All language subtitles for Dateline.Secrets.Uncovered.S11E15.720p.WEB.h264-BAE.[eng]

- I'm Craig Melvin,

and this is
"Dateline: Secrets Uncovered."

- Two guys saw what they
thought was a mannequin.

She had wood piled
on top of her.

No identification.

- We all came together
by becoming volunteers

to identify Jane Does
and John Does.

- There's a passion
trying to find out

who our Doe is.

- I think what if this
is your family?

You want to give them
closure.

- To us homicide detectives,
it's way above our heads.

- I said I think I know
how we can do it.

- All of these people
share some amount of DNA

with our unknown person.

- We thought
this is the family.

This is it.

- It's surreal.

It felt like somebody
just punched me.

It just felt like--

- It's a funny thing,
isn't it?

That it would be important
to have a stone

with your name on it.

- It is.

- It's written in stone.

You're never forgotten.

- Hello, and welcome to
"Dateline: Secrets Uncovered."

In many cold cases,

a grieving family
is desperate

to bring their loved ones'
killer to justice.

But what happens
when the victim is unknown?

That was the secret Texas
authorities needed to crack

for years until a team
of determined strangers

vowed to finally put
a name with a face.

Here's Keith Morrison with...

- Here is where they put her.

Her permanent home.

- Nobody really knew
anything about her.

- This little cemetery
in east Texas.

One simple marker
on her grave

and the name
that wasn't a name.

Jane Doe.

- It makes it personal
because you think,

"What if this is your family?

"What if this could be
your friend?"

- She-- who was she,

this impossible enigma?

- How is it that
the young woman can

disappear and die
and that no one can

figure out who she is?

- The question that kept them
glued to their computers.

- Participating in something
like this too

can be almost consuming.

It can--
it can really drain us.

- The obsession...

- I was hooked.

I was absolutely hooked.

- This is where it began.

October 29th, 2006,

Kilgore, Texas.

Two men out target shooting
on Oil Lee's property

not far from town.

They smelled it first,

then they saw it.

Something burning.
Looked like a mannequin.

The men approached.

What was that?

And then they recoiled.

That was a young woman
dead and burning.

- You know,
we have homicides

just like
the rest of the world,

you know, going as far as
trying to burn the body.

It really struck fear
in people around here.

- Lieutenant Eddie Hope
was still a sergeant back then.

Gregg County
Sheriff's Department.

- She had wood piled
beneath her

and wood piled
on top of her

and there was I believe
a gas can,

uh, lid there.
- Wow.

- So, looked like
somebody was trying

to cover their tracks.

- She was meant to be part
of one big bonfire

and just disappear forever.
- Right.

- The officers who responded
noted every detail they could.

That she was young,
late teens-- early twenties.

And she was little,

maybe 5'4", 100 pounds.

She was wearing jeans,
a pale shirt

the color of lavender,

$44 in her pocket.

And this was unusual,
baby teeth.

She still had a few.

- She never lost them.

They said that's use--
that's highly unusual.

- Well, it gave you something
to work with anyway.

- A little bit.

- Other than that,
the young woman was

impossible to identify.

She had been murdered
of that there was no doubt.

Her last moments
had been very bad.

But in most homicide
investigations,

detectives burrowed deep
into the life of the victim,

talked to every friend,
interviewed the family,

find out about scorned lovers
or past mistakes.

That's often how
murders get solved,

but in this case
none of it was possible.

- Didn't have a clue.

- What could you do?
- Nothing.

If we got tips,
ran them down

because, I mean, we had
no grounds to go on

who this could be
or where she came from.

- They ran her DNA profile.

Didn't match any known person
known to them anyway,

but the autopsy revealed
semen in her body,

and it did match someone--

a known local sex offender.

So they pulled him in
and he admitted he had sex

that day with a woman
whose name he didn't know,

but he didn't kill her.

And he did have an alibi too,

so that was that.

- We would get people
off the internet

that would say, "Hey, I think
this might be so-and-so,"

and we would follow up on that
and eventually rule it out.

