The Girl Next Door

She was five foot one, 110 pounds.

“She had a butterfly clip in the back of her hair.”

She had beautiful gold hoop earrings, no drugs, no alcohol, inner system. If you put that all together, it tells you that this is the girl that was living next door. This girl could be from Louisiana.

This girl could be from New York. This girl could be from Rhode Island. We have no idea where to even start. Unfortunately, we're going to have to dig up her body to find out who she is.

I'm Sergeant Scott Tudac. I'm a detective with the Alameda County Sheriff's Office. I can vividly recall pulling in here that night. It was late at night.

“Didn't find a bag behind the local restaurant here in Custer Valley.”

You know, on the side part about it, too, is outside of being discarded like a piece of trash behind a tree. She had a rag stuff down her throat. She died asphyxiation.

So it's just a horrific, horrific ending. We have to figure out who this little girl is to go forward with the homicide investigation. One, two, three, up. We're hopeful that the new pathologist that looks at her little body

can tell us something that maybe we missed. Yep, down. Okay, hold on a minute. Like a fine person. Like a fine person.

This was a living breathing person. She does have a story to tell us.

“And she's trying very hard tonight to tell us what she can.”

There are million clues inside of skull.

It just takes the right person to bring them out. Facial reconstruction is kind of a last ditch effort. We were desperate to find out who killed this young girl. I knew we would. I just didn't know how.

But it just proves that he really shouldn't give up. The girl next door, tonight's 48 hours mystery. I think it haunts me a lot. I think it haunts everybody. That's worked on this case.

Like any good homicide detective, Sergeant Scott Dudak can sometimes get a little obsessed with his cases, but this case troubles him more than any other. What makes this one so different? She's just the child and no one knows who she is.

If anybody deserves everything you got and then 50% more than that, it'd be a child. A 22 year veteran of the Alameda County Sheriff's Department in Northern California, Dudak has solved his share of gruesome crimes.

But murders are rare in the suburban community of Castro Valley. It's a beautiful community. It's about 75,000 people. It's a middle to upper middle class most of it. Not a lot of crime, not a lot of violent crime, especially.

So very nice area. So what he saw the night of May 1st, 2003 was especially shocking, even to a seasoned detective. The body of a young girl, moored, stuffed into a trash bag and discarded behind a restaurant.

Can you show us exactly where she was found? If you go behind this tree right here, her body was down here by the cyclone fence. She had been dead for about 10 days, so it was fairly well decomposed. And the way she died with a ragging her throat

suggests someone may have wanted to silence her. Do you think she saw something? You know, there had to be something very, very terrible, obviously,

that went on for her ultimately to be killed.

Maybe she was a witness to something. What usually happens when you find an unidentified motor victim?

we know who they are, either by looking at missing persons reports

or having a parent contact us.

“But sadly, no one seemed to be looking for her.”

Because her body was so badly decomposed, a local artist did the best she could to give her a face. They also gave her a name. Jane Doe, police had to rely on her autopsy for other clues. We had 10 perfect prints that we got off of both her hands,

which is a rarity. Investigators guessed she was in our early teens. She was in good health with perfect teeth. This Jane had all the appearances of a typical teenage girl next door from her painted nails to her choice of clothing.

We had a seamstress read do the exact clothing that she was wearing.

We found out it's a Tommy Hill figure knockoff.

And this is a teen ageer's outfit. It's very common. This is what all the kids were wearing. Detective Doodak released this sketch. Hopeful, it was good enough for someone

“to recognize this girl once it was splashed all over the local media”

and posted on websites dedicated to finding missing children. With this sketch, being released, we probably had 150 possible clues or sightings of people that thought they knew who our Castro Valley Jane Doe was. One clue seemed so promising that Doodak and his partner

Ed Sheeklin followed it all the way down to the Texas Mexican border, where they collected DNA samples from several mothers of missing teenage girls. Including a girl whose picture wore a remarkable resemblance to Jane.

And every single one of us were checked out and it wasn't her. There would be many more dead ends. What's got Doodak remained determined, even though his frustration was mounting. I'm a father.

