What Did Construction Workers Find in Hell’s Kitchen? | Forensic Files

a gruesome Discovery in a New York City basement is a teenage girl and the decades long mission to restore her
identity a tangled family tree filled with deception an iconic Rock Club mob shakedowns tied to gangsters who would
later find themselves on The Sopranos this is the story of a woman who for more than two decades was known only as
the Midtown Jano it's Monday afternoon February 10th 2003 and construction workers are clearing
debris from a basement of a rundown 5-story building on West 46th Street in Midtown Manhattan a neighborhood known
as Hell's Kitchen now this place is in pretty bad shape and the only reason the workers are even down there is because
the restaurant next door arranged to rent part of the basement just for storage so they're doing their thing
when one of them notices something weird in the corner behind this old boiler it's this big rectangular concrete slab
like 6 feet wide 5T long and taller than your standard cinder block and it looks
just all kinds of wrong like it definitely doesn't belong here and in a place like New York where lifers have
seen it all that is saying something so a worker takes a sledgehammer to this thing and instead of the solid thud that
you would expect to hear when you like hit concrete there is this echoing sound that tells them it's hollow inside and
with the blow the cement starts breaking apart until they see brown fabric poking
through and when they pull on it a human skull starts popping out now the worker
notifies the NYPD and detective Gerard Gardner who just started his shift and is next up in rotation to catch a case
head straight to the scene now he knows right away that this is not going to be a routine investigation New York City
has more than its fair share of homicides don't get me wrong but cases involving skeletal remains are rare here
so he calls in the City medical examiner forensic anthropologist and when they dig through that concrete to the dirt
below they find a skeleton like curled up in the fetal position all wrapped up in a rust colored carpet this was
literally a concrete coffin mhm and more like a tomb I mean there is no bottom to
it per se like whoever did this might have put the body down or maybe even dug into the floor a little bit and then
what they did was they poured cement right over the top almost as if they were building some kind of foundation
now at first glance investigators don't see any obvious signs of trauma on this skeleton but they have no doubt that
this is a homicide well yeah someone encased in conrete kind of speaks for itself yes but theoretically I mean they
could have died from something nonviolent like an overdose and then whoever was there like panicked and
covered it up whatever but that's not even a consideration here because the victim was hogged tied with panty hose
and an electrical cord which is also wrapped around this person's neck but even though they have a huge potential
clue about the cause of death like with these things they've still got their work cut out for them the concrete might
have helped to preserve the skeleton but what they're dealing with is just that bones there is no flesh there is no
muscle nothing and even the bones aren't in great shape like the outer Surface starts like peeling away on them kind of
like old paint shipping off of a wall so an ID is going to be difficult however they do find some pretty promising Clues
they discover that this person had long fingernails and the victim is wearing a tan bra there's also a glittery fabric
with red and yellow sequin that they think might come from some kind of clothing which all hints to them that
this might be a female now the Anthropologist can also get a pretty good sense of this person's age the
victim's wisdom teeth haven't totally come in yet which usually happens between like 17 years old and 25 years
old and their collar bone isn't fully fused meaning that this person's bones were still growing when they died and
while they don't find a purse or ID the victim is wearing two pieces of jewelry that could be huge for identification so
there is a 1966 bll of a watch on their wrist and a yellow metal signant ring on
their right pinky finger with the initials PM lowercase c g now everything get gets hauled into the lab and a
couple of days later detective Gardner gets an update on the findings that starts painting a clearer picture they
can now confirm that this definitely is a female victim a young woman between 15
and 21 years old somewhere between 410 and 5'4 she had a narrow face petite build and reddish brown hair some of
which was still attached to the skull according to America's Most Wanted her pointy chin and the shape of her skull
and the eye sockets LED them to believe that she was likely white now looking at
her pelvic bone the Anthropologist thinks it's unlikely that she ever had children although they can't be sure but
it is her teeth that really tell an interesting story because she had expensive dental work done on her back
teeth but her front teeth were starting to rot before she died it makes me wonder if she left home or was somehow
like taken from family or caretakers well before she died like she's young at some point somebody cared enough to get
her that expensive dental work but then somewhere along the line something changed right now investigators theorize
