Unidentified Bodies Test Coroners : Investigation: Office cracks one of its toughest cases, that of a 19-year-old woman killed seven years ago on the Ventura Freeway.

At least eight times a year, Ventura County coroners are faced with what can become the most challenging cases of their profession: a dead person whose name is unknown.

Many bodies are identified within a few days, their fingerprints matched with prints stored in a vast computer network.

But a few take longer.

One of the coroner’s toughest cases was cracked this week, when Deputy Coroner Jim Wingate identified a young woman known for seven years only as Jane Doe No. 871-87.

Using a set of fingerprints faxed to his office from the Las Vegas Police Department, Wingate on Thursday identified the woman as East Coast native Jaqueline Cohen.

Cohen was a 19-year-old resident of a little town called Dobbs Ferry, located 20 miles north of New York City, when she disappeared from a mental institution in New York City on May 18, 1987, Wingate said.

She was killed in Ventura County 17 days later, when she walked straight into the southbound lanes of the Ventura Freeway near Wagon Wheel Road and was struck by a motorist, Wingate said. Cohen died instantly of traumatic head and abdominal injuries, he said.

Because she carried no identification, she became a Jane Doe, an anonymous designation given to any female whose name is unknown. Unidentified males are called John Does.

As her remains lay unclaimed in Ventura County, Cohen’s parents on the East Coast spent seven years searching in vain for her.

For them, finally learning the details of her death was shocking, despite the passage of the years. Her father, Stan Cohen, had called the Dobbs Ferry Police Department on the anniversary of her disappearance each year to check on the progress of the case, said Dobbs Ferry Police Sgt. Bill Gelardi.

Sometimes he called on her birthday too, Gelardi said. Jaqueline Cohen’s 27th birthday would have been Monday.

“Am I relieved?” asked Stan Cohen on Friday, when asked about the discovery. “No, I am not relieved,” said the resident of Rye Brook, N.Y. “I’m sorry, but I can’t talk right now.”

While it is always difficult to inform family members about the death of a loved one, solving Doe cases invariably brings a sense of closure in the coroner’s office that is satisfying, Wingate said.

“We’re always happy when parents find out what happened to their kids,” he said. “Even when it turns out like this, it can stop the anguish.”

Cohen’s case is far from the oldest Doe case in Ventura County, Wingate said. He said some files on unknown people date back to the 1920s.

Doe cases are never officially closed until an identification is made, he said. But getting a chance to work on them, while juggling their normal duties as deputy coroners, sometimes makes it difficult to solve them, Wingate said.

Coroner’s deputies work like sleuths to find the identity of an unidentified body. If possible, they take fingerprints from the body and run them through the county sheriff’s office. If that doesn’t yield answers, the fingerprints are sent to a statewide fingerprint network, Wingate said.

The coroner’s deputies also check with law enforcement agencies for missing-person reports and note any unusual features of the deceased: a tattoo, for example, or dental work. They ask the media to help publicize the case.

If those efforts fail, a report is sent to the California Department of Justice, Wingate said. Any leads that turn up are followed, he said.

In the past decade, there have been about 80 Doe cases investigated by the county coroner’s office; of those, 17 remain unsolved, Wingate said. Many of the unsolved cases involve only partial remains of a body that have been discovered, he said.

The big break in identifying Cohen came Wednesday, when New York’s state criminal justice division sent the Ventura County coroner’s office a Teletype, Wingate said. The Teletype said that information recently entered in a national crime computer network indicated that a missing person from the New York area might match a Jane Doe reported by Ventura County.

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Wingate said he called the Dobbs Ferry Police Department to find out more about the case and learned that Jane Doe 871-87 indeed shared several similarities with their missing person. Dobbs Ferry Police Sgt. Gelardi told Wingate he would send a set of fingerprints via fax machine.

But the facsimile was of poor quality, so Wingate requested a set of fingerprints from the Las Vegas Police Department. Cohen apparently had been arrested in Las Vegas on a misdemeanor charge shortly before her death.

That high-resolution facsimile arrived Thursday and Wingate made the identification.

Cohen’s cremated remains have been stored at Ivy Lawn Memorial Park all these years. They will remain there until the family decides what to do, Wingate said.

In the meantime, Jane Doe Case. No. 871-87 is officially closed.