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Daughter of 'Jane Doe' learns about mother; killer 'could still be out there,' she says

BY BETH HUNDSDORFER AND GEORGE PAWLACZYK - News-Democrat

Katie found and lost her mother in one day.

Katie is the daughter of Summerfield's "Jane Doe," who was strangled and left in a cornfield outside the small village. She remained unidentified for more than 21 years until in January 2008 an FBI fingerprint recheck revealed she was 27-year-old Eulalia Pholia Mylia Chavez Wilcomer.

"I was at work and I waited until I got home and I Googled it," said Katie, who asked that only her first name be used to protect her and her adopted family. "I was like, 'Oh, my God!' So I found out who she was and that she was murdered in the same day."

A 1983 police photo of Eulalia Pholia Mylia Chavez Wilcomer. - Provided/BND

Katie, now 32, learned the name of her mother, who gave her up for adoption in California when she was an infant, from her mother's high school friend in 2008, then learned through a computer search that her mother was found in an Illinois cornfield near a small town called Summerfield, strangled, mutilated and unidentified for decades.

The news of her mother's murder brought fear, said Katie.

Does serial killer hold key to 23-year-old murder mystery in Summerfield?

Body was found near Summerfield

BY GEORGE PAWLACZYK - and Beth Hundsdorfer

Her final resting place is not a grave in Palo Alto, Calif., where she grew up, nor a cemetery in Summerfield, where her strangled and mutilated body was found in a cornfield almost 23 years ago.

The remains of 27-year-old Eulalia Mylia Chavez, or "Lolly" as her friends knew her, are not actually buried. Instead, they are stored in archival box 07-14 at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, where her skeleton is kept for anthropological study. No one was ever charged with her murder.

But Chavez, who was found on Sept. 6, 1986, but not identified until an FBI fingerprint match in January 2008, has not been forgotten.