What we were thinking
at the time was

maybe she's not
from around here

because nobody's
missing her here.

- And so, Gregg County paid
for a burial plot

and for a little marker
on the ground above her body.

- A small headstone
just-just reads Jane Doe.

There was no other
information we knew on her.

- And winter game,
but they didn't give up.

A Texas ranger who sometimes
worked with them

said maybe he could help.

- And he was able
to fly in a-an artist

to try to reconstruct what-
what our victim looked like

in real life.

- And here it was,
but it produced no leads.

The county even made
a clay model using an x-ray

of the victim's skull
including those baby teeth.

Sent it around
the local media.

Still nothing.

And detective work--
it's an unending drum

that beats at all hours
in the day and night.

Felonies, misdemeanors,
the lot demanding attention.

- We got cases everyday
and, you know,

we get three or four cases
each a day.

Sometimes more.

- They didn't forget her as
they went about their work,

but the young woman
remained nameless

no matter how many trails
they followed.

- And that just went on
for years.

I mean, it's basically
all we had.

- A little bit here,
a little bit there

but not much.

- Right.
- And no solution?

- No solution, no nothing.

- And then something
unusual happened.

The little details
like her baby teeth

caught the eyes of amateur
internet investigators

on sites like Reddit
and Websleuths.

And before too long,
they began referring

to the mystery woman
with a kind of shorthand.

It was the distinctive color
of her shirt that did it.

One of those armchair
detectives took to calling her

Lavender, Lavender Doe.

- This was a case that was
followed online

very closely
by many people.

- People like this guy,

and what happened
after that?

Well, remember what
we said about obsession?

- A murder victim
without a name

and detectives without
any clues.

Not an easy mystery
to solve,

but lurking in the shadows
help is on the way.

- I spent a lot
of my spare time

looking into missing
persons cases.

Really just kind of trying
to flesh out the stories.

- I was impressed that
people cared.

- Cared and knew how to help.

- I said I think I know how
we can do it and she said,

"Bingo, all we need is DNA."

If I can figure out
Jane Doe's parents,

we'll know who Jane Doe was.

**

- Tomorrow and tomorrow
and a decade went by.

11 years after the murder

of a young woman
they called Lavender Doe

and more than 200 miles
from the spot

where her body was found

in the town
of Killeen, Texas.

A man was feverishly
at work.

Though it wasn't
his profession,

this work that consumed him,
not yet at least.

- I kinda spent a lot
of my spare time

looking into missing
persons cases.

Really just kind of trying
to flesh out the stories

of some of these
lesser known cases.

- His name is Kevin Lorde.

He is, well, many things.

A former software developer,
a T-shirt salesman,

a passionate and loyal consumer
of all things true crime.

He wasn't an investigator
or a law enforcement officer,

just someone plagued
by unanswered questions.

- I was looking for
Jane Does

in the area in Texas
that might be a match

to one of
these missing girls.

- And that's how he came
across hundreds of pages

of online forums about
a mystery woman

nicknamed Lavender Doe.

Could she be one
of the missing women

he was trying to locate?

And so, Kevin called the Gregg
County Sheriff's Department

and found himself
on the phone with

the lead detective
on Lavender Doe's case,

Lieutenant Eddie Hope.

- I was impressed
that people cared,

'cause we live in a world
where everything's fast pace

and a lot of people are
worried about themselves

and not others.

- And here was evidence

that maybe they are
interested in others.

- Right.

- Some other investigator

might've blown off
a guy like Kevin,

just another civilian
with an internet connection

and a theory,

but Kevin seemed to know
what he was doing.

And his internet skills?

Way beyond what
Lieutenant Hope could do.

And before long,

although they didn't
actually meet in person,

they began acting
almost like partners.

- We just flew together.

You know, whatever he needed
that he couldn't get

that I could get
law enforcement-wise,

he would send it to me.

- He kind of meshed together
these bits of information.

- Yes.

- And two things
happened.

One, Kevin realized
Lavender Doe was not

one of the missing women
he'd been looking for.

