Daisy Mae Tallman Heath (January 10, 1958 - August/September 1987) was a woman whose partial skull was found in a remote area near Yakima, Washington, in 2008.
She was identified by Othram in January 2023.
Case[]
Daisy Heath grew up in White Swan, a community on the Yakama Indian Reservation[1]. In her youth, she was known as Daisy Tallman, changing her surname to her father's as an adult.
She was reported missing by her family on October 29, 1987. At that time, they had not seen her for over two months but hadn't reported her absence earlier as it was common for her to leave for extended periods, and her family claimed she had survival skills in the backcountry from hunting and fishing.
Her sister reported that at the time of her disappearance, Heath was struggling with mental health issues that had arisen from the death of her grandmother and infant daughter.
While still officially a missing person, her disappearance was listed as suspicious by the FBI and, in a 2009 report, was listed as a likely homicide. The area where her remains were found in 2008 is off-limits to non-citizens of the Yakama Nation.
She was declared legally dead in 1998, around ten years before the discovery of her remains and 25 years before identification.
Heath at a younger age
Sources[]
- DNASolves
- Daisy Heath at the Charley Project
- Yakima Herald
- Yakima Herald
- FBI Analysis of reservation deaths
Footnotes[]
- ↑ Yakama was spelled Yakima until 1994.