Patricia Parker was identified in 2020 as the woman whose skeletal remains were found in a wooded area of Dade County, Georgia, on September 28, 1981. For nearly 40 years she had been a Jane Doe; the discovery of her identity brought relief to a son who had long feared his mother had abandoned the family.

The identification followed confessions by Samuel Little, who, while imprisoned in Texas, told investigators about killing a young Black woman he had met at a nightclub on 9th Street in Chattanooga in the early 1980s. Little said he drove the woman to a secluded road, strangled her and rolled her body off an embankment. The Georgia Bureau of Investigation compared those details with the 1981 remains, commissioned a forensic skull reconstruction released in March 2019, and then confirmed a DNA match with samples from Parker’s son.

Samuel Little confessed to the killing. He was already serving multiple life sentences; it was reported a trial for Parker’s death was unlikely and a plea agreement was more probable. Did anyone who knew Patricia in Chattanooga in the early 1980s see her at the 9th Street nightclub or remember her disappearance?