dude, i really need a new phone. check out my new samsung galaxy s25 ultra. it's got galaxy ai. imagine this thing running on our superfast xfinity mobile network. and i also heard that it can do multiple things with a single command. —with google gemini. let me try it. add recipes with overripe bananas to my “dessert ideas” note. that's what you chose to ask it? i had other things planned. ask how to get up to one thousand dollars off the new samsung galaxy s25 ultra with xfinity mobile. i'm andrea canning, and this is dateline on mynetwork-tv. . she had wood piled on top of her, no identification. kevin lord: we all came together by becoming volunteers to identify jane does and john does.

missy koski: there's a passion trying to find out who our doe is. you think, what if this is your family? you want to give them closure. to us homicide detectives, that's why you the margaret press: i said, "i think i know how we can do it." all of these people share some amount of dna with our unknown person. we thought, this is the family. this is it. surreal. it felt like somebody just punched me in the stomach. it's a funny thing, isn't it, that it would be important to have a stone with your name on it. it is. it's written in stone. you're never forgotten. [theme music] hello, and welcome to "dateline." in many cold cases, a grieving family is desperate to find their loved one's killer.

but this mystery was not a whodunit. the killer eventually confessed to the brutal crime. but who did he murder? that question haunted a small texas town for more than 12 years, until a team of tenacious strangers put a name with a face. here's keith morrison with "the woman with no name." keith morrison (voiceover): here is where they put her, her permanent home. nobody really knew anything about her. keith morrison (voiceover): this little cemetery in east texas, one simple marker on her grave and the name that wasn't a name-- jane doe. it makes it personal. because you think, what if this is your family? what if this could be your friend? keith morrison (voiceover): she, who was she, this impossible enigma? how it is that a young woman can disappear and die

and that no one can figure out who she is? keith morrison (voiceover): the question that kept them glued to their computers. participating in something like this, too, can be almost consuming. it can really drain us. keith morrison (voiceover): the obsession. i was hooked. i was absolutely hooked. keith morrison (voiceover): this is where it began-- october 29, 2006, kilgore, texas. two men out target shooting on oil leased property, not far from town. they smelled it first. then they saw it, something burning. it looked like a mannequin. the men approached. what was that? and then they recoiled. that was a young woman, dead and burning. you know, we have homicides, just like the rest of world.

but, you know, going as far as trying to burn the body really struck fear in people around here. keith morrison (voiceover): lieutenant eddie hope was still a sergeant back then, gregg county sheriff's department. she had wood piled beneath her and wood piled on top of her. and there was, i believe, a gas can lid there. wow. so it looked like somebody was trying to cover their tracks. she was meant to be part of one big bonfire and just disappear forever. right. keith morrison (voiceover): the officers who responded noted every detail they could, that she was young, late teens, early 20s, and she was little, maybe 5'4, 100 pounds. she was wearing jeans, a pale shirt the color of lavender, $44 in her pocket. and this was unusual-- baby teeth. she still had a few. she never lost them. and i said that's highly unusual. well, that would give you something to work with anyway. a little bit. keith morrison (voiceover): other than that, the young woman was impossible to identify.

she had been murdered-- of that, there was no doubt. her last moments had been very bad. but in most homicide investigations, detectives burrow deep into the life of the victim, talk to every friend, interview the family, find out about scorned lovers or past mistakes. that's often how murders get solved. but in this case, none of it was possible. didn't have a clue. what could you do? nothing. if we got tips, ran them down. because i mean, we had no grounds to go on who this could be or where she came from. keith morrison (voiceover): they ran her dna profile. it didn't match any known person-- known to them, anyway. but the autopsy revealed semen in her body. and it did match someone, a known local sex offender. so they pulled him in. and he admitted he had sex that day with a woman whose name he didn't know,

but he didn't kill her. and he had an alibi, too. so that was that. we would get people off the internet. they would say, "hey, i think this might be so-and-so." and we would follow up on that and eventually rule it out. what we were thinking at the time was maybe she's not from around here because nobody's missing her here. keith morrison (voiceover): and so, gregg county paid for a burial plot and for a little marker on the ground above her body. a small headstone that just reads jane doe. there's no other information we knew on her. keith morrison (voiceover): and winter came, but they didn't give up. a texas ranger who sometimes worked with them said maybe he could help. and he was able to fly an artist to try to reconstruct what our victim looked like in real life. keith morrison (voiceover): and here it was. but it produced no leads. the county even made a clay model using an x-ray of the victim's skull, including those baby teeth,