And two, he got hooked
on the case

of the girl
in the lavender shirt.

But he kept
hitting dead ends.

He needed
some specialized help,

very specialized.

- I reached out
to DNA Doe Project

to see if I might be able
to come on as a volunteer.

- The DNA Doe Project,

a nonprofit founded by
a former rocket scientist

named Colleen Fitzpatrick

and a novelist
and genealogy enthusiast

Margaret Press.

- I barely knew what
John and Jane Does meant,

but I had been retired
for about a year

and come back
to the West Coast

to be near my daughter
and grandchildren

and to relax.

- It was winter, 2017,

when Margaret,
not the retiring type,

was struck
with an idea.

She'd already been deeply
immersed in genealogy,

helping adoptees find
their birth parents, so...

- If I can figure out
Jane Doe's parents,

we'll know
who Jane Doe was.

Margaret's plan?

Obtain remains
from Jane and John Does,

retest their DNA

and upload the results
to a public database,

where, maybe, that DNA
would lead them

to some relative
of their victim.

- So I had my recipe,

and I reached out
to Colleen,

and I said, "I think I know
how we can do it."

And she said, "bingo,
all we need is DNA.

Oh, and I know
a couple of people."

- At first, they paid
for the DNA tests

with their own savings.

And then they set up
a nonprofit

and started
taking donations.

After just six months,
they solved their first case.

- The mystery surrounding...

- A few weeks later,
another case

made headlines
around the world,

showing the power
of genealogy.

- Police arresting a man
they believe

is the so-called
"Golden State Killer."

And the suspect,
a former police officer,

discovered using DNA.

- That one did
change the world,

because that was
a violent killer,

and that was a huge impact
on world--

on the community.
- Sure.

Opened everybody's eyes.
- Yep.

- And suddenly Colleen
and Margaret had company.

- Genealogists came
out of the woodwork,

and I could see us
as a very unique organization

where law enforcement
agencies

could come to us with
their bones and no money,

and we could bring in
volunteer genealogists

who were begging
to help us.

- What you can bring
to this process

is a crowd-sourced
investigation

like, you know, a bunch
of bees forming a hive.

And disparately
they're not gonna do much,

but all together
they can really accomplish

something
truly significant.

- Right, exactly.

- Kevin Lord
was one of those bees.

He joined DNA Doe
as a volunteer.

And then others followed,
a kind of mini hive

looking for the truth
about a mystery woman

they called
Lavender Doe.

- The bees get busy

- We spent hours
working together,

talking to each other.

- "Oh, my gosh,
did you see this?

"And what about this?
And where's this?

Who's this guy?"

- We're kind of
the last resort.

**

- It was a kind
of obsession now,

the determination
to give her back her name,

to identify
the anonymous young woman

murdered and set on fire
and then buried

here in Long View, Texas.

God knows law enforcement
had tried every trick

in the investigative book,

except for a new book,
if you could call it that,

the DNA Doe Project.

A bunch of amateurs,
really,

but committed?
Oh, yes.

- It's not that law enforcement
has not tried.

Most of the cases
that come to us,

we're kind of
the last resort.

- "Us" meaning a group
of people

who had never actually
met in person,

who labored away
in a kitchen

or a bedroom
or a basement,

who knew each other
only online.

Like Lori Gaff,

a former Black Hawk
helicopter pilot

who stumbled on
a Facebook posting

about DNA Doe.

- I was completely
enthralled,

and me being me,
had to know

absolutely everything
there was about it.

And I thought I totally want
to be a part of this.

- And was soon addicted.

- It will consume your life
if you let it,

so we-- I've been
making an effort

to kind of set limits.

- One hour turns into ten
pretty quick,

I would think, right?
- Ten--

Ten might be
a slow day.

This has become, um,
an obsession.

- Then there was
Missy Koski,

a self-described
"search angel,"

who used genetic genealogy
to find her biological father.

What was that like
to find him?

- It was incredible.

It was absolutely
incredible.

So she began helping
other adoptees

find their birth parents.
And one day...

