For nearly 26 years, no one knew the identity of a woman whose body was found floating in the Cumberland River. 

It was a troubling mystery that Metro Nashville police and genetic genealogists spent years trying to piece together, until finally, they were able to make a breakthrough. Last week, the police department announced that the woman who had only been known as the “Leo Jane Doe” for multiple decades now had a name.

Diane Minor was a country singer, beauty queen and weather personality for WSIX-TV before the station changed ownership and became WKRN. She moved to Nashville as a teenager seeking her first big break in the music business but was originally from Alabama.

Eric Schubert, a 23-year-old genealogist from New Jersey, knew that she was from Alabama four years ago, but that was just the first clue to the massive genetic puzzle.

Schubert, who was been nationally recognized for his volunteer work on other cold cases since he was just a teenager, began trying to help detectives put together a picture of who the “Leo Jane Doe” was back in 2020.

At the time, he was working on a handful of other cold cases, including the death of 9-year-old Marise Chiverella, which was then one of the most notorious unsolved murders in Pennsylvania. 

The college freshman had been doing genealogical work to help families find their ancestors as a hobby since he was 10 years old, with some articles referring to him as a “genealogy wiz.” He became interested in criminal cases at the age of 16, but thought that, realistically, no law enforcement agency would ever enlist his help.

“I was like 16, 17, 18 and thought no police department is going to email me and say, ‘Hey, Eric, you know, we heard about you. We would love to get your help on this case’,” Schubert said. “But the week I graduated high school, that’s exactly what happened.”

You can read more about this story in an article by Sierra Rains published in the wkrn.com web site at: https://bit.ly/4fqDwTY.