sent it around to local media-- still nothing. and detective work, it's an unending drum that beats at all hours of the day and night, felonies, misdemeanors, the lot, demanding attention. we got cases every day. and, you know, we'd get three or four cases each day, sometimes more. keith morrison (voiceover): they didn't forget her as they went about their work, but the young woman remained nameless, no matter how many trails they followed. it just went on for years. i mean, it's basically all we had. a little bit here and a little bit there, but not much. right. and no solution. no solution, no name. keith morrison (voiceover): and then something unusual happened. the little details, like her baby teeth, caught the eyes of amateur internet investigators on sites like reddit and web sleuths. and before too long, they began referring to the mystery woman

with a kind of shorthand. it was the distinctive color of her shirt that did it. one of those armchair detectives took to calling her lavender, lavender doe. this was a case that was followed online very closely by many people. keith morrison (voiceover): people like this guy. and what happened after that? well, remember what we said about obsession? a murder victim without a name and detectives without any clues, making this a very hard mystery to solve. but help is on the way. coming up. kevin lord: i spent a lot of my spare time looking into missing persons cases. i was impressed that people cared. andrea canning (voiceover): cared and knew how to help. i said, "i think i know how we can do it." and she said, "bingo. all we need is dna." andrea canning (voiceover): when "dateline" continues. this charmin ultra soft smooth tear

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justice. >> the administration. >> doesn't necessarily want to be questioned on any. >> of its policy. >> main justice. new episodes drop every tuesday. msnbc presents a new podcast hosted by jen psaki. each week, she talks to some of the biggest names in democratic politics, with the biggest ideas for how democrats can win again. the blueprint can win again. the blueprint with jen psaki. keith morrison (voiceover): tomorrow and tomorrow, and a decade went by. 11 years after the murder of a young woman they called lavender doe and more than 200 miles from the spot where her body was found, in the town of killeen, texas, a man was feverishly at work, though it wasn't his profession, this work that consumed him-- not yet, at least. i kind of spent a lot of my spare time looking into missing persons cases, really just

kind of trying to flesh out the stories of some of these lesser known cases. keith morrison (voiceover): his name is kevin lord. he is, well, many things-- a former software developer, a t-shirt salesman, a passionate and loyal consumer of all things true crime. he wasn't an investigator or a law enforcement officer, just someone plagued by unanswered questions. i was looking for jane does in the area in texas that might be a match to one of these missing girls. keith morrison (voiceover): and that's how he came across hundreds of pages of online forums about a mystery woman nicknamed lavender doe. could she be one of the missing women he was trying to locate? and so kevin called the gregg county sheriff's department and found himself on the phone with the lead detective on lavender doe's case, lieutenant eddie hope. i was impressed that people cared. because we live in a world where everything's fast paced, and a lot of people are worried about themselves

and not others. and here was evidence that maybe they are interested in others. right. keith morrison (voiceover): some other investigator might have blown off a guy like kevin, just another civilian with an internet connection and a theory. but kevin seemed to know what he was doing. and his internet skills? way beyond what lieutenant hope could do. and before long, though they didn't actually meet in person, they began acting almost like partners. we just flew together. you know, whatever he needed that he couldn't get that i could get law enforcement wise, he would send it to me. you kind of meshed together these bits of information. yes. keith morrison (voiceover): and two things happened. one, kevin realized lavender doe was not one of the missing women he'd been looking for. and two, he got hooked on the case of the girl in the lavender shirt. but he kept hitting dead ends. he needed some specialized help-- very specialized.

i reached out to dna doe project to see if i might be able to come on as a volunteer. keith morrison (voiceover): the dna doe project, a nonprofit founded by a former rocket scientist named colleen fitzpatrick, and a novelist and genealogy enthusiast, margaret press. i barely knew what john and jane does meant. but i had been retired for about a year. i'd come out back to the west coast to be near my daughter and grandchildren and to relax. keith morrison (voiceover): it was winter 2017 when margaret, not the retiring type, was struck with an idea. she'd already been deeply immersed in genealogy, helping adoptees find their birth parents. so-- if i can figure out jane doe's parents, we'll know who jane doe was. keith morrison (voiceover): margaret's plan? obtain remains from jane and john does, retest their dna,

