The Clark County Medical Examiner’s office has confirmed the identity of a woman whose body was discovered 17 years ago.

The Medical Examiner’s Office recently identified Donna Lee Swindell as the unidentified person found in Hazel Dell on Nov. 6, 2004. Swindell was 57 years old at the time of her death. The cause and manner of her death are undetermined.

Randon Walker was a homicide detective with the Clark County Sheriff’s Office when Swindell’s body was discovered. Walker worked the case as a detective, but lost hope that the woman would be identified after exhausting all leads and technology available at the time.

But late last month, now working as a death investigator for the Medical Examiner’s Office, Walker notified Swindell’s family that remains discovered 17 years ago were those of Swindell.

“It was gratifying and sad,” Walker said. “Sad that it had been this long.”

As a homicide detective, Walker had little to go by. He knew the woman’s approximate height, and that she was Caucasian and about 45 to 55 years old. DNA from the remains didn’t match any reference samples in the FBI’s DNA database. Walker chased leads, but everything led to a dead end.

In May 2018, Walker left the Sheriff’s Office and joined the Medical Examiner’s Office. One year ago, he was assigned the cold case. Within minutes, he recognized the case as one he first investigated more than a decade earlier.

The Medical Examiner’s Office submitted a DNA sample from the remains to Bode Technology, a DNA technology laboratory in Virginia that also provides forensic genealogy services. The genealogist used the DNA from the remains to predict the unidentified person’s ancestry and compared it to individuals in online genealogy databases. The genealogist found an ancestral link to two brothers and compiled a long list of people who could potentially be the parents of the unidentified woman.

Walker spent months eliminating hundreds of names from the list, carving out time to work on the cold case in between current cases. The rising number of deaths in Clark County has outpaced population growth and left investigators with less time to work on cold cases. From 2010 to 2020, the number of deaths investigated by the Medical Examiner’s Office increased by 59%, while the county’s population increased by 17%.

“Anytime I had a moment, anytime I had a lead to run down, I was trying to reunite this woman with her family,” Walker said.

Walker used government search engines, public ancestry websites, marriage records and death certificates to narrow his list of names. Finally, he came to Donna Lee Swindell. He learned all activity linked to her social security number had stopped a couple of months before the unidentified body was discovered and her driver’s license hadn’t been renewed after November 2004.

Walker tracked down potential family members living in Lane County, Ore. and enlisted the help of Dr. Jeanne McLaughlin, a professor at University of Oregon who assists the state of Washington with forensic anthropology. McLaughlin collected a DNA sample from a family member on behalf of the Medical Examiner’s Office for comparison. On Nov. 24, Walker received confirmation: the unidentified woman discovered in 2004 was Donna Lee Swindell.

After 17 years and significant advances in DNA processing and comparison technology, Walker was able to return Swindell to her loved ones.

“Everybody deserves the human dignity of being cared for and returned to their family,” he said.

Additional information:

The National Missing and Unidentified Person System, or NamUs, is a national information clearinghouse and resource center for missing, unidentified and unclaimed person cases. Medical examiners use NamUs to help resolve unidentified person cases, and law enforcement uses NamUs to resolve missing person cases. Family members of missing persons can enter information about their loved ones into NamUs and can search the system for reports of unidentified persons. Clark County currently has information about three identified people in NamUs. Learn more on the NamUs website.