The Girl Next Door

An Obsessed Cop And Amazing Forensics Help Solve A Haunting Mystery

(CBS)  Detectives also kept an eye on Jane's grave to see who might visit her. One day there was an intriguing clue: they found a note and necklace on the headstone. "And the letter actually says 'God loves you, it’s okay baby girl, Jim is paying for what he did to you,'" Dudek explains.

Dudek is hoping that DNA and fingerprint tests on those items will provide some answers, but that will take weeks, even months.

So once again the detective is manning the phones. "Sooner or later somebody’s gonna make a connection and they'll pick up the phone and they'll call us and they’ll do the right thing," he says.

That combination of police work and publicity finally paid off. In January 2006, 48 Hours Mystery reported on the case of Jane Doe. The calls started pouring in, and one of them would turn this case around.

"The emotion that day was, it can't be explained, it was just huge for us. It was just, I can't believe that maybe this could be what we've finally been looking for," Dudek recalls.

Someone who watched the program thought Jane looked like a young girl who was seen around Castro Valley with a man. "His name is Miguel Castaneda. And he worked in the restaurant where the body was dumped," Dudek explains.

Detectives had some questions for Castaneda. But when they went looking for him, he was gone.

Dudek and his team have received a tip that Jane and the man she was seen with may be from the same hometown in Mexico. So they're chasing their latest lead all the way across the border, trying to identify her.

The detectives head to Yahualica, a poor, working-class town near Guadalajara. Their plan: to show the sculpture, and a photo of Miguel Castaneda, to as many townspeople as possible.

For the next 48 hours, the detectives work day and night, walking hours on end to hand out some 4,000 flyers. The team hopes the reward, now up to $65,000, will attract some attention as well.

At first Dudek recruited some help, but pretty soon he didn’t have to ask. The townspeople here, like those back in Castro Valley, had already taken this case to heart. "The word spread around town so quick we had people coming up to us, asking if they can hand out flyers," Dudek explains.

Dudek was most eager to reach the teenagers in town. He thought they were his best shot at tracking down Jane’s family.

From one school to another, he repeated his story, and didn't spare them the grisly details of what happened to Jane. "We felt that they were old enough to put themselves in her place, what horrific things she went through in the last moments of her life," he says.

On his third day in Mexico, Dudek received a frantic message. It was a woman who had seen the flyer and feared that Jane was her missing daughter. The minute Dudek laid eyes on her, he had a feeling his search was over. "You have that moment where you go, 'Oh my God,' 'cause she has some of the identical features," he explains.

The woman showed detectives pictures of her daughter. "The sculpture that Gloria did and that picture, how much more close can you get? The cheek bones are perfect, her lips are perfect in that picture, she has gold hooped earrings," Dudek remarks.

And the woman said her daughter, like Jane, had perfect teeth.