# 3 Doe Cold Cases That Were Cracked With Forensic Science

An episode of [Lazy Chill True Crime](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1815534472), 15 Sep 2025, 20 min.

Audio: https://traffic.megaphone.fm/APO1908962971.mp3

Discover how forensic science cracked 3 Doe cold cases, using DNA, genetic genealogy, and modern forensics to finally identify the unidentified. 👇 Youtube links: Lazy Chill True Crime Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC8dVJtzeHcJgd_Z0bHrJTHQ Lazy Chill History Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@LazyChillHistory Lazy Chill Zone Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@LazyChillZone 👇 Support My Work: 🛍️ Merch: https://lazy-chill-zone-shop.fourthwall.com ❤️ Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/lazychillzone 👇Social Media Links: https://www.instagram.com/lazychillzone/ 👇 Podcast links: ⚡History Video Podcast on Spotify⚡: https://open.spotify.com/show/7km5pLWpYWEj1mrPpEfRUr?si=0FHYnZf-Qs2FY1GyLevfig ⚡True Crime Podcast on Spotify⚡: https://open.spotify.com/show/0klIz08pAr7wR4we0Ia4sk?si=68qZxCeAQkysXzMZrHE0Iw 🍏 True Crime Podcast on Apple 🍎: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/lazy-chill-true-crime/id1815534472 forensic science cold cases, doe case identification, unidentified remains solved, genetic genealogy cold cases, forensic breakthroughs in mysteries, solving john doe cases, jane doe forensic science, unidentified bodies identified, cold cases solved 2025, forensic genealogy success stories, missing persons solved by DNA, cold case identifications, forensic anthropology cold cases, doe cases forensic breakthroughs, unidentified remains solved by DNA, cold cases closed with forensics, forensic genealogy cold case files, mysteries solved with DNA, unidentified victims identified, forensic technology cold cases, john doe identified by DNA, jane doe identification 2025, solved unidentified persons, forensic DNA cold case investigations, unidentified cold cases solved, genetic genealogy identifications, forensic science mystery solutions, solving missing persons with DNA, forensic case breakthroughs, unidentified victims solved with science

## Transcript

[0:00] For four years, the identity of a teenage girl discovered in
[0:03] rural Texas remained a mystery. In June 2021, a property owner
[0:09] in Wharton County stumbled upon skeletal remains in a secluded,
[0:14] brushy area off County Road 225. The victim had been shot
[0:19] multiple times in the head and with no name and few clues, she
[0:23] became known only as the Wharton County Jane Doe.
[0:27] It wasn't until June 2025 that authorities finally gave her a
[0:32] name. She was 16 year old Jaime
[0:34] Makiela Beltran. This revelation cracked open a
[0:39] chilling story of her disappearance and slaying and
[0:42] marked the beginning of the end of a long running cold case.
[0:47] Jaime Beltran was last seen in April 2021 in her hometown of
[0:52] Houston, TX. She was just 16, but despite
[0:56] this, her sudden absence initially raised little alarm.
[1:01] In fact, her mother did not report Yami missing until 15
[1:04] days later. According to unverified
[1:07] accounts, the delay happened because Yami's mother received a
[1:11] disturbing phone call informing her that her daughter had been
[1:15] slain and she was in fear. On June 18th, 2021, about two
[1:23] months after Yami disappeared, her remains were found in
[1:27] Wharton County, roughly an hour's drive from Houston.
[1:31] A local landowner clearing brush came upon a human skeleton in an
[1:35] isolated field near Hungerford. Investigators noted that the
[1:40] body had been left exposed to the elements with no attempt at
[1:43] burial. The Fort Bend County Medical
[1:46] Examiner determined that the Jane Doe had died from multiple
[1:49] gunshot wounds to the head and had likely been dead for several
[1:53] weeks or more. Because of advanced
[1:57] decomposition, even basic details like her ethnicity
[2:00] couldn't be determined, but she was thought to be of white,
[2:04] Hispanic or mixed Native American heritage.
[2:09] Investigators found a few poignant clues with the body.
[2:13] The unknown girl was wearing a Gray shirt emblazoned with the
[2:16] word Ohana and a picture of Stitch, the Disney cartoon
[2:21] character. She also wore shorts printed
[2:24] with coffee mugs and doughnuts and a lightweight tan hooded
[2:28] jacket. On her fingers were 3 silver
[2:31] rings, one with two entwined hearts and two others with
[2:35] Whitestone settings. These personal items were
[2:39] carefully photographed and shared with the public in hopes
[2:42] that someone might recognize them.
[2:45] Despite these efforts, no immediate match was made to a
[2:48] missing person. The mystery girl did not
[2:51] correspond to any open case in Wharton County, which puzzled
[2:55] local officials. Investigators strongly
[2:58] considered that the victim might not be local at all.