that she might have been one of the kids who maybe ran away to New York City chasing Big Dreams or something but
whatever she was looking for I mean obviously she found something very different and that idea isn't totally
out of left field so the detective who's working the case now Ryan glass he told
our reporter Nina that this part of Hell's Kitchen specifically like including this very building which is
301 West 46th Street was known for drugs and sex work it's right by the Port Authority Bus Terminal which is often
the first stop for young people coming into the city but that also makes it a magnet for Predators looking for
vulnerable teens cops even nicknam the area the Minnesota strip because so many of the girls being trafficked there were
runaways from the Midwest and the basement that she was buried in has its own interesting history so it was home
to a Speak Easy prohibition than a rock Club in the 60s okay but at least with this watch Being from' 66 we know that
this body is at least from like the 60s oh yeah it's definitely not like that old but they can tell that she has been
there for a while so her skeleton is mostly intact but some bones were missing like smaller ones from her like
hands feet stuff that could have maybe been carried off by rats and speaking of rats when labex process the scene they
find this like whole little ecosystem that developed around her remains maggot casings rodent bones a nest and there
were also animal and human hairs in the carpet that she was wrapped in and then there's like this random collection of
items that they find mixed in with everything pieces of Sears brand feed and weed bag scraps of wrap poison
wrapper like a plastic green toy soldier some duct tape and a dime from 1969 the dime is so crusty and corroded
that they can barely make out the date but they do was that all buried with her or did it just like end up with her over
time right so okay that's hard to say some of it was definitely in the mix with her remains like the Sears bag and
the toy soldier and that dime were actually in the rug with her which makes me think that maybe they were just kind
of lying on whatever carpet that like she was ended up being rolled up in or I mean it's also possible that she had
those things on her like who knows but the other stuff like the rap poison rapper probably that stuff came like it
was more in the concrete I mean it's really like kind of a show down there but all of this stuff still helps create
kind of a rudimentary timeline like those little green army men they became huge in the 50s when everyone got
freaked out about lead poisoning from the metal ones but then the dime tells us that she couldn't have been killed
before 1969 then the rap poison rapper that brand didn't even exist until the late
'70s so taking everything into consideration they think she was killed sometime in
the 70s maybe the 80s but they're leaning more toward the 80s given the history of crime in that stretch of the
city now even after the medical examiner whose name is actually Dr happy even after Dr happy checks everything out he
can't find any injuries that definitively show how this person died but given the electrical cord around her
neck doctor happy is thinking that it was probably strangulation and while they don't know for sure if she was
sexually assaulted nothing seems to point to that actually her bra was still properly in place not like pulled down
or messed with and they also find scraps of dark Fabric near her hips and legs that might be from pants or shorts along
with some buttons so right now they have no name no suspects and no motive and they're like two decades behind all they
can do for now is try to build a profile of what kind of person could have done this police believe the killer had to be
someone who knew that building inside and out probably a regular in the neighborhood they would have needed to
know their way around concrete as well and that particular basement and there's actually a few ways to access this
basement from inside the building plus a steel trap door that opens to a neighborhood parking lot but they don't
think that this was just some random person who wandered in I mean think about how much time it would take to
construct something like this tomb as we calling it this is a place that her killer felt comfortable in well and it's
not just about burying her right like unless this basement already had concrete stored in it they'd have to
haul that down there making multiple trips in and out like make the concrete yeah detective glass estimates that they
would have needed at least 50 bags of concrete to basically make this thing that she's encased in and what was this
building in the80s so it's a little hard to tell at first but it might have just
been a reg regular basement back then like TBD will kind of get there but this building in general like investigators
at the time quickly realized that it was never a kind of place where people would
stay long like by the time they're canvasing in 2003 the place is practically empty there aren't any
long-term residents even the superintendent is fairly new and the first floor is just an adult video store
and some of the upper floors are completely blocked off and they do end up finding one guy who worked in the
area back in the'80s but he can't tell them anything useful about the space so with no witnesses to work with Detective
