Pennsylvania State Police Trooper Brian Noll confirms that Maggie Cruz is not Beth Doe. 

Trooper Noll says he spoke with Maggie this morning. "She was relieved that it wasn't her," said Noll. "She is alive and well and is living in New Jersey."

Jane Foust had contacted Pennsylvania State Police in April of 2019 because she believed that Beth Doe could be her foster sister. She stated that the two ran away to Tarrytown, New York, in 1973, and that was the last time and place she saw her.  

Foust told investigators that she received a call from her foster sister in 1976 saying she was pregnant and needed money. She never heard from her again after that. 

Investigators followed the tip and reached out to the public for help in locating "Maggie" in order to confirm or rule her out as their "Beth Doe." Pennsylvania State Police have been trying to solve the "Beth Doe" case for decades but no family has ever come forward to identify the young woman. "The search for new leads in the Beth Doe case continues," said Noll.

This new development eliminates "Maggie" as "Beth Doe" and also closes the missing persons report in Framingham, Massachusetts. Foust says she's relieved to learn that her foster sister is alive and well and would really like to connect with her.

Anyone with information about "Beth Doe" should contact PA State Police or The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children at 1-800-The-Lost.

Imagine a young woman, possibly a teenager, brutally murdered along with her unborn child and no one comes forward to identify her. Not her parents, or siblings, or grandparents, no one. Investigators know little about her, but they've been her voice for the last 43 years.

"Beth Doe" was found along the banks of the Lehigh River in Carbon County, Pennsylvania, on December 20, 1976. She was dismembered and stuffed into three suitcases. Her nose, ears and breasts had been removed. Inside one of the suitcases was the full-term female fetus. 

We started researching this case at the beginning of 2019, and it's been quite the journey to bring it all together. We first reached out to Pennsylvania State Police and right away they said 'yes' to our interview request. We met Trooper Brian Noll, the lead investigator on the "Beth Doe" case, at the end of April. It's obvious how much he and the previous investigators want to solve this case. They've been chipping away at it for 43 years, applying traditional investigative techniques and advanced forensic technology, but it hasn't brought them closer to identifying the victim. Without her name, finding Beth Doe's killer, if that person is still alive, is like searching for a needle in a haystack. ​

Still, investigators have never stopped working on this case. They continue to look for ways to keep "Beth Doe" in the public eye. According to Trooper Noll, "Beth Doe" is the one case that still generates the most tips, even after all these years. Perhaps it's the nature of the crime and because there was a baby involved. What was done to them, that type of evil, is on a whole different level.

Below are some photos we took and others we obtained during the course of working on this story. They are of the actual suitcases and the blanket recovered at the scene. Trooper Noll pointed out the blanket and it's unique embroidered design. Notice the small patch of blue yarn in one of the pictures. It's almost as if the design started unraveling at one point and was stitched back together. It's a very specific blanket and someone should be able to recognize it. Same with the suitcases. If you follow this case, you've probably seen the picture of the three suitcases since it's readily available online. We wanted to see more, and Trooper Noll delivered. He shared additional pictures of the suitcases in hopes that someone recognizes them. 

For this story we started by contacting people in the small town of White Haven near where "Beth Doe" was found. We sent out dozens of emails, messages via social media, and made countless phone calls. It took months, but the more we went to White Haven, the more the community started to open up. Eventually we met Dolly Maughan and her son Brent. They've lived in White Haven their entire lives and still remember the case. Brent was good friends with Kenneth Jumper, the boy who found the suitcases, and was supposed to be with him that day. We reached out to the Jumper family but we did not hear back from them. One can only imagine how traumatic the experience must have been for Mr. Jumper. He was only 14 at the time.

We also met Philip Jeffries, a retired deputy coroner and funeral director in Weatherly, Pennsylvania. The Vietnam veteran assisted Pennsylvania State Police in the disinterment process for "Beth Doe" in 2007. Mr. Jeffries has seen his share of trauma, but the young mother's murder stayed with him all these years. 

Jeffries transported the mother and daughter's remains to a laboratory for a second autopsy on October 30, 2007. He then prepared their bodies for burial. He shared photos from his archives and details of the service for "Beth Doe" which you'll see in our report. ​​

This case is not uncommon. According to the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System or NAMUS, "Beth Doe" is one of more than 12,000 unidentified bodies in morgues or buried in public cemeteries across the United States.

According to Todd Matthews, communications director for NAMUS, the sheer volume of cases of missing and unidentified people has become the nation's silent mass disaster. ​Many cases like Beth Doe's are decades old, and they've been adding up over time. 

As we looked for information that wasn't already out there about this case, I stumbled upon several posts on different social media sites from a woman in Mesa, Arizona, who contacted Pennsylvania State Police because she believes "Beth Doe" could be her foster sister. Jane Foust says the sketch of "Beth Doe" jumped out at her the second she saw it. Immediately she thought about her foster sister Maggie, full name Madelyn Cruz, whom she met in 1972 at a boarding school called Rockwood Academy in Lenox, Massachusetts. They became friends and, not long after, Jane's parents took Maggie in as a foster child.

​Jane says the arrangement didn't last long. The two were rebellious teenagers who got in trouble often and at one point ran away to Tarrytown, New York, in the summer of 1973. After a few days and with nowhere to stay, Jane decided to return home, but says Maggie refused to go with her. That's the last time she saw her. It wasn't until June 1976 that Jane says she received a call from Maggie saying she was pregnant, scared and needed money. Jane didn't tell her parents and didn't have money to send to Maggie. That was the last time they spoke. Jane wishes she had done more when Maggie reached out to her.

Below are pictures of Madelyn "Maggie" Cruz. One is from the Rockwood Academy yearbook, which the owner was kind enough to send to me for this story. Jane Foust shared the other photo with us. What do you think? Does Maggie Cruz resemble Beth Doe?

Could this be the needle in the haystack that investigators have long been searching for? Could this bring closure to this 43-year-old mystery and to the small community near where "Beth Doe" was found? If not, this raises yet another question: What happened to Maggie Cruz?