Missing and Murdered: Shirley Ann Soosay

Published: Feb. 14, 2023, 10:12 p.m.

Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women is an epidemic in the US and Canada that leaves families looking for their loved ones in the dark, without justice, enough recognition, or support from law enforcement in investigating or solving cases in the same way that other non-indigenous cases receive attention.

In 1980, two women were found brutally murdered in Southern California, neither of which could be identified. They were named Jane Doe Kern County and Jane Doe Ventura County. Their cases have gone cold and frigid for 40 years, until attention to DNA and investigative genetic genealogy, and a niece, Violet Soosay, looking for her Aunt Shirley, brought attention to the cases, and eventually identified Jane Doe Kern County as Shirley Ann Soosay.

TW: Sexual assault, murder.

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