In March 1980, Tamara Lee Tigard, a 21-year-old White/Caucasian female, left her home in Las Vegas, Nevada, for a walk and was never seen again. A month later, on what would have been her twenty-first birthday, fishermen made a grim discovery on the banks of the North Canadian River near Jones, Oklahoma. They found the nude body of a young woman who had been shot multiple times in the chest with a. 45 caliber handgun.
Investigators believed she was clothed when she was killed, as a dime had been driven into her body by one of the bullets, along with fabric from her clothing.
The killer had attempted to hasten the body's decomposition by covering it with quicklime. However, this act had the opposite effect, preserving the remains and leading the unidentified woman to be known for decades only as the "Lime Lady". For nearly forty years, her case remained a mystery. Traditional investigative methods failed to uncover her identity or lead to her killer. Her parents and sister would pass away never knowing what became of her. The case grew colder with each passing year, a silent testament to a life cut short.
A breakthrough finally came in 2018 when the Oklahoma County Sheriff's Office teamed up with the DNA Doe Project. Using genetic genealogy, a team of volunteers was able to find a likely name for the "Lime Lady" in just a day and a half. The identification of Tamara Lee Tigard was officially confirmed in December 2019 through a match with dental records from her time in the U.S. Army. A missing person's report had been filed in Las Vegas shortly after her disappearance but had been mistakenly cleared when a woman in Ohio was found using her identity.
While Tamara Lee Tigard finally had her name back, her murder remains unsolved. As of today, no arrests have been made in connection with her death, and there are no publicly named suspects. Investigators have noted they had people they wanted to speak with following her identification, and the case remains an active homicide investigation. Authorities continue to seek answers, hoping to finally bring justice to the young woman who vanished from Las Vegas and was found miles away in Oklahoma so many years ago.
