Badly decomposed remains that were found stuffed in a garment bag and buried in a shallow grave in Nevada in 1978 have finally been identified through advanced DNA testing as an Ohio woman who vanished after moving to Oregon with her boyfriend.
The Nevada State Police announced Wednesday the victim at the center of the 45-year-old cold-case mystery was Florence Charleston, from Cleveland, who was in her late 60s when she relocated to Portland, Oregon, before her death.
It is still unknown how Charleston died, or why she ended up in a makeshift grave more than 530 miles from her new home. Cops said the investigation is ongoing.
Her niece Diane Liggitt said she was around 18 when she learned from her father that her aunt, known to her loved ones as “Dolly,” had left for the Pacific Northwest with a new boyfriend in the early 1970s, never to be heard from again.
“Was she happy, or not? Was she safe?” Liggitt recalled wondering through the years.
“All these questions I had, and it turns out she was dead.”
Charleston’s remains were found on Oct. 26, 1978, in the town of Imlay, located about two hours north of Reno. Women’s clothes were also found with the decomposing corpse found by the Pershing County Sheriff’s Office.
An autopsy revealed the badly decayed body likely belonged to a middle-aged woman but failed to determine a cause of death, police said.
Liggitt said her aunt would have been around 68 at the time of her death.
The case was later entered into the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System, with the victim described as a woman thought to be 5-foot-5 with red or auburn hair. Investigators also thought she may have been left-handed.
The clothing items found with her remains included a dark-green sweater with a white safety pin attached to the front, dark-green pants and a long-sleeved pink sweater.
In the spring of 1979, Nevada State Police detectives were called in to help with the investigation. They tried digital facial reconstruction. They compared dental records with other missing persons and unsolved cases. They worked with the FBI to look for clues in the clothing.
But all their efforts were unsuccessful and the case went cold.
Then last March, cops teamed up with Othram Inc., a Texas-based private forensic genealogy lab that has helped solve numerous cold cases nationwide.
Othram said it used DNA taken from the remains “to develop a comprehensive DNA profile for the unidentified woman,” leading investigators to two of Charleston’s nieces still living in Ohio.
Liggitt said she received the news in April while she was on her way out of the house when she got a call from an unknown out-of-state phone number.
On the other end of the line was Nevada State Police Detective Sean Koester, who had taken over the cold case in October 2022.
Koester told Liggitt that he had been trying to reach her and her cousin, Donna, he said, to talk about a set of 45-year-old human remains.
“You found my Aunt Dolly?” Liggitt recalled asking.
Soon after that call, Othram was able to match Charleston to the unidentified remains by using a DNA sample from Liggitt’s cousin.
Liggitt said she and her family were “relieved because we finally know something, but God, we can’t stand that anybody could kill her, she was too good of a person, everybody loved her.”
Liggitt, who is now in her late 60s, said she hopes to live long enough to learn what happened to her aunt.
With Post wires