Christine Lester (January 4, 1963 - c. May 5, 1987) was a young woman found dead in Madera County, California in 1987.
She was identified in March 2023.
Disappearance[]
Christine vanished after telling her grandmother that she was meeting up with a friend with whom she would hitchhike to Flagstaff, Arizona. Her uncle drove her to meet up with her friend, and she promised him she'd be home by the time he was off work. She was never seen again. Christine was twenty-four and a member of the Navajo Nation, and relatives described her as 'shy' and 'very religious', stating that she left home quite infrequently. The supposed friend who she claimed to be meeting with stated that the two had no plans that day, and had not even known each other. Her loved ones stated that they believed she had not run away, as she left her epilepsy medication behind when she left. A sibling of hers was noted to have received a letter addressed to her around five years after she disappeared from a supposed boyfriend, detailing explicit activities between the two.
Discovery[]
A little more than two weeks after Christine disappeared, the decomposed body of a woman was found by a tractor-trailer driver in rural Madera County, California, just north of the San Joaquin River. The woman wore jeans, a multicolored T-shirt, and white tennis shoes, and was described as 'tall and thin'. Medical examiners later determined that she was likely of Asian descent, about thirty to fifty years old, and had been dead for around thirty days. Her death was a homicide, though investigators declined to release the exact cause, believing it was something they could use to help identify her killer. A statewide bulletin was released by the county, yet they found no missing women matching this description. The case quickly went cold.
Identification[]
In 2020, a new deputy decided to reopen the case of Jane Doe and put in an order to exhume her. Due to ongoing lab backups, a DNA profile was not submitted until this winter. However, in March 2023, the DNA profile from Jane Doe matched the one submitted by Christine's brother, and it was determined that they were one and the same. Her family is holding a funeral procession to escort her remains back to the family plot on the Navajo Reservation, where they will be holding a service for her.
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