Escatawpa Jane Doe is ID’d after 40 years. A serial killer took her life, officials say.
After 40 years, skeletal remains known only as “Escatawpa Jane Doe” have been identified through DNA.
The woman’s name was Clara Birdlong, and Jackson County Sheriff’s investigators believe she was murdered by serial killer Samuel Little, a news release from the Jackson County Sheriff’s Office says. Little confessed to more than 90 murders throughout the southeast before he died at age 80 in a California prison cell.
At the time, the FBI said he was the most prolific serial killer in U.S. history.
Less is known about Clara Birdlong. Hunters discovered her skeletal remains in December 1977 near Mississippi Highway 613 and Interstate 10, which was then under construction.
A medical examination determined that she was Black, petite, had a front gold tooth and was possibly wearing a wig.
Her identity remained a mystery, despite facial reconstructions and computer composites created to help identify her, as well as earlier DNA analysis.
In 2018, Little confessed to murders in the Southeast, including the murder of Birdlong, whose name he did not know.
Coast investigators identify family
In January, the Jackson County Sheriff’s Office, working with the State Crime Lab, contracted with Texas-based DNA research company Othram Inc. to create a family tree for Jane Doe. Othram quickly identified a distant cousin of the victim, the news release says.
When sheriff’s investigator Matt Hoggatt located the cousin in Texas, she referred him to her 93-year-old paternal grandmother, who was originally from Leflore County in North Mississippi. The grandmother said her cousin, Clara Birdlong, who was born in 1933, went missing in the 1970s from Leflore County.
Another distant cousin said Birdlong was a small woman nicknamed “Nuttin,” who had a gold front tooth and wore a wig.
Investigator Hoggatt kept digging. He found a woman in Leflore County who said Birdlong left in the 1970s with a man who claimed he was headed to Florida. Birdlong was never heard from again, the woman said.
The DNA sample from Jane Doe matched the grandmother’s DNA. Further investigation ruled out other relatives as the victim.
The investigators also learned that Little had been arrested in 1977 in Pascagoula for petty theft. They believe he is responsible for Birdlong’s murder, the news release says, although her cause of death has never been determined.
Anyone who may remember Birdlong is asked to call the Jackson County Sheriff’s Department at 228-769-3063 or Mississippi Coast Crime Stoppers at 877-787-5898.