and upload the results to a public database, where maybe that dna would lead them to some relative of their victim. so i had my recipe. and i reached out to colleen, and i said, "i think i know how we can do it." and she said, "bingo. all we need is dna. oh, and i know a couple of people." keith morrison (voiceover): at first, they paid for the dna tests with their own savings. and then they set up a nonprofit and started taking donations. and after just six months, they solved their first case. the mystery surrounding-- keith morrison (voiceover): a few weeks later, another case made headlines around the world, showing the power of genealogy. police arresting a man they believe is the so-called golden state killer. and the suspect a former police officer, discovered using dna. that one did change the world because that was a violent killer. and that was a huge impact on the world, on the community. sure. it opened everybody's eye. yep. keith morrison (voiceover): and suddenly, colleen and margaret

had company. genealogists came out of the woodwork. and i could see us as a very unique organization where law enforcement agencies could come to us with their bones and no money, and we could bring in volunteer genealogists who were begging to help us. what you can bring to this process is a crowdsourced investigation, like, you know, a bunch of bees forming a hive. and disparately, they are not going to do much. but all together, they can really accomplish something truly significant. right, exactly. keith morrison (voiceover): kevin lord was one of those bees. he joined dna doe as a volunteer. and then others followed, kind of mini hive, looking for the truth about a mystery woman they called lavender doe. andrea canning (voiceover): coming up, the bees get busy. we spend hours working together,

talking to each other. lori gaff: oh my gosh. did you see this? and what about this? and where's this? who's this guy? kevin lord: we're kind of the last resort. andrea canning (voiceover): when "dateline" continues. without. >> feeling sleepy. get 0% brain interference for fast non-drowsy interference for fast non-drowsy allergy relief with ugh, weeding is the worst. but now, there's spruce. you'll see visible results in 1 hour, and dead weeds in 1 day. and it's safe for use around people and pets. spruce: the new, hard-working, worry-free weed and grass killer. ♪ it's spruce! ♪ everyone is playing from coast to coast. download quick hit to coast. download quick hit slots for free and get the first time you try bounce, it hits you. your laundry feels way fresher, softer.

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and then buried here in longview, texas. god knows law enforcement had tried every trick in the investigative book, except for a new book, if you could call it that, the dna doe project. a bunch of amateurs really, but committed? oh, yes. it's not that law enforcement has not tried. most of the cases that come to us were kind of the last resort. keith morrison (voiceover): us meaning a group of people who had never actually met in person, who labored away in a kitchen or a bedroom or a basement, who knew each other only online, like lori gaff, a former black hawk helicopter pilot who stumbled on a facebook posting about dna doe. i was completely enthralled. and i-- me being me, had to know absolutely everything there was about it. then i thought, i totally want to be a part of this. keith morrison (voiceover): and was soon addicted. it will consume your life if you let it.

so i've been making an effort to kind of set limits. one hour turns into 10 pretty quick, i would think, right? 10 might be a slow day. this has become an obsession. keith morrison (voiceover): then there was missy koski, a self-described search angel, who had used genetic genealogy to find her biological father. what was that like to find him? it was incredible. it was absolutely incredible. keith morrison (voiceover): so she began helping other adoptees find their birth parents. and one day-- while i was helping an adoptee, that adoptees got a phone call from the dna doe project. and she was told that she was distantly related to a jane doe. i just got intrigued. and i said, "can i talk to them?" keith morrison (voiceover): before long, missy was hooked, too. and the three, kevin, lori, and missy formed a team.

so you're like the three musketeers sitting there together. we spend hours working together, talking to each other almost exclusively online. and we just get in there and blab all day long about, oh my gosh, did you see this? and what about this? and where's this? who's this guy? i can't find this-- whatever. keith morrison (voiceover): back in gregg county, after more than a decade chasing leads on lavender doe, lieutenant hope understood that investigations had changed. eddie hope: genealogy, it's the way of the future. and to us homicide detectives, it's way above our heads, to be honest with you. so you welcomed their help. i did. keith morrison (voiceover): and across the country, someone else had taken notice of the amateur investigators working with dna doe. i like to write about how ordinary people, for example, genealogists are dealing with new advances in dna.