- While I was helping
an adoptee, um,

that adoptee got a phone call
from the DNA Doe Project.

And she was told that
she was distantly related

to a Jane Doe.
I just got intrigued.

And I said,
"can I talk to them?"

- Before long,
Missy was hooked, too.

And the three,
Kevin, Lori, and Missy,

formed a team.

So you're like
the Three Musketeers

sitting there together.

- We spent hours

working together,
talking to each other

almost exclusively
online.

- And we'd just get in there
and blab all day long

about, "oh, my gosh,
did you see this?

"And what about this?
And where's this?

Who's this guy?
I can't find this-- whatever."

- Back in Gregg County,

after more than a decade
of chasing leads

on Lavender Doe,

Lieutenant Hope
understood

that investigations
had changed.

- Genealogy
is the wave of the future.

And to us homicide
detectives,

it's way above our heads,
to be honest with you.

- So you welcomed their help.
- I did.

- And across the country,
someone else had taken notice

of the amateur investigators
working with DNA Doe.

- I like to write about
how ordinary people,

for example
genealogists,

are dealing with
new advances in DNA.

Sarah Zhang is a staff writer
for "The Atlantic" magazine.

- I liked the fact
that Kevin

had been so invested
in this case.

- Passion like that
was a story worth following,

and she did,

watching their process.

For one thing,
using the victim's

skin or hair or blood

to generate
a DNA profile

which they upload
to a genealogy site

called GED Match.

- We get a whole list
of DNA matches back,

and all of these people share
some amount of DNA

with our unknown person.

- It's important
to understand,

the volunteers work
with public DNA databases.

And where does all this
DNA material come from

that you're able
to look at?

- These are all people
who have taken tests

with companies like
Ancestry DNA or 23 And Me,

the consumer tests.

- And who've given access
to others to view the results.

That's a relatively tiny
percentage of the population,

so the odds of finding
an exact match?

Vanishingly small, but...

- Just by the pure
probabilities,

we're often lucky enough
to get a decent enough match.

- By "decent match"

he means
a distant relative,

someone who likely doesn't
even know the victim.

- We kind of look for a match
that's in the neighborhood

of maybe a second
or third cousin or so

as a good
starting point.

- A starting point
to work backwards

and try to reconstruct branches
of the family tree

by scouring the internet,

mining every possible
bit of information

from birth certificates
to death notices

to marriage licenses
to social media.

Where the heck do you
find all this stuff?

I mean, you must have spent
hours and hours and hours

and hours and hours in front
of a computer screen,

trying to find it.
- And lots of money.

- Yep.

- The DNA Doe Project
made a new sketch,

and they put it
up online.

They added a PayPal button
to raise money

for that retest
of Lavender Doe's DNA.

And pretty soon,
the online community

that followed
the Lavender Doe case

answered the call.

- Within four days
the public had come through

and completely funded
the testing that we had to do.

- But before they could even
get the test sent out,

something very unexpected
happened.

- I get a call from
Lieutenant Hope

at the sheriff's office
saying that he has big news.

- What could that be?

- A bombshell is dropped,
but investigators are still

going to need some luck
to solve this case.

Coming up...

- That's why I wanted
to get this off my chest.

- I just let him talk.

He left no detail out.

- A break in the case,
and a frustrating discovery.

We found that there
were 27 first cousins.

- Whoa!
- Where are they?

Who are their children?

Are they alive?

What can we find?

**

- Welcome back to
"Dateline: Secrets Uncovered."

I'm Craig Melvin.

Lavender Doe, that was the name
given to the unidentified woman

whose burned body
was found in 2006.

More than a decade later,
her identity remained a secret.

Now, a group of amateur sleuths
were helping police,

but it was
an uphill battle until...

an unexpected confession
fell right in their laps.

Back to Keith Morrison with
"The Woman With No Name."

**

- It was hot,
that Texas summer of 2018.

The summer the DNA Doe
volunteers spent

hunkered down inside,

staring at their
computer screens,

trying to identify
Lavender Doe.

