Body found next to California road in 1987 identified as Navajo woman who had "explicit" letter sent to her after she vanished
CBSN
Human remains that had been buried for decades in a California gravesite and marked as "Jane Doe" have been identified as Christine Lester, a Navajo woman who went missing from northern Arizona, authorities said. Lester's family said they received an "explicit" letter written to her from an anonymous person years after she vanished.
The Madera County Sheriff's Office hasn't publicly disclosed the cause of Lester's death because it doesn't want to jeopardize the investigation, CBS affiliate KPHO-TV reported Wednesday.
Officials with the sheriff's office near Fresno said a woman was found dead on the side of a rural county road in 1987 but couldn't identify her at the time. The body was exhumed in 2020 to create a DNA profile that authorities were able to match to one Lester's siblings earlier this year.