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Submitted: 12/29/21 • Approved: 12/29/21 • Last Updated: 1/1/22 • R1408949-G0-S3
aka Mary Ann Gibson
Intered Apr 3, 1979
*A New Tombstone for Jane Doe
When Leroy Blair of the White County Historical Society found a tombstone for “Jane Doe” in Hughes Cemetery on March 8, 2001, he had no idea there was a strange story behind it.
Blair is chairman of the WCHS cemetery committee. He has visited every graveyard in the county. But this was the only Jane Doe he had found. Curious, he made several inquiries and wound up reading newspaper accounts about an unidentified female whose body was found Sunday, March 18, 1979, at the foot talking of a 40-foot bluff off Highway 31 west of Floyd. She was described as being 19 to 23 years old, weighing 120 pounds and 5 feet, 8 inches tall. She had long brown hair, brown eyes and had a few distinctive marks on her body, including a tattoo of a bear and the word “BEAR” on her left leg and a tattoo of a rabbit and “BENA” on her right leg. Jane Doe was wearing blue jeans and a brightly striped sweater. She had no jewelry or identification. She had been dead several weeks.
Blair eventually contacted J.R. Howard, a law enforcement official in Little Rock, who gave him additional information. When authorities were unable to determine the woman’s identity in 1979, she was buried in the remote Hughes Family Cemetery, and the “Jane Doe” tombstone placed on the grave. Howard did not explain why this graveyard was chosen. It is located about three miles west of Letona on Highway 310. When Blair contacted him, nearly 22 years after her death, Howard had some news about Jane Doe. The state medical examiner, using dental records, established the woman’s identity a few years after she was buried, he said. She was Mary Ann Gipson from Texas.
“Mr. Howard told me that she had been murdered near McCain Mall in North Little Rock,” Blair said. “He said when he told her parents about what happened to her, their only comments were, ‘We wondered what had happened to her,’ and no effort was made to claim the body. ” Howard told Blair that the suspected murderer was already in prison for another crime and has never been charged for this murder. “I thought it would be nice if there was a tombstone with Jane Doe’s real name on it,” Blair said. When he told owners of Bible Monument in Searcy about it, they donated an engraved granite stone.
Blair personally placed the new stone on the grave. Joining him for the brief ceremony were his wife Ellen, WCHS directors Billie Willingham and Glen Majors and WCHS member Anna Beth Redmon.
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Contributed on 12/29/21 by hawkinsdonna48
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Record #: 1408949