But they'd hardly started
when Kevin Lord got a call

from Lieutenant Eddie Hope.

A young woman named
Felicia Pearson has been

reported missing
by her family.

She was last seen
with a new boyfriend

who told them
she left him.

Just went away.

They spoke with
her mother.

- And we learned
there was a wooded area

inside of Longview that
he had taken her to before,

and that's where
we found Felicia.

- Murdered.

There was no doubt about
this victim's identity.

And no question
who the prime suspect was.

Her violent ex-con boyfriend,
Joseph Wayne Burnett.

Lieutenant Hope
knew the name.

The same man whose semen
had been found 12 years before

in the body of
Lavender Doe.

- He was arrested.

He was brought into
the Gregg County jail.

- Sign the corner
right here.

- Two detectives
questioned Burnett.

He admitted
killing Felicia.

But that wasn't all.

- He started talkin'
about a girl

that he killed and burned
several years ago.

- A burned girl?

Right away, the detectives
called Eddie Hope.

You're on your way home
at that point.

- I was already home.

- Must have been
good to hear.

- Didn't take me long
to get back.

- That's why I wanted to
get this off my chest.

- I just let him talk.

He talked about
this 12-year-old murder

as if it happened yesterday.

He left no detail out.

- That's when
I reached down there,

and I grabbed a rope,
and I put it around her neck,

and I tightened it up.

- She never
saw it coming.

A rope around her neck.

It only took seconds.

- As soon as
I choked her,

she-she-she just quit movin'.

- So he'd confessed
to killing her.

But there was
something else.

- Personally, I don't
know her like a friend.

- Know her name?
- I think her name was Ashley.

- He thought her name
was Ashley.

He wasn't really
for sure of that.

- Just a first name:
Ashley, maybe.

But even if Ashley
was a real first name,

it didn't solve
the mystery.

- We had the confession
and we still don't know

who this person is,
and that just eats you up.

I mean, that's not the order
it's supposed to go.

- Despite his confession,
Burnett pleaded not guilty.

Justice for a victim still
labeled Lavender Doe

in court documents
would take some time.

Time the volunteers
couldn't waste.

- That made it
a lot more real

and put more weight
behind what we were doing.

- Who was Lavender Doe?

- That was what was left
at that point.

- Lavender Doe's retested DNA
returned from the lab

in October, 2018,

and the team went to work
looking for potential relatives.

And just nine days later,
they found one,

a woman in East Texas,
right near the spot

where Lavender Doe
was found.

- I contacted Lieutenant Hope.

I told him we have
this descendent

who lives about 30 minutes from
where Lavender Doe was found.

I can't tell you
exactly how she's related,

but it seems like it
would be a huge coincidence

if she wasn't fairly
closely related.

- This had to be
immensely exciting.

- Oh, we thought we--
this is the-this is the mom.

This is the family,
this is it.

- And so, of course,
Lieutenant Hope,

with a brand new optimism,
drove out to see her.

And he came up empty.

The woman had
no missing relatives

and no idea
who Lavender Doe might be.

- Must've been disappointing.

- It was.

- Like, you thought maybe
you were on to something,

and you weren't.

- You kinda get your hopes up,
then you-you let down,

but you-- that had been
happenin' for,

you know, 12 years.

- I was so, "No, no, no,
she's lying, she's lying."

This is it, because when
you're researching

family from another part
of the country,

and all of a sudden,
you find this relative

in the right spot
in the right place

at the right time,
it has to be.

- Then, it dawned on them.
The woman wasn't lying,

and there was still
a chance she could help.

Kevin had a hunch,
perhaps she knew something

without knowing she knew it.

What did she know?

- She told us that she did not
know who Lavender Doe was.

But she had taken a test herself
with ancestry DNA,

and she would be happy
to share her results with us.

- Well, what happened
when she did that?

- When we compared her DNA
to Lavender Doe's DNA,

we could see that it looked
like Lavender Doe's parent

was probably
a first cousin of hers.

- And suddenly
they felt close.

