The Georgia Bureau of Investigation has finally put to rest a mystery of an unidentified body found in Dade County in 1981.
The previously unidentified black female homicide victim found in Dade County on Sept. 28, 1981 has been positively identified as Patricia Parker.
Parker was 30 years old at the time of her death. Since 1981, the GBI maintained an open investigation into her remains, but over the years the case grew cold.
In 2018, prolific and confirmed serial killer Samuel Little gave the Texas Rangers information about the murder he committed in Chattanooga in the early 1980s of a young, black female. Hamilton County District Attorney’s Office Cold Case Unit Supervisor Mike Mathis searched and did not find any unsolved cases in Chattanooga matching this description.
TOO MANY ADS? GO AD-FREE
Did You Know?: The ads you see on this site help pay for our website and our work. However, we know some of our readers would rather pay and not see ads. For those users we offer a paid newsletter that contains our articles with no ads.
What You Get: A daily email digest of our articles in full-text with no ads.
Mathis contacted the GBI Regional Office in Calhoun, which covers northwest Georgia and borders Hamilton County to find out if any unsolved GBI cases matched this description. It did match the description related to the unidentified remains found in Dade County in 1981.
On December 19, 2018, GBI Special Agent Steve Rogers and Mathis travelled to Decatur, Texas where Little was incarcerated and interviewed him. Little provided investigators with more details that led them to believe the remains found in Dade County were the woman Little had taken in Chattanooga and killed in Georgia.
On March 19, 2019, a press conference was held where the GBI unveiled a forensic reconstruction of the female’s skull asking for the public’s assistance in identifying the woman. As a direct result of that press conference, a family came forward stating they believed the woman was their family member. DNA was obtained from family members and samples were sent to the GBI Crime Lab for comparison leading to the positive ID.
