Remains of 'Baby Girl' Found 37 Years Ago in Tennessee Finally Identified as Missing Indiana Teen Tracy Sue Walker

Tracy Sue Walker missing teen baby girl Cold case Forensic genetic genealogy testing

By Joel Brussels , Parent Herald Sep 01, 09:24 pm

Photo: (Photo : HECTOR RIO/AFP via Getty Images)

Officials made a huge announcement on Tuesday, August 30, saying that the skeletal remains of a teen girl found more than three decades ago in Tennessee have finally been identified thanks to forensic genetic genealogy testing.

The remains were discovered in Campbell County, Tennessee, on April 3, 1985. According to the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation (TBI), authorities believed the skeletal remains belonged to a white female, who was likely age 10 to 15 at the time of her death.

Investigators nicknamed her "Baby Girl" as she could not be identified back then. The mystery behind the identity of Baby Girl was finally cracked nearly 40 years later. TBI revealed in a news release that the girl was Tracy Sue Walker, born in June 1963.

What happened to Walker?

Walker's case is still shrouded in mystery, though. She disappeared from the Lafayette, Indiana, area in 1978, when she was about 15. Investigators are looking into what took the teen to Tennessee and the circumstances leading up to her untimely death.

Her case went cold for years, but new strides were made possible thanks to developments in DNA technology. A sample of the Baby Girl remains was submitted in 2007 to the University of North Texas Center for Human Identification.

A DNA profile was created for her in the Federal Bureau of Investigation's (FBI) Combined DNA Index System, known as CODIS, and in the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System.

A TBI agent and an intelligence analyst then revisited the case and looked for leads in 2013 to determine her real name. A break in the case did not come until this year when a sample of the teen's remains was sent to Othram, a private lab in the state of Texas that conducts forensic genetic genealogy testing and has aided in several cold cases.

Lab provided possible connection of victim to relatives in Indiana

The private lab provided a possible relative of Baby Girl, who was living in Indiana. Using that data, TBI found potential family members of the victim in Lafayette, Indiana, and made contact with them.

The contacts confirmed to TBI that they had a family member go missing from that area in 1978. The release said that TBI then worked with Lafayette police to acquire familiar DNA standards for possible siblings of the girl. These were later entered into CODIS.

The University of North Texas Center for Human Identification positively identified this week the remains as those belonging to Walker, according to NBC News. Her case is not yet solved, though, and the TBI is asking for help from the public for information about the case or tips about people the victim may have known to help solve what happened to her.