Black Jane Doe Found 50 Years Ago Finally Indentified
Black Jane Doe Found In Mississippi River Identified 50 Years Later
A Jane Doe found in the Mississippi River in 1975 has finally been identified as Cheryl Edwards, a Black girl who was 15-years-old at the time of her death.
According to Fox 26, the body of Cheryl Edwards was discovered in the Mississippi River by a fisherman on April 11, 1975. Cheryl’s body was found with no clothing, jewelry, or any identifying markers. An autopsy revealed that she was shot in the head and was 10 weeks pregnant at the time of her death. The Clinton County Sheriff’s Office ruled her death a homicide at the time, but there were no leads as they couldn’t identify her body despite years of investigation.
The discovery of Cheryl Edwards’ identity came as a result of a partnership between the Iowa Department of Public Safety (DPS), the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children, and the DNA Doe Project. A team of 16 genealogists from three different countries began working on the case in October 2025 during the DNA Doe Project’s annual conference in Texas.
“It’s probably the most rewarding work I’ve ever been involved in,” said Matthew Waterfield, team member for the DNA Doe Project, told CBS News. “It is laborious. It’s often time-consuming work. It’s very labor-intensive, but we all feel very passionate about the end goal.”
Waterfield explained to CBS News how his team identified Cheryl Edwards. He said that the first breakthrough in the case was identifying Cheryl’s grandparents, who lived in Louisiana. They used that information to then identify Cheryl’s father, who was their eldest child. They found that Cheryl’s father had moved around a lot during his time in the Navy before settling down in Waukegan, Illinois.
“We weren’t sure if they had a daughter. So we saw they’d had some sons, and it was only when we found an index on the California Birth Records Register of a Cheryl Edwards, that we realized that this was probably a daughter of the family we were looking at, which we then confirmed,” Waterfield explained. “And then, upon looking into her, we found absolutely no proof of life for her post 1975. That, to us, was a huge indication that she may well be our Jane Doe.”
The DNA Doe Project informed the Iowa DPS of the potential finding. DPS then visited a member of Edwards’s family, who confirmed that she had gone missing. After some more DNA testing, the DNA Doe Project was able to confirm that the body was indeed that of Cheryl Edwards.
“This is a case that a lot of agencies have been involved in. A lot of agencies care very deeply about, and hopefully will now be able to pursue further answers with regards to the circumstances of her death,” Waterfield said.
The Clinton County Sheriff’s Office told CBS News that Edwards’ family had been looking for her ever since her disappearance 50 years ago. They hope that by finally identifying the body, they’ll be able to gather more information about the circumstances leading up to her death.
Too often, Black girls are subject to unimaginable violence with little to no consequences for the perpetrators. Hopefully, identifying Cheryl Edwards will result in whoever was responsible for her death being brought to justice.
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