Nelda Hardwick Was Linked to a Deceased Jane Doe 20 Years After She Disappeared, But Exhumation Found Something Surprising

On May 8, 1998, a woman who’d been hit and killed by a vehicle was found near Interstate 10 in Hancock County, Miss. Authorities couldn’t determine her identity, so she was laid to rest as Jane Doe.

In 2013, a judge ordered Doe’s exhumation so DNA testing could determine if she was Nelda Louise Hardwick: a 34-year-old woman who disappeared in Lake Charles, La., in October 1993 after writing a note saying she was going to the store.

Shockingly, the body that was exhumed belonged not to Hardwick, Doe or even a woman—the body belonged to a man.

Jim Faulk, the coroner for Hancock County in 2013, said he began looking at photos of missing women after police in northern Louisiana reached out to him about Doe. When he saw Hardwick’s picture, he was struck by her resemblance to Doe.

There were other similarities between the two: Doe and Hardwick were about the same age and height. Both had brown hair. Neither had pierced ears. Doe had no teeth, while Hardwick had worn a full set of dentures.

Members of Hardwick’s family were certain they’d found her after years in limbo and wanted Doe to be exhumed for DNA testing. They believed Hardwick wouldn’t have willingly left her four children and speculated she might have been abducted.

But exhumation required a judge’s OK, and this approval seemed in jeopardy when some discrepancies between the two women were discussed in court. Doe had scars like ones described by Hardwick’s family, but they were in different locations: one was on her left arm, not the right, and another was below her belly button, not above.

The two women were also listed as having different eye colors, brown for Hardwick versus gray for Doe. However, Katie Thomas, an area director for the Doe Network, a volunteer-run organization that supports agencies working to identify missing and unidentified persons, tells A&E Crime + Investigation, “Details may not always match exactly. Eye color can appear differently than it did in life due to postmortem changes such as through corneal opacity.”

In October 2013, the judge granted permission for the exhumation, saying that even if Doe wasn’t Hardwick, DNA could help uncover her identity. Faulk thought another missing woman, Faye Aline Self, was also a potential match.

Before the exhumation happened, Faulk needed to determine the location of Doe’s casket. This task was complicated by the fact that Hurricane Katrina had washed away grave markers in the section of the cemetery where she’d been buried.

Dr. Jesse Goliath, a professor at Mississippi State University and founding director of the Mississippi Repository for Missing and Unidentified Persons, tells A&E Crime + Investigation that ground penetrating radar (GPR) and soil probing technologies can help map out the locations of burial units when grave markers are lost.

However, Faulk would have needed free GPR services. The coroner instead discovered the Doe Network had a picture of Doe’s gravesite taken days after her burial. Monuments seen in the image, along with volunteer help from a surveyor and a math teacher, made it possible to calculate the grave’s location.

On December 18, 2013, the exhumation took place. A reporter for WLOX News was present as the crew found skeletal remains—but then witnessed these remains be reburied with nothing removed for testing.

Two days later, medical examiner Dr. Mark M. LeVaughn filed a letter with the court explaining the grave had contained the remains of a man who was almost a foot taller than Doe and had no missing teeth.

“There are many steps in the process of burying an unidentified body where it might have gone awry," Dr. Mary Jumbelic, a forensic pathologist and former chief medical examiner of Onondaga County, N.Y., tells A&E Crime + Investigation. "Did the wrong body get released to the funeral home? Was there a mix-up at the funeral home itself? Did the cemetery mislabel the decedent?”

She also suggests they might have "dug in the wrong spot either originally or at the time of exhumation.” Jumbelic notes records can help pinpoint what went wrong.

A&E Crime + Investigation asked the press secretary for the Mississippi Department of Public Safety if Doe’s records were still available, or if an event such as Hurricane Katrina might have destroyed them, but did not receive a response.

Katrina could have played a different role. “The storm surge could have affected the cemetery and shifted/displaced bodies,” Jumbelic says.

Thomas says of Doe, “With no dentals or DNA available and no known location of her body, it will be difficult to ID her.”

The letter LeVaughn wrote to the court in 2013 said that finding Jane Doe would likely necessitate disturbing other remains in the cemetery.

“In terms of locating an unknown burial spot, GPR and soil probing could be used,” Goliath says. “However, it is extremely difficult without burial plot information from the funeral home or cemetery manager/sexton to accurately assess who a person may be if we find an unmarked grave.”

Some hope still exists for Doe, Hardwick and Self. Tara Kennedy, the Doe Network’s media representative, tells A&E Crime + Investigation that public awareness can generate tips and find answers: “Publicity about missing persons and unidentified remains are the best way to keep cases active.”