Everybody that works on this case is a father. And it just pulls at you every single day,

“as far as why I can't we just solve this.”

Then another clue that seemed almost too good to be true from a possible witness. We thought it was a huge break. We got an anonymous letter in the mail. The letter writer claimed to have seen someone

get something from the trunk of a car and dump it in the very same bushes where the body was found. So basically, the person who wrote this letter was telling you that they got a look at the person who dumped the body of Jane Delk.

Correct. We asked this person to come forward. Told him we would keep him anonymous. However, unfortunately, he chose not to come forward at that point. This potential witness admitted in the letter

that he was reluctant to come forward because he himself had been in that parking lot waiting for a married girlfriend. Anything you want to say to that person, no? He's a huge witness for us. And we need him to make that decision and do the right thing.

As the weeks turn to months, the letter writer never came forward.

And no one claimed this young girl. But her case touched the people of Castro Valley and an unlikely hero emerged. He had no way of knowing that what he was about to do would one day help solve this mystery.

From day one, she touched me. And to this day, she still does. Dave Woolworth, a landscaper, was best known around town for his signature tie-died t-shirts. When I read the story, I started a cryer.

And I looked at my wife. And I told her that no one will come in claimant. It was eating happy. Once the forensic investigation was completed, Jane was destined for cremation. But that was unacceptable to Woolworth, himself, a father who had once been a strange

from his own daughter. But the mother can't fall in. What are you going to hand her? A bag of ashes? We think this is your daughter?

Woolworth decided to take the lead in raising donations from the community. Nobody knows her name, or exactly where she came from. But the tragedy of a young girl found dead in the East Bay has touched many people. The whole community in this area has adopted her. She's known as Castro Valley's Jane Doe.

And so four months after her body was abandoned in a parking lot, Castro Valley's adopted daughter was given a funeral befitting a dignitary. No child, could ever die alone. No child, could ever go to a name with. As several more months went by, this child was still nameless and her killer faceless.

We saw a lot of cold cases, a lot of homicides, very proud of that fact, okay. But all those have a name. We know who they are. So Sergeant Doodak made that agonizing decision to exume the young girl's body. Search again for the clues that could close this case.

I can't believe that we're actually doing this, I can't believe we're at this stage in the investigation where we have to go to such extreme measures. Detectives got Doodak feels he has no choice. You told some people that that was the worst night of your life. It was the most horrifying thing.

I mean, I had tried to prepare myself for it. However, it was just the longest, 18 hours of my life. We can't start finding out who stuff the ragdounders throw, who put her in the bag, who threw her behind the local restaurant. We can't even go there yet because we don't even know where she's from.

The first order of business is to find out who she is.

His team of forensic experts, humerus, fusing, almost, it's almost fully fused. That by anthropologists, Allison Galloway, will examine Jane Doodak's bones for clues that could provide a better estimate of her age. The bones all suggest that she's pretty much finished growing.

“I think she's probably much more, so like 14 to 17 range.”

In another attempt to pinpoint Jane's age, Doodak has turned to Dr. Drain Spencer, a dentist and forensic specialist. Here's the dental x-rays now of the maxellen mandible of Jane Doodak. But the wisdom tooth is just starting to get its roots. Dr. Spencer compares Jane's x-rays to some of his teenage patients.

This is a 14-year-old that just happened to come into my office this week and we took this picture. See how the roots are just little gnarly things. They really haven't formed and comparison to the other mullers. Let's put up a 15-year-old again, look at the wisdom teeth.

See, they really haven't formed very much here. And the last x-ray we'll put up is a 16-year-old. And again, you see some little roots, they're forming a little more now on this 16-year-old right here. So I'm comfortable with saying this Jane Doodak is in the range of 14-15-16-17 somewhere

in there, probably. A lot of people are used to seeing forensics on television by watching shows like CSI, but this is the real thing. The forensics field has made such leaps and bounds.

“That's why we decided that we would go over her body, inch by inch by inch.”

