On a warm day in June 1969 in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, 14-year-old Joan Marie Dymond told her family she was going outside after dinner. The brown-eyed, brown-haired teenager, who stood 5 feet 5 inches tall, never returned.
Dymond’s remains were found and identified, Pennsylvania police announced Tuesday. Dymond’s family “deserves to see this come to an end. Capt. Patrick Dougherty, who is in charge of Pennsylvania State Police Troop P, said in a news release, “We’re going to do everything we can to make sure they get it.”
People searching for relics in a trash-filled depression near Dymond’s home found his body on Nov. 17, 2012, on the site of a former coal mine in Newport Township, less than a dozen miles from Dymond’s home.
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Police stated the remains were those of a woman believed to be in her late teens or early 20s who died from “foul play.” The unidentified person, initially named Jane “Newport” Doe, likely died in the late 1960s, according to laboratory results.
After tests comparing the remains to DNA samples in national databases proved inconclusive, the Luzerne Foundation, a Pennsylvania nonprofit, gave Pennsylvania police money to conduct genetic genealogy research at Othram, a private lab in Houston. In March, Dymond’s body was turned over to Othram.
Police said those tests showed the bones could have come from someone in the Dymond family. Then this month, police announced that DNA tests comparing samples from the Dymond family proved Jane “Newport” Doe was actually Joan. Police are now trying to figure out who did it.
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At a news conference, Luzerne County District Attorney Sam Sanguedolce urged people to report even the smallest clues. “You would be surprised how little things can lead to new information that can help us solve a case.”
The Times Leader media group reported on July 3, 1969, that Dymond was last seen wearing a brown blouse with long sleeves and flowered pants, according to an advertisement in the Wilkes-Barre Record newspaper. Dymond had not been seen since June 25 of that year.
Dymond was a “sweet girl,” her sister Suzanne Estock said at the press conference. At the time, Estock was pregnant and she said Dymond was looking forward to becoming an aunt. Estock said she wanted to find the people who killed her sister. “It’s too bad that someone who was so young and full of life was killed.
George and Anne, Dymond’s parents, died in 1984 and 2000, respectively, without ever knowing what happened to their daughter.
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