Tammy Jo's high school friend started journey to her ID

In the summer of 2013, Laurel Nowell began to wonder what became of her high school friend, Tammy Jo Alexander.

She had not seen Tammy Jo since the 1970s, when the two were teens. As 15-year-olds, they had gotten in trouble together — not always minor-league trouble, but trouble that included running away and hitchhiking from their Florida homes to California.

"We ditched school a lot," Nowell said in a telephone interview from her Phoenix home. "We were just crazy, a little like hooligans.

"She was pretty outgoing. Me, on the other hand, I'm not outgoing."

What Nowell did not know in 2013 was that Alexander hadn't been seen by her family and friends since 1979. But Nowell's curiosity about her friend and an insistence to find her were the initial steps that led to the realization this year that a girl found slain in Livingston County in November 1979 was 16-year-old Tammy Jo Alexander.

In fact, had it not been for Nowell's curiosity, it's possible that the Livingston County "Jane Doe" — called "Cali" because she was found fatally shot in Caledonia — still might be unidentified.

"Without her, Caledonia Jane Doe would still be a Jane Doe," said Pamela Dyson, Alexander's sister.

Looking for a friend

In 2013, Nowell, who worked in the accounting field, was out of work, giving her time to explore the Internet and do what her family and friends were doing — join Facebook.

Online, she stumbled across postings from a man who attended the same high school as Nowell and Alexander. He wondered what had become of Alexander.

"He had been looking for her," Nowell said. "I called him. It just made me want to search more."

She continued to traverse the web for more information, eventually finding an obituary for Alexander's mother that reported Tammy Jo as deceased. Yet, try as she might, Nowell, a genealogy buff, could find no record or information of Alexander's death or burial location.

"I don't know why whoever put that obituary in included that unless they just wanted to write her off," Nowell said.

But the obituary did help her locate Dyson. From her, Nowell learned that Alexander had vanished in 1979. Dyson said she had always been told that the police were aware of Alexander's disappearance.

"We always thought she was being looked for," Dyson said. "(Nowell) took it upon herself to dig deeper."

Nowell could not find any record of Alexander's disappearance, and tried to get the information plugged into the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System, or NamUs, which is operated by the U.S. Department of Justice.

NamUs wanted a police report, so she contacted police in Brooksville, Florida, where she and Alexander had lived.

"Of course they thought I was a lunatic and they blew me off for a month," she said. However, working with Dyson, she was eventually able to get a report generated about Alexander's disappearance. Police could find no such report from 1979.

The information was posted on NamUs, and, shortly thereafter, a California resident, Carl Koppelman, saw the report and considered Alexander a match with photos he'd seen of "Cali." Koppelman is a member of Websleuths.com, a network of online volunteer investigators who pore over reports of missing persons and dead bodies that are unidentified.

Koppelman contacted Nowell and others, then they reached out to the police. A DNA comparison with Dyson provided the proof that "Cali" was Tammy Jo.

Lingering questions

Now, Nowell wonders just how Alexander ended up in New York.

Nowell had never run away before, until she joined Alexander hitchhiking across the country. One trucker finally told them they needed to go home, and had them call their parents.

Nowell's family paid for the two of them to fly home. Alexander's family, as Nowell remembers, did not seem overly concerned.

"Her parents just said, 'You can stay for all we care.' "

Only later, Nowell said, did she realize that Alexander was living in a turbulent and troubled household, and escape sometimes seemed the best option.

"Running away was not something I had ever done," she said. "It must have been something she was used to because she had such a bad family life."

Nowell said she can't imagine that Alexander would have traveled to New York in 1979 with someone she did not know. Alexander had wanted companionship and friendship when the two traveled cross-country.

"We were together when we went to California," she said. "How in the world did she end up (in New York) alone?"

The last time Nowell saw Alexander was their final day of 10th grade. Nowell's parents then moved to New Mexico. Nowell said the move was, in part, to help her find new friends from more stable households with more settled lives.

"I almost wish they had stayed in Florida," she said. "In a way, I feel like I abandoned her."

She hopes to attend the June 10 event when a new headstone is unveiled at Alexander's burial site in Livingston County. Friends are trying to raise money for the trip through a GiveForward campaign.

"That's very important to me. I would like to touch that tombstone. I would like to touch that area."

GCRAIG@DemocratandChronicle.com

To help

Friends and family of Tammy Jo Alexander are trying to raise money for Laurel Nowell to travel to western New York on June 10 for the ceremony at the new headstone for Alexander.

The fundraising campaign can be found at bit.ly/1BscbWQ.