On Thursday, the Allen County Coroner’s office identified a woman found dead in a Fort Wayne basement more than 30 years ago. Tabetha Ann Murlin identified using advancements in technology and genetic genealogy.
Murlin was found in May 1992 wrapped in a blanket and floating in 8-12 inches of water in a basement on Reynolds Street. Badly decomposed and unable to be identified, Murlin has been known as "Mary Jane Doe" for the past nearly 32 years.
Fort Wayne Police Detective Brian Martin investigates homicides and cold cases. Martin was also part of the investigative team that identified April Tinsley’s killer in 2018 utilizing the same genetic genealogy method.
He says having a positive identity for Murlin opens up doors for them to continue investigating how she died.
“It allows us to ask the public for help. It allows us to ask, hey, people who may have known Tabetha back in the day, maybe they were friends, maybe they were coworkers, associates, whatever that may be," Martin said. "They can explain part of what she was doing in her life at that point. Who was involved in her life, who were significant people in her life and those are the kind of things we need to help answer the questions how and why.”
The Allen County Coroner's office has spent years continuing to try and find her identity, but investigators did know some information about her from examining her bones. They knew she was between the ages of 20 and 25, somewhere between 4-foot-6 and 5-foot-2 in height, and they knew she was pregnant at the time of her death.
Investigators also believed Murlin was a transient who was living in the basement, due to evidence of a makeshift bed. The coroner at the time did not believe there was any foul play involved, due to a lack of stab or bullet wounds, but he couldn’t determine whether she’d been strangled.
In March 2017, Murlin’s body was exhumed. She was autopsied, given a dental examination and transported to the University of Indianapolis Anthropology Department where Krista Latham, a board certified forensic anthropologist, examined her remains.
A femur bone was sent to the University of South Texas Center for Human Identification, where a partial DNA profile was recovered. The profile was entered into two national databases to be searched periodically for a match, but nothing came up.
In 2019, Beth Buchholtz, a detective with the Longmont, Colorado police department and forensic sculptor, did a facial reconstruction of Murlin which was released to the media. Teeth and one of her femurs were submitted to Indiana State Police (ISP) for DNA testing.
Still, no one came forward with information about her identity.
In April, after reading about Mary Jane Doe in the newspaper, Lisa Needler reached out to the coroner’s office. Needler is the co-founder of IGGnite DNA and she wanted to offer their services to do genealogy testing on the DNA retrieved by ISP.
IGGnite DNA offers Forensic Investigative Genetic Genealogy services to law enforcement agencies to assist in investigation of cold cases, homicides, violent crimes, sexual assault cases and unidentified remains.
The coroner’s office began fundraising to utilize IGGnite’s services and raised the needed money in three days.
Genetic genealogy is the use of genealogical DNA tests and profiling to infer genetic relationships between individuals.
On Jan. 16, Murlin’s mother, who had passed away in 2013, and father were identified, as well as two aunts, one of whom had adopted Murlin. Murlin, investigators discovered, was Tabetha Slain’s married name. One of her aunts produced a marriage license from 1987.
A DNA swab was taken from Murlin’s father. Investigators met with Murlin’s estranged husband, Jerry Murlin, who separated from her in 1989.
Allen County Coroner Dr. E. Jon Brandenberger spoke to Murlin’s family during the press conference, where her father and brother were in attendance and said this could be Murlin’s day.
“And you’ve been waiting to have a day for her, for all of this time and so, I want to understand the grief that you feel and I also want to understand the celebration that you have on being able to identify this as your daughter and sister.”
On Feb. 12, ISP revealed a 1 in 7,500,000 odds that the father’s DNA matched Murlin’s and investigators were able to positively identify Mary Jane Doe as Tabetha Ann Slain Murlin.
