BROWARD COUNTY, Fla. – Detectives have identified the victim of a 1998 murder in western Broward County, sheriff’s officials announced Thursday.
The woman previously known to detectives as Jane Doe has now been revealed to be Eileen Truppner, a 41-year-old mother of two and a native of Puerto Rico. Officials with the Broward Sheriff’s Office said she had moved to South Florida a few years before her death.
In the evening hours of Dec. 18, 1998, deputies said someone dragged Truppner’s body into the sawgrass in a remote area off U.S. 27, north of Interstate 75. Detectives believe she had also been raped.
The sheriff’s office announcement comes months after BSO highlighted the case in its “Open and Unsolved” series, releasing a new sketch of the then-unidentified victim.
2022 sketch:
“She was outgoing, she was calm, she was quiet, she was kind, she was a good person,” Eileen Truppner’s sister, Nancy, said in a video produced by BSO. “She didn’t deserve that.”
According to BSO, detectives sent DNA evidence from the crime scene to the Florida Department of Law Enforcement’s genetic genealogy unit, which combines DNA analysis with genealogical research to solve crimes.
“The method by which we obtained her DNA was using technology that originally wasn’t available when this murder was committed,” BSO Detective Zack Scott, who’s investigating the case, said in an interview with Local 10 News on Thursday.
Detectives have identified a person of interest in the case and are seeking information from “anyone who knew or crossed paths with Eileen Truppner between August 1998 and when her murder occurred in December 1998,” a BSO news release states.
Anyone with information is asked to call Scott at 954-321-4214 or Broward Crime Stoppers at 954-493-8477.
Latest BSO “Open and Unsolved” episode on case: