More than a decade after officials reopened the cold case, a female discovered dead in an Illinois cornfield in 1991 has been identified as a Chicago-area woman.
Last week, Paula Ann Lundgren was identified following an inquiry that included a posthumous DNA sample. Authorities now want to piece together more information about her life and death.
Several officials attempted to identify the woman throughout the years.
Her body was unearthed in 2013 to gather DNA and other investigative techniques not available in the early 1990s. In 2019, a professor at Illinois Valley Community College employed investigative genetic genealogy to create a list of the woman’s potential surviving relatives.
The LaSalle County coroner’s office searched the list for years before contacting the FBI in February. There was a gap in the lawsuit during July.
“We have limited resources, so the FBI agreed to provide further assistance with the case that eventually led to a living relative,” Rich Ploch, the coroner, told reporters Monday. “That person’s DNA was confirmed as a match to Paula.”
Lundgren, who had largely lived in the Chicago area, would have been 29 years old when a farmer discovered her body in a cornfield in northern Illinois’ LaSalle County in September 1991, authorities said.
The coroner’s office determined that the woman died as a result of cocaine intoxication. Her unnamed body was later interred in an Ottawa cemetery, with a gravestone stating, “Somebody’s Daughter, Somebody’s Friend.”
The LaSalle County sheriff’s office stated that now that Lundgren’s identity is known, “new leads can be developed as to how she came to be in the cornfield.”