Teen identified 30 years after body found. Now Indiana cops want to find her killer
Nearly 30 years ago, a local farmer found the body of a 17-year-old girl who had been dumped off an Indiana interstate.
Unable to identify Jane Doe, the case went cold, according to the Boone County Sheriff’s Office. But the department didn’t give up hope in someday being able to bring her justice.
Meanwhile, the teen’s family in Toledo, Ohio held out hope that their “Maggie” would someday be found safe, according to the Indianapolis Star. That was until the sheriff’s office identified Jane Doe earlier this year.
Margaret Ann Sniegowski Jr. was killed before she was found by that farmer on May 3, 1992, the sheriff’s office said in an April 13 news release. And now the sheriff’s office wants to find her killer.
“When Maggie was found, she was found one month prior to her 18th birthday,” Sheriff Mike Nielsen said in a news release. “This case has been personal and close to me since that day we found Maggie almost 30 years ago.”
When he became sheriff in 2015, Nielsen says he committed to identifying Jane Doe.
“This case was one of the first violent offenses that I was involved in and has stayed close to my heart over the years for many different reasons,” he continued.
‘She was not trash’
Maggie was a high school student when she was killed, the Indianapolis Star reported, and had seven older siblings. Family says they are not sure how she ended up dead over 200 miles away from home.
“She was not trash,” brother Lenny Sniegowski said at a news conference, according to the newspaper. “She was a beautiful, loving, funny, upbeat person who didn’t deserve this.”
For several years after Maggie’s body was found in 1992, authorities say they made several failed attempts to identify her.
After Nielsen became sheriff, he had her body exhumed “because of the emerging DNA technology that has occurred almost every year since her death.”
It wasn’t until October 2020 that the sheriff’s office partnered with Othram, a laboratory that helps law enforcement with DNA identification.
The skeletal remains were sent to the company for a DNA extraction in February 2021, officials said, and in May 2021, two individuals provided a donation to help solve the case.
By September 2021, Othram had enough DNA to upload a profile into a genetics genealogy database, according to the news release.
Officials got a potential match in November of that year.
23andMe was key
One of Maggie’s sisters had sent in her DNA to 23andMe, a key in identifying her sister’s body, according to the Indianapolis Star.
Investigators reached out to the Sniegowski family in January, officials said, and two siblings provided DNA for kinship testing.
That same month, results confirmed the body was Margaret Ann Sniegowski Jr., according to the news release.
With a positive identification, the case is now considered an “active homicide investigation,” Nielsen said.
“We will now focus on finding her killer and working hard to find out who dumped her body along an onramp at I-65 and SR 47,” he continued.
Her cause of death has not been confirmed, WXIN reported, but authorities believe she may have been strangled.
“We made a promise 30 years ago that we would find out who she was,” Nielsen said, according to WXIN. “We kept that promise and we will keep the promise moving forward that we will find out who’s responsible and we will bring them to justice along with the prosecutor and everybody else.”
Boone County is about 30 miles northwest of Indianapolis.
This story was originally published April 15, 2022 at 11:43 AM with the headline "Teen identified 30 years after body found. Now Indiana cops want to find her killer."