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She Was Found Dead In A Trunk Nearly 54 Years Ago. Now, Florida’s Longest Cold Case Victim Has A Name.

   DailyWire.com
Florida's 'Trunk Lady' identified as Sylvia Atherton nearly 54 years after body found.
St. Petersburg Police Department

On October 31, 1969, two police officers in St. Petersburg, Florida, found a black steamer trunk in a wooded area behind a restaurant.

When they opened the trunk, they found a woman’s body wrapped in a large plastic bag. The woman had visible injuries to her head and appeared to have been strangled with a man’s Western-style bolo tie. She was wearing only a pajama top, according to the St. Petersburg Police Department.

Florida's 'Trunk Lady' identified as Sylvia Atherton nearly 54 years after body found.

St. Petersburg Florida

The woman was buried under the name “Jane Doe,” and for nearly 54 years, no one knew her real name. Her body was exhumed on February 10, 2010. Police regularly tried to learn her identity using teeth and bone samples, but the samples were too degraded. She remained unidentified even after she was featured on television programs, in articles, and at cold case conferences.

It wasn’t until earlier this year when investigators had a break. St. Petersburg Cold Case Detective Wally Pavelski found a sample of the woman’s hair and skin that had been taken at her original autopsy back in 1969. Pavelski sent the samples to Ortham Labs in Texas, which has aided law enforcement by identifying cold case victims through familial DNA. In April, Ortham developed a DNA profile of the woman, which was used to find family members who provided DNA profiles to confirm Jane Doe’s identity.

Her name is Sylvia June Atherton, and she was 41 years old when she died. Pavelski tracked down one of her children, a daughter named Syllen Gates who lived in California, who was just nine years old when her mother disappeared.

Syllen told investigators that her mother left their home in Tucson, Arizona, with her husband, Stuart Brown, 5-year-old daughter Kimberly Anne Brown, adult son Gary Sullivan, adult daughter Donna, and her husband David Lindhurst. The group said they were moving to Chicago. Syllen and her 11-year-old brother were left with their father, Atherton’s ex-husband. At some point, Gary Sullivan returned to Tucson to live with the family that remained.

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Det. Pavelski soon learned that Stuart Brown, Sylvia’s husband, died in 1999 in Las Vegas, Nevada. Court records didn’t mention Sylvia.

While all this is known, it is still unknown who killed Sylvia Atherton or how she ended up in Florida. The whereabouts of Donna and Kimberly, who left with their mother for Chicago, are also unknown.

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