14-year-old ‘Jane Doe’ identified 41 years after she was strangled, Texas police say

Decades after she was found strangled to death by the side of a road, a mysterious teen girl, known for 41 years as “Walker County Jane Doe,” has been identified, Texas authorities said.

Her name was Sherri Ann Jarvis, Walker County Sheriff Clint McRae announced at a news conference Tuesday, Nov. 9, which was streamed by broadcast station KBTX.

Using new technology and DNA testing, investigators were able to determine her identity, officials said.

“I don’t like referring to this case as a cold case. It has always been a top priority of our department,” McRae said. “We loved her as well.”

Jarvis was 14 years old when she was sexually assaulted, killed, and left on the shoulder of Interstate 45, just north of Huntsville. A citizen spotted her body and dialed 911.

It was 9:20 a.m., Oct. 31, 1980 when a deputy responded to the call, and the case would confound investigators for years to come, each lead coming up empty, the questions of who she was and who killed her going unanswered.

Witnesses remembered seeing her at a rest stop and restaurant near Huntsville, McRae said. She was alone, and came inside to ask for directions.

She went on her way and wasn’t seen alive again.

She told people she was from around Rockport, near Aransas Pass, along the Texas Gulf Coast, but after investigators talked with police and school officials in the area, it became clear that probably wasn’t the case.

Now officials know Sherri Ann Jarvis was from Stillwater, Minnesota, McRae said.

In a statement, Jarvis’ family thanked investigators for their work and for bringing long-awaited closure.

“We lost Sherri more than 41 years ago, and we’ve lived with bewilderment every day since, until now, as she has finally been found,” they said.

“Sherri Ann Jarvis was a daughter, a sister, a cousin and a granddaughter,” the statement read, adding “she loved children, animals, and horseback riding.”

Jarvis likely would have remained “Jane Doe” forever, if not for recent advancements in DNA analysis, said David Mittelman, CEO of Othram, a company specializing in forensic-grade genome testing.

The sheriff’s office, along with other state and federal law enforcement departments, teamed up with Othram, providing DNA samples from Jarvis’ original autopsy, McRae said.

“We can take evidence that is very old, DNA that’s been previously unusable with other methods and traditional testing … and we can pull genetic information … and use that to build out long distance relationships,” Mittelman said.

With that genetic info, Othram provided investigators with the names of six people they believed to be close relatives of Jarvis, according to McRae.

Detectives “used internet resources to build a family tree,” accounting for all of the names given but one, McRae said. The sixth, they learned, was a 14-year-old girl who had run away.

They collected DNA from family and compared it to the “Jane Doe” samples and found a match, confirming the victim was Sherri Ann Jarvis, who ran away from Minnesota in 1980 and never came back.

“She was a tender 13 years of age when the state removed her from our home for habitual truancy,” her family said in their statement. “Sherri never returned to our home, as promised in a letter we received from her shortly after her departure.”

Why Jarvis came to Texas isn’t clear, authorities said. She wasn’t in the custody of her family when she ran, and the state of Minnesota’s records of her have been purged.

“Our parents passed away never knowing what happened to her or having any form of closure, but we are grateful they never had to endure the pain of knowing her death was so brutal,” the family’s statement said. “We love and miss you Sherri, very much. You are with mom and dad now … may you rest in peace.”

Texas authorities said they will continue searching for Jarvis’ killer, and that new information has come to light since she was identified, though investigators would not specify what the new information is.

“I hope this information will lead us to whoever did this,” Walker County District Attorney Will Durham said. “If they are alive, they’ll be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.”

This story was originally published November 9, 2021 at 5:46 PM with the headline "14-year-old ‘Jane Doe’ identified 41 years after she was strangled, Texas police say."