COLLEEN ORSBORN - 15 yo (1984)/ Suspect: Christopher Wilder (Serial killer - deceased) - Orange County FL

When 15-year-old Colleen Orsborn missed her bus, ditched school, grabbed a pink bikini and left home on March 15, 1984, DNA science was still young.

When a fisherman found a knee poking out of the ground near an Orange County lake a few days later - faded pink nail polish left on the body's fingers and toes - there was still no DNA database.For almost three decades, Colleen and the girl found in Orange County remained separate mysteries.      

They shouldn't have.

"It's a tragedy that somebody ruled her out," Orlando's District 9 Medical Examiner Jan Garavaglia said Friday.

Garavaglia confirmed that a DNA sample from the long-unidentified girl by the lake has been matched to Colleen, the pretty Campbell Junior High eighth-grader who police believe was one of the first victims of serial killer Christopher Wilder.

"It would certainly give us some sense of peace," Colleen's older sister Margaret Carroll, who still lives in Volusia County, said of the new activity on the case. "I don't know if it'll ever be over for any of us. But by all means, we'd like to know what happened to her.

"Colleen left her family's beachside home on Butler Boulevard the same day Wilder, a 39-year-old Australian millionaire who raced in the 24 Hours of Daytona at Daytona International Speedway, checked into a Howard Johnson hotel in Daytona Beach.

At the time, two women Wilder knew - including an ex-girlfriend - had disappeared.

Colleen's family initially wondered if she simply ran away from home. Then weeks passed. By the time Wilder died in a skirmish with state troopers in New Hampshire - about a month after Colleen disappeared - police believed he was responsible for 11 abductions and four slayings. Today, they know he killed at least seven women and one teenage girl he abducted at a Las Vegas beauty pageant.

Those eight didn't include three survivors Wilder either spared or left for dead. And it didn't include Colleen, who local police were sure was his victim."I'm almost certain she's a victim of Wilder. He was in town the day she turned up missing," Larry Lewis, a retired Daytona Beach police detective who worked the case, said Tuesday. "They'll never know who did it because old Wilder killed himself.

"When the girl's body surfaced in Orange County, Lewis said, police checked into whether it was Colleen.

He sent the Medical Examiner's Office an X-ray of one of Colleen's old injuries - a broken arm - to see if it matched the body."He said, 'No, no, no, we don't have any evidence of a break there,' " Lewis said of the medical examiner's response. "We had ruled her out because of the broken bone; I'm pretty sure that was the biggest part of it."

Garavaglia, who took over the examiner's office in 2004, said notations in the case file abruptly stopped sometime after that.

The match came in March 2010, six years after newcomer Garavaglia sent DNA from all the agency's unidentified bodies to a national database. A mitochondrial DNA sample - the type inherited from the maternal side - matched samples taken from two of Colleen's sisters.

When, despite the match, the case still wasn't moving by December, Garavaglia asked the Florida Department of Law Enforcement to look into it.

"Once we got the FDLE involved, then they were able to light a fire under some people," said Garavaglia, also known as "Dr. G" on the Discovery Fit & Health television series about her cases.

http://www.miamiherald.com/2011/02/02/2046637/dr-g-matches-dna-to-missing-daytona.html

Colleen Orsborn

On March 19, 1984, 15-year-old Colleen Orsborn left her Daytona Beach home to go to school. However, because the city was at the height of its spring break season, she decided to skip school to go to the beach instead. Unfortunately, she never returned home and was reported missing. Three weeks later, the decomposing body of an unidentified Jane Doe was discovered in a shallow grave in Orange County. Colleen’s family speculated that the body might be hers, but the medical examiner ruled this out. However, the family remained skeptical about this ruling and would eventually ask for DNA testing to be performed on the remains. After 26 years, it was positively confirmed that the Jane Doe was Colleen Orsborn.

Colleen is believed to have been a victim of serial killer Christopher Wilder. He was nicknamed the “Beauty Queen Killer,” because he liked to target models and attractive young women and was known for luring his victims by pretending to be a photographer for a modeling agency. Wilder went on a killing spree in early 1984, abducting and raping at least 12 women and murdering eight. Wilder started off his spree in Florida and traveled through several states before he was killed in a shootout with police in New Hampshire on April 13. Wilder just happened to be staying at a motel in Daytona Beach on the day Colleen Orsborn disappeared, so he is the prime suspect in her death. However, since Wilder was killed before he could provide any answers, no one will ever know for sure.

http://listverse.com/2013/08/13/10-potentially-unconfirmed-victims-of-famous-murderers/