Bonnie Houston, a woman whose dead body was found almost three decades ago, has been identified. According to Action News 6 Philadelphia , the body of Bonnie Marie Houston was found in a large blue gym bag in 1988, two years after she went missing. A DNA sample taken from the victim’s family now confirms that the remains belong to the missing woman.
The body was originally found by a couple who had stopped to see an animal near a swamp in Georgia. Instead, they found the gym bag with the dead woman’s remains inside. The condition of the body showed that the young black woman had her hands tied with a nylon cord. No other explanation of the cause of death was given.
During the investigation, it was determined that the victim had been in another location and transported to the swampy area in Georgia.
Police say the victim was last seen alive in 1986 in Virginia, where she had once attended college at Norfolk State University. When she disappeared, no one in her family reported her missing. The Georgia Bureau of Investigation released the following statement regarding the case, according to PilotOnline .
“‘Information developed through the investigation strongly suggests that Houston was murdered in Norfolk, Virginia in 1986 and those remains were transported to Oglethorpe County, Georgia where they were hidden in the swamp area,’ the release states.”
When the remains were found in Georgia in 1986, the DNA profile was saved. The case came to the attention of the police for the first time in 2013, when a family member of the victim came forward to file a police report and to inquire about the case. Today, the Bonnie Houston file is still considered a missing person’s case as investigators try to ascertain what happened to her.
“Right now we are trying to piece together a puzzle and now that we have a body we have to determine whether a crime occurred. We just don’t know.”
There were very few articles written in 1988 about the finding of the body. One article written by The Atlanta Journal Constitution gave a few more details than the press statement released by the Georgia Bureau Of Investigations a few days ago.
According to that article and the information input into a missing person’s database, police had estimated that the deceased woman had died during the Spring of 1987, and the woman, who appeared to be in her 30’s, was either black or biracial.
The details also say that the woman appeared to have lived a hard life based on the condition of her body, which was severely injured three to six months prior to death.
Inside the gym bag was a woman wearing Jordache blue jeans and Nike tennis shoes. There was a dress inside the bag.
[Photo Credit: Twitter]