In a quiet breakthrough that brings a long‑awaited name to a cold case, the remains of a woman found in La Vergne, Tennessee, in 2007 have finally been identified as 40‑year-old Mary Alice Maloney. She was a Hartford, Connecticut native who had been living in the Nashville area when she disappeared, and the confirmation comes thanks to the volunteer sleuths at the DNA Doe Project.
Mary Alice Maloney’s skeletal remains were discovered on November 14, 2007, by a police officer in a remote, wooded area off Hollandale Road. Her body was found without any clothing, but investigators noted jewelry — two bracelets and a ring — that later became key pieces in her identification.
At the time, police estimated her age between 25 and 49 and believed she may have died in the spring or summer of that year. Based on the forensic analysis, she was believed to be African American or multiracial. The cause of her death, according to additional sources, was later determined to be a gunshot wound to the back of her head — a homicide.
After years of dead‑ends, the La Vergne Police Department asked the DNA Doe Project for help. The nonprofit, which works pro bono to identify John and Jane Does using genetic genealogy, faced significant challenges — Maloney’s DNA was severely degraded, making the standard testing difficult. Still, the team persisted. With careful lab work, they were eventually able to build a usable DNA profile and uploaded it to GEDmatch Pro and FamilyTreeDNA.
The breakthrough came in April 2021, when a match popped up in GEDmatch. Though distant, the relative was enough for the team to map out Maloney’s ancestry — revealing roots in Puerto Rico alongside her African American heritage. More genealogical digging connected her to relatives, including one who had married her father, and investigators pieced together her life story.
Once the family tree was built, the La Vergne Police Department was able to confirm the long-suspected truth: the Jane Doe found in 2007 was indeed Mary Alice Maloney. For her loved ones, it was a bittersweet moment — closure at last, but after nearly two decades of questions.
In a statement, the DNA Doe Project thanked everyone who helped make the identification possible: the La Vergne Police Department, labs like HudsonAlpha Discovery and the University of North Texas, Kevin Lord, and the teams at GEDmatch and FamilyTreeDNA. Jenny Lecus, the project’s team leader, reflected on the hurdles they face in such cases: “Our work is often complicated by the lack of people who have uploaded their DNA profiles to the public databases we can use for our cases.”
The identification of Mary Alice Maloney underscores how powerful genetic genealogy can be — not just to bring names back to the nameless, but to give families the dignity of answers. It may have taken 18 years, but her story has finally been told, and her name has come home.
