{"id":105968,"date":"2025-07-30T22:41:25","date_gmt":"2025-07-30T22:41:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/105968\/"},"modified":"2025-07-30T22:41:25","modified_gmt":"2025-07-30T22:41:25","slug":"1984-phoenix-murder-victim-identified-as-missing-14-year-old-girl","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/105968\/","title":{"rendered":"1984 Phoenix murder victim identified as missing 14-year-old girl"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"text | text-start article-text\"><b>PHOENIX (AZFamily)<\/b> \u2014 The remains of a teen girl who was brutally murdered in Phoenix have been positively identified, more than four decades after her death.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | text-start article-text\">On Wednesday, <a href=\"https:\/\/dnadoeproject.org\/case\/del-rey-jane-doe-1984\/\" target=\"_self\" rel=\"noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/dnadoeproject.org\/case\/del-rey-jane-doe-1984\/\">the DNA Doe Project identified her<\/a> as 14-year-old Renee Isabel Nilsson, who was reported missing about two weeks before her unidentified remains were found.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | text-start article-text\">On June 10, 1984, the partial remains of the teen girl were found in a dumpster on 21st Avenue, just south of McDowell Road. Her head and other parts of her body were reportedly missing and never recovered.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | text-start article-text\">Unable to identify her at the time, investigators believed she was a white female, approximately 5\u20324\u2033 tall, with brown hair, and likely between 16 and 18 years old. She was known for the next several decades as \u201cDel Rey Jane Doe.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"figure-img img-fluid mx-auto d-block\" alt=\"The DNA Doe Project has identified the victim of a decades-old murder in Phoenix as a missing...\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/E2GQVL5BNJEY5EULIWUQYWULME.jpg\" width=\"980\" height=\"551\" \/>The DNA Doe Project has identified the victim of a decades-old murder in Phoenix as a missing 14-year-old girl named Renee Isabel Nilsson.(DNA Doe Project)<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | text-start article-text\">Two years ago, the Maricopa County Office of the Medical Examiner contacted the DNA Doe Project about the cold case. Genetic genealogists then worked to develop a DNA profile on the remains, which was completed in May 2024.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | text-start article-text\">Investigators were then able to identify two families who were related to the girl. That led to the discovery of a 1968 marriage record between a man from one of those families and a woman from the other in Los Angeles.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | text-start article-text\">Records showed that the couple had one daughter, Renee Nilsson, who reportedly got married in 1987\u2014three years after the teen\u2019s remains were found. Digging deeper, investigators learned that the person who got married was using Nilsson\u2019s identity.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | text-start article-text\">The real Renee Nilsson was reported missing in May 1984 after she left her home to go swimming and never returned. And through further DNA testing, investigators later confirmed that Del Rey Jane Doe was indeed Nilsson.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | text-start article-text\">\u201cWhen her remains were found in 1984, Del Rey Jane Doe was believed to be substantially older than 14,\u201d team leader Trish Bird said in a news release. \u201cBut science has now caught up, with modern forensic anthropology and investigative genetic genealogy finally leading us to Renee.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | text-start article-text\">Nilsson\u2019s murder remains under investigation.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | text-start article-text\">See a spelling or grammatical error in our story? <a href=\"https:\/\/www.azfamily.com\/page\/send-us-your-feedback\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Please click here to report it<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | text-start article-text\">Do you have a photo or video of a breaking news story? Send <a href=\"https:\/\/www.azfamily.com\/community\/user-content\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">it to us here<\/a> with a brief description.<\/p>\n<p class=\"copyright |\">Copyright 2025 KTVK\/KPHO. All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"PHOENIX (AZFamily) \u2014 The remains of a teen girl who was brutally murdered in Phoenix have been positively&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":105969,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5131],"tags":[5229,5643,68098,1587,7182,68094,68100,68095,1589,68096,68097,7183,68099,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":{"0":"post-105968","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-phoenix","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-arizona","10":"tag-arizona-cold-cases","11":"tag-az","12":"tag-azfamily","13":"tag-cold-case-solved","14":"tag-del-rey-jane-doe","15":"tag-dna-doe-project","16":"tag-phoenix","17":"tag-phoenix-cold-cases","18":"tag-phoenix-murder","19":"tag-phoenix-news","20":"tag-renee-nilsson","21":"tag-united-states","22":"tag-united-states-of-america","23":"tag-unitedstates","24":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","25":"tag-us","26":"tag-usa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114944598740200296","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/105968","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=105968"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/105968\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/105969"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=105968"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=105968"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=105968"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}