Episode 145 Doe: ID 'Singer Island Jane Doe' Susan Poole’
On June 16, 1974, a man and his two sons were searching for driftwood on Singer Island in the Burnt Bridge area of North Palm Beach, Florida when they found human remains. Investigators descended on the area and found more of the skeletonized remains along with tattered and weathered pieces of clothing. There was no ID with the body, and police would face an uphill battle identifying the remains which were thought to be those of a young woman or teenage girl between the ages of 14 and 25. It was believed that the girl had stood between 4ft11 and 5ft'2 tall, and that she weighed between 83 and 103 pounds. Police found evidence that she had been tied to a tree, leading them to believe that she was likely the victim of a homicide. With not much to go on, the case of the girl that would become known as 'Singer Island Jane Doe' went cold.
Although police didn't know who their victim was, they thought they knew who killed her; a vicious, and sadistic serial killer and predator named Gerard John Schaefer. Schaefer worked as a sheriff's deputy for the Marin County, FL sheriff's department, and he had murdered and attacked several women and young girls in the area where Singer Island Jane Doe had been found. If Schaefer did indeed kill Singer Island Jane Doe, he took his secrets to the grave after he was murdered by a fellow inmate whil in prison.
In 2022, after the Palm Beach County sheriff's office teamed up with Othram Labs to perform genealogy on the DNA from Singer Island Jane Doe, they finally learned who she was; Susan Gale Poole. She had been reported missing from her Brower County trailer park in December, 1972 when she was 15 years old. Police are confident that she's the victim of Gerard John Schaefer, and in fact, he was responsible for the murder of another girl that lived in the same trailer park as Susan. Although it will likely never be established how she crossed paths with her killer, her family is relieved to have her remains so that they could give her a proper farewell.
'Singer Island Jane Doe' has her name back now; it's Susan Poole, and this is her story.
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