Gardner shifts Focus to the physical evidence starting with that bull of a watch he's hoping that the serial number
might lead them to whoever bought it but according to New York Post reporter Al Gart that is a total dead end it turns
out that Boulevard just randomly assigns serial numbers for insurance like they don't actually track the purchases at
all so they move on to what they think is actually their best chance at identifying her that ring so Gardner
teams up with the FBI and starts searching Nationwide for missing persons with PM CG in their initials now based
on their timeline and what they know so far they look for people born on or after 1958 and they get 11 names back
but after comparing things like race and age and other characteristics they have
to eliminate every single one so next they dig into arrest records checking out every woman with those initials
who's been charged with a crime across the country and they're doing this thinking that maybe she could have been
involved in sex work or maybe drugs and if that's the case maybe she had a run in with law enforcement so that search
gives Garder another 500 names to chase down but still even with those 500 names
he gets nothing you know what doesn't make sense to me about the sex worker Theory though like in so many cases
we've covered where the victims were sex workers The Killers just dumped them somewhere on the side of the road in an
alley ditch they didn't even try to hide what they've done or what they did and like if they did do that like Lisk like
they did try to hide the victims were like super super hidden close together or at least buried Outdoors but this guy
he went to extreme lengths to try to make sure like she would never be found not even by accident right like like to
your point there are serial killers even that emmo is a little off but there actually was one of the first potential
suspects at least that we know of that they look into was someone who targeted sex workers and someone who took
elaborate steps to hide their bodies or at least make sure that like these bodies couldn't be tracked back to him
now this guy is among New York's most notorious serial killers Joel riffkin riffen terrorized women all over the
city in Long Island from the late ' 80s into the early 90s and the only reason he stopped was because he got caught
driving with a missing license plate of all things like that he could have gotten caught for and when he did get
caught police found a decomposing body in his pickup now he ended up confessing to killing 17 women though he was only
ever convicted technically of nine murders now what we know about him is he strangled his victims all of whom were
sex workers or women struggling with addiction and he was super calculated about disposing of their bodies like and
the thing about him is he used different methods each time which made it really hard for investigators to connect these
crimes and get this according to biography.com with his second victim he actually put her dismembered head arms
and legs into buckets and then filled those buckets with concrete and dump them into the East River and a Brooklyn
Canal now only catch is that riffkin was known for leaving bodies outside in water in woods near
highways sometimes he put them in oil drums but as far as we know he never stashed anyone away indoors and I'm not
exactly sure how or if they ruled him out back then I know detective glass interviewed him years later after he
inherited the case but in 2003 even though they're interested in him they don't seem to really focus on him
Gardner tells algart that there's time riffkin isn't going anywhere like he's serving over 200 years in prison yeah
but anything could happen like what if he dies I guess in my my opinion why wait well at the time I think they were
wanting to know more about their victim who the Press is calling Midtown Jane Doe I think they want to figure that
part out before going to him and we've talked about this before right like you try and get like all your ducks in a row
so you know when someone's lying you have all the facts like they might get only one shot at those interviews and
without solid information about who she is they would be at a huge disadvantage I mean truthfully they still don't even
know when she was killed but according to America's Most Wanted they do catch a break with that when they send crime-
scen soil samples to the lab mixed in with some dirt they find a torn up clothing label and after Tech like clean
it up and look at it under a microscope they can see seals showing that it was made by the international ladies garment
Workers Union so detective Gardner reaches out to them hoping that they can date this label and when he gives them
the numbers and the letters and all the things on the seal they tell him that it
could not have been made before December 1987 so like late ' 80s or even the early 90s and that's making sense to
investigators I mean at the time like ' 80s 90s New York was in the grip of a drug epidemic that was driving violence
to levels that they'd never seen before we're talking like 1,00 plus homicides a
year except like it's feeling great except that timeline might not be accurate it takes a while but they
eventually end up learning that the estimate was wrong the clothing label the dates that they were given were
completely off manufacturing records show that it could have been made as early as the 60s so we're back there
