A newspaper article led to the resolution of a 13-year-old cold case in 1989.
Susan Trossman was a journalism student at Northern Illinois University in 1976, when the remains of an unidentified young woman were found under a collapsed shed near Whipple Road in rural Sycamore. The woman had been shot, and her body was partially decomposed.
The case of Jane Doe garnered widespread attention the following year, when then-Sheriff Wilbur Scott called in experts to do a facial reconstruction, a practice so revolutionary then that television series “Quincy” even used the case as the basis for an episode. A picture of the reconstruction was displayed on fliers pasted all over the DeKalb area. Leads came in from as far away as England and Japan.
“That was a worldwide search, literally,” DeKalb County Sheriff’s Office Chief Deputy Kevin Hickey said. “We had leads from Canada and leads from Mexico on that girl, and she turned out to be a local runaway from Aurora.”
In 1989, Trossman was a reporter at the Beacon-News in Aurora, and she wrote a story about the 13-year-old Jane Doe case, which ran with the reconstruction picture. This time, the photo was recognized. Gary Grabow of Aurora realized the picture looked like his little sister, Elizabeth Sue Grabow Angotti, who had disappeared from her Aurora home July 24, 1976, at age 17. Jane Doe was found two months later.
Once Jane Doe was positively identified as Angotti, the cold case became hot, Hickey said.
“The last person seen with the victim becomes your first suspect,” he said.
Angotti had last been seen with her boyfriend, Ralph Dyson Jr. of Elgin. Dyson died of a drug overdose in DeKalb County a year before Jane Doe was identified, Hickey said, but investigators were satisfied enough with the evidence against him that the case was cleared.