Murder of Sherri Jarvis

On November 9, 2021, the Walker County Sheriff's Office publicly announced the identity of Walker County Jane Doe as 14-year old Sherri Ann Jarvis, who had run away from Stillwater, Minnesota in 1980. Her identification had previously been announced in late September 2021 by forensic artist Carl Koppelman, who had produced several forensic reconstructions of the victim, and who announced that her identity was temporarily being withheld to give her family sufficient time to grieve privately.

The information compiled by the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System states the following individuals were each positively excluded as being Walker County Jane Doe prior to her 2021 identification.

In 2020, the Walker County Sheriff's Office partnered with Othram Incorporated to attempt to identify Walker County Jane Doe via genetic genealogy. Initial attempts to extract usable genetic materials from her remains were unsuccessful, but testing on her preserved tissue samples yielded usable DNA, which was used to generate a genetic profile of the victim and construct a family tree. Through this family tree, living relatives of the victim were identified and located. DNA swabs from these individuals were used to confirm the identity of Walker County Jane Doe in 2021.

In November 2015, the case was officially reopened by the Walker County Sheriff's Office.

In December 2015, a photograph surfaced of a white female, aged approximately 14 years old and 5 feet 4 inches in height and whose other physical characteristics also closely matched those of Walker County Jane Doe. The girl depicted in the image is a possible runaway named "Cathleen" or "Kathleen" who may have hailed from Corpus Christi. This photograph emerged after a brother and sister reviewed a private collection of images taken of themselves—then aged 12 and 10—at a motel in Beeville, Texas in the summer of 1980. These siblings had encountered this girl at the motel in question and recall both that she may have lived with a couple at the time the image was taken, and that she had expressed her wishes to meet a friend from the Texas state prison in Sugar Land. Both of these siblings sincerely believed that Cathleen (or Kathleen) may have been Walker County Jane Doe.

Within the decade prior to Walker County Jane Doe's identification, the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children constructed and released two facial reconstructions of how the victim may have appeared in life. The first facial reconstruction was released in 2012 and the second shortly after the 35th anniversary of her murder. All facial reconstructions were created with the aid of studying mortuary photographs taken of the victim.

The remains of Walker County Jane Doe were exhumed in 1999 in order to conduct a further forensic examination of her remains, including the obtaining of a DNA sample from her body. This second forensic examination of her body revised the likely age of Walker County Jane Doe to be between 14 and 18 years old, with investigators stating they believed the most likely age of Walker County Jane Doe to be between 14-and-a-half and 16-and-a-half years old.

Several forensic facial reconstructions have been created to illustrate estimations of how Walker County Jane Doe may have looked in life. In 1990, forensic and portrait artist Karen T. Taylor created a postmortem drawing of Walker County Jane Doe in which she incorporated an estimation as to the appearance of the necklace she had been wearing. An investigator at the Walker County Sheriff's office has also created a facial rendering of the victim.

On January 16, 1981, the unidentified girl was buried in the Adickes Addition at Oakwood Cemetery. Her burial followed an open-casket funeral, and the cemetery in which she was interred is located within the city where her body was found. She is buried beneath a tombstone donated by Morris Memorials; the inscription upon her tombstone reads, "Unknown white female. Died Nov. 1, 1980." A new tombstone bearing her name, nickname, photograph, and the inscription "Never alone and loved by many" has since been erected.

On November 1, 1980, the nude body of a girl estimated to be between the ages of 14 and 18 was discovered by a truck driver who had been driving past the Sam Houston National Forest. She was lying face-down in an area of grass approximately 20 feet (6.1 m) from the shoulder of Interstate Highway 45, and just two miles north of Huntsville. This motorist called police at 9:20 a.m. to report his discovery.

Jarvis was known as "Tati" to her friends; she had been removed from her home and placed under the state's custody at age 13 due to her habitual truancy and had run away shortly after her 14th birthday. Her final contact with her family had been a letter penned to her mother from Denver in August 1980. In this letter, Jarvis indicated frustrations at being placed in state custody but of her intentions to eventually return home. At this formal announcement, a statement from her family was read, thanking "the dedication" of all who had worked to identify Jarvis and to "provide [the] long-awaited, albeit painful answers" to their questions as to her whereabouts, adding that they take comfort from the fact she has been identified. This statement also thanked those who had visited her grave while she had remained unidentified and emphasized the family's wish for her murderer(s) to be brought to justice.

In 2017, a theory arose that Jarvis may have been killed by the same perpetrator known to have murdered three other females in 1980 whose bodies were also discarded alongside Interstate 45. Only two of these four victims have been identified, and all had been strangled. All four victims have been described by investigators as being "high risk". One of these females, aged between 20 and 30, was located on October 15, 1980 in Houston. She was a black female with possible Asian heritage, and had died months prior to the discovery of her body. A second female was also black; her body was discovered beneath a bridge in Houston in December 1980. She was aged between 16 and 26 years old at the time of her murder.

According to the first witness, the girl—appearing somewhat disheveled—had arrived at the South End Gulf station at approximately 6:30 p.m. on October 31. At this location, she had exited a blue 1973 or 1974 model Chevrolet Caprice with a light-colored top, which had been driven by a white male. This witness stated the girl had asked for directions to the Texas Department of Corrections Ellis Prison Farm. After receiving directions, the girl had left the Gulf station on foot, and was later seen walking north on Sam Houston Avenue.

Sherri Ann Jarvis (March 9, 1966 – November 1, 1980) was an American murder victim from Forest Lake, Minnesota whose body was discovered in Huntsville, Texas on November 1, 1980. Her body was discovered within hours of her sexual assault and murder, and remained unidentified for 41 years before investigators announced her identification via forensic genealogy in November 2021.

A photograph of this girl, plus additional details of her physical characteristics and the circumstances surrounding the caption of this image, exist upon the Facebook page "Who Was Walker County Jane Doe? Sherri Ann Jarvis" This image and details pertaining to its caption are accompanied by appeals to the public to help provide the girl's full name and origins—all of which can be anonymously submitted to law enforcement should the sender wish to do so. Primarily, appeals were made to any individual who attended any elementary or middle school within Corpus Christi in the 1960s and/or 1970s who may recognize the girl in this photograph. Cathleen (or Kathleen) was most likely born in 1966, although her precise year of birth is unknown.