Capt. Tony Consalo (fourth from right) and Sgt. Milo Thornton (third from right), both with the Indian River County Sheriff's Office, and volunteer crime scene analyst Robin Pettey (right) peer into an open vault of an unidentified woman who was exhumed Thursday at Winter Beach Cemetery. The body was removed from the vault and was transported to the C.A. Pound Human Identification Laboratory at the University of Florida in Gainesville, which will conduct a study of the body. The woman was found in a ditch on State Road 60 west of Interstate 95 in 1982 and the case has gone unsolved since. (PATRICK DOVE/TREASURE COAST NEWSPAPERS)

By Lamaur Stancil of TCPalm

INDIAN RIVER COUNTY — A Jane Doe unearthed from the Winter Beach Cemetery on Thursday after 34 years underground is in Gainesville, being scrutinized by forensic scientists to see what information they can glean about her, using today's technology.

"We're excited about the possibility of putting closure to this case after so many years," Indian River County Sheriff's Office spokesman Lt. Eric Flowers said.

The Sheriff's Office announced earlier this month it would exhume the body of the woman found in a watery ditch on State Road 60 about 6 miles west of Interstate 95 on Sept. 1, 1982. She had suffered four gunshot wounds and had been in the ditch a couple of days before she was discovered, the Sheriff's Office said.

A work crew from ABC Vault of Fort Pierce arrived at the cemetery before 9 a.m. Thursday and began digging into the unmarked grave in the southeast section of the cemetery. They used machinery to hoist the concrete vault out of the ground. Once the vault lid was open, a sheriff's deputy used a crowbar to pry open the casket. The woman's body was in a black body bag within the casket.

The C.A. Pound Human Identification Laboratory at the University of Florida in Gainesville will study the body. Dr. Michael Warren, director of the lab, had the woman placed into a university pickup and drove it out of the cemetery about noon Thursday. He made the trip from Gainesville to Winter Beach with six graduates students. They did not open the body bag before leaving.

Warren did not give an estimated time for how long his lab will need to study the body.

"They will do their work and, eventually, her remains will be brought back here to the Winter Beach Cemetery and returned to where she had been laid to rest up until now," Flowers said.

The plan is to perform a 3D scan of the skull and have a forensic artist draw a profile of the woman based on that information.

"They'll be able to use new technology we didn't have back in 1982," Flowers said. "We'll get a full demographic background on her as well as her ethnic history and family background."

An artist provided a sketch of the woman in 1982, but that was based on how she appeared after several days of decomposition with her face submerged, said Robin Pettey, a former crime scene technician for the Sheriff's Office. Facial reconstruction should be able to provide a more accurate image of the woman, she said.

Pettey worked for the Sheriff's Office for 15 years, during which time she worked on the Jane Doe case. She's volunteering her time to continue her work on the case.

The Jane Doe was white, 5 feet, 5 inches tall, weighed 130 to 140 pounds and had brown hair. Little else is known about her, but a few details on her body indicate she could still have family members out there, Pettey said. She was found with a gold and silver wedding band and a scar on her abdomen, indicating she had a cesarean section and gave birth to a child, Pettey said.

"Hopefully, this will stir or jog someone's memory," Flowers said.

A truck driver noticed the woman's body along S.R. 60 in 1982, according to the Doe Network, a website that holds a database of unidentified people. The dead woman wore a short-sleeved, pullover terry cloth blouse with gold fringe on the bottom, bluejeans and knee-high stockings, according to the website.

Various forensic and law enforcement tools Pettey used have not led to the woman's identity. There have been no matches for the dead woman's dental imprint or fingerprints. The woman also doesn't match any entries on missing people databases from the time she was discovered.