[3:02] She was thought to likely be a trafficking victim or run away
[3:05] from far away whose family had no idea what happened.
[3:11] For nearly four years, the Jane Doe remained unidentified and
[3:16] the case went cold. The breakthrough finally came in
[3:19] mid 2025, when advances in DNA analysis and persistent
[3:24] detective work put the puzzle pieces together.
[3:27] Yami's mother had provided ADNA sample, which was uploaded to
[3:31] CODIS in June 2025. Specialists at the University of
[3:37] North Texas Center for Human Identification in Fort Worth
[3:41] managed to match the unidentified remains to Yami's
[3:44] mother nearly four years after her body was found.
[3:48] This 16 year old girl was no longer anonymous.
[3:53] Yami's family in Houston had no idea that the unidentified girl
[3:57] found in the next county was their missing daughter and had
[4:00] never heard of the case before. Presumably, had the case
[4:04] received wider attention, her identity may have been given
[4:08] back to her earlier since she had a lot of identifying items
[4:12] with her. Identifying Yami answered the
[4:16] biggest question, who was the victim?
[4:19] But it also raised an obvious urgent follow up question.
[4:25] Once her name was known, a harrowing narrative of Yami's
[4:28] final moments emerged. According to a witness, a female
[4:32] friend of Yami's, her demise was not a random crime, but an act
[4:37] of betrayal by an older predator who was claiming to be her
[4:42] boyfriend. On the night she disappeared in
[4:45] April 2021, Yami was riding in a vehicle with her 27 year old,
[4:50] quote UN quote boyfriend, Luis Omar Beltran Mendoza.
[4:56] The friend was also in the vehicle and they were heading
[4:59] down Interstate 45 near Houston. At some point, an argument
[5:04] erupted. Beltran Mendoza allegedly struck
[5:07] Yami in the face while driving. Yami, wounded and furious,
[5:13] threatened to report him to police for unspecified crimes he
[5:17] had been involved in. That threat proved fatal, and
[5:21] Beltran Mendoza pulled out a gun and shot Yami 3 times in the
[5:25] head at point blank range. Beltran Mendoza then threatened
[5:31] to eliminate the other young woman as well.
[5:34] He drove to a rural spot, presumably the field in Wharton
[5:38] County, and dumped Yami's body. The terrified friend was held
[5:43] captive by him for a few days before he finally let her go,
[5:46] warning her not to tell anyone. Traumatized and fearing for her
[5:51] life, she initially stayed silent.
[5:54] It was only later that this witness bravely came forward and
[5:58] told police everything, even identifying Beltran Mendoza in a
[6:01] photo lineup. Her testimony gave investigators
[6:05] a clear picture of what happened to Yaemi and who was
[6:08] responsible. And I know there's going to be
[6:12] someone in the comments who will question why this friend waited
[6:15] so long to come forward, but we really don't know what Mendoza
[6:19] subjected her to over the course of her captivity and further yet
[6:24] she knew he was capable of extreme violence.
[6:27] Also, reading between the lines, I'm going to guess that this
[6:31] witness was likely a minor as well.
[6:35] On August 7th, 2025, a Texas grand jury formally charged the
[6:40] 27 year old with Yemi's slaying, but by the time the indictment
[6:45] was issued, Beltran Mendoza had vanished.
[6:49] Now a wanted fugitive, he remains on the run and has yet
[6:52] to be apprehended. Beltran Mendoza is originally
[6:55] from Mexico, which has fueled speculation that he may have
[6:59] fled the country to avoid capture in the wake of this
[7:02] crime. What began as a nameless mystery
[7:07] has become a quest for justice, and investigators remain
[7:10] determined to catch Beltran Mendoza and hold him
[7:13] accountable. On an August morning in 1971, a
[7:21] father and son travelling along Oregon's Redwood Hwy. stumbled
[7:25] upon a horrifying discovery in the woods near the California
[7:29] border. They found the scattered
[7:31] skeletal remains of a young woman.
[7:34] The area was littered with trash, as if it were an illegal
[7:37] dump site, and it looked like someone had tried to conceal the
[7:41] body under debris. No one knew who this girl was,
[7:46] how she had perished, or why she was left in a lonely patch of
[7:50] forest. It took nearly 50 years for
[7:53] modern genetic sleuthing to finally identify her as Annie
[7:57] Marie Lehman, but learning her name is only the beginning, and
[8:01] what happened to Annie in 1971 remains unsolved.
[8:08] Annie Lehman was a 16 year old girl from Aberdeen, WA who
[8:12] vanished under fairly murky circumstances in early 1971.
[8:17] One day she was seen at home packing her bags, and when her
[8:20] sister asked where she was going, Annie advised that she
[8:24] was leaving with an older woman who was waiting outside.
[8:28] That older woman was later tracked down and allegedly told
[8:32] a relative that Annie had been taken to San Francisco and sold
[8:36] into a trafficking ring. Whether this story was true or
[8:40] just a rumor, it left Annie's family terrified for her fate.
[8:45] And stop me if you've heard this one before.
[8:48] Authorities assumed Annie left by choice and didn't launch any
[8:52] search for her, as was the style at the time.
[8:56] Seriously, I feel like I can just copy and paste that line
[9:00] into my scripts 90% of the time. When a teen went missing in the
[9:03] 60s or 70s. On August 18th, 1971, only a few
[9:10] months after Annie left home, the travellers discovered a
[9:14] human skeleton in Josephine County, Oregon, just outside the
[9:18] town of Cave Junction. Investigators determined the
[9:21] remains were a female in her late teens or early 20s, likely
[9:25] deceased for several months. Notably, she also wore two
[9:30] rings, including one with a mother of Pearl stone into which
[9:34] the letters AL had been scratched.
[9:37] This haunting clue would only fully make sense decades later
[9:41] when those turned out to be the victim's initials.
[9:46] Investigators also found a disintegrating road map of
[9:49] Northern California camping areas stuffed in the girl's
[9:52] pocket. This suggested the unknown young
[9:54] woman might have been traveling toward California.
[9:58] From the condition of the scene, police strongly suspected foul
[10:02] play. The body's hidden placement and
[10:05] the remote location indicated that someone may have dumped her
[10:08] there intentionally after eliminating her elsewhere.
[10:13] Unfortunately, due to the skeletal state of the remains,
[10:17] the medical examiner couldn't determine an exact cause of
[10:20] death. With no identification and no
[10:24] obvious cause, the case was difficult from the start.
[10:28] Police checked missing persons reports and sent descriptions of
[10:32] the victim and her clothing across the region, but no match
[10:35] was made. By the end of the 1970's, the
[10:39] Jane Doe case went cold and the victim remained unidentified for
[10:43] decades. In August 2004, cold case
[10:49] detectives reopened the file and used new forensic methods to try
[10:53] to identify her. In an absolutely bizarre
[10:56] coincidence, they released a facial reconstruction of the
[11:00] victim, and to help her case be more relatable, they named her
[11:04] the Jane Annie Doe. Of course, at the time, the
[11:08] investigators had no idea that Annie was actually her name.
[11:12] The reconstructed face was publicized, generating a few
[11:16] tips, but nothing that led to a name.
[11:21] In 2016, another approach was tried, forensic isotope analysis
[11:27] of the girl's hair and teeth. The isotope tests suggested a
[11:31] possible upbringing in the northeastern United States.
[11:35] This clue led to some false leads, but ultimately it proved
[11:39] to be a dead end. Annie was actually from
[11:43] Washington, not New England, and there's no record of her having
[11:46] ever even visited the Northeast. The real breakthrough came from
[11:52] cutting edge genetic genealogy. In 2018, the nonprofit DNA Dough
[11:58] Project took on this Jane Doe as one of its cold cases.
[12:04] Technicians extracted DNA from the old bone samples, though the
[12:08] genetic material was highly degraded by decades of storage.
[12:12] They were able to find family members in the UK and New
[12:15] Zealand and eventually use those hits to construct the family
[12:19] tree out. In early 2019, these connections
[12:24] were used to find a woman in Washington state who turned out
[12:27] to be the sister of the Jane Doe, and she gave ADNA sample
[12:31] for testing. In March 2019, it was confirmed
[12:38] that the Jane Doe, nicknamed Annie, was indeed Annie Lehman
[12:42] of Aberdeen, WA. With Annie identified,
[12:47] investigators turned to the bigger question of what actually
[12:50] happened to her. One possibility is that Annie
[12:53] left Aberdeen of her own accord and headed South, only to fall
[12:57] prey to foul play along the way. The map of California
[13:02] campgrounds in her pocket supports the idea that she was
[13:05] traveling toward California. She may have hitchhiked or
[13:09] gotten a ride with someone dangerous.
[13:12] If Annie was on the road and encountered a predator, that
[13:15] could explain how she ended up hidden in a rural area off the
[13:18] highway, far from home. During the early 1970s, it
[13:23] wasn't unheard of for hitchhiking teenagers to come to
[13:26] harm at the hands of opportunistic predators, and
[13:30] Annie may have been one such unfortunate victim.
[13:33] Also, I'm sure it won't come as a surprise to any of you
[13:37] watching, but California and the Pacific Northwest were a massive
[13:41] hotbed for serial predators during this period.
[13:47] The other main theory is based on the troubling account from
[13:49] her family that Annie was effectively trafficked.
