Police have new lead in 43-year-old cold case with cryptic coded message

Police in New York state say they may finally have a suspect in the murder 43 years ago of a woman whose identity remains unknown, and who was carrying a mysterious note tied to a Vancouver hotel when she was killed.

The Chautauqua County Sheriff’s office, 120 kilometres southwest of Buffalo, recently said it received information that Christopher Bernard Wilder, a suspected serial murderer, may have been in New York City on Dec. 4, 1983 — two days before Jane Doe’s body was found.

“Wilder was known to frequent Western New York,” the sheriff’s office says, appealing for information from anyone who may have seen him in the area in early December 1983.

The following year, the FBI put Wilder on its 10 Most Wanted Fugitives list, suspecting him of “multiple kidnappings, rapes and murders.” A short time later, he died in a shootout with police in New Hampshire.

With both the victim and the possible suspect dead for more than four decades, the sheriff’s office continues to search for anyone with information in the U.S., or in Canada as Jane Doe may have been in Vancouver, or in Europe where her clothes were made.

“If this case is to be solved it will most likely be a result of someone who knew the victim or her family, or who knows who murdered her,” the sheriff’s office said in recent new release, which included a new composite drawing of the victim.

A utility crew found Jane Doe’s body in a ditch along Route 17 in Ellery, a small town in Chautauqua County, on Dec. 6, 1983. She had been shot four times at close range: once inside her mouth, once in the back and twice in the chest.

She was wearing good-quality clothing, had gold fillings in her teeth and was estimated to be in her 30s. She is believed to be Canadian or European, in part because she was using a European-made IUD birth-control device that was not sold in the U.S. but was available in Canada.

“Advanced forensic work of Ellery Jane Doe’s DNA and fingerprints here in the United States, Canada, and overseas has not led to her identification, or to the identification of any of her family members,” the sheriff’s office says.

Perhaps the most significant clue in this case was found inside her trench coat pocket — a piece of paper from the Blue Boy motor hotel on Vancouver’s Southeast Marine Drive. The scrap of paper contained a handwritten list of letters and numbers that have stumped police and true-crime fans for years.

The note appears to read:

“Sas. kR.h. 24233

k.R.Ba. 68301

Sarg. 74261″

What do they mean? And what was Jane Doe’s connection to a low-budget hotel 4,000 kilometres away from where her body was found?

Over the years there have been many theories about the meaning of the letters and numbers, including as possible internal phone lines for an airport or some other institution.