keith morrison (voiceover): sara zhang is a staff writer for "the atlantic magazine." i like the fact that kevin had been so invested in this case. keith morrison (voiceover): passion like that was a story worth following. and she did, watching their process. for one thing, using the victim's skin or hair or blood to generate a dna profile, which they upload to a genealogy site called gedmatch. we get a whole list of dna matches back. and all of these people share some amount of dna with our unknown person. keith morrison (voiceover): it's important to understand that volunteers work with public dna databases. and where does all this dna material come from that you're able to look at? so these are all people who have taken tests with companies like ancestrydna or 23andme, the consumer tests. keith morrison (voiceover): and who have given access to others to view their results. that's a relatively tiny percentage of the population, so the odds of finding an exact match

vanishingly small. but-- just by the pure probabilities, we're often lucky enough to get a decent enough match. keith morrison (voiceover): by a decent match, it means a distant relative, someone who likely doesn't even know the victim. we kind of look for a match that's in the neighborhood of maybe a second or third cousin or so as a good starting point. keith morrison (voiceover): a starting point to work backwards and try to reconstruct branches of the family tree by scouring the internet, mining every possible bit of information from birth certificates to death notices to marriage licenses to social media. keith morrison: where the heck do you find all this stuff? i mean, you must spend hours and hours and hours and hours and hours in front of a computer screen trying to find it. and lots of money. yep. keith morrison (voiceover): the dna doe project made a new sketch. and they put it up online.

they added a paypal button to raise money for that retest of lavender doe's dna. and pretty soon, the online community that followed the lavender doe case answered the call. and within four days, the public had come through and completely funded the testing that we had to do. keith morrison (voiceover): but before they could even get the test sent out, something very unexpected happened. i get a call from lieutenant hope at the sheriff's office saying that he has big news. keith morrison (voiceover): what could that be? andrea canning (voiceover): coming up. i guess i wanted to get this off my chest. i just let him talk. he left no detail out. andrea canning (voiceover): a break in the case and a frustrating discovery. we found that there were 27 first cousins. whoa. where are they? who are their children? are they alive? what can we find? andrea canning (voiceover): when "dateline" continues.

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first responders, military and law enforcement only@gov.com. >> i'm richard. >> louis. >> with the news update. >> haphazard cuts. >> to funding in the. >> federal workforce are. >> sparking outrage at town halls across. >> the country. >> in georgia, citizens demanded congress regain control of spending rather than. >> turn it. >> over to elon musk. >> and his department of government efficiency. >> and the los angeles district attorney saying he does not support. overturning the menendez brothers murder convictions. prosecutors saying eric menendez lacked credibility, telling five different versions of events leading to. >> the deaths. >> of their parents. >> for now. >> for now. >> back to dat welcome back to "dateline." i'm andrea canning. it had been 12 years since the burned body of a young woman was found in an east texas field. she was known only as lavender doe, a reference to her purple shirt. her true identity was a mystery, one that transfixed a team

of amateur cold case sleuths. now a stunning confession was about to send their mission into overdrive. here's keith morrison with "the woman with no name." keith morrison (voiceover): it was hot that texas summer of 2018, the summer the dna doe volunteers spent hunkered down inside, staring at their computer screens, trying to identify lavender doe. but it hardly started when kevin lord got a call from lieutenant eddie hope. a young woman named felisha pearson had been reported missing by her family. she was last seen with a new boyfriend, who told them she left him, just went away. they spoke with her mother. and we learned there was a wooded area inside of longview that he had taken her to before. and that's where we found felisha. keith morrison (voiceover): murdered. there was no doubt about this victim's identity

and no question who the prime suspect was-- her violent ex-con boyfriend joseph wayne burnett. lieutenant hope knew the name, the same man whose semen had been found 12 years before in the body of lavender doe. he was arrested. he was brought into the gregg county jail. sign it for me right here. keith morrison (voiceover): two detectives questioned burnett. he admitted killing felisha. but that wasn't all. he started talking about a girl that he killed and burned several years ago. keith morrison (voiceover): a burned girl? right away, the detectives called eddie hope. keith morrison: you were on your way home at that point. i was already home. that must have been good to hear. it didn't take me long to get back. and that's why i wanted to get this off my chest. i just let him talk. he talked about this 12-year-old murder as if it happened yesterday. he left no detail out. and that's when i reached down there, and i grabbed a rope.

