Pollen May Help Solve 35-Year-Old Murder Mystery

A few grains of pollen might help authorities solve a 35-year-old murder mystery, WKRN reports. According to CBS New York, a woman known as "Buckskin Girl" for the jacket she was wearing was found in a ditch alongside an Ohio road in 1981. She died from wounds to the head, but no one has ever been able to identify her. Now forensic scientists studying particles found on the woman's clothing think they may have some clues.

Pollen found on her clothes shows she spent a lot of time in a region of the Northeast including New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, and Connecticut. But more recent grains of pollen found on the outside of her clothes hint she may have traveled to an arid region in the western US or northern Mexico shortly before her death. And the amount of soot found on her may mean she was hitchhiking or had been hanging around large cities. More tests are being planned to narrow things down and hopefully put a name to Ohio's Jane Doe. (More cold cases stories.)