that adds almost what three more decades to the estimated time frame of her death
yes but for some reason even though they they're putting the label at the 60s police still seem pretty set on the idea
that this victim was killed in the80s I don't know why but like that's their thinking at the time so what they do is
they have an artist create a reconstruction of her face using detailed measurements from her skull
they get her featured on America's Most Wanted which is like Prime back then but
no one recognizes her now they managed to determine that the human hairs in the carpet belong to a blonde male probably
a white guy but they can't say who that guy is was there like a lot of hair um detective glass described it as
like a pinch like about what you would clean out of hairbrush but they don't know I mean if it's the killers or if it
was just like mixed up with everything else like it's not going to be like the nail in the coffin for someone right
like that's not going to be the clencher so fast forward a little bit over the years the emy's office checks Midtown
janeo against various missing people and at least one possibility does gain some
Traction in August 2011 a woman named Moren is online when she comes across the sketch of Midtown Jane Doe and as
she later tells Long Island press reporter jacqulyn guchi it stops her in her tracks because she thinks it looks
just like her missing sister Judy odonnell who vanished in 1980 while pursuing her dreams of becoming an
actress and a singer in New York City and it's not just her looks that strike Moren as similar she knew that Judy had
been living on the streets in Hell's Kitchen she knew that she' been arrested for sex work which remember is the going
theory about Midtown Jane Doe plus they both expensive dental work that just seemed to stop like their lives took a
sharp turn but but what about the ring Judy odonnell doesn't match the initials not hers but those are Judy's
grandmother's exact initials and Moren knows that Judy and their Grandma were super close and like there's nobody in
her family that remembers a ring like that but Meen thinks that it would be like probable that Judy might have like
found it somewhere and kept it to honor their grandmother like who knows so that
October a forensic specialist compare Judy's dental records to Jane Do's but they can't say if it's a match one way
or another and after being encased in concrete for God knows how long by this point her bones are so degraded that
getting a viable DNA profile is like trying to get blood from a stone so all told they submit 33 different samples
for analysis but it's not until 2015 that they're able to get an any sort of profile from Midtown Jane Doe and it's
not until the following year that they can confirm that Jane do is not Judy odonnell which is shocking a surprise
and like disappointing but at least they have DNA that they can work with now right yes it's great and they are even
able to put it into codus but the sample is so small that scientists can basically only use it for direct
comparison but either you're right it's progress and in 2017 there is this renewed push to finally
figure out who she is once and for all after a detective rediscovered the case while reviewing old unsolved files and
he decided it was time to take a closer look so what they do now is they try to do isotope analysis which basically
looks at the chemical makeup of hair teeth bones all of that to figure out where a person might have lived and
based on what they do the results Point pretty strongly to one region the Midwest the Minnesota strip yes it's got
a name for a reason right but the Midwest doesn't like narrow down right it's not specifically Minnesota when
they checked missing persons reports were they checking from the Midwest or just like New York and the surrounding
area they were checking everywhere all over across the country so obviously the isotope test didn't really move things
along so when detective glass is assigned the case in 2022 he comes with totally fresh eyes no no preconceived
notions about who she was or where she's from or how she got there and what do you know it gives him a different take
his gut is telling him that Midtown Jane do wasn't a sex worker and that he thinks she was killed way before
1980 and this Theory might have just stayed a theory but then something huge happens a lab called asraa forensics
which specializes in analyzing Lo quality samples they managed to get a genealogy grade DNA profile from one of
her foot bones so the nypd's new genealogist this woman named Linda Doyle she is brought on board and when they
upload the sample they quickly yet two crucial hits they get a first cousin on her dad's side and a first cousin once
removed on her mom's side that kind of match right off the bat is unheard of almost yeah really rare yeah and thank
God though right like they are long overdue for a break and this is a big one because the paternal cousin's
surname is Mone uh the uppercase M lowercase C uppercase G from The Ring yep so Linda starts doing what
genealogists do best she's like digging into public records old newspapers obituaries court documents anything she
can dig up and get her hands on that might show her where these two branches of Jane Do's family tree intersects and
after all of this research Linda can only find one person who fits the bill 16-year-old Patricia mclone she wasn't
