A teenager who has been missing for more than 50 years has been identified from human bones unearthed in a coal mine.
When Joan Marie Dymond vanished from a park in June 1969, she was 14 years old.
She was never located despite years of police searching.
People searching for artefacts in a trash-filled trench in the ground in Luzerne County, Pennsylvania, in November 2012 discovered bones in the grounds of a former coal mining business, according to a press statement from the police.
Police only discovered they belonged to “a girl, estimated to be in her mid-teens to early 20’s, who died of suspicious or “foul play” circumstances,” at the time they were unable to identify them.
For ten years, the bones were referred to as Jane “Newport” Doe until a recent advance in DNA analysis.
The investigation was revived by the detectives, who also provided the victim’s DNA for genetic genealogy testing.
The remains of the missing teen were identified after they received a hit on Dymond’s family members.
Her family has now gotten closure over Dymond’s disappearance, fifty years after it happened.
The public is being urged to assist Pennsylvania Police in finding her killer.
“We never stopped pursuing answers, and this investigation remains very active,” the commanding officer of Pennsylvania State Police Troop P, Captain Patrick Dougherty, said in the press release.
