Washington State Patrol identifies ‘Helen Doe’ as Mollie McCullough, 35 years after I-5 crash
'Helen Doe' killed in I-5 truck crash identified 35 years later
"Helen Doe," a woman killed in a fiery truck crash in Cowlitz County on I-5 in 1991, has finally been identified thanks to a breakthrough in technology, genealogy, and work from Washington State Patrol.
KALAMA, Wash. - For 12 years, Washington State Patrol Detective Sgt. Stacy Moate kept a sketch of an unidentified woman on a bulletin board in her office. The woman had died in a fiery truck crash on Interstate 5 near Kalama in 1991. Investigators knew who was driving. They knew what a witness remembered about the passenger. For decades, they knew her only as Helen Doe.
A witness remembered a woman with long brown hair, high cheekbones, a vest and a feather earring. Those details helped Forensic Artist Natalie Murray develop a sketch. The witness also thought the woman might be Native American, a possibility detectives considered for years.
Then, on Aug. 6, Moate reached a man named Michael McCullough. She asked him a question she had put to other people while working her way through a family tree built from DNA matches.
"Do you know of any female family members that went missing back in the ’90s?" Moate recalled asking.
His answer came quickly.
"Yeah, that’d be my sister Mollie."
DNA testing confirmed that the woman killed in the crash was Mary Ellen "Mollie" McCullough, the Washington State Patrol said. She was 34. Her identification ended a 35-year search for the passenger’s name and gave her family an answer to a question they had been asking since she left with a truck driver.
On Moate’s bulletin board, there are now photographs alongside the sketch.
"So, for 12 years, I just had her sketch up on the wall as a reminder," Moate said. "And I’m very thankful now that we get to put real pictures of Mollie up here."
Her family had spent 35 years wondering where she went. They had no idea she had made it to Washington.
A crash in Washington, a family waiting for word
The backstory:
McCullough was born March 26, 1957, in Cambridge, Ohio. She was the oldest daughter in a large family. She loved her nieces and nephews, horses and the freedom to travel. Her father had been a truck driver, and she enjoyed riding in semitrailers.
"She just moved around," her brother said. "She didn’t like being tied down."
Mollie McCullough (left) and sketch done by the Washington State Patrol (right).
Mike McCullough said the last time he saw his sister was at Christmas in Florida. In 1991, she left home to catch a ride. Her family never heard from her again.
Relatives were unable to get her name added to missing-person lists, the State Patrol said. They grew more concerned when she missed her grandmother’s funeral in 1993 and her mother’s funeral in 1994.
"When we didn’t hear from her, we just figured the worst and kind of accepted it, and we’re hoping for something better, but we kind of knew that was coming," Mike McCullough said.
By then, investigators in Washington had already spent years trying to identify a passenger killed on southbound I-5 near Kalama. On May 14, 1991, two semitrailers collided and a fire followed. The crash killed driver Lester Harvel and the woman riding with him. Investigators identified Harvel. They had few leads to his passenger’s identity.
One of McCullough’s nieces lived in Washington for a time and saw publicity about Helen Doe. She knew her family was of European descent and had no reason to believe her aunt had traveled to Washington, the State Patrol said. She did not make the connection.
An unmarked grave and a new chance at DNA
Dig deeper:
In 2014, 23 years after the crash, Moate and State Patrol detective Greg Wilcoxson reopened the case. Wilcoxson has since retired.
The detectives worked with the Cowlitz County coroner, the late Kathy Taylor, a forensic anthropologist with the King County Medical Examiner’s Office, Crime Stoppers, the Puyallup Tribe of Indians and FOX 13 Seattle’s David Rose to have the remains exhumed. The tribe helped pay for the exhumation, and tribal members performed a blessing. FOX 13 was at the Longview cemetery as crews opened the grave.
Investigators obtained a DNA profile, but it produced no match in the FBI’s national DNA database, known as CODIS. Federal, state, county and tribal law enforcement agencies circulated the sketches. As more missing Indigenous people were entered into databases and DNA testing methods improved, investigators had more records and tools to work with. Still, they had no name.
