Body found by fisherman in 2020 identified as missing Alabama woman, sheriff says
Published 11:43 am Monday, December 19, 2022
A body found in the summer of 2020 has been identified as an Alabama woman who went missing around the same time, the local sheriff said.
The body was found in Flint Creek in Morgan County on July 31, 2020, by a fisherman, Lawrence County Sheriff’s Office deputies said. Police at the time were unable to identify the body and list her as a Jane Doe case.
Just weeks before Wanda Ashford Floyd was taken to Decatur General Hospital with an unknown medical issue, but was released the same day. Approximately a week after her release, friends notified law enforcement that Floyd was missing.
In late 2021, an investigator with the Mobile County Cold Case Unit contacted Decatur Police to help with investigative genetic genealogy on the unidentified Jane Doe.
Due to some similarities between the Jane Doe and Floyd, a close family member provided a DNA sample.
The Mobile County Sheriff’s Office Cold Case Unit working with some of their close partnerships with Moxxy Forensic Investigations, Hudson-Alpha Discovery, Saber Investigations, GEDMatch, and the Alabama Department of Forensic Sciences were able to determine the identity of the Jane Doe to be Wanda Ashford Floyd.
Mobile County Sheriff’s Office officials said they wanted to thank their partners who volunteered their services, Carla Davis (a philanthropist) who fully funded the lab cost needed to identify Ms. Wanda Ashford Floyd, The Decatur Police Department and Genealogy Analyst Olivia McCarter of the Mobile County Sheriff’s Office.
“This is not the outcome we had hoped for concerning the disappearance of Ms. Wanda Ashford Floyd,” said Lawrence County Sheriff Max Sanders. “We would like to extend our deepest sympathy to the Ms. Wanda Ashford Floyd family and her friends.”
Ms. Wanda Ashford Floyd family has been notified.