The murder of Melinda Lou Barnhouse

This case is unusual in that the killer was convicted decades before the victim was identified. Alfred Ray Case of Brookhaven was arrested about a year after the September 1989 discovery, charged with manslaughter in the death of the unidentified woman, and convicted; he was sentenced to 20 years and is reported to be serving time at a Mississippi correctional facility with a release scheduled for 2030. What stayed cold for more than thirty years was the identity of the woman he killed. She had been buried as Jane Doe, entered into the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System in 2009 as case UP4769, and despite years of effort her name remained unknown. The breakthrough came through forensic genetic genealogy, a technology that did not exist in 1989. In 2022 the Mississippi Office of the State Medical Examiner, in partnership with the Lincoln County Sheriff's Office and the Mississippi Bureau of Investigation, submitted forensic evidence to Othram's laboratory in The Woodlands, Texas. Othram scientists used Forensic-Grade Genome Sequencing to develop a comprehensive genealogical profile from the decades-old evidence, and the company's in-house genealogy team built a family tree that pointed investigators toward living relatives. On May 10, 2023, additional DNA testing of a close family member positively confirmed that the woman buried in Brookhaven as Jane Doe was Melinda Lou Barnhouse, originally from Maryland. Lincoln County Sheriff Steve Rushing said investigators were certain of the result, telling reporters that they knew one hundred percent it was her and that they had been in touch with family members, an aunt and a brother. The identification did not change Case's conviction, which had been secured through the original investigation, but it finally answered the question that had hung over the case since 1989: the name of the victim.