Hillsborough: 1983 Jane Doe finally has an identity

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1983 Jane Doe finally has an identity

Thanks to a Web-surfing sister in Texas, a woman found dead almost 16 years ago in Tampa now has a name.

By SARAH SCHWEITZER

TAMPA -- For years, she was known simply as Jane Doe. Investigators knew little about her beyond the fact her nude body had been found in the parking lot of Floriland Mall on a summer day in 1983, the victim of a homicide.

But recently, with the click of a computer button in Gun Barrel, Texas, the mystery was solved.

Last January, police say, Sharon Hawkins was surfing the World Wide Web at her home in Gun Barrel, near Dallas, when she landed at the Web site for the Missing Children Help Center.

Scrolling through pictures of missing kids, she came upon one that looked ever so familiar. And then she read the description: a teenager with burn marks on her hands and thighs who had been found dead in Tampa in July 1983.

Her own sister had suffered burns in a fire when she was a toddler. Hawkins knew immediately it had to be her: Vickie Renee Newton Wilke.

Hawkins notified the Missing Children Help Center, which notified Tampa police. Soon, a hunt was on for verification. Hawkins said her sister had no dental records and no fingerprint records, so police sent a touched-up photograph of the homicide victim to Hawkins. Sure enough, the image matched with memories of her sister, who she had not seen since January 1982, when Wilke hitchhiked to Florida at age 17.

In a strange coincidence, the man responsible for Wilke's death had a revelation of his own just months after Hawkins' discovery.

Vincent Quevedo, 34, had been arrested and charged with the murder in 1983. Police say he killed her by holding his hand over her mouth and suffocating her. After pleading guilty to manslaughter, he was sentenced to probation, and a short time later, he violated his probation. A warrant was issued for his arrest, but he wasn't found -- until two weeks ago.

On April 15, for reasons that are not clear, Quevedo turned himself in to authorities at Tampa police headquarters. He is being held at Hillsborough County Jail on no bond for violating his probation.

"It was a very weird thing. We ID her in 1999 and he turns himself in in 1999," said Detective Henry Duran.

The medical examiner had confirmed that the woman was Wilke, and paperwork to change her death certificate was nearly complete, when Quevedo turned himself in. Police decided to make the discovery of her name public on Wednesday.

For the Hawkins family, the identification meant the end of a long chapter that they had long suspected would not have a happy ending.

"When I talked with them, they told me this meant finally having closure," Duran said.

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