Deodak feels the most important key to unlocking this mystery is to get a better picture

of what Jane looked like alive. 62. And for that, he calls in forensic artist Gloria Nusey, who will make a sculpture of Jane based on her bone structure. Oh, look.

You quite often peer into coffins, bodies are exhumed. A lot of people might think that's a little bit morbid. Life isn't always pretty, but it is work that needs to be done. It's using skills that I have to help someone else, and that that is very important to me. There's a lot of asymmetry, there's a lot of asymmetry.

So Nusey and Dr. Galaway studied Jane's skull for clues to the girl's spatial features. It's part science, part guesswork.

“How can you reconstruct a person's face just based on a skull?”

Most people out there would seem almost impossible because all you have is the skull. Well, the information is in the bone. It tells me that the width of the cheekbones is this. It tells me that, you know, the slope of the forehead is this. Every skull is absolutely unique, but the landmarks are the same.

Well, we do have a nasal spine, which is, we have a nasal spine. But Nusey also needs a sense of Jane's ethnic background to create a sculpture that will hopefully resemble the dead girl closely enough, or someone out there to recognize her. Most of the features we're seeing are European, but there are some features that suggest that she might have some if the Asian will need to work in background.

The first step is to make a mold of the skull, so Jane's body can be returned to the

cemetery in the morning. Nusey will work all night long to make it.

She'll then bring the mold to her studio, where she'll work on it for weeks, okay.

“She'll bring Jane to life. There she is. The next part is the fun part, putting the clay”

on and finding her face, what she looks like. These little markers are showing the depth of tissue at these specific points on the skull. It's like I connect the dot. Those markers tell Nusey how thick the clay should be over different parts of the face to get an accurate and life-like shape.

I'm going to put on her mouth. I know the width of her lips because I've measured that from the skull. I just want to try to make her look like a person. Let's see this little fly little smile. There's a softness to her eyes.

All that she's been through, it's just her chance and it just needs to be absolutely

perfect. Five weeks after the exclamation and after some 40 hours of work.

“Of course, we tried to match her hair as well as because she your hair was dyed.”

Gloria Nusey is putting the final touches on the forensic reconstruction. You know, she definitely looks like she's kind of coming to life to me. Well, what do you think? Oh, she just is so, she is just so beautiful and so, she just looks so precious to me. Oh my god. Wow.

When he sees the finished product, this looks like a human being.

She's done such a fantastic, wonderful job.

Detective Dudek is convinced he's one giant step closer to finding out James Real Name and the identity of her killer. Jane Doe is ready for her close-up. The new sculpture of her face is being unveiled today in a media blitz. That sculpture is going to be huge as far as generating leads.

Now you have a face, you have the shirt, you have the pants. It's still early, but it's going to pay off. Okay, there's no doubt in my mind. It maybe has a total package here. Somebody will realize that's my girl.

Detective Dudek is also spreading the word to other police agencies. So, just in this one transmission alone, we're going to reach 200 in three agencies. It will start getting out these new flyers and they are hoping somebody will recognize her. And he's offering a $55,000 reward.

“This is going to be the new poster. Do you recognize this girl?”

We're passing out flyers regarding Jane Doe. We're trying to drum up some leads and get some information on our Jane Doe who still has her Jane Doe. Yes. We're still trying to find the identity of castor Bella Jane Doe. And you know about the case?

Yes, I do. I've been following it. Okay, great. We'll go out to the businesses. We'll get it out to the people. Just make sure that our Jane Doe stays in everybody's mind.

The detective doesn't know it yet, but his little girl is very much on the mind of this woman. All the way across the country. For castor Bella Jane Doe, I put in a couple hours a night for a few months. Ellen Leach of Gulfport, Mississippi is a stock room clerk by day and an armchair detective by night. It could be called an obsession of sorts.

I try to find missing persons to give their families some sense of closure. I have been to probably 50 websites. Ellen Leach is one of thousands of amateur detectives who scour the internet to help police solve cold cases. By matching photos of the missing to those victims who remain unidentified. That's the closest one I've found so far.

