diagnosed with schizophrenia, according to Rutherford. Ray was suffering a mental health crisis when admitted to the hospital on Feb. 15, 1982, FHD said.

Ray died at the hospital after suffering a grand mal seizure and subsequent fall, Rutherford said. Her cause of death was listed as aspiration due to gastric contents, according to Rutherford.

Ray remained nameless, identified only as Jane Doe when she was buried in the county cemetery, said Dr. William Stevens, a deputy coroner who is the director of anthropology in Richland County.

This is the hospital file photo of a woman who’s identity was unknown for four decades after her death in Richland County.
This is the hospital file photo of a woman who’s identity was unknown for four decades after her death in Richland County.

“In spite of exhaustive efforts by then (Richland County) Coroner Frank Barron ... and searching through years of missing women, she remained unidentified for more than four decades,” Rutherford said.

As the years passed, the Richland County Anthropology Department “worked tirelessly” to identify the Jane Doe, but due to the lack of leads the anthropology team reached out for help, and got it from FHD and Genealogy For Justice, Rutherford said. Genealogy For Justice is a non-profit that works to solve cold cases.

“It was a very complex investigation,” Rutherford said. “Almost 4,400 people in the family tree and 11 sets of common ancestor couples whose descendants had intermarried.”

The investigation led to a group of family surnames in North Carolina, Rutherford said.

A family photo of Virginia Higgins Ray, a woman who died in a Richland County hospital and was unidentified for more than 40 years, the coroner’s office said.
A family photo of Virginia Higgins Ray, a woman who died in a Richland County hospital and was unidentified for more than 40 years, the coroner’s office said.

In early May, it was decided that law enforcement officers would start knocking on some of these people’s doors, said FHD President Allison Peacock.

But on the Friday before Mother’s Day, before there were boots on the ground, Peacock and the coroner’s office decided to send a Facebook post all over North Carolina, to see if any family members recognized Ray.

“It resulted in a miracle on Mother’s Day,” Peacock said at Tuesday’s news conference.

On May 14, a daughter of Virginia Higgins Ray contacted the coroner’s office, saying “she believed that we had her mother’s remains,” Rutherford said.

On May 19, the Richland County Sheriff’s Department DNA lab confirmed the relationship of a daughter and a sibling of Virginia Higgins Ray to the unidentified remains of Jane Doe, according to Rutherford.

“This is one of the most complex genealogy cases I’ve ever been involved in,” Peacock said. “Once we hone in on a family, we have to corroborate what we see in the tree by talking to living relatives. We found that very difficult, a lot of the people in this family had moved to different states.”

Now, the woman who died decades ago and was buried, then exhumed in 1996 with the hopes that she could be identified with advanced DNA technology, is finally going to be laid to rest by her family under her own name.

“We are going to reunite her with her family,” said Rutherford, adding that Ray’s sister was in Columbia to bring her back to North Carolina.

There are still some unanswered questions surrounding Ray. Both Rutherford and Stevens said they didn’t know how Ray ended up in South Carolina. Stevens also said it was “unclear” when the woman with four children was reported missing in North Carolina.