After 26 years of uncertainty, investigators have successfully identified “Chelsea Jane Doe,” the teenager found murdered in Massachusetts. According to authorities, DNA testing has revealed her as 16-year-old Tiffany Bradley from Pennsylvania.
The grim discovery occurred on November 13, 2000, when police stumbled upon the body in the parking lot of the Chelsea Soldiers’ Home, Suffolk County District Attorney Kevin Hayden reported. “They found a body of an unknown female,” Hayden recounted. “Tragically, she had been severed in half, with her head and hands missing.”
Currently, Eugene McCollom is serving a life sentence for the murder. He confessed to police that he had concealed her head and other body parts in the sand at Nahant Beach. Despite this, detectives struggled for years to determine her identity.
It wasn’t until recent advancements in investigative genetic genealogy allowed the FBI to trace her family and locate her brother, finally uncovering her identity.
Massachusetts State Police Colonel Geoffrey Noble expressed relief at the breakthrough. “We have waited so long for this day,” he said, noting the rarity of knowing a suspect’s identity before identifying the victim.
Suffolk County District Attorney’s office 
“We have waited so long for this day,” Massachusetts State Police Col. Geoffrey Noble said. “It is rare to have a case like this one, where we knew the suspect’s name before the victim’s.”
Bradley’s family had reported her missing at the time to police in Pennsylvania. Investigators believe she was a victim of human trafficking, and met McCollom shortly after arriving in the Boston area. They say he killed her in his room at the Lynn YMCA.
“Her last conversation with her favorite cousin was cut short with her voice trembling, saying, ‘I’ll call you later. I have to go,’” her relative Shakirah Wiggins said. “That call never came and was replaced with 26 years of waiting, wondering why.”
Bradley was an athlete who played on her school’s basketball team and joined the ROTC. Bradley’s aunt, Janet Bradley-Knight, remembered her as “a loving girl.”
“Thank you so much for letting us take her safely home,” she said. “From the bottom of my heart, for not letting my baby be a box on the shelf. I thank you all for your tireless effort.”
“It is totally amazing that after 26 years people care enough to give her a name and return her to her family,” family member Shakirah Wiggins said.