Yeah. Late one night, the features of one little girl from Southern California began to line up with James. I like the way the face shape was around the chin that looks like she's got a good smile to her. She looks like a beautiful little girl. We were very hopeful that it was going to be our Jane Doe.

But this girl's dental records, no indication of any trauma on Jane Doe.

Do not match Jane's perfect teeth. It's another dead end by now one of hundreds. That was probably one of the lowest times in this investigation because we're hoping so much that that sculpture would give us that one piece of the clue that we needed to end this mystery. Hundreds of tips are coming in. Nothing seems to be panning out.

“Are you worried at all Gloria that she may not be identified?”

I am worried that she might not be identified. Maybe there is someone who doesn't know her but is afraid to come forward.

Gloria Newsy is even beginning to doubt her own work.

My greatest fear of course is maybe I didn't do it right. Did I do something wrong? Whoever did this to her was probably counting on nobody knowing who she was and probably felt like she was nothing. Nobody means nothing and nobody deserves to be murdered. You had the sculpture in your office. Every day you come to work, you look at her face.

It was my way to say until we get an idea on you, you're going to stay here so I don't forget about you.

“Detectives were also keeping an eye on James Grave to see who might visit her.”

One day sure enough there was an intriguing clue. The necklace was found only the headstone itself. Correct. There was actually this note was actually strong through the necklace so it was attached to it. And the letter actually says, "God loves you. It's okay, baby girl. Jim is paying for what he did to you."

Do deck is hoping that DNA and fingerprint test on those items will provide some answers. Jim, the suspect it could be, is it? But that will take weeks, even months. You got a little girl out there that every single night her mom and dad must wonder when she's coming home. You had left to say tip on our voicemail. So once again, the detective is Manning the Fones.

Well, I just want to thank you first off for calling.

Surrelators somebody's going to make a connection and they'll pick up the phone and they'll call us and they'll do the right thing. That combination of police work and publicity finally paid off. In January 2006, 48 hours mystery reported on the case of Jane Doe. And the call started pouring into this dispatch center. One of them would turn this case around. The motion that day was, it can't be explained. It was just huge for us. It was just,

I can't believe that maybe this could be what we finally been looking for. Someone who watched the program thought Jane looked like a young girl who was seen around Castro Valley with this man. His name is Miguel Castaneda and he worked at the restaurant where the body was dumped. Detectives had some questions for Castaneda. But when they went looking for him, he was gone.

Hi, my name is Lloyd Lockridge and I'm the host of a new podcast from Odyssey, called Family Lore. In this podcast, I'm going to have people on to tell unusual and sometimes far-fetched stories about their families. I've heard my whole life that she ended at the Margarita. And then, we're going to investigate those stories and find out how much of it is true. He gets a pattern one month before the ride by this. Oh my god, please follow and listen to Family Lore,

an Odyssey podcast available now on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your shows. Detective Scott Dudak and his team have received a tip that Jane Doe and the man she was seen with may be from the same hometown in Mexico. So, they're chasing their latest lead all the way across

“the border to try to identify her. Why did you make the decision to go to Mexico yourself?”

Why not leave it up to the Mexican authorities? This was our case. This was our little girl.

The detectives worked day, and night, walking hours on end to hand out some 4,000 pliers. The team hopes the reward, now up to $65,000, will attract some attention as well. Make sure when you're in your hand and I'm out that they know that we think she's from this area,

because that's where everybody's telling them. Okay. At first, Dudak recruited some help.

“You want to go hand out some of these and I'll pay you?”

But pretty soon, he didn't have to ask. The townspeople here, like those back in Castle Valley, had already taken this case to heart. The words spread around that town so quick. We had people coming up to us asking if they could hand out pliers. Dudak was most eager to reach the teenagers in town. He thought they were his best shot at tracking down Jane's family. Back in May, first of 2003, the Primero de Mayo de los

Meetres, we had a girl that was from your area. She had been killed and then stuffed in a green bag. And it was like looking at a bunch of Castle Valley Jane-Dose, the 70s kids all had names. From one school to another, he repeated his story. They put her behind this restaurant and cast her belly. Like she was a bag of trash. You didn't spare them the grizzly details of what happened to Jane-Dose. And they had to know what happened to her. We felt that they were old enough to

put themselves in her place. What horrific things she went through in the last moments of her life. On his third day at Mexico, Dudak received a friendly message. One of the citizens said there was a person that needed to talk to me right away. It was a woman who had seen the flyer and feared that Jane was her missing daughter.

“She was there to say, "I think it's my little girl that you're looking for."”

The minute Dudak laid eyes on her, he had a feeling. His search was over. You have that moment where you go, "Oh my God," she has some of the identical features. The woman showed detectives pictures of her daughter. The sculpture that Gloria did, how much more close can you get? The cheekbones are perfect. Her lips are perfect. Your she has gold hoop earrings.

And the woman said her daughter, like Jane, had perfect teeth.

She told us she had never been to a dentist because she never complained about her teeth.

The age and time frame fit, too. Her daughter left for California in March of 2003 on her 16th

“birthday. And she went to stay with Miguel Castaneda, who was a family friend. Within weeks,”

her mother lost contact with her. About the same time, the body was discovered behind the restaurant. It's like, "Oh my God, I'm going to have to tell this lady what happened to her little baby." And before I even started to say anything, she just started to scream and shaking her head saying, "No, no, no." It was brutal for me. There's no other way to describe it. A solemn dudak briefed reporters a few hours later. The tech that she coined and I

would been working on us for three and a half years are very confident that it is, in fact, Jane Tell. A DNA sample from her mother would later confirm it. Jane's real name was Yassiniya Nungarei. She's just like the girl next door. She's just a teenager that went to school. She really loved poetry. She liked to read books a lot. She had a younger brother. You know, she wanted to leave

that area to make a better life for herself. And this poor child came to America. For the American dream, and three weeks later, this 16-year-old school girl is killed by a person and stuffed in a bag. How tragic of an end is that to her American dream. Four years after Yassiniya's murder detectives finally know her tragic story.

And it might never have happened without Gloria Nusey's sculpture.

In this picture, Yassiniya is 15 years old. What's amazing is when you look at the

the shape of her jaw. I see a similarity in the shape of her nose. It is her.

“But Nusey's success is bittersweet. On the one hand, your work helped to identify her.”

On the other, it also took away any hope that her mother ever had, of seeing her alive again. I can, and I can't imagine what that would ever be like. I am a mother. I have a daughter. Yassiniya's mother must be so devastated to find out that her daughter is gone. On that tearful day in Mexico, Judyck made two promises to Yassiniya's mother to bring her daughter's body back home and to hunt down the person who killed her.

And he wants to start by finding Miguel Castaneta. Yassiniya's body is being adhumed one last time to begin the long journey home.

“I wanted to be there and bring her home. You know, that to me was the closure.”

Then she was Yassiniya. You know, she wasn't Castra Valley Jindo. Then she was Yassiniya. You know, she is our girl. She's my girl. It's just that she was so innocent and so young. And to come to the United States for a better life, and that's not what she found. That's not at all what happened to her. Once again, Yassiniya is given a police escort.

The detectives are taking her back to Mexico. Where her mother, Maria, is waiting. It was a pretty sad day, you know, you wanted to be strong for the family. Because we viewed ourselves as her relatives now. It was very difficult. Now there were two communities in mourning on either side of the border. Castra Valley raised money again for a funeral fit for a princess.

And the townspeople of Yawalika showed Maria they shared her grief. During the funeral through the procession, you walked all through the town where Yassiniya grew up.

What was that like for you? You know, I had never experienced anything like that.

It was a prod experience, you know, everybody came out and we'll say goodbye to her as we walk by. And I think, and not only did we bring closure to Maria and her family, I think we brought closure almost to the whole town. For Maria, it was a devastating end to four years of trying to find out what happened to her little girl.

“That's what I made 'em with this person. For me, she was very special.”

