KERN COUNTY, Calif. — A Jane Doe in a nearly 50-year-old murder case in California, has just been identified as a Fresno teen.<\/p>\n
The Kern County Sheriff’s Office announced Tuesday that the victim has been identified as 15-year-old Michelle Louise Collier.<\/p>\n
Deputies say in June 1978, the remains of an unidentified girl were found in an Arvin vineyard.<\/p>\n
The case went cold after the remains could not be identified through the available technology of the time, which was primarily fingerprints and dental records.<\/p>\n
By 2007, it was discovered that DNA samples had not been collected, leading to exhumation of the body to obtain the sample.<\/p>\n
The collected DNA sample was then sent to the California Department of Justice but no match was made because there was no family DNA in existing databases.<\/p>\n
Deputies say that was until a match was made following a consumer DNA test taken by Collier’s family.<\/p>\n
“We are grateful to finally reunite Michelle with her family after 48 years and to finally restore Michelle\u2019s name and provide her family with long-awaited answers,” the Kern County Sheriff’s Office said in a statement.<\/p>\n
The Kern County Sheriff’s Office says it does not have a dedicated Cold Case Unit but says Collier’s case remains open.<\/p>\n
Anyone with information on this case is urged to contact the Kern County Sheriff\u2019s Office.<\/p>\n
Copyright \u00a9 2026 KFSN-TV. All Rights Reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"KERN COUNTY, Calif. — A Jane Doe in a nearly 50-year-old murder case in California, has just been…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":415960,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[166657,112,114,113],"class_list":["post-416617","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-fresno","tag-166657","tag-fresno","tag-fresno-headlines","tag-fresno-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/416617","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=416617"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/416617\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/415960"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=416617"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=416617"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=416617"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}