East Haven Jane Doe Identified
Investigators Have Named the Murdered Teenager Discovered in a Ditch Near Frontage Road as Missing Boarding School Student Patricia Newsom
By Shawn R. Dagle
East Haven police have identified a murdered teenager found in a drainage ditch off Frontage Road nearly five decades ago using genetic genealogy.
Police made the announcement that the teenager – previously known as the East Haven Jane Doe – had been identified as Patricia Meleady Newsom during a press conference at the East Haven Town Hall the afternoon of April 17.
Nearly fifty years earlier – on August 16, 1975 – a truck driver making a delivery to the Bradlees (currently CarMax) off Frontage Road in East Haven discovered the remains of a deceased teenager that had been bound with antenna wire, gagged and wrapped in a tarp in a nearby drainage ditch.
Investigators at the time estimated the teenager had been dead approximately a week before she was discovered. No identification was found with the teenager’s remains and her identity remained a mystery.
Eventually the unknown teenager’s remains were buried in the State Street Cemetery in Hamden in an unmarked grave.
“Although many possible leads developed over the years, she had never been identified and her killer has never been brought to justice. In 2020, discussions began regarding the possibility of exhuming what we now know to be Patricia’s remains at the State Street Cemetery….however, many challenges stood in the way of locating her unmarked grave,” police explained last month.
No longer an operating cemetery the association which once managed the burial ground is also no longer in existence.
Using maps and other records police believed they had determined where the East Haven Jane Doe was buried. When they exhumed the casket however in June of last year they were shocked to learn that the body they had dug up was that of a male.
A ceremony was held for the unknown male’s remains which were subsequently reburied.
Police went back to the drawing board and using ground penetrating radar were able to locate the remains of the East Haven Jane Doe.
Her body was exhumed and DNA samples were able to be obtained from the remains which were later matched to Maryann Newsom Collette – a sister of Patricia’s whose DNA had been entered into a DNA database.
Since discovering Patricia’s identity police have been able to learn new details about her life from her sister Maryann.
“Patricia was born in Idaho Falls, Idaho on June 20, 1957, and relocated to the east coast with family in the late 1960s,” police explained.
Patricia’s mother Elizabeth Ann Clinton (a nurse and graduate of Chestnut Hill Hospital’s Nursing School) died in December of 1968 at the age of 39 from cancer while the family was living in Philadelphia. Her father Herbert – originally from Ohio – remarried and the family moved to Morganville, New Jersey in 1972.
At some point that year it appears that Patricia left to attend an unknown boarding school possibly in the area in or around Monticello, New York according to police.
According to Patricia’s sister Maryann (who wrote about the subject on a Facebook page set up to search for her sister) – their brother recalls writing a letter to Patricia while she was at the boarding school but it was returned as undeliverable.
That year it is believed that Patricia ran away from the boarding school with another unknown female student and was headed to Maine. It is uncertain whether she ever made it there.
“I remember being told that Trisha had run away from boarding school. That was the end of that subject in our household. I found out that our oldest brother had been told the same thing,” Maryann would later write on Facebook.
Eventually Patricia’s father and stepmother divorced and Maryann moved to Ocean City, New Jersey with her stepmother and younger half-brother. However she never forgot about her missing sister and never gave up on the search.
Recently she created a Facebook page about her sister’s disappearance seeking clues about what happened to Patricia.
Then in Tennessee – where she currently lives – Maryann was contacted by East Haven police through the local police department to notify her that they had identified the remains found near Frontage Road as belonging to her sister using Maryann’s DNA that had been entered into a database.
Police are currently looking for the public’s help in identifying the boarding school that Patricia attended. They also are looking to identify the girl she ran away from boarding school with.
There is the possibility that Patricia hitchhiked as was common at the time when she ran away from the school said police.
It is unclear whether she ever made it to Maine nor is her whereabouts between the time she ran away to the summer of 1974 when her remains were discovered known.
“Our investigation is leading us up the east coast from Philadelphia to Vermont. If you have family or friends in Philadelphia, New Jersey, New York, Vermont or Maine, please run this story by them. We are looking for anyone, anywhere who may have crossed paths with Patricia in the 70's. Our goal is to be able to present the likely events that led to her death to her family who have never stopped seeking justice for Patricia,” said police.
While there was a boarding school – St. Joseph’s – in Monticello, New York around the time of Patricia’s disappearance it is unclear whether this is the boarding school that she attended.
A detective from East Haven has discovered the group’s Facebook page and has reached out to see if anyone, frequenting that page who attended the school at the time Patricia may have, remembers her.
It is also interesting to note that there was a girl’s preparatory school in the same Chestnut Hill section where Patricia’s mother attended nursing school in Philadelphia called the Mount Saint Joseph Academy for Young Ladies.
Interestingly Mount Saint Joseph Academy started as a boarding school in the 19th century at the Monticello mansion at Chestnut Hill.
While the school eventually relocated to Flourtown and by the early ‘70s when Patricia might have attended appears to have no longer been a boarding school could she have attended and there have been some confusion with a boarding school in Monticello, New York and this former boarding school at the Monticello mansion in the Chestnut Hill section of Philadelphia near where Patricia’s family lived?
It is also interesting to note that a classified advertisement that appeared in the Daily News in September of 1972 describes a Hillldale Boarding School for children between four to 12 years with a contact address of Monticello, New York. Another ad later refers to children four years and up.
The only known suspect identified by police in Patricia’s case - Glen Askeborn (who was arrested for strangling a woman) reportedly lived just two streets away from where Patricia’s body was found and also had lived in Maine (the state Patricia was supposedly headed after running away from boarding school) with his parents at one time.
There also were reportedly many similarities between the murder in Maine Askeborn had been arrested for and Patricia’s murder. Both victims had been strangled, both were bound and both had gags in their mouth.
Police eventually did interview Askeborn regarding Patricia’s murder but he reportedlyl denied any involvement. It is also important to note that while Askeborn’s parents owned a home in Maine it appears they moved to the area some four years after Patricia’s remains were discovered.
Patricia’s murder remains an open investigation according to East Haven police.
-May 8, 2023
Sources
The Daily News Classifed Ad September 8, 1972
The Philadelphia Inquirer Obituary Elizabeth Ann Clinton December 5, 1968
The Philadelphia Inquirer Wedding Announcement June 22, 1951
The Disappearance of Amy Cave, Pat Flagg, Down East Books, 1990 pg. 256]
East Haven Police