NEW JERSEY 1982 — "Princess Doe" Had No Name for 40 Years. Then DNA Named Her

#TheUnNamedFiles #NewJersey #truecrimecommunity On the morning of July 15th, 1982, a cemetery worker named George Kise found a teenage girl at the back of Cedar Ridge Cemetery in Blairstown, New Jersey. She was barefoot, with a gold cross tangled in her hair, and she wore a red shirt and a wraparound skirt with peacocks printed along the hem. Her fingerprints matched no one. No one came forward to claim her. The police lieutenant who worked her case refused to file her as one more Jane Doe, so he gave her a name of his own: Princess Doe. For the next 40 years, it was the only name she had. 🔔 Subscribe to The UnNamed Files for cold cases, forensic breakthroughs and the people who refused to let the unidentified stay nameless. Lt. Eric Kranz dressed a mannequin in her clothes so the world could see what she wore. The town paid for her funeral, and on January 22nd, 1983, buried her a few yards from where she was found, under a stone that read “Missing from home. Dead among strangers. Remembered by all.” That June, she became the first unidentified person ever entered into the FBI’s National Crime Information Center. A missing California girl was wrongly linked to her for years, until DNA excluded her in 2003. In 2005, a prison inmate wrote to investigators saying he wanted to confess, but without her name, nobody could test his story. Then, in 2021, the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children funded a new kind of DNA test. Astrea Forensics pulled a genetic profile from a molar root weighing 200 milligrams, and genealogists at Innovative Forensic Investigations built the family tree. On July 15th, 2022, forty years to the day after she was found, investigators in Blairstown announced who she was. If you have information about this case, contact the Warren County Prosecutor’s Office at 908-475-6275. A man has been charged in connection with her death; that charge has not been proven in court. This is the story of a girl the world knew only by a nickname and a peacock skirt. It is also the story of the lieutenant who named her, the investigator who exhumed her, the town that kept her grave, and the 200 milligrams of tooth that finally gave her name back. #TheUnNamedFiles #PrincessDoe #ColdCase #JaneDoe #NewJersey #Blairstown #GeneticGenealogy #NamUs 📚 REFERENCES & FURTHER READING Warren County Prosecutor’s Office, press release, via WRNJ Radio, “‘Princess Doe’ identified 40 years after remains found in Warren County cemetery; suspect charged” (2022) National Center for Missing & Exploited Children, Rebecca Steinbach, “After 40 Years, Princess Doe Identified” (2022) Innovative Forensic Investigations, via Laura Burgess Marketing, “Identity of Princess Doe Revealed and a Charge Filed in the 40-Year-Old New Jersey Case on its Anniversary Date” (2022) The Associated Press, “‘Princess Doe’ identified 40 years after remains were found” (2022) WFMZ-TV 69 News, Priscilla Liguori, “Convicted murderer charged in decades-old ‘Princess Doe’ NJ homicide” (2022) WFMZ-TV 69 News, “Looking back and forward: What makes NJ’s Princess Doe different than other cold cases” (2022) Long Island Press, Jaclyn Gallucci, “Identifying Princess Doe: 30 Years After She Was Slain, New Technology May ID Her and The Killer” (2012) Long Island Press, Jaclyn Gallucci, “Princess Doe Likely From Arizona, Spent Time in Long Island Area” (2012) Patch, Jennifer Jean Miller, “Remembering Warren County’s ‘Princess Doe’ 39 Years Later” (2021) The Doe Network, Case File 36UFNJ National Center for Missing & Exploited Children, missing poster for Diane Genice Dye National Missing and Unidentified Persons System (NamUs), Bi-Annual Report (June 2026)