The Girl Next Door

Will Forensic Reconstruction Help ID Nameless Murder Victim?

(CBS) 
Ellen Leach had matched the sculpture to Greg May’s missing person’s photo.

After dental records confirmed the skull was in fact Greg May’s, police notified Don and Shannon that their father had at last been found. But the news provided little relief.

"I asked him, 'How were the remains found, in what condition?' And he said, 'Are you sure you want to know?'" remembers Don.

For Don and Shannon, the sculpture has become a memorial of sorts to their father.

"When you really study it, you see a lot of the features are there, the ears strike me the most. The jaw line, the forehead, the hair, the lips," says Don.

That sculpture was an answer to their prayers and helped to prove their father was murdered.

The next step was to bring Greg May's killer to justice.

Back in Castro Valley, Calif., would another sculpture help bring justice for the girl they call Jane?

“This work has been done and hopefully it’s enough that somebody will come forward that knew her,” says sculptor Gloria Nusse.

But her identity is only one part of the mystery. Why, after two years, has no one claimed her? Detectives have a theory: that someone out there knows exactly who she is and what happened to her but the person is too afraid to come forward.

So police have been keeping an eye on her grave to see who might be drawn to visit her. And one day it paid off: they found an intriguing clue.

A necklace and a note were found on Jane Doe's headstone. "The note was actually strung through the necklace, so it was attached to it. 'God loves you, it’s OK, baby girl, Jim is paying for what he did to you,'" says Dudek.

Sgt. Dudek hopes that DNA and fingerprint tests on those items will provide some answers. But it will take weeks, perhaps months, to find a match and he doesn’t want to waste any time.

So he’s releasing new posters based on the sculpture of Jane.

“We’ll go out to the businesses and get it out to the people and just make sure that our Jane Doe stays in everybody’s mind,” says Dudek.

That’s certainly true for amateur sleuth Ellen Leach, who spent hour after hour of her own time, sifting through reports of missing teens in search of a match.

Then late one night, the features of one little girl from California began to line up with Jane’s.

"I like the way the face is shaped around the chin. It looks like she’s got a good smile to her,” says Leach. "She looks like a beautiful little girl.”

Ellen has a gut feeling about this one: but only time will tell if she’ll have the same success as she did for the case of Greg May.