Dana Point Jane Doe on listverse today

On the morning of September 20, 1987, a young woman’s body was found on a beach near Dana Point, California. The woman looked to be 18–23 years old and had fallen to her death from a cliff. A number of items were found at the top of the cliff, including a purse and a map with the phone number for a cab company written on it. The woman carried no identification, though her purse did have an embossed name—Carol Pinkham. Investigators did track down a woman named Carol Pinkham, but she had no known connection to the victim and claimed that the purse was stolen from her 12 years earlier.

It turned out that the woman had called a cab to pick her up from a gas station in Oso at approximately 4:00 AM. She told the driver that her car had broken down. (No abandoned vehicles were found in the area.) She asked to be taken to the Ritz-Carlton in Laguna Beach, but since she did not have enough money to cover the full trip, the driver took her as far as he could before dropping her off near the cliff area.

The woman remained an anonymous Jane Doe for over 27 years, until the case drew the attention of some childhood friends of Holly Jo Glynn, a young woman from Whittier who hadn’t been seen since the 1980s. Finally, in May 2015, DNA testing positively confirmed that Holly Jo Glynn was the Dana Point Jane Doe. Holly was 21 years old at the time of her death, which was ruled to be a suicide.