Doe ID: Nora Castillo

DNA: ID

AbJack Entertainment

Society & Culture, True Crime

4.8 • 871 Ratings

🗓️ 10 March 2025

⏱️ 26 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Episode 137 Doe ID: Nora Castillo

In June, 1988, a farmer in Baca County, Colorado found skeletonized human remains on his property. Investigators found nothing in the way of identification, and only a 1986 quarter in a pocket. All investigators knew was that they had found the remains of a young woman, who was likely Hispanic, and although a cause of death could not be determined, severe injuries to her legs, and the overall circumstances led police to think that she was the victim of a homicide. Police had no missing persons cases on women in the area that matched their victim, and her case went cold almost immediately. They kept the Jane Doe's remains for years before finally laying her to rest. Over the years, investigators searched databases for DNA links, and frustratingly, a link was missed by the system that could have given Jane Doe her name back sooner. Eventually, genealogy did provide police with their victim's name. It was Nora Castillo, a young mother from McAllen, Texas, who had gone missing in 1986 or 1987 following a string of struggles in her life. Now that police know who their victim is, they still want to find out how she came to be in the farmer's field in 1988, and who put here there. This Jane Doe finally has her name back; it's Nora Castillo, and this is her story.

If you have any information about Castillo or this case, please contact the Baca County Sheriff’s Office at 719-523-4511 or the McAllen Texas Police Department at 956-681-2221.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	You're listening to DNAID.
0:03.0	Brought to you by Abject Entertainment.
0:05.3	Be sure to check out some of the other great true crime podcasts from this network,
0:09.7	including The Murder in My Family, Missing Persons, Scene of the Crime, Zodiac Speaking,
0:16.4	Beyond Bizarre True Crime, Citizen Detective, and Campus Killings.
0:21.9	All of these podcasts are available for you to binge on right now, wherever you listen to podcasts.
0:27.4	Subscribe where you're listening to this podcast so you don't miss an episode. The
0:40.3	The The
0:57.0	The On June 3, 1988 88, Paul Brinkley, a farmer with a large property outside Springfield in
1:28.5	southeast Colorado, called the Baca County Sheriff's Office and reported that there were
1:33.3	human bones in an overgrown field on his farm.
1:37.6	Baca County Sheriff Willard Gough, some deputies and the coroner, Robert Morrow, arrived at the
1:42.4	farm and confirmed the find.
1:44.9	Sun-bleached white bones from a person lay scattered in a field on the property.
1:49.5	I have to clarify here that this was not a small, neatly-groomed field.
1:53.1	Think about the massive, untamed open spaces in the TV show Yellowstone, and you're
1:57.1	envisioning the right setting. The field was unused and covered with overgrown vegetation.
2:02.5	The body, when it was a body, had not been buried but had decomposed above ground. There was no telling
2:07.6	how long the bones had been there, but the coroner estimated one to three years. Baca County law
2:13.8	enforcement worked with the farm operator to implement a thorough search of the surrounding area that lasted for several days. They crawled on hands and knees and sifted through the soil
2:22.6	and processed a chunk of land measuring a half mile long and 150 yards wide. Photos of the scene
2:29.1	shows stakes in the ground with crime scene tapes strung around them and little red flags in the
	...

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