Lolly Chavez

Lolly Chaves
Name	Eulalia Mylia Chavez
Sex	Female
Age	26
Missing from	Palo Alto, California
Disappeared	mid-1970s
Discovered	September 6, 1986
Location	Summerfield, Illinois
Identified	2007
Span	21 years
Cause of death	Strangulation

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Eulalia Mylia "Lolly" Chavez is a transient runaway who was found murdered on September 6, 1986 in Summerfield, Illinois and identified in 2007. She is possibly a victim of serial killer Larry DeWayne Hall.

Early Life

Eulalia Chavez was born in 1959 in Costa Rica. At some point in her life, she and her brother were adopted by a woman named Sonya Wilcomer and were living in Palo Alto, California when Chavez disappeared. Wilcomer, who died in 2011, last saw her foster daughter in the mid-1970s and for years would receive nightly, sometimes disturbing, phone calls from people who claimed to see Chavez in various states. Chavez was known to hitchhike across the country to see her favorite bands and gave birth to a daughter named Kate. Kate has no memories of her mother.

Case

On September 6, 1986, the body of a young woman was found nude, strangled, and sexually mutilated a day after her death in a cornfield near Summerfield, Illinois by a farmer. A now-deceased police officer who was at the scene recalled finding bags of her items, which included a set of silverware and a salt and pepper shaker. The unidentified woman became known to locals as "Summerfield Jane Doe," and was buried in the Mount Hope Cemetery under a gravestone that said "Jane Doe: Known Only to God".

In 2007, the unidentified woman's body was identified as being "Lolly" Chavez's after fingerprints from an arrest record matched. After her family was informed of her death, Wilcomer had Chavez's body donated to the University of Tennessee for research purposes.

After confessing to Chavez's murder to a St. Louis television reporter via letter, serial killer Larry DeWayne Hall became the prime suspect. Hall is speculated to be responsible for the disappearances up to forty-five women during the 1980s and 1990s. Many of Hall's speculated victims were young women that were sexually mutilated, like Chavez, and/or found near Civil War memorials. He is currently incarcerated at a North Carolina federal prison for the 1993 kidnapping and murder of Jessica Roach. DNA evidence at the crime scene proved to be inconclusive against Hall's DNA. However, it was admitted that regardless of whether the DNA matched or not, Hall would not have been charged with Chavez's death as he will spend the rest of his life in prison and the death penalty no longer exists in Illinois.

Sources

• Lolly Chavez at Find a Grave
• Radford University article on Larry DeWayne Hall
• Belleville News-Democrat
• The Dispatch-Argus
• The Indiana Lawyer
• Fox 2 Now