and i put it around her neck, and i tightened it up. keith morrison (voiceover): she never saw it coming, a rope around her neck. it only took seconds. as soon as i choked her, she just quit moving. keith morrison (voiceover): so he had confessed to killing her. but there was something else. personally, i don't know her like a friend. know her name? i think her name was ashley. he thought her name was ashley. he wasn't really for sure of that. keith morrison (voiceover): just a first name, ashley. maybe. but even if ashley was a real first name, it didn't solve the mystery. we had a confession, and we still don't know who this person is. and that just eats you up. i mean, that's not order it's supposed to go. keith morrison (voiceover): despite his confession, burnett pleaded not guilty. justice for a victim still labeled lavender doe in court documents would take some time time, time the volunteers couldn't waste.

that made it a lot more real and put more weight behind what we were doing. keith morrison (voiceover): who was lavender doe? that was what was left at that point. keith morrison (voiceover): lavender doe's those retested dna returned from the lab in october 2018. and the team went to work looking for potential relatives. and just nine days later, they found one, a woman in east texas right near the spot where lavender doe was found. i contacted lieutenant hope. i told them we have this descendant who lives about 30 minutes from where lavender doe was found. i can't tell you exactly how she's related, but it seems like it would be a huge coincidence if she wasn't fairly closely related. this had to be immensely exciting. oh, we thought, this is her-- this is the mom. this is the family. this is it. keith morrison (voiceover): and so, of course, lieutenant hope with a brand new optimism drove out to see her. and he came up empty. the woman had no missing relatives and no idea

who lavender doe might be. keith morrison: it must have been disappointing. it was. like you thought maybe you're on to something, and you weren't. kind of get your hopes up, then you're let down, but yet that had been happening for 12 years. i was so, no, no, no, she's lying. she's lying. this is it. because when you're researching family from another part of the country, and all of a sudden, you find this relative in the right spot in the right place at the right time, it has to be. keith morrison (voiceover): then it dawned on them. the woman wasn't lying, and there was still a chance she could help. kevin had a hunch. perhaps she knew something without knowing she knew it. what did she know? she told us that she did not know who lavender doe was, but she had taken a test herself with ancestrydna. and she would be happy to share her results with us. well, what happened when she did that?

when we compared her dna to lavender doe's dna, we could see that it looked like lavender doe's parent was probably a first cousin of hers. keith morrison (voiceover): and suddenly, they felt close. all they had to do was find the right cousin, the right cousin who might be missing a daughter, a niece, or someone. not so easy. as we started looking and researching every person in this family, we found that there were 27 first cousins-- whoa. --who could have possibly been lavender doe's parent. you think, wow, here's our big break. now all we need to do is find the cousin. and it turns out there are 27 of them? 27. some of the people in the family had had several marriages and several children from each marriage. and so we started with that list. and we had to go through and see if we could

find each of these people. where are they? who were their children? are they alive? what can we find? keith morrison (voiceover): one by one, they pulled on their threads, hundreds of them leading nowhere. and then it was kevin who found it. the texas woman had a distant cousin who lived out of state, a woman she didn't know, had never met, whose name was robin. and robin had a daughter. but when they tried to find her-- she had addresses up until right around 2006 and then kind of just fell off the map and couldn't find her anywhere. keith morrison (voiceover): 2006, what a coincidence. it was the year lavender doe was murdered. andrea canning (voiceover): coming up. i wasn't prepared for the emotion that i had right then.

i couldn't control myself. i remember sitting on the couch and just crying. andrea canning (voiceover): a search ends, and a story begins. we lost track between her and us for about 10 years. andrea canning (voiceover): when "dateline" continues. >> while. >> you. >> sleep. so you wake. >> refreshed for a more. >> productive day. get 24. >> hour. >> hour. >> continuous relief that does. did you know... 80% of women are struggling with hair damage? just like i was. pantene miracle rescue deep conditioner with melting pro-v pearls. locks in moisture to repair 6 months of damage. for resilient, healthy-looking hair. if you know, you know it's pantene. nothing makes a gathering great like eggland's best eggs. they're just so delicious. with better nutrition, too. for us, it's eggs any style.

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if you're coming out here and you can't put a closure to it, you know, you can't end the story yet. keith morrison (voiceover): to help write that ending, he had put his faith in the dedicated volunteers who had spent countless hours trying to give her back her name. by the fall of 2018, they seemed close. dna and genealogy had led them to a woman named robin, whose daughter had disappeared. at that point, we were kind of thinking, wow, this has got to be her. keith morrison (voiceover): except when they tried to find her, this robin person, they discovered she was dead. so they kept scouring the internet. and the robin led them to another relative who, if they were right, would be lavender doe's cousin. they tracked down a number. and lieutenant hope called, asked if any young woman in this person's family was missing. and he said, "i haven't seen her in years." he said, "last we had heard, she ran away from home.

just like she just disappeared." keith morrison (voiceover): but, he said, his missing cousin had a half sister. lieutenant hope called her, too. well, i talked to her several times, and she agreed to send kevin their dna kit. keith morrison (voiceover): which meant sending the half sister's dna sample to the lab and waiting. keith morrison: how long did that take? it took about a month and a half, i believe. that must have been pins and needles. oh, yeah. keith morrison (voiceover): it was a winter's day, late january, when they got the news. it was a match. kevin called lieutenant hope. i was pretty excited. and the whole department was excited. i wasn't prepared for the emotion that i had right then. i couldn't control myself. i remember sitting on the couch and just crying because i was so happy.

but the emotion of all this work, all these countless nights, working all day and all night and trying to figure this out just all came together right then. keith morrison (voiceover): so who was she? who was the young woman who, for so long, had been a sketch known only as lavender doe? here she was, dana lynn dodd. it was dana's half sister, amanda, who had provided that dna sample and then, naturally curious, she looked online and saw that clay model. and i called him back, and i told him, "that's dana. it's dana." what was it like to see that? surreal. it felt like somebody just punched me in the stomach. i was angry that she was by herself. you know, her worst fear came true.

she was forgotten. keith morrison (voiceover): which was the heartbreaking truth amanda revealed about dana dodd. hers was a life of instability, uncertainty, and from the very beginning, rejection. her mom moved out when she was little. one mother figure after another came and went from her life. she was passed around between my dad and his, you know, current wife or current girlfriend at the time. and that's how we lost track between her and us for about 10 years. keith morrison (voiceover): by the time dana was in her early teens, amanda was 23 years old and married and raising a son of her own. and when she heard dana was living not far away somewhere in florida-- i just looked at my husband and said, "this is what we need to do." and he knew it, and there was no questions asked. she moved right into the home. keith morrison (voiceover): after all she had been through, it was almost like a fairy tale, a real home.

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welcome back. police had a confession in the lavender doe murder case. but another mystery remained out of reach, until a team of amateur detectives working closely with police managed to discover the victim's true identity. now the strangers who spent years untangling this mystery realized they had one more mission to complete. here's keith morrison with the conclusion of "the woman with no name." keith morrison (voiceover): for 12 years,

they knew her only as lavender doe, the mystery murder victim with the purple shirt. now they knew her real name-- dana lynn dodd. what a story a name reveals, of an abandoned baby, a rejected toddler whose whole life had been a cautionary tale. her long lost half sister amanda stepped in to help and did help. but then at age 16, dana got a serious boyfriend. that's when the problems started. it's a story as old as time. yeah. oh, yeah. keith morrison (voiceover): so then amanda sent dana to live with her brother, john. i tried to make it where she was always wanted. keith morrison (voiceover): but that boy again. did you give her ultimatum? i did. i did. you know, because-- you know, i told her, do you want to stay with this guy, or do you want a better life? and she's like, "you know what? i love him." keith morrison (voiceover): when that didn't work out either, dana, determined to finally

take control of her own life, decided to get a job. it was with a magazine company, she said, that would allow her to travel, selling subscriptions and other products. john told dana that sounded like a bad idea. in a contest between you and those folks in the magazine, you didn't stand a chance. no, no, because she was wanting to try to do something for herself. so she was trying to prove something. she was just looking for acceptance, anybody that would accept her and take her. and that's what she was looking for her whole life. keith morrison (voiceover): dana was 18 and full of optimism. she would call me every month saying, "hey, i'm in indiana. hey, i'm in cincinnati," for, like, six months. five or six months, she would call me every month. keith morrison (voiceover): it was summertime 2006, when she called him the last time. i told her to come home.

