On a spring day in 1990, the body of a young woman was discovered behind a Pilot truck stop off Interstate 70 in Licking County, Ohio. It was April 19th, and the woman, clad only in her underwear, had been brutally beaten to death by blunt force trauma to the head. For twenty-seven years, she was known simply as Jane Doe, her identity a mystery to the investigators working to find her killer. The 29-year-old female was Caucasian, but beyond that, her story was a blank slate.
Investigators pursued various leads, and her case was even featured on an episode of "Unsolved Mysteries," yet her name remained elusive. She was laid to rest in a cemetery in Marne, with a headstone that read, "Jane Doe, somebody's mother somebody's daughter."
The silence in the case was finally broken in 2017, not by a confession or a new piece of evidence from the crime scene, but by the persistent efforts of a family hundreds of miles away. In October 2016, the family of Patrice Anita Corley filed a missing person report in Louisville, Kentucky. This report led to a DNA sample being submitted and ultimately matched to the Licking County Jane Doe. Patrice, a mother to a young son and a veteran, had been missing since December 1989. Her family had tried to report her missing earlier, but were initially unable to do so. The positive identification of Patrice Corley finally gave a name to the long-unidentified victim and breathed new life into the cold case.
With her identity confirmed, detectives from the Licking County Sheriff's Office reopened the investigation into her murder, traveling to Louisville to work with the local police. Theories surrounding her death have included the possibility that she was a victim of a serial killer known as "Dr. No," who was active in the region. However, despite the renewed focus on the case, no arrests or convictions have been made in connection to her homicide. The case remains an unsolved mystery, a tragic story of a young mother whose life was cut short and whose identity was lost for nearly three decades. The investigation continues, with law enforcement still seeking answers to who killed Patrice Corley and why she was left behind a truck stop so far from her home.
