Victim in early 1990s homicide case identified

Authorities on Tuesday announced the conclusion of a decades-long quest to identify a woman whose remains were found in southwest Las Vegas.

Linda Sue Anderson was identified through familial DNA, the Metropolitan Police Department said in a news release.

The body of Anderson, who was last heard from by her family in Henderson in 1991, had been located by chance on April 18, 1993, when a biologist, conducting a survey of desert tortoises in an area near Tropicana Avenue and Durango Drive noticed part of a handmade quilt in the dirt with several large rocks on it, then found human hair and smelled the odor of decomposition, police said in the release.

The Clark County coroner’s office, which conducted an autopsy on the remains in 1993, determined that the woman had been a homicide victim in mid- to late 1991 and assigned her case to the department’s Cold Case Section investigators, the release stated.

The remains, nicknamed Jane Tropicana Doe, were not identified for almost 30 years, police said.

Then in February of last year, cold case investigators gave samples from Anderson’s body to a forensic genetic genealogy company known as Othram. With the help of the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System and the FBI, police contacted possible family members who had submitted their DNA, according to the release.

The discovery of her identity took place, and on Dec. 29 Othram notified detectives that the person had been positively identified as Anderson, also known with the last name Andrews, according to the release.

From her family members, cold case investigators learned that Anderson was 38 years old and living in Henderson when the family lost track of her after a phone call in June 1991, police stated.

Meanwhile, the facts behind her apparent murder are still unknown, and the case remains under investigation by police.

Anyone with information about Anderson is urged to contact the department’s Homicide Section by phone at 702-828-3521 or by email at homicide@lvmpd.com.

A previous version of this story gave an incorrect age for the victim.