born after 1958 she wasn't a sex worker as far as we know and she wasn't from the Midwest she actually lived right
there in Brooklyn until she disappeared except Patricia was never reported missing and here's just a
random twist so Patricia's paternal cousin who died a couple of years before genealogy tracked the family down he was
actually a retired NYPD cop and had worked as one Precinct away from where they found her body now I doubt that
they even knew each other doesn't seem like they were very like the whole family was like a super close-knit
family but it was just I thought it was so weird I don't know so while detectives have this tentative answer to
the question that's haunted them for so long they're now facing even bigger ones
like who was Patricia what happened in her final days and how does a teenage girl just vanish without anyone looking
for her so as detective glass and Linda dive into the investigation they begin to uncover a story that has been buried
literally for decades and to even try to understand it we have to go back to the
beginning but fair warning you're going to need to buckle up because from day one Patricia's life was
complicated Patricia's dad Bernard mclone senr was a busy man to say the least by the time he hooked up with
Patricia's mom who was also named Patricia butet just caller Pat he had already been married twice he and his
first wife had two sons before they split then he remarried to this woman named Helen they had a son but while he
was still married to Helen Bernard and Pat got married in Virginia now he knocked about 5 years off his age on
their application saying that he was 45 when he was nearly 50 and for some reason Pat added a year
saying she was 21 but she was really only 20 now Patricia is born on April 20th 1953 so this is about 10 months
after her parents so-called wedding if you can call it that since he's already married and at the time Bernard is still
living with Helen The Other Woman he's married to okay so we've got one man three wives uhhuh two of whom were at
the same time and at least four kids and a partridge and a pear tree like if going to need a flowchart to keep
everyone straight but trust me I'm giving you the simplified version though if you really want the messy details
there is a great article in Rolling Stone by the reporter Sarah weinman that breaks all this down but anyways even
though Bernard's two families live in the same Sunset Park neighborhood in Brooklyn he somehow managed to keep his
double life a secret for years was that a secret from both women okay so nah interviewed Linda Doyle and based on
what we learned from her along with Sarah Wyman's article I'm pretty confident that Helen was completely in
the dark but with Pat I'm not exactly sure I mean Bernard obviously wasn't like living with her and Patricia so I
assume that would have been a red flag but he was a Long Haul truck driver so being gone for these long stretches like
wouldn't have been that weird either but at any rate in 1957 he apparently left Helen for Pat although when Helen died
of breast cancer a few years later her obituary still referred to her as Bernard's beloved wife so like make of
that what you will and then Bernard and Helen's son Bernard junor hold up can we
please like call them Junior and senior from here on you imagine like having a son and naming after you and the white
like and then having a wife whose daughter is named after her so sure Junior was in his teens when his mom
died so he moved in with his dad Pat and Patricia but if there was any stability
in their home it didn't last long in 1963 when Patricia was 10 senior died of a heart attack Pat became Junior's legal
guardian and he lived with her and Patricia for a while but in a brief account that he wrote about his life
titled sad but true he said that he was totally alone after his father died meanwhile as Patricia bounce between
public and Catholic schools her attendance got more and more spotty she had to repeat a grade detective glass
and Linda can't even locate a yearbook photo of her like she's not in any of them but they did find little fragments
of Patricia's life on other school records and a really troubling picture starts to emerge like at her first and
only semester at a junior high she transferred to in late 1968 she only showed up for 9 days of class and
obviously her teachers were concerned one of them noted that Patricia seemed well behaved but she questioned how she
ever was going to learn anything if she was never there and Pat was also reportedly worried and she told school
officials that she just didn't know who her daughter was skipping school with but I don't know how much attention she
was really paying to Patricia by then she had started dating another married man and I think he was living with them
now Patricia was totally closed off from her teachers though she did mention being interested in something she calls
Beauty culture which I'm thinking is probably like cosmetology but they didn't think that she seemed motivated
to continue her education but I don't know if motivation is the real issue here because I mean what really stands
out to investigators are the last few memos in Patricia's student file all dated
1969 including a report from March detailing a series of medical related absences and then another from May 8th
when she dropped out of school for good and officially her final departure was a
quote unquote medical discharge but this isn't Linda's first genealogy rodeo and