All they had to do was
find the right cousin.

The right cousin who might
be missing a daughter,

or niece, or someone.

Not so easy.

- As we started looking
and researching every person,

in this family,
we found that there were

27 first cousins--
- Whoa!

- Who could have possibly been

Lavender Doe's parent.

- You think, wow,
here's our big break,

now all we need to do
is find the cousin.

And it turns out
there are 27 of them?

- Twenty-seven.

Some of the people in the family
had had several marriages

and several children
from each marriage.

And so we started
with that list.

And we had to go through
and see if we could find

each of these people.

Where are they,
who are their children,

are they alive?

What can we find?

- One by one, they pulled
on their threads.

Hundreds of them,
leading nowhere.

And then, it was Kevin
who found it.

The Texas woman had
a distant cousin

who lived out of state,
a woman she didn't know,

had never met,
whose name was Robin.

And Robin had a daughter.

But when they tried
to find her...

- She had addresses up
until right around 2006,

and then kind of just
fell off the map,

and we couldn't find
her anywhere.

- 2006, what a coincidence.

It was the year
Lavender Doe was murdered.

- Coming up...

- I wasn't prepared
for the emotion

that I had right then.

I couldn't control myself.

I remember sitting
on the couch,

and just crying.

- A search ends,
and a story begins.

- We lost track between her
and us for about 10 years.

- Over the years,
Lieutenant Eddie Hope

thought a lot about
those last moments

of Lavender Doe's life.

- Kinda haunts after you
if-if you're comin' out here

and-and you're-- you-you can't
put a closure to it.

You know, you can't
end the story yet.

- To help write that ending,

he had put his face
in the dedicated volunteers

who had spent
countless hours

trying to give
her back her name.

By the fall of 2018,
they seemed close.

DNA and genealogy had led them
to a woman named Robin,

whose daughter
had disappeared.

- At that point,
we were kinda thinking,

wow, this has-this has
gotta be her.

- Except, when they
tried to find her,

this Robin person,
they discovered she was dead.

So they kept scouring
the Internet,

and the Robin led them
to another relative

who, if they were right,
would be Lavender Doe's cousin.

They tracked down a number,
and Lieutenant Hope called,

asked if any young woman
in this person's family

was missing.

- And he said, I haven't
seen her in years.

He said, "The last
we had heard,

she ran away from home,

just like
she just disappeared."

- But, he said,
his missing cousin

had a half-sister.

Lieutenant Hope
called her, too.

- Well, I talked to her
several times

and she agreed to send Kevin
her-- their DNA kit.

- Which meant sending
the half-sister's DNA sample

to the lab and waiting.

How long did that take?

- It took about a month
and a half, I believe.

- That must have been
pins and needles.

- Oh, yeah.
- Yeah.

It was a winter's day,
late January,

when they got the news.

It was a match.

Kevin called Lieutenant Hope.

- I was pretty excited,
and that--

the whole department
was excited.

- I-I wasn't prepared
for the emotion

that I had right then.
I couldn't control myself.

I remember sitting on
the couch and just crying

because I was so happy,
but the emotion

of all this work,
all these countless nights,

you know, working
all day and all night,

and trying to figure
this out,

just-just all came
together right then.

- So who was she?

Who was the young woman
who, for so long,

had been a sketch known
only as "Lavender Doe"?

Here she was,
Dana Lynn Dodd.

It was Dana's half-sister,
Amanda,

who had provided
that DNA Sample,

and then,
naturally curious,

she looked online
and saw that clay model.

- And I called him back,
and I told him,

"That's Dana.
It's Dana."

- What was it like to see that?
- [sighs] Surreal.

It felt like somebody just
punched me in the stomach.

I was angry that
she was by herself, you know.

Her-her worst fear
came true.

She was forgotten.

- Which was the heartbreaking
truth Amanda revealed

about Dana Dodd.

Hers was a life of
instability, uncertainty,

and from the very beginning,
rejection.

Her mom moved out
when she was little.

One mother figure after another
came and went from her life.

- She was passed around between
my dad and his, you know,

current wife or current
girlfriend at the time,

and that's how we lost track
between her and us

for about ten years.

- By the time Dana
was in her early teens,

Amanda was 23 years old
and married

and raising a son
of her own,

and when she heard Dana
was living not far away,

somewhere in Florida...
- I just looked at my husband

and said, "This is what
we need to do,"

and he knew it, and there
was no questions asked.

She moved right into the home.

- After all she'd
been through,

it was almost
like a fairytale:

A real home.

Was she happy about it at first?
- Very, very happy.

She said she liked
the normal life,

feeling normal,
not having to worry,

you know, "being loved,"
is what she said,

and being able to sit down
at dinnertime with the family

and be able to discuss

just your daily things
that we take for granted.

- It was good
for a while.

So what happened
to Dana Dodd?

How did she become
that mystery victim

so far away?

- A young girl alone.

- That's when
the problems started.

- It's a story as old as time.
- Yeah. Oh, yeah.

- And on her own.
- It's just a form

of human trafficking.
You're around the drug dealers.

You're around
the prostitutes.

It just kind of puts them into
a whole different, dark world.

**

- For 12 years, they knew her
only as "Lavender Doe,"

the mystery murder victim
with the purple shirt.

Now they knew her real name:
Dana Lynn Dodd.

What a story
a name revealed,

of an abandoned baby,
a rejected toddler,

whose whole life had been
a cautionary tale.

Her long lost half sister,
Amanda, stepped in to help,

and did help,
but then at age 16,

Dana got a serious boyfriend.

- That's when
the problems started.

- It's a story as old as time.
- Yeah. Oh, yeah.

- So then Amanda sent Dana
to live with her brother, John.

- I tried to make it
where she was always wanted.

- But that boy again.

Did you give her
an ultimatum?

- I did. I did, uh,
you know, 'cause, you know,

I told her, "Do you want
to stay with this guy,

"or do you want
a better life?"

And she's like,
"You know what? I-I love him."

- When that didn't
work out either,

Dana, determined to finally
take control of her own life,

decided to get a job.

It was with a magazine company,
she said,

that would allow
her to travel,

selling subscriptions
and other products.

John told Dana that sounded
like a bad idea.

- In a contest between you
and those folks

in the magazine,
you didn't stand a chance.

- No. No.
'Cause she was wantin'

to try to do something
for herself,

so she was trying
to prove-prove something.

- She was just lookin'
for acceptance,

anybody that would
accept her and take her,

and that's what she was
looking for her whole life.

- Dana was 18
and full of optimism.

- She would call me
every month saying,

"I'm-I'm in Indiana.
Hey, I'm in Cincinnati."

For. like, six months,
five or six months,

she would call me
every month.

- It was summertime, 2006,

when she called him
the last time.

- And I told her
to come home.

And she said, "No, I want
to do this on my own."

So that was the last time
I heard from her.

- How long did you
talk to her that time?

- About an hour.
- Long conversation

on the phone.
- Very, very,

because I tried to
convince her to come home.

- You were begging her
to come home.

- Oh, yes, begging her.
We can--

We'll take care of you.

- And then
the long silence.

Where was she?

They had no idea.

What a helpless feeling
that must have been.

- It was. It was hard.
It was very helpless,

and more so because we
didn't know anything--

anything about the company.

Where do you start when
you know they're traveling

all over the country?

- Some of those magazine
sales companies

are notorious for exploiting
their young employees,

preying on them.

Lieutenant Eddie Hope
knows this all too well.

- It's just a form
of human trafficking.

They take these kids.
They promise 'em a good life.

And once they get 'em
away from home,

they're living in
seedy motel rooms

and with that comes that
you're around the drug dealers.

You're around the prostitutes.
You're around the-the pimps.

It just kind of puts them into
a whole different dark world.

- Dark, and in Dana's case,
deadly.

Dana met her fate in this
Walmart parking lot,

trying to sell magazines
to Joseph Wayne Burnette.

