DNA could help solve 2016 Warner Robins missing person case, possibly a Macon homicide

In the two years since the skeletal remains of a Jane Doe were discovered in an overgrown lot in south Macon, police have been working quietly to identify the homicide victim.

Though an initial autopsy showed the remains were that of a black woman who had been shot in the head, forensic DNA testing revealed the victim was a John Doe.

“We have an idea of who that person is,” Bibb County Sheriff’s Lt. Shelly Rutherford recently told The Telegraph.

A man was riding a tractor, cutting some tall grass off Feagan Road the afternoon of May 12, 2016, when he came across a human skull.

Though police released no additional information after the autopsy in 2016, the case was still being worked “intensively,” Rutherford said.

In January 2017, a bone sample from John Doe was sent to the University of North Texas Center for Human Identification, GBI spokesman Rich Bahan said. There, forensic scientists developed a DNA profile that was added to a federal database about eight months later.

Rutherford said police also have obtained DNA samples from the family of a missing person who investigators suspect also could be John Doe.

“Right now we’re waiting on a DNA type,” Rutherford said, referring to the process of matching a missing person’s DNA with their family members for positive identification. “We can’t release any other information on the remains until the typing comes back.”

Rutherford refused to identify who investigators suspect the victim might be, but Frankie Allen said she has been told it may be her 26-year-old son, Danzar Thaddeus Gooden.

“He liked to cross-dress,” Allen recently said of Gooden, who goes by male and female pronouns and often the name Dymun Dupree. “He’d wear his dresses. He was looking good, too. … He was gay, ... he was a nice person.”

Allen said police took a swab of the inside of her cheek to get a DNA sample to compare with John Doe’s.

Gooden disappeared April 2, 2016. His cousin, Victoria Clark, reported him missing four days later. Clark told police Gooden said he was going to hang out with some friends, but did not say where or with whom, according to a missing persons report.

The last time Allen saw him was about a week before that. He was sitting on the porch of her house in north Warner Robins, about 7 miles south of where John Doe would be found more than a month later.

“He came and got his mail and said, ‘Hey mom, I love you.’ “ Allen recalled. “I said, ‘I love you.’”

Both Allen and Idrena Williams, Gooden’s sister, said they suspect someone knows something about her son’s disappearance and is not coming forward to share it.

“I just want to know what happened to my son,” Allen said. “It has been a burden to bear but you just got to pray to the Lord he will lighten your burden.”

This story was originally published May 26, 2018 at 3:36 PM with the headline "DNA could help solve 2016 Warner Robins missing person case, possibly a Macon homicide."