The Santa
Cruz Police Department announces a positive identification made in the nearly
20 year old case dubbed “Pogonip Jane”.
Our victim has been identified as Kori Joanne Lamaster. Kori was 17
years old at the time of her death.
The case was
dubbed “Pogonip Jane” when the body of a young female was found partially
buried in Pogonip Park by 2 hikers on January 29, 1994. The victim was not identified and had not
been reported as missing.
The
identification was finally confirmed through fingerprints obtained from the
victim at the time of autopsy. The autopsy prints were matched to a fingerprint
card taken when the victim was very young.
The fingerprint card was held by the family and used for the comparison
to the prints in our case file.
The case was
originally investigated by Butch Baker prior to his promotion to Sergeant. Butch was assigned as the lead investigator
when he worked in the Investigations Unit as a Detective. When Butch returned
to the Investigations Unit after his promotion, he picked up where he left off
in pursuing an identity for “Pogonip Jane”.
Butch commented on how this case continued to haunt him, as well as his
strong desire to bring notification and closure to the victim’s family, whoever
and wherever they are.
Butch never gave
up trying to identify “Pogonip Jane”.
Following his death in February, SCPD Detectives took up Butch’s case
and were determined to bring it to closure. It means a great deal to us to be able to bring one piece of closure to this family, and complete the work Butch started.
Over the
years, Detectives worked with Sheriff’s Office volunteer Chris Smith and tried
a number of strategies to identify the victim.
One of those strategies included the production of a clay model
reconstruction from the victim’s skull.
Investigators hoped to produce a reasonable likeness that might produce
leads. Investigators even generated an
Internet and Facebook page in hopes of generating leads.
A break in
the case came when a familial DNA hit was made in October of this year. Although Kori went missing in 1993, her
family didn’t file a missing person report with the Pacifica Police Department
until 2007. In 2008, the family
submitted a DNA sample to Pacifica Police for their case. The State Department of Justice lab notified
the Santa Cruz Police Department of a possible familial match in October, 2013.
Detective
Bruce Cline went to work contacting the family and trying to track down Kori’s
father to complete the DNA match and identification. Detective Cline was led to a sister in the
state of Washington, who happened to locate a fingerprint card obtained from
Kori when she was a young child.
Detective Cline located a fingerprint card from the autopsy where three
prints were successfully lifted from the badly decomposing body. Earlier this week, Detective Cline was
notified the prints are a match, and “Pogonip Jane” was now identified as Kori
Joanne Lamaster.
Unfortunately,
the story doesn’t end here. The police
department still has an active homicide case we are working. We are looking for information from anyone
who might have had contact with Kori as she traveled through the Santa Cruz
area in and around 1993.
In the course
of our investigation, we identified a father and son who were witnessed to have
traveled with Kori around the time of her death. These individuals were “persons of interest”
in our investigation and remain in that status today. They are Wayne White (father) and Greg White
(son). Greg is since deceased, but Wayne
lives in Tennessee.
We are interested in
talking with anyone who may information about this father and son team,
especially anyone who may have witnessed them traveling with Kori.
