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YOUNGSTOWN -- A woman reported missing from Austintown 20 years ago has now been identified as the victim in a cold case murder in Utah.
According to the Utah Department of Public Safety, Lina Reyes-Geddes, of Austintown, has been identified as the "Jane Doe" who was found in 1998 along a road in Ticaboo, Utah, with a fatal gunshot wound to her head.
During a press conference Thursday in Taylorsville, Utah, police said Reyes-Geddes' body was wrapped in plastic and secured with duct tape. The body was inside a sleeping bag covered in a piece of carpeting. A passerby on the road discovered the body.
Since then, investigators had been trying to identify her. Investigators said the suspect in her murder committed suicide in Nevada several years after her body was found.
According to the Charley Project, an online clearinghouse of missing person cases, Reyes-Geddes left Austintown on April 8, 1998, and was supposed to travel to Dallas and then to Laredo, Texas. But, officials said she never made it there.
Her husband, who is now deceased, reported her missing to police six months after she left to travel to Texas, the Charley Project states.
With help from Youngstown Police Department detectives, her family members in Mexico came forward for DNA testing. After swabs were sent to investigators, the results showed it was Reyes-Geddes' body.
Garfield County Sheriff's Office agent Brian Davis said the Youngstown Police Department putting her photo in the missing person database helped solve the case.
"Our photo that we released here of our victim, to connect to that photo out of Ohio, that was the key, was those photos being released at the same time, ironically enough," Davis said during Thursday's press conference.
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