In her youth, Ada Beth Kaplan Moore was a promising student from New York who dreamed of becoming a prima ballerina. Born in New York, she attended Forest Hills High School where she was an office aide and a recipient of the 1963 New York State Scholarship Award. Eventually, she moved across the country to California, where she married and settled into a life in the Canyon Country neighborhood of Santa Clarita. She had been a resident there since at least 1985. By 2009, she had separated from her husband. Two years later, the life of 64-year-old Ada Moore, a female who had become increasingly isolated, would end in a way that baffled even seasoned investigators.
On the morning of March 29, 2011, workers in a rural grape vineyard near Sebastian Road in Arvin, California, made a horrific discovery. On a dirt road lay the body of a woman, placed in what authorities would later describe as a posed position. The scene was meticulously and unnervingly clean.
The victim had been decapitated, her thumbs had been removed, and her body had been drained of all its blood. Ray Pruitt, the sheriff at the time, later recalled the scene as "creepy," stating, "Honestly it looked like somebody had taken a mannequin, removed the head of the mannequin and posed it on the dirt road." Investigators with the Kern County Sheriff's Office quickly determined that the remote orchard, about 60 miles north of Santa Clarita, was not the primary crime scene but a dumping ground.
With no identification, no clothing, and her thumbs removed, authorities had no immediate way of knowing who she was. Fingerprint searches were unsuccessful, and crucially, no one had ever filed a missing person report for her. For more than a decade, she was known only as "Jane Doe 2011." The case grew cold, a silent testament to a brutal crime and a victim without a name. The mystery of her identity seemed as unsolvable as the question of who had taken her life in such a ritualistic and macabre manner.
The breakthrough came in 2023, twelve years after her body was found. The Kern County Coroner's Office, working with the nonprofit DNA Doe Project, utilized forensic investigative genetic genealogy to finally give Jane Doe her name back. By building a family tree from her genetic profile and comparing it with DNA from potential relatives on the East Coast, investigators confirmed her identity as Ada Beth Kaplan Moore. With her name known, the cold case was given new life, and the focus shifted from identifying the victim to finding her killer.
The investigation is now in the hands of Kern County Sheriff’s Office Detective Ashley Thompson, who is painstakingly trying to piece together the last years of Ada's life. The task has proven incredibly difficult. Detective Thompson learned that Moore did not work and had no children. "It’s very hard to find out who she was because she was very alone," Thompson stated. Investigators have found no connection between Moore and Kern County, where her remains were discovered. After her separation, she seemed to have few, if any, close friends or family members who were in regular contact with her. Her estranged husband reportedly sent a letter to a Santa Clarita newspaper in August 2011 claiming she had left him for a "multimillionaire," but authorities have not publicly commented on this lead.
Detective Thompson has made public appeals for anyone who knew Ada Moore, also known as Ada Kaplan, to come forward. Investigators believe that even minor details about her routines, acquaintances, or relationships could provide the crucial lead they need. The detective has expressed her personal commitment to finding justice for a victim who seems to have no one else. "I get phone calls from loved ones all the time asking me about updates," Thompson told an interviewer. "I don’t receive any phone calls for Ada. Nobody’s -- nobody is fighting for her."
As of October 2026, the murder of Ada Beth Kaplan Moore remains an active and unsolved cold case. Detective Thompson continues her fight to uncover what happened to the once-aspiring ballerina who died so violently and alone. "It’s a big, big case for me that I just -- I want to be able to just solve," she said. "Because if I don’t solve it, I don’t think anybody’s gonna care." The Kern County Sheriff's Office urges anyone with information, no matter how insignificant it may seem, to contact Detective Thompson at 661-861-3110 or 661-391-7593. To remain anonymous, tips can be submitted to the Kern Secret Witness Line at 661-322-4040.
