Woman vanished almost 30 years ago in Washington. Her body was recently ID’d, cops say

A hiker stumbled across a skull at Windy Point in Colorado in 1994, opening a nearly 30-year mystery that has finally been at least partly solved, sheriff’s officials reported.

Modern DNA analysis has identified the remains as belonging to Susan Hoppes, a 45-year-old woman last seen in Pierce County, Washington, in 1993, the Montrose Press reported.

Now investigators are trying to piece together the facts behind her disappearance in the almost 30-year-old cold case, the Montrose County Sheriff’s Department said in a news release.

“It’s a tough thing. Evidence is gone,” David Harrison, a retired sheriff’s detective who once worked on the cold case, told the Montrose Press.

In August 2020, the department requested familial DNA testing on the remains, the release said. In April, the Colorado Bureau of Investigation notified detectives the body had been identified.

The remains, found on the Uncompahgre Plateau in July 1994, had previously been known only as “Windy Point Jane Doe,” the sheriff’s office said.

The case is being investigated as a homicide, the release said.

Hoppes was last seen leaving a home in Pierce County, Washington, in 1993, with two other people, the Montrose Press reported. She had no known connection to Colorado.

This story was originally published May 12, 2022 at 8:43 AM with the headline "Woman vanished almost 30 years ago in Washington. Her body was recently ID’d, cops say."