Linda Marie Pagano (April 11, 1957 - 1974) was a teenager found murdered in 1975. She initially disappeared in September 1974.
Her family confirmed the match in July 2018. Until then, she had been unidentified for 43 years.
Case
Pagano had an argument with her stepfather and left home, never to be seen again. Little information is available on her disappearance and the investigation.
On February 5, 1975, her partial skeleton was discovered along a riverbank by children. Her mandible was not recovered and her limbs were missing, presumably due to dismemberment, as her killer had sawed some of her teeth out of the skull. Despite efforts to identify her, there were no leads and the remains were eventually buried.
Identification
In 2015, an amateur genealogy researcher was searching through cemetery records in Cleveland when she discovered a listing for "Unknown white female bones" that had been discovered in 1975 in Strongsville. Intrigued by the case, she started to research the discovery of the remains at her local library and reached out to local law enforcement, including a Cleveland Metroparks ranger, who sent her the case file. After receiving the case file, she posted it to Reddit and it eventually made its way to Websleuths, where it caught the attention of Carl Koppelman, who created a facial reconstruction from the skull. Linda Pagano was eventually listed on NamUS and the similarities were made between the Strongsville Jane Doe and Linda by Carl and law enforcement, which eventually lead to her identification in 2018.
Gallery
Sources
- Spectrum News POSTMORTEM WARNING
- News 5 Cleveland
- Akron Beacon Journal
- Article #1 (10/7/17)
- Article #2 (7/11/18)
- Article #3 (1/14/19)
- Linda Pagano at Find a Grave