#RememberThem: Fifteen

In the decades since the arrest of serial killer Benjamin Atkins, there was always one Jane Doe among the 11 women who lost their lives. One who remained a mystery. A girl that some sorrowful and confused family out there was missing. Someone whose fate was never known. Maybe that family had followed the case and knew that the Atkins Jane Doe was possibly their missing girl. Maybe they had no idea -- maybe they lived somewhere far from Detroit. Maybe they just figured she ran away, was in the wind, and she wanted it that way. Who knows.

Then in 2023, a cold-case investigative group based on the West Coast announced that they identified this Jane Doe via forensic genetic genealogy, working with a detective in Michigan, but said the family did not want her name to be released. I verified that for my Atkins book with phone calls to local law enforcement. 

There were a lot of possible IDs for this Jane Doe, at the time, but none of them panned out as far as fingerprints, dental records, etc. Lots of families came forward who were missing someone, and that's a very sad aspect of this Jane Doe's story. 

So even though the public still does not know the name of this victim, who was one of three women found on the same day at the Monterey Motel in Highland Park, Michigan, in February 1992, her family now does have closure, and does know what happened to their loved one. For everyone else, she -- at least for right now -- remains UF 15 for 1992 in Wayne County, Michigan. I like to think of her as Fifteen, kinda like Seven of Nine on "Star Trek: Voyager" or Eleven on "Stranger Things." But not quite.

So we honor her -- the human being she was, the girl she was born to be before Atkins interrupted that -- with this installment in the #RememberThem series. 

A screenshot from the Monterey Motel crime scene video of the room where Fifteen was found. Atkins told police how he placed a mattress in the doorway to the bathroom of Room 18 so that anyone wandering through the abandoned structure would be dissuaded from entering.

Highland Park Public Safety's sketch of Room 18 from the day Fifteen and two other females were found at the Monterey, February 1992.

This post is part of a series on this blog that I am calling #RememberThem, a chance to honor the women who encountered the two Detroit serial killers I have researched, John Eric Armstrong and Benjamin ("Tony") Atkins. In this continuing series, with installments dropping every week or so, we first learn more about the women Armstrong was known to have killed in Detroit, plus two of his survivors, then we turn to the women who encountered Atkins. Click on the "Honoring the Victims" label on the left to see all of the parts in the series. Also see the #RememberThem series on YouTube.

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Above photos are copyrighted and specifically for use in The Crack City Strangler: The Homicides of Serial Killer Benjamin Atkins; any other use prohibited without permission.

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(And yes, that photo on the book's cover is actually a photo of Atkins; see this blog post on the confusion over his photos.)