NASHUA, NH – A woman known to Pima County Sheriff’s Department in Arizona for 34 years only as “Jane Doe” finally has an identity – Brenda Gerow, a Nashua native who was 20 years old the last time she was seen alive by her family.
According to news reports out of Arizona, Pima County Sheriff’s detectives say John Kalhauser, the man she left Nashua with for Arizona, is a “person of interest” in the cold case.
Kalhauser, 61, is already incarcerated, serving time for the murder of his wife, Diane Van Reeth, whose body was never found after she disappeared in 1995. At the time Kalhauser was living under a different name, Don Steechi.
Detectives were able to use new technology on some of the 34-year-old evidence, which led investigators to exhume the remains of their Jane Doe, but it was a photograph of Gerow that provided the ‘huge break’ in the case.
The photograph had been in Kalhauser’s possession, locked inside the evidence room.
Detectives also leveraged the power of social media, releasing images of the reconstruction done on Jane Doe’s skull to East Coast law enforcement agencies. Eventually, Gerow’s family was found.
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