Solved with DNA: Authorities use new techniques in 37-year-old Lake Tahoe murder case

Investigators went to the ends of the Earth for more than three decades to find out who she was.

They sent her information to Scotland Yard and Interpol. A psychic in New Jersey claimed she knew something about the shooting. Yet investigators in Washoe County, Nevada, were stumped by the July 17, 1982, fatal shooting case of an unidentified woman found near Lake Tahoe until now.

Nearly 37 years after “Sheep’s Flat Jane Doe” was discovered by hikers near a trail close to Mount Rose Highway, Washoe County detectives have successfully used DNA techniques – similar to those used to identify Golden State Killer case – to identify both the victim and the suspect in the cold case.

Representatives from the DNADoe Project and IdentiFinders International joined members of the sheriff’s Forensic Science Division at a news conference Tuesday to announce the victim’s name for the first time: Mary Silvani, born in Michigan but living in California. The suspect was identified as James Richard Curry, born in Texas but also living in California.

Curry died in prison five months after the murder after attempting suicide, Washoe County Sheriff Darin Balaam said.

Investigators still don’t know whether or how Curry and Silvani knew each other, and no missing person report was ever filed for Silvani. But solving the case brought closure to some of Silvani’s family members.

“I really wanted justice,” Angel Capriles, whose great-uncle was Mary’s father, said. “I wanted to know.”

Capriles said she was shocked when she got a call from the DNADoe Project. “They tell me ‘this is a sensitive thing, your DNA came up as a match in a 30-year-old cold case.’ ” Capriles immediately became invested in solving the mystery, and she actively encouraged her family members to cooperate with the investigators.

Deputies partnered with the DNADoe Project and Identifiers International after criminalists in the sheriff’s Forensic Science Division attended a lecture on forensic genealogy presented by Dr. Colleen Fitzpatrick of Identifinders International and the DNA Doe Project.

They believed these groups could help solve the cold case, so the the sheriff’s office began working with them in April 2018, just before Sacramento officials arrested Joseph James DeAngelo in the decades old East Area Rapist and Golden State Killer cases. DeAngelo is currently awaiting trial.

Investigators soon identified the victim as Mary Edith Silvani, born in Pontiac, Michigan, in 1948 after they uploaded Silvani’s DNA to the DNA database GEDMatch to try to identify family members.

Capriles was using another cousin’s Ancestry.com account to track her family tree, and had uploaded the information to GEDMatch to find other family members. The cousin is not blood-related to Silvani, but was able to put investigators in touch with Capriles.

Capriles then helped connect the investigators with Mary’s half-niece. The case was complicated because the half-niece was adopted and had an altered spelling of the family name, she said.

Capriles had only recently been in contact with the half-niece, and was trying to help her find her birth parents. They thought Mary might have been her mother. But after finding the son of Mary’s older brother, investigators determined Mary was the woman’s aunt.

Then, based on a set of fingerprints provided by the Detroit Police Department from a misdemeanor arrest in 1974, the victim was identified as Mary Silvani in 2018. Her identity was not released at the time because the suspect had not yet been identified.

The suspect was harder to identify because he turned out to be an illegitimate son, according to detectives. Curry was born in Texas in 1946, and moved to California after he was released from prison in Huntsville in 1977.

Five months after Silvani was killed, Curry confessed to committing three other murders in California while in custody. He was arrested after he killed a man in his home and sexually assaulted the man’s wife, kidnapped her and killed her. He confessed to one other murder as well, authorities said.

Curry died in 1983 in prison several days after he attempted suicide. He died before any record of his DNA was taken or any proceedings in his court case moved forward, which is why investigators weren’t able to match his DNA sooner, they said.

The other murders Curry committed occurred in San Jose and Santa Clara counties. Investigators suspected Curry may have also killed a co-worker from Waukena, the Tulare County town where he had lived, but that victim’s remains have not been located.

Curry was identified after his two children provided voluntary DNA samples to a Washoe County Sheriff’s detective, confirming that their DNA matched those of the Sheep’s Flat murder suspect.

“This is an incredible story and I am extremely proud of the work done by everyone who took part in this case over the past three decades,” Balaam said in announcing the end of the case.

“Even taking advantage of new genealogical technologies, a great deal of investigative work was done by Sheriff’s Office staff working this case. A reminder that the pursuit of justice never sleeps.”

This story was originally published May 7, 2019 at 4:06 PM.