Justin Sayers

@_JustinSayers

One part of a 47-year-old murder mystery has been cracked, though the bigger crime remains unsolved.

Kentucky State Police on Wednesday announced they identified the remains of a body found along a scenic trail in Harlan County nearly 50 years ago.

In June 1969, a man picking flowers on the side of Little Shepherd Trail on a mountain trail near Cumberland, Ky., discovered the body of a woman who had been murdered, according to a police release.

According to a story in the Courier-Journal on June 9, 1969, Kentucky State Police said the body had several stab wounds, some that penetrated the heart, burn marks on her legs, and about 10 teeth missing. Police described the woman as in her 20s, between 110 and 120 pounds with light brown hair that had been tinted.

Her identity remained unknown until this month when Kentucky State Police detective Josh Howard was able to identify her as Sonja Kaye Blair-Adams using DNA and the National Missing and Unidentified Person Systems, the release said. Blair-Adams was from Letcher County and was 21 at the time she was murdered.

The Jane Doe hadn't been entered into the National Missing and Unidentified Person Systems, a national database designed to assist the public and law enforcement match missing persons with unidentified remains, until 2009, the release said.

Blair-Adam's daughter, Karen Stipes, searched the database and contacted Howard and Harlan County Coroner Philip Bianchi when she realized the remains could be her mother, the release said.

According to the Lexington Herald-Leader, Stipes was less than a year old when Blair-Adams died. She was raised by her grandparents in Letcher County.

She was aware of the story of the woman who had been found on the mountain and knew there was a possibility that the body was her mother. One of her children initially found the database listing in 2009.

Blair-Adams' body had been buried in Harlan County with a headstone that said "unidentified female." Authorities exhumed the body last year, and both Stipes and her children provided DNA samples to compare to that of the body. The sample was sent to the University of North Texas last year and confirmed a match this month.

While police have the identified the woman, they still haven't found her killer. Howard told the Herald-Leader he believes someone took her to the spot near the trail to kill her but has not identified a potential motive.

Anyone with information about the case is asked to contact Kentucky State Police Post 10 at 606-573-3131.

Reporter Justin Sayers can be reached at 502-582-4252 or jsayers@gannett.com.