[13:54] In this scenario, the unknown older woman who accompanied her
[13:59] was an accomplice who delivered Annie into the hands of a
[14:01] criminal organization. According to the second hand
[14:05] story shared with Annie's relatives, she was sold into an
[14:09] illicit operation in San Francisco.
[14:12] If that story is factual, Annie might have been held against her
[14:16] will and harmed by those who exploited her.
[14:20] Her slaying could have occurred at the hands of traffickers, and
[14:23] they may have dumped her body in the Oregon woods while moving
[14:26] along a route between Washington and California.
[14:32] Investigators acknowledge both scenarios as potentially true,
[14:36] though they haven't provided much further insight than that.
[14:40] What they've let the public know is that Annie's passing
[14:42] definitely did involve foul play.
[14:45] Authorities continue to gather information in hopes of proving
[14:49] one of the theories and ultimately finding out who was
[14:52] responsible for Annie's demise. More than 50 years have passed
[14:59] since Annie Lehman's life was cut short, but the case remains
[15:03] open and unsolved. The identification of her
[15:06] remains in 2019 was a major victory, but it's only the first
[15:11] step. IN2021A crew of tree planters
[15:18] working in a remote Washington forest made a grim discovery a
[15:23] human skull with multiple bullet holes.
[15:26] For four years, the identity of this John Doe remained unknown
[15:31] until cutting edge forensics finally put a name to the
[15:34] remains in 2025. The skull belonged to Anthony
[15:38] Kroy, a young man who had vanished from Portland, OR
[15:42] nearly 3 decades earlier. Anthony Kroy was 21 years old
[15:48] when he disappeared from the Portland area in late 1995.
[15:53] Known to friends by the nickname T-bone, Kroy was a talented
[15:57] tattoo artist. By the summer of 1995, Kroy was
[16:01] living a transient lifestyle, couch surfing and staying in
[16:05] cheap motels with friends while trying to get by.
[16:09] Perhaps the last confirmed sighting of Kroy was in August
[16:12] or September 1995 at a motel in Northeast Portland.
[16:17] He had been staying there with two friends, but when those
[16:20] friends left, Kroy remained behind and was never seen by his
[16:25] loved ones again. Kroy's friends and family
[16:28] reported his disappearance to the police, however, as an adult
[16:33] with a somewhat nomadic lifestyle, authorities initially
[16:37] suspected he might have left on his own.
[16:40] However, Kroy's family never believed he would willingly drop
[16:43] out of touch, and indeed all records of his life seemed to
[16:47] abruptly stop in 1995. Fast forward to April 26th, 2021
[16:56] in a remote wooded area near Lake Merrill in Cougar,
[16:59] Washington, when a crew planting trees for a logging company
[17:03] stumbled upon a human skull. Detectives from the Cowlitz
[17:07] County Sheriff's Office responded and noted 2 entry and
[17:11] two exit holes in the skull, clear evidence that this
[17:15] individual hadn't perished of natural causes.
[17:19] This gruesome find kicked off a new investigation, but the
[17:22] immediate challenge was identifying the victim.
[17:26] A search of the area on May 15th, 2021, aided by sniffer
[17:32] dogs, uncovered A femur bone, but no personal belongings or
[17:37] identification were found. The partial remains were
[17:41] designated as an unidentified John Doe case and initially
[17:45] yielded few clues and the case went cold in 2025.
[17:52] With traditional methods exhausted, the Cowlitz County
[17:55] Sheriff's Office turned to advanced genetic genealogy as a
[17:59] last resort. To identify the remains,
[18:02] investigators submitted adna extract from the bones to
[18:05] Othrum, who identified a potential relative who turned
[18:10] out to be the sibling of the John Doe.
[18:13] With this information, the unidentified remains were
[18:16] officially those of Anthony Matthew Kroy, born December 4th,
[18:21] 1973. Nearly 30 years after Kroy's
[18:24] disappearance, his family finally had an answer about his
[18:28] fate. Authorities announced the
[18:30] identification in early September 2025 and
[18:34] unsurprisingly, noted that the investigation into his
[18:37] disappearance would now be investigated as a slaying.
[18:43] Given how recently he's been identified, there hasn't been
[18:47] much time for theories to form about the case yet, but a few
[18:50] things are known. Investigators know where Kroy's
[18:54] body ended up and have a general time frame of when he perished.
[18:58] The fact that he was last seen at a Portland motel before
[19:01] presumably being shot and dumped in rural Washington is a
[19:05] critical clue. This suggests the perpetrator
[19:09] may have transported him out of the city after slaying him
[19:12] there. Given Kroy's social circle and
[19:16] transient habits, investigators will likely attempt to interview
[19:21] old friends and associates to find anyone with a possible
[19:24] motive to harm him. However, given the lifestyle he
[19:29] was living, and given that there was no meaningful initial
[19:32] investigation done, this may be extremely difficult at this
[19:36] point.

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