'Helen Doe' killed in I-5 truck crash identified 35 years later

For 35 years Washington State Patrol detectives knew her only as Helen Doe. She died in a fiery truck crash in Cowlitz County on I-5 in 1991. We were there more than a decade ago when her remains were exhumed to build a DNA profile. But it wasn't until recently that technology, genealogy, and good old-fashioned police work would finally solve the mystery. Helen Doe is Molly McCullough and her family had no idea she had ever made it to Washington. For 12 years, I just had her sketch up on the wall as a reminder, and I'm very thankful now that we get to put real pictures of Molly up here. For Detective Sergeant Stacey Mote, giving up on trying to identify Helen Doe was never an option. It just became important, so important to me, because she was in a box at the coroner's office, right, just in the back shelf somewhere, and that's just not okay with me. I just don't think that, I mean, everybody deserves to have their name back. On May 14, 1991. Two semis collided on southbound I-5 near Kalama. The crash and fire killed driver Lester Harville and the woman riding with him. For decades, investigators couldn't tell her family she was the passenger. Witnesses thought she might be Native American, based on her clothing and jewelry. So forensic artist Natalie Murray created this sketch in hopes someone would recognize her. For years, her body lay in an unmarked grave in Longview. Then, in 2014, the Puyallup tribe helped pay to exhume her remains, and tribal members performed a blessing. The Cowlitz County coroner sent the bones down to their lab with Othram, and they did the DNA testing, and they started just building the family tree. It showed Helen Doe was not Native American. She was white. Genetic genealogists at Othram Labs found her distant relatives. That gave Detective Sergeant Mote a long list of people to call. I probably made 60 or 70 phone calls, at least, as well as emails and text messages. You know, and a lot of those didn't go answered, unfortunately. On August 6th, she made one more call. Mike McCullough answered. And I said, do you know of any female family members that went missing back in the 90s? And he just simply said, yeah, that'd be my sister, Molly. It just hit. I just kind of knew, because it just sounded like her. For years, they'd wondered where she'd gone. That phone call finally brought the two searches together. Helen Doe was Mary Ellen McCullough. Her family called her Molly. I think to get closure was really the best thing for us. Because every Christmas, we'd always talk about this. Mike describes his sister as independent, always on the move, and happiest on a horse. But she really was a free spirit, wasn't she? Oh, yeah. Yeah, she just moved around. She didn't like being tied down. He says the last time he saw Molly was at Christmas in Florida. Then she missed their grandmother's funeral and their mother's. When we didn't hear from her, we just figured the worst and kind of accepted it. And we're hoping for something better. I kind of knew that was coming. The break in the case came from DNA his niece had put into an ancestry database like FamilyTreeDNA.com. The site allows you to check a box giving law enforcement permission to use it. You've got to do your DNA because if you have somebody missing, that's the only way you're going to find them. Mike says he's grateful to the State Patrol, the Puyallup Tribe, the coroner's office, and especially to Detective Sergeant Mote for never giving up on his sister. It was just important that I did everything I could to find out who she was and make sure that her family knew where she'd been. She says she hopes identifying Helen Doe will give hope to other families of missing loved ones. These are other cold cases that we have open just here in the King County area for the state patrol that we just have up here as a reminder to keep working on them. So the work goes on. Mike says they are planning on having Molly cremated and will take her back to Cambridge, Ohio, where she was born. And one other thing I learned is that the public can donate to help Othram Labs and law enforcement identify more remains. Go to our website, Fox13Seattle.com, for the link to see the list of all their cases.