She was happy and she liked flowers, stuffed animals. She used to get along well with people. When she left, she told me that she wanted to keep studying and working because she was a very hard worker. From the time she was little, she was a hard worker. Maria knew her daughter's future was bleak in her poverty-stricken hometown.

So she reluctantly let her go to California, because Miguel Castaneda promised to watch over her.

And at first, things seemed to be going well.

She told her mom, her worst day in America, was still better than any day that she had in Mexico. Then the phone calls home suddenly stopped, Castaneda told Maria that Yacenia had packed up in left. As the months went by, Maria knew something was very wrong. She knew her daughter was somewhere in the San Francisco Bay Area. She did everything possible. She could do to try to contact people, but she didn't know who to call.

She didn't deserve this. She had dreams. She wanted to work, study, and earn her money. Now it's time for Detective Dudak to make good on his other promise to Maria. To catch the person who so brutally put an end to her daughter's dreams. Our job's not done. Our job's not going to be done until that person's locked up.

When Yacenia left Mexico, she came to stand this bungalow here in Hayward, California.

“She was only here about three weeks with Castaneda. She got a job as a babysitter.”

But the situation may have sourd quickly that Detective has received a tip that Castaneda asked a friend to come to his bungalow to help move a large bag. He was told, "Hey, I need some help moving a mattress." And when he started to pick it up, he realized that it was most likely a body, not a mattress, and he decided that he wanted to know part of it.

We were able to talk to this person. You know, unfortunately, because this is an active case, I can't really divulge too much as far as that stuff goes. But Dudek doesn't hesitate to say this. He's now convinced that Castaneda is the killer. It's my belief that Yacenia felt that Castaneda was like an older brother,

“Castaneda wanted more of a relationship than that type. I think Yacenia turned down”

his advances and she was killed because of that. And Dudek is still hoping to hear from another possible witness. The mystery man in the parking lot, who was waiting for his married girlfriend, "How would you go to approach this person who may be your key witness to the suspect's disposal of the body?" I think like everything else on this case, if you put the humanitarian

part of it in, would you say, "Hey, I'm not asking you as a cop, I'm asking you as a father, I'm confident this person may come forward and help me on this case." As for the necklace that was left on the grave in California, it did not contain any relevant DNA. But Detective still have enough of a case against Castaneda to get a warrant for his arrest. This is a picture that we obtained when we were in Mexico

of him. But first, they have to find their suspect. And that might not be easy. He could be hiding

in either country. I strongly urge Mr. Castaneda to turn himself in either to the Mexican authorities or to the U.S. consulate, or if in fact he isn't the United States to any police department in the United States. Back in the town of Yahualika, Yaseni is grieving mother is grateful to be able to bury her daughter close to home. Please, I am asking you to help me to thank them, because thanks to them, my daughter is here

and I want to give them a hand.

And she's also grateful to a man she may never meet.

Landscaper, Dave Woolworth. I just did what was right. She was a clean cut 16-year-old girl to took pride in herself. Without his efforts, Casto Valley's Jane Doe would have been cremated,

“her identity forever a secret. She's where she belongs with her mom. Knowing she's home with her mother”

is also giving Woolworth some comfort at a difficult time. I have cancer. My days are numbered. I'm glad that I lived long enough to see it. Woolworth still hopes to see Yaseni as killer put behind bars and do deck is determined to make that happen soon. And we're gonna move as fast as we can and we'll get our man. We'll make an arrest and we'll get them. This was about a bunch of people getting together, not forgetting about a girl that was

found murder behind a restaurant. Citizens, scientists, cops, clergy, everybody came together and look at the result. Yaseni will be my little girl and everybody's little girl in this area forever. [Music] Miguel Castaneta has not been apprehended. Investigators believe he has remained in hiding in Mexico. Every Monday, listen to a new episode of 48 hours and then join me, 48 hours corresponding

Ann Marie Green on Tuesday for a new episode of post-mortem where we bring you a closer look at each case. Post-mortem is available on Amazon Music. Follow the show on Amazon Music for more future episodes.