The Woman in the Suitcase

On April 25, 1972, two fishermen found the body of a young woman in a suitcase floating in the North Edisto River near Rowesville. It was investigated by the Orangeburg County Sheriff’s Department. The body of the woman was sent to the Medical University of South Carolina for an autopsy.

This autopsy determined that the woman was actually of Asian/Oriental descent and was around 20 years old and was 5ft 4inches tall. She also had two distinguishing tattoos. One tattoo was of the name “Judy” on the upper under part of her left arm. The other tattoo was a rabbit’s head with a bowtie at the base, possibly a Playboy Bunny. From the autopsy, they were able to obtain fingerprints from the body, which were sent to the FBI for analysis. They also sent the fingerprints to the Korean and Japanese governments, due to her determined ethnicity. 

The initial reports printed in the newspaper articles stated that the woman had been in the water for 15-20 days and she had died due to blunt force trauma to the forehead. Several months later in July 1972, she was thought to have been strangled to death, but the decomposition of the young woman’s body made it hard to officially determine her true cause of death. 

The newspaper articles written about this case also provided quite a bit of details regarding what the woman was wearing when she was found in the suitcase and what was in the suitcase with her.  

The unidentified woman was wearing the following items: 

 A black bra; 

A pink and white horizontal striped pullover; 

Green underwear; 

A gold ring with a blue oval stone on her right ring finger; 

A gold chain necklace with a Chinese pagoda. 

Inside the suitcase were the following items: 

A pair of calf length boots; 

One pair of black boots; 

One white formal type slipper with a white plastic buckle; 

A ball of red yard (possibly a misprint; possibly red yarn); 

Tube of Max Factor Green Mist eye shadow; 

A brown eyebrow pencil; 

A pink crocheted hat; 

And one compact containing a soft amber color with a brush

The most interesting thing found in the “Grasshopper” brand plaid suitcase, however, were negatives found behind the lining of the suitcase. Those negatives were developed and revealed a picture of young Asian woman, thought to be the woman in the suitcase, and a young Asian male. The hat seen in the photograph is the pink crocheted hat found in the suitcase. The Orangeburg County Sheriff’s Department was sure with the developed photos they would be able to find someone who could identify her. 

Unfortunately, the young woman in the suitcase was never identified and was buried in an unmarked grave in the Sunnyside Cemetery in Orangeburg, South Carolina. 

 

 I am currently waiting on a response from the Orangeburg County Sheriff’s Department to my Freedom of Information Act request and I am trying to get her listed into NamUs, the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System.