That's where he told police
he picked her up,

took her to this bridge,
and killed her.

Why? He said it was because
she stole money from him.

Impossible to know
if that was true,

because of what
he did next.

- So I took her body,
and I laid her out

on top of the wood after
I soaked the wood in the diesel.

And when I set her on fire,
I left.

- She wasn't trash.
She wasn't a piece of trash

like he took upon himself
to discard of,

and I want everybody, you know,
to know who Dana was,

and who she was
as a person.

Even with her difficult life
and her upbringing,

and, uh, she still
had a good heart.

- Maybe it's not
the greatest ending,

but at least they know,

and I guess I go
back to the truth.

They know the truth,
and it just feels good

when we can
hand them that truth.

- And everybody deserves
to know the truth.

- So after 12 years,

the investigators,
professional and amateur,

finally knew her name,

knew what happened to her,

but it felt
unfinished somehow.

And so they all made
a kind of pilgrimage

to see the place
with their own eyes,

and that was
the very first time

the trio would actually
meet in person.

- We stay up all night
working on the internet

and messaging
back and forth,

but we'd never met
each other personally.

- Here, Lieutenant Hope
took them to the Walmart

and to the cemetery where
she'd been all this time.

- I think the thing
that surprised me the most

is that there were
already flowers there.

The community,
over the years,

paid attention
and didn't forget her.

- They left her
their own flowers,

lavender, of course.

Science writer,
Sarah Zhang,

who set out to learn
from the volunteers,

saw their journey
to the end.

- It did strike us there

that we were the first people
who'd gone to her grave

who probably knew who
she actually was.

- So that was
extremely poignant,

to be able to stand there.

I don't know that I can even
articulate what that was like.

- This-this really,
I think, changed us,

and changed the way we work.
- Changed it how?

- It makes it personal,
because you think,

what if this
is your family?

What if this could
be your friend?

- Kevin became a licensed
private investigator,

and continued to work
with the DNA Doe Project,

still giving back victims
their long lost identities.

- We made a little bit
of a dent,

but there's never gonna be
a shortage, unfortunately,

of Jane Does and John Does
for us to help identify.

- And some are like
Dana Lynn Dodd,

the little girl abandoned
early and often,

and though Amanda and John
tried to help,

she was, in the end,
abused and discarded,

but not forgotten.

What do you hope
her legacy will be?

- I'm hopin'
she knows that--

what joy she brought
in our life,

to me and Mandy
and our family,

my son.

That legacy would
probably be it,

that she was a part
of our lives.

- And to those
armchair detectives

and their partner,
Lieutenant Eddie Hope,

she was as important
as you or me.

- It doesn't matter what
walk of life you come from.

Everybody's a person.

Everybody has
a mom and dad,

and it's just--

That's the way
they should be treated.

- In December, 2020,

Joseph Wayne Burnette
pleaded guilty

to the murders
of Felisha Pearson

and Dana Lynn Dodd.

He was sentenced to 50 years
for each murder.

- For the relatives
of Burnette's victims,

this has been
the last chapter

of a very painful book.

- And, indeed, it was,
though, by then,

Amanda and John had
found a little solace

here in Longview,

the community that
didn't forget.

- We felt like that
was her adopted family.

- Which is why they decided
not to take her remains

back home to Florida
with them.

She will stay here
in Longview,

with her name
carved in stone.

- It's a funny thing,
isn't it?

That it's-- That it would be
important to have a stone

up above the place
you're lying down

with your name on it,
and, yet, it is.

- It is, exactly.

You never think about it,
but it is something--

It's important to have that,

because you're
never forgotten,

you know, that
your name is there,

It's written in stone.

- "Lavender Doe" no longer.

Eternally Dana Lynn Dodd.

- Some of the people
still go by her grave site

and still put flowers
and things like that there,

and that's what we wanted,

'cause she's part
of Longview.

- And she'll never be
sent away again.

- No. She's home.

- That's
all for this edition

of "Dateline:
Secrets Uncovered."

I'm Craig Melvin.
Thank you for watching.