Unidentified Wiki
Register
Advertisement
Stop2
This article includes content which may be disturbing to some readers, such as details of suicide. Discretion is advised.

Joyce Marilyn Meyer Sommers (July 13, 1927 - December 18, 1996) was a woman who died by suicide in 1996 in Annandale, Virginia. Upon the discovery, she had written a note requesting cremation, no autopsy and signed it as "Jane Doe." While unidentified, she was nicknamed "Christmas Tree Lady".

She was identified by Othram Inc in July 2022.

Background[]

Joyce Meyer was born on July 13, 1927, the eldest of three girls and two boys, and was raised on a farm outside of Davenport, Iowa. She attended Iowa State University and later moved to Los Angeles where she lived with an aunt while working for Seventeen magazine. Meyer then left Seventeen in the 1950s to teach second grade at a Catholic school in the city. Around that time Meyer began seeing a psychiatrist whose treatments alienated Meyer from her family. Sometime in the 1960s, she had a confrontation with her mother in which Meyer accused her of being a bad parent.

Disappearance[]

Meyer eventually moved to Seattle and married James E. Sommers, but she didn't notify her family. The couple had no children and divorced in 1977. Meyer then moved to a trailer park in Tucson, Arizona. In the 1980s, Meyer's siblings visited her; she asked them to help build her a home which they couldn't do. Meyer was never seen or heard from again after that.

In the early 1990s, Meyer's siblings attempted to find her. Meyer's brother, Larry Meyer, went back to the trailer park where he found her trailer abandoned. He found four copies of a book in her fridge that she self-published called The Target Child. The book was about Meyer's supposedly abusive childhood, but her sister, Clough, doesn't believe their parents were abusive or that all of them suffered growing up.

During the early 1990's, a private investigator hired by Larry Meyer and Clough's ex-husband managed to find evidence that Meyer moved to the East Coast, but further efforts proved useless. Public records show that Meyer might have lived in Northern Virginia, possibly Alexandria, in 1996. The records show an address for her in downtown Washington D.C, a townhouse on Massachusetts Avenue that has since been integrated into another building.

Gallery[]

Media[]

  • Bloodline Detectives covered the case in June 2023.

Sources[]

Advertisement