Skeletal remains found in North Carolina nearly 50 years ago identified as 15-year-old runaway girl

Human remains found nearly a half-century ago in North Carolina were identified as having come from a 15-year-old Maryland girl who ran away from home months earlier, state law enforcement officials said Tuesday.

The skeletal remains were discovered on Dec. 29, 1977 in woods near a tire manufacturing plant in Wilson, 60 miles east of the state capitol in Raleigh, State Bureau of Investigation officials said.

It took decades and multiple advances in DNA technology for law enforcement to finally put a name to the bones — 15-year-old Cindy Marcell Blizzard, “who had run away from Monkton, Maryland, in the spring of 1977,” according to an SBI statement this week.

While Blizzard’s cause of death is still unknown, state law enforcement officials are treating the matter as a possible homicide.

“Her death remains unsolved. Investigators are still looking for answers,” the SBI said.

When Blizzard’s skeleton was first found, a medical examiner could only determine that the remains were of a white female, 16 to 23, who had been dead for as little as six months and as long as two years, the SBI said.

While a cause of death has still yet to be determined, “circumstances surrounding the location and recovery of the remains raised the probability of foul play,” according to SBI officials.

DNA of the remains were first submitted to genetic data bases in 2010 with no hits, officials said.

Then in 2024, law enforcement conducted more “advanced DNA testing” and used “forensic tools that didn’t exist in 1977,” eventually leading to Blizzard’s identification, state officials said.

Investigators are asking for the public’s help and any tips that could be emailed to coldcases@ncsbi.gov or called in to state law enforcement at (919) 582-TIPS or the Wilson County Sheriff’s Office at (252) 237-2118.

NBC News Top Stories wp:paragraph