Veronica Mazzica
Appearances
Dateline NBC
Talking Dateline: The Woman with No Name
Yeah, unfortunately, they are doing construction outside my apartment building, and it just started. So hopefully they quiet down. All right.
Dateline NBC
Talking Dateline: The Woman with No Name
Yeah, absolutely. It's definitely a different experience than when we have a family reach out to us about their missing loved one or their murdered loved one. Every single case we feature is sent to us by people who watch Dateline and interact with us on our social media. And the Jane and John Doe cases that we have featured have also been sent to us by people in our social communities.
Dateline NBC
Talking Dateline: The Woman with No Name
I've found that a Some person out there that they've never crossed paths with that Jane or John Doe, but they have dedicated themselves and their lives to this person that they don't know.
Dateline NBC
Talking Dateline: The Woman with No Name
Yes, that is correct. One of the things that... is helpful in these cases is getting the sketches or the reconstructions or anything that has been created in these cases and getting that out to the public and using our platform to show these things to the general public. And if you recognize this, please call is the goal of telling these stories.
Dateline NBC
Talking Dateline: The Woman with No Name
Yeah. So Penny Doe is a Jane Doe that was found in Pennsylvania in July of 1990. And inside her pocket, each pocket was a penny. And so she was nicknamed Penny Doe. And there's not a lot of information out there about Penny Doe, but they believe this woman was between 20 and 40 years old. She had shoulder length, dark brown hair.
Dateline NBC
Talking Dateline: The Woman with No Name
Penny Doe's body was found in a place called Monroe Township, which is in Clarion County, Pennsylvania. And they don't believe she's from there because they didn't have anyone missing from that area that matched Penny's. the description of this Jane Doe, but also because they believe she came from a place that had fluoride in her water due to her teeth.
Dateline NBC
Talking Dateline: The Woman with No Name
When they did testing on it, they were able to tell that she didn't have any cavities and it just seemed like she had come from an area that had fluoride in their water at that time and that area did not. So it's now been 34 years since... that Jane Doe was found. There are a lot of people in that town. I talked to a guy that worked at the newspaper there.
Dateline NBC
Talking Dateline: The Woman with No Name
I talked to the girl who found her, now all grown up, and they all really want to give Penny Doe her name back.
Dateline NBC
Talking Dateline: The Woman with No Name
So paratrooper John Doe, he was actually found in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, which this hits a little bit close to home for me because I actually grew up there. I have been exactly in the spot where his body was found. He was found on Memorial Day weekend in 1984. His body was found floating in the water.
Dateline NBC
Talking Dateline: The Woman with No Name
I did speak to the Fort Lauderdale Police Department, and they said that his death was a drowning and that they did not suspect foul play. However, there is this woman who she actually lives in New Jersey. And back almost 10 years ago, she started an organization called Veteran Doe. And I spoke with her. Her name's Amelia.
Dateline NBC
Talking Dateline: The Woman with No Name
It's not just to identify him. She does work on any cases that seem to have a military connection. And I asked her why she was starting this, like what made her do that. And she said, you know, she had a bunch of military connection within her family. The men in her family had all been in the military. And one of the things she was talking about was that
Dateline NBC
Talking Dateline: The Woman with No Name
Because of the military connection, it should be relatively easy to find these people.
Dateline NBC
Talking Dateline: The Woman with No Name
Yes. So he was about 20 years old and he had brown hair and brown eyes. And the thing that she was telling me about that is very specific to this John Doe is that he has two tattoos that she thinks might be the key to identifying this John Doe. One of them is a pegasus with the phrase born to fly free. And the other is a skull with a beret that says U.S. paratrooper.
Dateline NBC
Talking Dateline: The Woman with No Name
The easiest thing to identify him earlier this year was the 40th anniversary of his disappearance. And Amelia would really like to help bring him home and give him his name back, even though they don't suspect foul play in his case specifically.
Dateline NBC
Talking Dateline: The Woman with No Name
Yeah, so Jane Seneca Doe is a case that the Dateline Digital team covered a couple years ago. The Jane Doe was found in October 1976, and she died of a single gunshot wound. She was found in Grundy County near Seneca, Illinois, and that's how she got her name, Jane Seneca Doe. So a couple of years back in 2018, the Grundy County, Illinois authorities, they began working with the DNA Doe project.
Dateline NBC
Talking Dateline: The Woman with No Name
And I actually spoke to the Grundy County deputy chief coroner. His name is Brandon Johnson. And he was just stressing to me just how much investigative work went into actually identifying her, which they were able to finally do earlier this year. Identified Jane Seneca Doe as a woman named Joanne Vicki Smith.
Dateline NBC
Talking Dateline: The Woman with No Name
And he told me one of the things that was really difficult with this case was that she had actually been adopted. And so a lot of her family members on her family tree didn't even know that she existed, which made it 10 times harder to solve this case. And so between the DNA Doe Project and the Grundy County, Illinois authorities, they were able to finally give her her name back. And
Dateline NBC
Talking Dateline: The Woman with No Name
Anyone who's interested in these cases, they can read all about them. We're putting a link in the description of this podcast.
Dateline NBC
Talking Dateline: The Woman with No Name
Before I go, though, I do have a question for you.
Dateline NBC
Talking Dateline: The Woman with No Name
We did get a question from a Jensen Peterson on Instagram. They said, sometimes when I listen to the podcast, it seems as though the writers have written the piece specifically for the voice and style of Keith, Josh, and Andrea. I try to imagine another host saying those exact words, but it would be out of character for them.
Dateline NBC
Talking Dateline: The Woman with No Name
So are the episodes written specifically with each host's talents in mind?