and she said, "no, i want to do this on my own." so that was the last time i heard from her. how long did you talk to her at that time? about an hour. a long conversation on the phone. very, very-- because i tried to convince her to come home. keith morrison: you were begging her to come home. oh, yes, begging her. we will take care of you. keith morrison (voiceover): and then the long silence. where was she? they had no idea. what a helpless feeling that must have been. it was. it was hard. it was very helpless and more so because we didn't know anything about the company. where do you start when you know they're traveling all over the country? keith morrison (voiceover): some of those magazine sales companies are notorious for exploiting their young employees, preying on them. lieutenant eddie hope knows this all too well. it's just a former human trafficking. they take these kids. they promise them a good life.

and once they get them away from home, they're living in seedy motel rooms. and with that comes that you're around the drug dealers. you're around the prostitutes. you're around the pimps. it just kind of puts them into a whole different dark world. keith morrison (voiceover): dark and, in dana's case, deadly. dana met her fate in this walmart parking lot, trying to sell magazines to joseph wayne burnette. that's where he told police he picked her up, took her to this bridge, and killed her. why? he said it was because she stole money from him. impossible to know if that was true because of what he did next. so i took her body, and i laid her out on top of the wood after i soaked the wood in the diesel. and when i saw her on fire, i left. she wasn't trash. she wasn't a piece of trash, like he took upon himself to discard of. and i want everybody, you know, to know who dana was

and who she was as a person. even with her difficult life and her upbringing, and she still had a good heart. maybe it's not the greatest ending. but at least they know. and i guess i go back to the truth. they know the truth. and it just feels good we can hand them that truth. and everybody deserves to know the truth. keith morrison (voiceover): so after 12 years, the investigators, professional and amateur, finally knew her name, knew what happened to her. but it felt unfinished somehow. and so they all made a kind of pilgrimage to see the place with their own eyes. and that was the very first time the trio would actually meet in person. we stay up all night working on the internet and messaging back and forth. but we never met each other personally. keith morrison (voiceover): here, lieutenant hope took them to the walmart and to the cemetery

where she'd been all this time. i think the thing that surprised me the most is that there were already flowers there. the community, over the years, paid attention and didn't forget her. keith morrison (voiceover): they left her their own flowers-- lavender, of course. science writer sarah zhang, who set out to learn from the volunteers, saw their journey to the end. it did strike us there that we were the first people who'd gone to her grave who probably knew who she actually was. lori gaff: so that was extremely poignant, to be able to stand there. i don't know that i can even articulate what that was like. this really, i think, changed us and changed the way we work. changed it how? it makes it personal. because you think, what if this is your family? what if this could be your friend? keith morrison (voiceover): kevin became a licensed private investigator and continued to work with the dna doe project,

still giving back victims their long lost identities. we made a little bit of a dent, but there's never going to be a shortage, unfortunately, of jane does and john does for us to help identify. keith morrison (voiceover): and some are like dana lynn dodd, the little girl abandoned early and often. and though amanda and john tried to help, she was, in the end, abused and discarded, but not forgotten. what do you hope her legacy will be? i'm hoping she knows that-- what joy she brought in our life to me and mandy and our family, my son. that legacy would probably be it, that she was a part of our lives. keith morrison (voiceover): and to those armchair detectives and their partner, lieutenant eddie hope, she was as important as you or me. it doesn't matter what walk of life you come from. everybody's a person. everybody has a mom and dad.

and it's just, that's the way they should be treated. keith morrison (voiceover): in december of 2020, joseph wayne burnette pleaded guilty to the murders of felisha pearson and dana lynn dodd. the relatives of burnette's victims, this has been the last chapter of a very painful book. keith morrison (voiceover): and indeed it was, though by then, amanda and john had found a little solace here in longview, the community that didn't forget. we felt like that was her adopted family. keith morrison (voiceover): which is why they decided not to take her remains back home to florida with them. she will stay here in longview, with her name carved in stone. it's a funny thing, isn't it? that it would be important to have a stone up above the place you're lying down with your name on it. and yet it is. it is. exactly, you never think about it, but it is something--

it's important to have that. because you're never forgotten, you know, that your name is there. it's written in stone. keith morrison (voiceover): lavender doe no longer-- eternally, dana lynn dodd. amanda gadd: some of the people still go by her gravesite and still put flowers and things like that there. and that's what we wanted. because she's part of longview. and she'll never be sent away again. no, she's home. that's all for this edition of "dateline." i'm andrea canning. thank you for watching. [theme music] >> good morning, and. >> welcome to this. >> saturday edition of. >> morning joe. >> weekend. >> it was another busy week in washington, so let's get right to some of the conversations y