Moate said she kept thinking about where the woman’s remains were being held while the case remained open.
"It just became important, so important to me because she was in a box at the coroner’s office, right? Just in the back shelf somewhere and that’s just not OK with me," she said. "Everybody deserves to have their name back."
Dozens of calls and one more name on the list
Big picture view:
The Cowlitz County coroner sent a bone sample to Othram, a forensic DNA laboratory. In May 2022, the lab developed a more advanced DNA profile and uploaded it to FamilyTreeDNA. The analysis pointed to Scottish, Irish and English ancestry, giving investigators a different set of families to look at.
Othram’s genealogists and local volunteer genealogist Renee Kerr helped trace relatives and build out the family tree. Some of the matches were consistent with second, third or fourth cousins. Moate worked through the leads as time allowed alongside her active caseload.
"I probably made 60 or 70 phone calls at least, as well as emails and text messages, you know, and a lot of those didn’t go answered, unfortunately," she said.
Four years passed between the new profile and the call to McCullough. On Aug. 6, Moate had already tried a couple of leads without success when she decided to make one more call. Othram’s list identified Michael McCullough as "Reference Tester #11."
Moate introduced herself, explained that detectives were trying to identify a woman who had died in a Washington crash in the early 1990s and told him the DNA suggested the woman belonged somewhere in his family tree. Then she asked whether he knew of any women in his family who had disappeared around that time.
"It just hit," McCullough said. "I just kind of knew. It just sounded like her."
McCullough said DNA his niece submitted to a genealogy database helped investigators make the connection. FamilyTreeDNA allows users to opt in to law enforcement matching. Additional testing confirmed that he was the unidentified woman’s brother.
‘Every Christmas we’d always talk about this’
The answer confirmed what relatives had long feared. It also gave them something they had gone without for 35 years — an account of where Mollie had been and how she died.
What they're saying:
"I think to get closure was really the best thing for us because every Christmas we’d always talk about this," Mike McCullough said.
Moate said she had worried she would retire before finding the woman’s name. She also wondered what kind of reception she would get if she reached the family after so many years.
"Her family had wanted to find her, and they loved her and they were so thankful to finally have answers," Moate said in the State Patrol release. She said the family took some comfort in learning that McCullough had died in a crash.
State Patrol Chief John Batiste credited Moate’s persistence and the work of detectives, forensic scientists and the agency’s Missing and Unidentified Persons Unit. He said following leads in the McCullough investigation also resulted in additional DNA evidence being entered in other cases.
"I am so proud of the work WSP personnel have done on this case and especially the dogged determination of Stacy Moate," Batiste said. "Our detectives and forensic scientists work hand-in-hand with our Missing and Unidentified Persons Unit. They go as far as the evidence will take them and when science allows for rediscovery, they just keep going and never give up."
"The total value of her persistence is incalculable," he said.
In a statement on behalf of the family, Mike McCullough thanked Moate and Wilcoxson, Othram, the Puyallup Tribe and the Cowlitz County community. In his FOX 13 interview, he also thanked the coroner’s office.
"From the bottom of our hearts, thank you for never giving up on Mollie," he said in the statement.
Batiste also addressed McCullough’s family.
"Sadly, in our work, not every case has a joyful resolution," he said. "We wish you all the comfort of knowing how your beloved Mollie lived, and the peace in finally knowing how she died. May this mystery now be over. And may her memory forever be a blessing to you all."
Mike McCullough said the family plans to have his sister cremated and bring her ashes back to Cambridge, where she was born.
In Moate’s office, other cold cases are still posted on the board. She pointed them out after showing where she had put Mollie’s photographs.
"These are other cold cases that we have opened just here in the King County area for the state patrol," she said. "We just have them up here as a reminder to keep working on them."
Local perspective:
Members of the public can see cases seeking funding for DNA testing and genetic genealogy through DNA Solves.
The Source: Information in this story came from the Washington State Patrol, interviews with the family of Mike McCullough and original reporting by FOX 13 Seattle.
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