The Curious Case of the Dane County Doe (UNSOLVED)

Today Trans True Crime will profile the curious case of the Dane County Doe, a skeleton of a possible transgender woman/cross-dresser/drag performer found stuffed inside a chimney of an abandoned music store in Wisconsin.

On September 3, 1989, a maintenance worker at Good 'N Loud, an abandoned music store in Madison, Wisconsin, was doing repairs when he moved a boiler; noticing water leaking from the flue. When he shined his flashlight into the base of the chimney, that's when he discovered the victim's remains.

The victim was found to possibly be a: transsexual, cross-dresser, or drag performer as they had male chromosomes but were wearing female clothing. The clothing included a: sleeveless paisley dress with matching belt, long-sleeved button down shirt possibly made of Oxford-type cloth, medium-sized white Stag brand shaggy-pile sweater, and low-heeled pointed shoes. She was wearing one pair of socks and carrying another pair. She also donned a German iron cross medallion. The victim was also not wearing underwear; leading some to theorize that maybe she was working as a prostitute and may have met with foul play.

I agree with the prostitution theory-maybe she and her killer went to the top of the roof; knowing the store was abandoned, for some privacy to engage in intercourse. Both were probably local to Madison if they knew Good 'N Loud was deserted. I imagine the killer found the doe to have male genitalia, that she didn't disclose, killing her and hiding her in the chimney, the closest thing for concealment of the crime. I highly doubt a transphobic man would want to touch, let alone carry a transgender woman to dump her randomly in a chimney, so the encounter must have taken place on the roof of said building.

Another theory, which seems to be a "sign of the times" but after studying the victim's injuries, call me crazy, but it seems almost too good, is that the victim was a burglar who wanted to break into the building by way of the chimney (as to avoid structural damage). She wasn't familiar with the interior of the building and upon sliding down, she found she couldn't get through without moving the boiler; the victim was five-feet five inches to five-feet seven inches tall and of thin build with no known signs of homicide, but did have a broken pelvis (found to be from the fall down the chimney). When she couldn't climb out, she starved to death? Possibly?

Some hope of identification did come in 2012 when retired State Senate Laura Zimmerman went public with her memory of a page at the Legislature whom she may have worked with between 1980 and 1985. She realized this in 1990 after the Smithsonian Institution did a clay reconstruction of the victim's skull, which she thinks resembles the page. She didn't bring it up to her then-boss, Dan Fields, because she couldn't remember the page's name. After reading online of how medical examiners use recreations of victims' skulls to identify unidentified homicide victims, she decided to contact police with her story. Zimmerman is hoping that investigators can run social security numbers of Senate pages who left the company before the remains were found; seeing if any of the citizens with a social security number "dropped off the face of the Earth" around 1989. Police are open to doing just that. So far, no new leads have come forward.