Naman Shrestha
In the episode titled ‘The Woman with No Name’ of NBC’s ‘Dateline,’ the primary focus is on the brutal murder of Dana Lynn Dodd and how her identity and murder remained a mystery for more than a decade. With the help of a team of armchair detectives, the authorities managed to determine her identity. When the police came across the gruesome killing of another woman, they were led right to the perpetrator responsible for both murders. Thanks to the insightful interviews with the victim’s loved ones and officials linked to the investigation, the viewers are provided with a detailed account of the decade-long case.
Dana Lynn Dodd Was Referred to as Lavender Doe For More Than a Decade
On September 6, 1985, in Jacksonville Beach, Florida, John Ray Dodd and Robin Wilma Novotny Ross welcomed a little bundle of joy into the world in the form of Dana Lynn Dodd. Her mother moved out when Dana was just a toddler. Since her father was homeless and charged with multiple alcohol-related crimes, she resided with her stepmother for some time and went to Sperry High School in Sperry, Oklahoma. Later, she moved to Jacksonville, Florida, to reside with her older half-sister, Amanda Gadd. At 16, she got into a relationship that negatively affected her bond with Amanda. At some point, Dana even moved in with her half-brother, John Dodd. However, besides her boyfriend, her rebellious nature caused a rift between her and her brother. She also got into trouble with the law for reportedly taking drugs.
In 2000, Dana moved out and skipped town with her boyfriend and began working as a door-to-door magazine salesperson. As the magazine company gave her the opportunity to travel across the country, John tried to convince her to stay with him in Florida. She last talked to her brother in the summer of 2006, and even then, he encouraged the 21-year-old to return home. In the same year, Dana went missing, leading to her family members filing a missing report. On October 29, 2006, the authorities recovered a body in Kilgore, Texas, but they could not identify the victim since the remains were severely burned. However, upon further inspection, they learned that the body was set ablaze a few minutes before it was found while the woman was killed the day before.
The case got complicated even further when they found traces of semen inside her, indicating she was likely sexually assaulted, too. For more than a decade, the police couldn’t determine the identity of the victim and called her “Lavender Doe” due to the purple sweater that was recovered with her remains. In 2018, the case was eventually taken up by the DNA Doe Project, a non-profit organization dedicated to identifying unknown crime victims with the help of genetic genealogy. They collaborated with the Aerodyne and Full Genomes Corporation team and released the identity of Lavender Doe as Dana Lynn Dodd on February 11, 2019.
Dana Lynn Dodd’s Killer Confessed Upon Getting Arrested For Another Murder
When Dana’s body was found in 2006, the police interviewed the residents of the area, who referred to the location as a killing ground with various suspicious people in the area. One of the persons of interest whom the detectives questioned was Joseph Wayne Burnette, a convicted sex offender who was imprisoned at the time. Although he admitted to having sex with a woman on the day of Dana’s murder, he claimed that he had a foolproof alibi for the time of the murder. Without any concrete evidence against him, the police could not charge him with murder. More than a decade later, on July 24, 2018, the body of 28-year-old Felisha Pearson was found in Longview, and Joseph was connected to the murder case.
When he was interrogated, not only did he admit to murdering Felisha, but he also confessed to the 2006 killing of Dana Lynn Dodd. Joseph gave a detailed confession, telling the detectives that he had met Dana at a Longview Walmart where she sold magazines for a living. He added that while she was soliciting customers in the parking lot, he introduced himself and somehow convinced the 21-year-old to get inside his vehicle. At the time of the interrogation, the identity of Lavender Joe was still a mystery and even Joseph was unable to provide any details regarding her identity. What baffled the investigators was the fact that during his confession, Joseph left no detail out in spite of the case being about 12 years old at the time. Finally, in August 2018, he was officially indicted for killing Dana Lynn Dodd, in addition to the murder of Felisha Pearson.
About a month later, in September 2019, after her identity was determined, Dana’s family held an official funeral for her. Her half-sister, Amanda Gadd, told KLTV, “We wanted to bring everybody out and thank them as one, for being part of Dana. Showing the love while we weren’t able to find her, they kept her safe and loved. So we wanted to thank everybody. All the years of looking for her, we did not know she was in this part of the country, we thought she was up north.” A couple of years later, deciding not to stand trial, Joseph Wayne Burnette pleaded guilty to the two murders he was charged with in exchange for a reduced imprisonment sentence. Thus, in December 2020, he was sentenced to 50 years in prison for each murder.
Read More: Felisha Pearson: How Did She Die? Who Killed Her?
