Speaking with non-profit that helped identify Happy Face Killer’s Gilroy victim

GILROY, Calif. (KION-TV)-- The DNA Doe Project is a non-profit that helps identify John and Jane Does by using DNA databases and tracking down potential matches.

Over 60 experienced genetic genealogists volunteer their time to help identity Does, one being Harmony Bronson.

She and a team of genealogists help determine potential matches, find out how Does are related to matches and determine their identity from those clues.

The Santa Clara County Sheriff's Office reached out to them and asked to help identify a woman who was found dead on the side of Highway 152 near Gilroy in 1993.

"This case was kinda challenging because we didn't have a lot of matches. In some cases, you get really lucky and you have a close relative that's uploaded to GEDmatch or FamilyTreeDNA. That was not the case with this Doe. She had very distant matches and they came from an endogamous Norwegian community. A lot of the matches were related to each other in multiple different ways. Their connection to our Doe was actually many, many, generations ago in like the 1700s."

After they identify potential matches it is up to law enforcement to contact family and hopefully leave the mystery of what happened to their loved ones behind.

The victim was known as "Blue Pacheco" and they did not have a lot of information to go off of, but that didn't stop the Jane Doe Project from helping identify her.

Patricia Skiple was born in Colton, Oregon and identified by the Santa Clara County Sheriff's Office earlier this week.

Bronson added that the DNA Dor Project is working and has solved various Jane and John Doe cases.

They are thankful for people that upload DNA samples to the online databases to help their work in providing families with closure.

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ORIGINAL STORY

The DNA Doe Project along with the Santa Clara County Sheriff's Office announced they have identified a victim of the "Happy Face Killer" that was found dead on Highway 152 in 1993.

Patricia Skiple, known as Patty or Patsy, was born on May 29, 1948, and was raised in Colton, Oregon was identified as the woman found dead near Gilroy who had been referred to as "Blue Pacheco."

On June 3, 1993, a trucker discovered the body of a female in a turnout on westbound Highway 152 near Casa de Fruta in Gilroy.

The coroner's office said the cause of death was strangulation and that the body appeared to have been dumped and had been there for weeks.

Keith Hunter Jesperson confessed to Skiple's murder, along with the strangulation murder of seven other women between 1990 and 1994.

Jesperson claimed her name was "Carla" or "Cindy, and that he picked her up at a truck stop near Corning, California along I-5 at the end of May 1993 and strangled her at a rest stop in Williams.

Jesperson is currently serving four life sentences without the possibility of parole in the Oregon State Penitentiary.

In 2019 the Santa Clara County Sheriff's Office turned the case over to DNA Doe Project and through recent DNA testing, Skiple was confirmed as the victim.

“This case was exceptionally challenging due to recent Norwegian ancestry which resulted in very distant DNA matches on GEDmatch and FamilyTreeDNA,” said DNA Doe Project team leader Cairenn Binder. “ It would not have been possible to solve this case without the dedication of our law enforcement partners at Santa Clara County Sheriff’s Office, especially Sergeant Shannon Catalano, whose tenacious efforts to solve the case made our job as genealogists as effective as possible.”

The Santa Clara Sheriff's Office used a likely candidate discovered by the Jane Doe Project in 2021 to get family members to voluntarily upload their DNA profiles to GEDmatch, a public DNA database that can be used for forensic cases.

“We thank the voluntary DNA testers who tested and/or uploaded to GEDmatch in order to assist us in solving this case,” said team leader Harmony Bronson. “Every single DNA match made a difference in this difficult case.”