Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
a facial reconstruction of the Jane Doe Discovered August 3rd, 1975
SOLVED
The Roadside Jane Doe, also known as the North Tonawanda Jane Doe, is a formerly unidentified body.
In the early morning hours of August 3rd, 1975, brother and sister, Zachary and Cassandra Kowalski, pulled over on Interstate 190 northbound, due to having problems with their car. When they got out, they found the deceased body of a teenage girl in a ditch. She was missing her hands and feet, as well as her teeth, and her skull had been bashed in. She was wearing a black spaghetti strap tank top and a long brown skirt with a rose pattern. She had been dead anywhere between three days to two weeks, and her cause of death was determined to be drowning. She was anywhere between fifteen and twenty-five years old. She had red hair, was approximately 5'7 and 138lbs.
The closest city was North Tonawanda, New York, and as such, she was buried in Acacia Park Cemetery, on February 13th, 1976, her grave reading;
JANE DOE DISCOVERED AUGUST 3, 1975
Her name- or lack there of -became well known with people around the area and one news article from January 1976, referred to her as the Roadside Jane Doe, the name that has since stuck in popular culture.
In 1991, Zachary and Cassandra Kowalski decided to set up a roadside memorial for the girl, getting a cross and writing Roadside Jane Doe and they continued taking care of the site, even now.
Many theories were made up about the Roadside Jane Doe, who killed her, who she was. In 2012, Georgia Branson went to North Tonawanda police, saying that she'd witnessed her father drown a girl in the bathtub when she was ten. It had been a redhead and she had been wearing the same clothes as the Jane Doe. Her father was serial killer, Thomas Branson. Thomas confessed to the murder, as well as several others. He stated he picked up the Jane Doe, as she'd been hitchhiking, but he couldn't remember her name, as he said she blended together with all the others. Though, he was able to identify several other Jane Doe's he had killed.
Thomas was imprisoned shortly thereafter.
In 2022, Roadside Jane Doe was exhumed and genealogy tests were performed. On September 5th, 2022, forty-seven years, one month and two days, after her discovery, she was officially announced to have been identified as Vivian Sophia Reese. She had been born in Yonkers, New York, on June 27th, 1960, and lived with her two brothers, Presley and Sammy, and her single mother, Annie Reese. After a heated argument with their mother, on July 25th, 1975, Vivian left the home. Presley says he called after her, telling her to call when she was able and Vivian flipped him off in return.
"Vivian was always like that," Presley said in a 2017 interview, when prompted about Vivian as a missing person's case, on the ID show Disappeared. "She was always very fiery, very opinionated, always spoke her mind no matter the situation. Either she fully ran away or that fiery attitude got her into some trouble. It could be neither, it could be both, I don't know, but I want to. Sammy and I, we don't care what news we receive, we just want news."
Annie Reese died in 2007.
Sammy and Presley have spent years looking for their sister and are happy to have closure.
At her new funeral, Sammy said "We are very happy to have closure. This is the last news we would have wanted to receive, but after nearly fifty years, if you receive any news, it can't be the greatest."
Vivian got a new gravemarker, reading;
VIVIAN SOPHIA REESE JUNE 27, 1958 AUGUST 2, 1975 THE ROADSIDE JANE DOE
May Vivian Sophia Reese rest in peace.
a picture of Vivian, taken shortly before she ran away
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
