Chip Chick
She had exactly 157 stab wounds to her chest, neck, and torso that had been made by a penknife. She had put up a fight against her attacker; the defensive wounds on her hands attested to that.
She had eaten two hours before she passed. There was no evidence that she had drugs or alcohol in her system.
She was deemed “Jane Doe 59,” since she was the 59th unidentified woman found that year, and informally called “Sherry Doe.”
Authorities tried to piece together who she was in the days that followed her discovery. Those days turned into months. Those months turned into years. Those years piled up into decades.
It ended up taking 46 years to identify her. Could she have been a Manson murder victim, especially since she was so close to where Sharon Tate had her life cut short by Charles Manson’s followers?
Here’s who she is and who could have been responsible for her death.
Family photo; pictured above Jane Doe 59 smiles in a black and white photo
As soon as Jane Doe 59 was found, the police had a strong suspicion that her death was somehow connected to Charles Manson and his followers.
She had been found on Mulholland Drive, which is between where Sharon Tate, her unborn baby boy, Jay Sebring, Abigail Folger, Wojciech Frykowski, and Steven Parent were murdered at 10050 Cielo Drive, and where Leno and Rosemary LaBianca had been murdered at 3301 Waverly Place.
Another young woman, 17-year-old Marina Habe, had been found murdered on Mulholland Drive on New Year’s Day of 1969.
