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| Woman killed nearly 4 decades ago is laid to rest again |
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| Written by John Saiz / Patterson Irrigator | |
| Wednesday, 05 November 2008 | |
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“She had been here so long. I didn't want to disturb her remains anymore.” — Cory Oiesen, Mary Alice Willey's cousin On a cold, windy Halloween morning, the few remaining members of Mary Alice Willey’s family returned her to her Patterson District Cemetery grave. A small group of mostly law enforcement personnel accompanied the family, including Ken Hedrick, a homicide detective with the Stanislaus County Sheriff’s Department. When Hedrick first heard of Willey’s case, he knew her only as Jane Doe, the young victim of a 1971 slaying. Since he rediscovered the file, Hedrick led an investigation that dug up her body and identified Willey. While the burial puts an end to the mystery of the cemetery’s Jane Doe, the identity of Willey’s killer remains unknown, and Hedrick is no closer to piecing together the crime than he was when investigators discovered her identity in September. He hasn’t found anyone who knew her at the time of the killing, he said, and with a homicide from last week landing on his desk, time to follow leads on a 37-year-old crime is hard to come by.  Chaplain Michael Douglass (right) and Stanislaus County Sheriff Adam Christianson administer the funeral of Mary Alice Willey, who was buried Friday at Patterson District Cemetery after her body had been exhumed and identified earlier this year. Her killer's fate remains unknown. John Saiz / Patterson Irrigator So, with gray clouds pouring over the western hills and a chill in the air, a handful of people put Willey in her grave for the second time, the mystery of her identity solved but her killer’s fate still unknown. Still, the family saw the burial as a celebration instead of a somber moment, and as a way to put a vicious murder behind them. Grisly killing, mystery body After workers fished Willey’s body from the Delta-Mendota Canal on Sept. 11, 1971, investigators determined she came to a horrific end. Her killer had stabbed her nearly 60 times, local newspapers reported. Her attacker had tried to cut off her fingers, but only managed to remove a thumb. The killer then dumped her lifeless body in the canal, where it would later be discovered between Patterson and Westley. Bodies in the canal were not daily findings, but they were not unheard of. Typically, local missing person reports would lead to a positive identification. But in Willey’s case, investigators never got the lead they needed to connect Willey with their Jane Doe. It is unclear exactly how county employees decided to buy a plot in the Patterson District Cemetery, but the typical procedure would have been to bury the body locally — either in a cemetery that had an existing agreement with the county or in the cemetery that provided it the most reasonable bid. That’s likely how Willey’s body ended up in the West Side. How she ended up in the Central Valley while still living is not certain. After speaking with her few surviving relatives, police describe Willey as a 23-year-old Southern California woman tasting her first bits of independence as a college student at California State University, San Francisco. Detectives alluded to a somewhat sheltered existence in a devoutly religious household. She had no history of running away and remained in regular contact with her parents via mail. When the letters stopped coming, the family grew suspicious. However, investigators then and now have never tracked down a missing person report. Ultimately, the original investigators thought they pursued every available path and shelved the file. Decades later, Hedrick discovered it and decided to use modern tools on the old case. To do so, he had to dig up the body. Investigators “It was a day just like today when we dug her up,” Bryan Bingham, general manager of the Patterson District Cemetery, said Friday. On that chilly April morning, medical examiners and sheriff personnel descended on the cemetery and removed Willey’s body from where it rested. Flesh and muscle having long since decayed, mostly bones remained. Investigators collected what they could and planned to do reconstructions and DNA tests. At the same time, the sheriff’s department publicized the investigation with hopes of compelling someone with information to step forward. That’s when Corey Oiesen and her long quest to find Willey came to Stanislaus County. While tracking down her family’s genealogy more than a decade ago, Oiesen discovered the tale of Mary Alice Willey, her missing cousin. Oiesen would do a little research here and there, traveling through Northern California looking for old articles that might lead her to the missing in-law she never met. She discovered a Modesto Bee article written about investigators recently exhuming the body. As she did whenever a possible lead presented itself, she followed up — eventually, she thought the story from Patterson was the break she was hunting. Using a combination of DNA, drinking water signatures and a series of other techniques, investigators came to the conclusion their Jane Doe was Oiesen’s missing cousin. West Side Willey This led her and two of Willey’s other relatives to the West Side on Friday to give her the burial she had never received. “She had been here so long,” Oiesen said. “I didn’t want to disturb her remains anymore.” Her other relatives agreed. They had been leaning toward returning her to the West Side ever since discovering her. After exploring the area, including Patterson, they were confident the West Side was where Willey would remain, even though her closest relative would be a two-hour drive away. The small-town atmosphere and the friendly people sealed the deal, Oiesen said. A woman who happened to see the burial even said she’d check in on Wiley. “She promised to bring flowers for Mary Alice’s headstone when she comes to visit,” Oiesen said. Contact John Saiz at 892-6187 or This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it
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