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Bejes Jane Doe was a girl whose partial remains were found at the bottom of a pit in the Topinoria Cave in Spain. Her remains were discovered alongside that of an older male. The male decedent would later be identified as a 31-year-old park ranger and Mayor of Sotres, Eloy Campillo Pérez, who was executed by Spanish guerrilla fighter Juan "Juanín" Fernández on 24 April 1945. The remains of the girl, however, were never identified, and Spanish authorities believe her death to be unrelated to Eloy's execution.
Case[]
On 11 August 2018, a group of professional spelunkers tasked with recovering the remains of those killed during the Spanish Civil War or by the regime of Francisco Franco descended a 180-meter pit/shaft in the Topinoria cave system of Bejes, Spain. Once they reached the bottom, they discovered human bones buried beneath mud and debris, with the team recovering a toothless jaw bone and some skull fragments. At the scene, a bullet casing was recovered, and gunshot wounds were observed on the decedent's skull. The remains were identified as Eloy Campillo Pérez. The recovery team soon encountered an issue when reconstructing Eloy's remains as they recovered bones that did not belong to Eloy due to morphological differences and how they couldn't be matched to Eloy's skeleton.
The spelunkers resumed recovery efforts to retrieve the remaining unknown decedent's remains and recovered a partial and incomplete skeleton, with only 18% of the decedent's remains being located. A jawbone with teeth remaining was recovered, and the authorities were able to extract DNA from it. Analysis revealed that she died between 1950 and 1960, with authorities later ruling out any connection to Eloy's death.
It was initially believed that she was a young shepherd or the child of a shepherd who accidentally fell into the cave, likely during winter when the snow covers the entrance and makes it easy to fall inside accidentally. Further examinations conducted by forensic anthropology doctor Fernando Serrulla would dispute the theory that she was a rural shepherd. Stable isotopes in her bones showed that the decedent had a large amount of δ13C in her remains, indicating a diet rich in corn and seafood. Protein δ15N was also found in remains, which showed a diet in animal protein, with Fernando concluding that she lived near a coastal region with her having consumed a diet of fish in life.
The police questioned the residents of nearby villages about if they recalled a girl matching that profile going missing. Although nobody questioned claimed to remember her, the police were informed that during Francoist Spain, small settlements of outsiders would be constructed by themselves on the outskirts of various towns in the area, with most of them coming from other regions of Spain to look for better opportunities in the North with one such settlement being not far from Topinoria. Authorities believed that the girl lived in one of these settlements and were never informed of her disappearance at the time.
Her DNA was entered into the Fénix Database operated by the Guardia Civil. Her DNA was also sent to international law enforcement organizations such as the FBI's CODIS database, although no match ever came up.
The authorities observed another curiosity as, unlike Eloy, the decedent's bones bore no signs of a high altitude impact like would be expected had she fallen into the cave, with the only injuries noted being to her skull, with the head injury having been believed to be have occurred post-mortem or at the time of death. Due to the incomplete state of the remains, the Spanish authorities were unable to determine a cause of death or whether she fell into the cave by accident or was murdered and disposed of in the cave.
Mercedes Campillo, Eloy's daughter, allowed the decedent to be buried in Sotres Cemetery next to her father, expressing that it wouldn't be right to separate them after spending so many years together in the cave.
Characteristics[]
- Dark brown hair.
- Green eyes.
- Suffered from femoral and cranial porotic hyperostosis.
- Suffered from malnutrition.
Sources[]
- El País (Spanish) POSTMORTEM WARNING