she knows exactly what that phrase was code for back then Patricia was pregnant wasn't she Bingo and this was all
happening during what was known as the baby scoop era after World War II when more and more girls and women were
facing unplanned pregnancies out of wedlock single motherhood carried a very heavy stigma not to mention the
financial burdens of raising a child alone and that combination of judgment and Desperation was The Perfect Storm
for exploitation many expectant mothers were wored or forced to give up their babies and some doctors saw it as a
business opportunity for a fee they would discreetly connect wealthy couples looking to adopt with vulnerable young
women who felt like they had no other choice so investigators think that the physician listed in Patricia's school
records might have been involved in one of these Shady operations in part because of a bizarre incident documented
in a daily news article so apparently a gunman burst into this specific doctor's
office on the upper west side one day at 9900 p.m. while the place was still like
buzzing with patients and staff and he robbed a patient of like $500 cash and night patience and cash is a major red
flag it's definitely raising eyebrows for Linda now word was that this doctor also performed abortions which to me
could explain the late hours and the cash but Linda doubts that anyone in Patricia's Catholic Community would have
sent her to a doctor for something like that so it's also possible that Patricia
had no plans to give up the baby that she might have had for adoption because her school paperwork had another
bombshell waiting for investigators it turns out that Patricia got married a day before she dropped out of school on
May 7th 1969 to a man named Donald Grant I mean did her mom have to sign off on that oh yeah Pat gave permission in fact
she was their official witness at the ceremony so where the is Donald Grant now exactly and who is he yeah I mean
they assume that he might be the father of her baby but investigators can't say for sure because they can't find a
single person who actually knew Patricia no friends no neighbors the few relatives that they're aware of have all
passed away so they don't have any details on how or when she met this Donald Guy all they can follow is this
paper trail so from the school records they go and pull the marriage license and it is basically just one giant red
flag for starters Donald was 32 when he exchanged vows with 16-year-old Patricia
so Pat was the witness at her daughter's wedding to this grown ass man yes cool cool cool but the age Gap isn't even the
big holy thing about this marriage license because guess what Donald put for his
address the building where Patricia was found 301 West 46 Street you got it what's so extra interesting is that
Donald's name is only listed at that address for one year in the 1969 city directory and Patricia isn't officially
linked to that building at all but it looks like their marriage like li like that's where it got mailed to so
investigators think that she probably lived there at some point and all of this fits perfectly with the new
timeline police are forming they now believe that Patricia was killed during the summer of 1969 hold up I know the
clothing label date was wrong but what about that rat poison rapper wasn't that from like the mid to late 7s yeah it was
later detective glass has a theory he thinks that the newer items like the rapper stuff like that that probably
shuffled into the original burial site somehow maybe during all the construction work that was going on I
mean that makes way more sense than Patricia being alive like into the 70s or even the 80s especially when you look
at all of the other evidence like the dime and the watch and all of that found with her remains so armed with their new
estimated timeline police decide to shift their focus to a place that they initially overlooked a place called
Steve Paul's the scene it was this like legendary rock club that operated in that very basement from the mid to late
60s and when I say legendary we're talking performances by Jimmy Hendrick the doors Fleetwood Mack this was The
Hot Spot even Andy Warhol hung out there and the layout of this place was unusual
like it was this massive Maze of brick walled Sellers and passageways but like everything else in that building the
scene was isn't destined to last by the late' 60s Brooklyn Mobsters were demanding protection money from the
owner and get this one of those Mobsters was Tony suro who is best known as Paulie Walnuts from The Sopranos wait
are you saying the character Paulie Walnuts was based on him or that the actor himself the actually used to be a
mobster the actual guy used to be a mobster but like he's not a suspect the cement Patricia was found in like for a
minute it sparked all these Mafia rumors over the years but police don't think there's anything to that Sero is just
like one of the many bizarre footnotes in this story but before he became an actor he was a legit criminal known for
shaking down nightclub owners including Steve Paul but Steve didn't want to deal
with all the drama so he shut the club down in maybe July or August of 1969 so suddenly you've got this empty basement
no crowds no music no staff the perfect opport for someone to bury a body in concrete without anyone noticing someone
like Donald and again I ask who is Donald well all they know is that on the marriage license he listed himself as a
musician which could mean anything from like selling out venues to like playing in a subway station for tips like who
knows I mean it's possible he even performed at the scene right but whatever the case may be the fact that
he never reported his wife Patricia missing I think speaks volumes for investigators they're convinced that
Donald is the key to this whole mystery just like you but their luck has run out
because as it would turn out Donald Grant or at least the Donald grant that he claimed to be on the marriage license
doesn't [Music] exist in their marriage license affidavit Donald Grant said that he was
born in Pittsburgh Pennsylvania on February 27th 1937 to James Edward Grant and Carrie Elizabeth Johnson who were
also supposedly born in Pittsburgh so with all those specific details finding him should have been a breeze there is
no Donald Grant with that exact background no family matching that description in Pittsburg the guy police
are looking for is a ghost the only official record they can find of this very specific Donald Grant is the
marriage license itself and the only detail they can even verify from that is his address on West 46th Street which
remember he only showed up in one time in 1969 and then poof this guy vanished from the directory and here's what's
really interesting according to Sarah weinman's reporting there was a Donald Grant who was born on February 28th
1937 but he died when he was a baby not in Pittsburgh but in nearby Ohio so this
dude basically stole a dead baby's identity that's what it looks like detective glass is confident that
stealing the identity are not like Donald is an alias but Linda figures there has to be some kind of Kernel of
Truth buried in his affidavit so she tries every possible combination rearranging names and dates searching
every which way she can think of but no matter how hard she shuffles the pieces around there is nothing but dead ends
it's like Patricia never even had a shot like no one protected her she was surrounded by Liars yeah I mean and
honestly you can add her half brother junor to the liar list because police learned that he went on to use various
aliases and he got caught up in identity theft and embezzlement in his sad but true write up Junior blamed his crimes
on his stepmom Pat and the married man that she dated after his dad died now he didn't elaborate at all except to say
that they were both awful people and those were the people raising Patricia too when you think about it and I say
all of that to say it's Junior's fraud case that gives us the only documentation police can find that
mentions Patricia's disappearance so the company that Junior stole from sent investigators to interview Pat in June
of 1970 and somehow in the middle of answering questions about Junior Patricia comes up and Pat told them that
Junior's sister was a quote unquote addict who abandoned her 11-month-old baby and according to Pat Patricia just
took off moved away sometime in 1969 and no one has seen or heard from her since
oh wait I think I'm confused about this timeline how far along in her pregnancy was she when she dropped out of school
okay so she married Donald on May 7th then she drops out of school the next day May 8th so if you do the math
assuming what Pat said about the baby being 11 months old as of June 1970 was accurate Patricia would have been about
6 or seven months pregnant when she dropped out and she likely would have given birth around July or August of 196
9 which is right when the scene closed but beyond that I don't know if Pat ever had seen the baby or knew where the baby
was I mean this was literally just one random paragraph buried in a huge case File that had nothing to do with
Patricia I mean she again isn't even mentioned by name and Pat didn't even get Patricia's age right but I think the
fact that Pat acknowledged that her daughter was gone makes something else investigators discover especially
disturbing you see Patricia's father had left a small inheritance to her and Junior Pat was in charge of managing the
account until they hit like a certain age and in May of 1971 this is almost 2 years after police believed that
Patricia was killed Pat petitioned the court to release $250 from her account and Pat claimed that Patricia needed the
money to buy like work clothes for a new job that she'd supposedly gotten and we
actually have a copy of the petition that she filed and Brit I'm going to have you look at it because I think
there's something super interesting on it so look at Patricia's so-called signature and then I've got Pat's
signature there too uh they look pretty similar and you have Patricia's real signature which looks nothing like
Patricia's signature on I know this like request so the paperwork fills in some blanks but only some and that's the
problem because police are running out of leads detective glass tries reaching out to everyone he can think of members
of the Church of all Nations where Patricia and the alleged Donald supposedly got married he tried her
schools even staff and regulars from the scene but no one remembers Patricia and
no one remembers Donald which isn't that surprising I mean what are police even asking these people about him do you
happen to know some guy named Donald who we don't know anything about who might have been here around these times whose
name probably isn't really Donald by the right like whether he white or black or
