Photo credit: Walker County Sheriff’s Office
After 41 years of mystery, the Walker County Jane Doe murder victim has been formally identified.
Walker County investigators released new information in the case this week, after extensive investigation and DNA testing, that the girl found on Interstate 45 in November 1980 was 14 year old Sherri Ann Jarvis from Stillwater, Minnesota. She was found by a truck driver on Interstate 45, having been raped, strangled, and left for dead.
Investigators say she arrived in Huntsville on Halloween 1980, where witnesses saw her at a truck stop asking for directions to the Ellis Unit Work Farm. She was found around 9 am the next day, November 1st.
Samples began being sent to a lab in July 2020 for DNA testing by Detective Thomas Bean, who has been on the case since 2015. Samples indicated six people as direct relatives, and began filling out a family dree and interviewed family members. They discovered Jarvis has been removed from her home in Minnesota for habitual truancy. Jarvis wrote a letter to her family shortly after, saying she would return home.
A suspect has yet to be identified, and an investigation is ongoing.