She Was The Victim Of A Serial Killer And For 37 Long Years, Nobody Knew Her Name
Anchorage, Alaska. She was dressed in a coat, sweater, and wool scarf when she was found out near Horseshoe Lake located in Palmer, which is about a 46-minute drive away from Anchorage.
She had jeans and leg warmers on, and she was wearing tennis shoes on her feet. She had 4 gold rings on her fingers, and a pack of cigarettes with her, in addition to a compact.
It was April 25th, 1984 when her remains were found lying in the woods close to the picturesque lake, and she had been shot and stabbed to death.
Nobody knew who she was back in 1984, and so, she was nicknamed Horseshoe Harriet after the lake she had been found near.
In the absence of her name, she was buried with a grave marker that simply read “Jane Doe #3” in Anchorage Memorial Park.
It would be 37 long years until anyone would find out who she was, however, there was one important detail in her case…
…The serial killer Robert Hansen had admitted to killing her.
Alaska Department of Public Safety; pictured above is the unnamed woman, who was nicknamed Horseshoe Harriet after the lake she had been found near
Robert was arrested in the year before this young woman had been found near Horseshoe Lake, and initially, authorities thought he had taken the lives of four different women.
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Those women were recovered before he had been arrested, but after he pleaded guilty in February of 1984, he revealed that he had a shocking number of victims.
“Hansen eventually admitted to murdering a total of 17 women and accompanied investigators on a helicopter flight where he pointed out the gravesites,” the Alaska Department of Public Safety said in a press release.
Just 12 of those 17 women were located by the authorities, one of which was Horseshoe Harriet.
Sadly, Horseshoe Harriet’s case grew cold even long after Robert was sentenced to serve 461 years behind bars for his crimes.
This past summer, her DNA was added to a genealogy database, and they were able to figure out her family tree from there.
“Genealogy research by Parabon Nanolabs and ABI indicated that the victim might be a woman named Robin Pelkey,” the Alaska Department of Public Safety said.
“Pelkey had been born in 1963 in Colorado. Additional research identified a few potential relatives of Pelkey’s that currently reside in Alaska and Arkansas.”
“Records indicated that she had been living in Anchorage in the early 1980s when Hansen was active. Pelkey would have been 19 at the time of her murder and no record was found reporting her missing.”
From there, authorities were able to find a relative of Robin’s who was close enough to her that they matched that person’s DNA to Robin’s.
This September, Robin was positively identified, and she was Horseshoe Harriet no more.
The Alaska Department of Public Safety mentioned that there still is one unidentified victim of Robert’s so far that has yet to get her name back; Eklutna Annie.
Authorities are in the process of utilizing genetic genealogy in the hopes of helping to figure out who she was, and you can read about her more below.
She Was The Very First Victim Of A Serial Killer, But She Has Gone Unnamed For Over 39 Years
Anchorage, Alaska. On July 17th, 1980, a woman was unearthed in a timber-covered area of Alaska, close to a powerline.
She was found in the town of Eklutna, just around a mile south of South Eklutna Lake Road, and not far from mile marker two out there in the wilderness.
It’s not clear exactly how Annie was found, but when she was, she had no forms of identification on her and had been dead for about a year prior to being buried.
She was wearing jeans, a brown leather jacket that hit at about her hip, reddish-brown to brown high-heeled, knee-length vinyl boots that zipped up the side, and a sleeveless knit sweater that was either light gray, beige, or white.
You can read the rest of the story on Chip Chick here.
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