SAN ANTONIO – Her charred remains discovered along South W.W. White Road last August, the Bexar County Sheriff’s Office is asking, “Do you know this woman?”
By releasing a forensic drawing of the unidentified murder victim, spokesman James Keith said that investigators are trying to bring justice to anyone who might have known her.
“But to do that, we have figure out who she is,” Keith said.
He said the initial call was for a grass fire in the area.
“They quickly realized that this was a woman whose body had been set on fire and dumped on the side of the road,” Keith said.
He said with little to go on, and in hopes of generating leads, investigators at first released photographs of the jewelry recovered at the scene, along with a distinctive T-shirt like the one the victim was wearing.
The black shirt had lettering that read “Lucky Bamboo Tattoo. Layton, Utah.”
Keith said the Sheriff’s Office even tried asking for leads in Utah, but with no luck.
He said they also had little response to the jewelry and T-shirt photos.
But Keith said that could change now that the public can see the woman’s face based on her skeletal remains, photos taken at the scene and the skills of forensic artist Becky Cooper.
“Unless you have that face, those eyes, that human appearance, it’s really hard for people to put two and two together,” Keith said.
Yet Dottie Laster, executive director of the Heidi Search Center, said she quickly saw similarities between the victim and Wendy Martinez, who was 24 when she disappeared in 2009.
The center’s walls are lined with photographs of the missing.
“So when I saw this sketch, I ran out here and got her flyer. I said, 'It’s possible,'” Laster said.
She said Martinez’s family was unsure, but her eyes and lips are similar, except Martinez had a small mole on her upper lip. Laster said last summer’s victim had a piercing.
Laster said the Sheriff’s Office contacted her last August when the body was found, but she didn’t realize the possibility existed until after she saw the forensic drawing.
“We’re hoping it’s someone who's missing and not somebody that had been off the radar to begin with," Keith said. “The scary part is she died (in) a senseless, tragic way, a horrific way. Somebody is capable of doing that and they’re still out there.”
Anyone with information on the woman’s identity or the case itself is urged to call the BCSO homicide detectives at 210-335-6070 or 210-335-TIPS.