tall or what his real age is like that is anyone's guess it's like asking for a ghost right literally all glass can do
is ask people if they knew a guy who used that name around that time in that area and every time he tries the answer
is always no but at least Patricia is coming into focus a little bit more after all the leg work investigators are
99.5% sure that she is definitely their Midtown Jane Doe But as Sarah weinman points out they can't just say like oh
well genetic genealogy says it's hurt like call it a day to officially confirm it they need mitochondrial DNA like the
kind that is passed down through the maternal line but who do you compare it to if everyone is gone literally
everyone I mean on both sides Pat senior Junior finding a sample is going to be tough but Linden detective glass go back
to the beginning back to someone who was on the early list of matches the maternal first cousin once removed so
this is Pat's first cousin and I'm going to call her Fiona now unfortunately Fiona died a few years ago but here's
where the story takes an incredible turn ironically thanks to a tragic twist Fiona's daughter worked at the World
Trade Center and she was killed in 911 and like many families Fiona gave a DNA sample hoping to identify her daughter's
remains among the rubble now that never happened but Fiona's DNA stayed in the database so they finally have something
to compare to Midtown Jane do and when they test it it is a match so amid all the uncertainty they finally know one
thing for sure this is Patricia mlon so here's where the case stands now the blonde male hairs from the carpet
haven't revealed anything yet but more testing is underway meanwhile the original building at 301 West 46 Street
is long gone it was demolished years ago to make way for a hotel and some apartments and as for Donald Grant
whoever he is or was he is the main suspect investigators are trying to figure out who he was and what happened
to the baby that Patricia supposedly had now they've already subpoena records from half a dozen of the largest
adoption agencies and there's no sign of a child of hers ever being placed up for
adoption but it could have been one of those like under the table deals that you mentioned totally every scenario is
possible every scenario is on the table right now but the lack of answers is frustrating for all that they have
learned about Patricia there is still so much that they don't know they still haven't been able to find even a photo
of her Junior didn't even acknowledge her existence in his sad but true write up and it is like she just got totally
erased from history her identification brings us closer to understanding what happened but her murder is still
unsolved and investigators want to catch her killer but they also want to know who she was so they're looking for
anyone who grew up near her childhood home 375 52nd Street in Brooklyn or anyone who went to school with her they
want you to contact them we've got a full list of the schools she attended and when on our blog post and I'm going
to put them down below as well someone out there had to have known this girl and she deserves to have her story told
so if you know anything about her about her family about Donald Grant or the scene anything at all please contact
Crimestoppers at 1 1800 577 tips and be sure to hit the Subscribe button for more stories like
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In this video, we delve into the Midtown Jane Doe case, a decades old mystery that began on February 10, 2003, when skeletal remains were uncovered in a run-down building at 301 West 46th Street in Hell’s Kitchen, New York City. Discovered hog-tied and encased in concrete, the victim’s identity eluded investigators for years, with clues like a “PMcG” ring, a 1969 dime, and a toy soldier hinting at a death decades earlier. Detective Gerard Gardner initially explored possible mob ties to the Westies gang and the building’s past as Steve Paul’s The Scene nightclub, while early suspect Joel Rifkin, a known serial killer. In 2022, Detective Ryan Glas of the NYPD Cold Case Squad took over, using advanced forensic techniques to pursue new leads. We recount this sensitive case, tracing its roots through NYC’s gritty history.

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Brief Summary

A teenage girl's remains are found in NYC, leading to the identification of Patricia McLone and an investigation into her mysterious death.

Key points

Gruesome Discovery in NYC. Construction workers uncover a human skull in a basement, leading to a homicide investigation.
The Victim's Identity. Investigators confirm the victim is a young woman, likely between 15 and 21 years old.
The Killer's Profile. Detectives believe the killer was familiar with the building and its layout.
Potential Suspect: Joel Riffkin. Investigators consider notorious serial killer Joel Riffkin as a potential suspect.
DNA Breakthrough. After years of investigation, DNA confirms Jane Doe is not Judy O'Donnell, a missing person.
The DNA Breakthrough. A lab called ASRAA Forensics provides a genealogy-grade DNA profile from Patricia's remains, leading to crucial familial connections.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

Someone encased in concrete kind of speaks for itself.

2:44WatchMar 27, 2025

Tension

75/ 100High tension

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