West Alton Jane Doe (2002) site

This is the location where serial killer Maury Travis dumped the remains of an unidentified victim called West Alton Jane Doe (2002).

It is situated at the intersection between Highway 67 and St. Charles Street in West Alton, Missouri.

The Jane Doe is listed on NamUs under #UP17787. Her case file number on the Doe Network is 1641UFMO.

In May 2002, Travis anonymously contacted reporter Bill Smith at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch newspaper to claim responsibility for the murders of 17 women.

In his letter, he mocked Smith's recent article about a victim named Teresa Wilson, calling it a "nice sob story."

"Dear Bill, nice sob story about Teresa Wilson. Write one about Greenwade (Alysia Greenwade). Write a good one, and I'll tell you where many others are. To prove I'm real, here are directions to number seventeen. Search in a fifty-yard radius of the X. Put the story in the Sunday paper like the last one."

Attached was a printed map of this intersection with an X marked on it.

When the police searched the location, they found the partial skeletal remains of a Black woman who had died months prior. It is believed that she was aged 25–35 and roughly 5'4" tall.

The victim had been wearing a sleeveless Chorus Blues denim dress, a black spandex-type tank top, and a black and silver-colored V-neck top.

Her remains were found in the bushes, scattered across a 30-foot radius. Furthermore, a limb and a hand were missing. This was likely due to animal predation.

Considering Travis' modus operandi, it is likely she was a sex worker or someone who lived a similar lifestyle.

He may have kept her alive in his basement for a period of time before the murder, as he was a sadist who held his victims captive.

Travis' need for attention proved to be his undoing.

When the authorities discovered remains at the site, they immediately focused their efforts on finding the source of the map.

After learning that the anonymous sender printed it from a website called Expedia, they subpoenaed a list of the IP addresses that had zoomed in on the intersection in West Alton.

The results showed that 65.227.106.78 was the only IP address to access that exact location.

65.227.106.78 was then linked to an MSN account called "maurytravis," which led the FBI directly to his house in St. Louis.

Travis committed suicide in his jail cell shortly after he was apprehended.

Although the discovery of West Alton Jane Doe led to his arrest, she has yet to be identified.