Texas motel pool death mystery ends as police ID Kansas teen in 54-year-old cold case
A teen who drowned in a pool at a Pecos motel in 1966 and whose name was unknown for 54 years was identified on Tuesday as Jolaine Hemmy of Salina, Kansas, according to Pecos police.
Hemmy, 17, was with a man on July 5, 1966, when her body was found in the pool at the Ropers Motel in Pecos.
Her identify was released Tuesday at a news conference in Pecos by Pecos police. The town is about 395 miles southwest of Fort Worth.
She and the young man had registered at the motel as Mr. and Mrs. Russell Battuon.
Just hours after they registered, the teen’s body was found in the pool. The man was reported to have been in the couple’s motel room at the time she was in the pool, according to Pecos police.
After her body was found and emergency crews worked on her, the man left with the couple’s belongings, Pecos police said in a Tuesday news release.
As of Tuesday, Pecos police still did not have the identity of the man.
Since her death, authorities had tried to identify the girl, and they finally got identification through DNA, Pecos Police Chief Lisa Tarango said in a telephone interview with the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.
Pecos police had worked with officials with the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children to verify Hemmy’s identification, as well as other labs and officials with the University of North Texas Center for Human Identification.
The teen had been reported missing in early July 1966 from her home in Kansas, said the police chief, whose department reviewed the cold case just over a year ago.
“Her body was exhumed on Aug. 27, 2019,” Tarango said. “The pandemic then slowed us down, but we were finally about to identify her.”
The police chief and a Pecos investigator recently traveled to Kansas to contact relatives.
“It was just raw emotions,” Tarango said when they informed family members that they had identified the teen.
The teen’s death remains under investigation, the police chief said.
This story was originally published January 19, 2021 at 2:47 PM.
