The woman at the center of what police in Howard County, Maryland, have for decades simply called “The Jane Doe Case” has finally been identified, and that breakthrough has reunited two of her children, who hadn’t seen each other for more than 70 years.

Sarah Belle Sharkey, whose name at birth was Sadie Belle Murray, was found unconscious and beaten in a Woodstock field in July 1971 and died in the hospital from her injuries two months later.

Until Thursday, the identity of the victim in the Howard County Police Department’s oldest cold case homicide remained a mystery. While the question of who killed Sharkey remains, her identification brought closure to two people who had been searching for it for a lifetime.

This breakthrough was made with the help of genetic genealogy, which uses D

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