DNA can answer who.
It cannot automatically answer why.
Chrisco died before detectives could sit across from him.
They could not ask:
Where did you meet Anita?
Did you know her from a restaurant?
Through friends?
A bar?
A ride?
Did you know her for hours or months?
Why was she in Huntington Beach?
Why that field?
What happened before she died?
He took those answers with him.
So although authorities say they identified Anita's killer through DNA, the narrative of the crime itself remains incomplete.
The Other Family Tree
Once investigators had developed the offender side of the case, they turned genetic genealogy toward Jane Doe.
This time they were looking for her relatives.
DNA matches pointed east.
Far east.
Eventually genealogy researcher Colleen Fitzpatrick and investigators built branches leading toward a family in Maine.
A distant relative named Steve Sabo was contacted.
Police asked whether anyone in the family had disappeared.
At first, the connection was not obvious.
Then relatives began researching old family records and obituaries.
In one obituary was a reference to a woman who had gone missing decades earlier.
Her name:
Anita Piteau.
Suddenly two mysteries separated by an entire continent began collapsing into one.
Maine had a missing Anita.
California had an unidentified Jane Doe.
DNA was saying they belonged to the same family.
Investigators contacted Anita's surviving relatives.
Samples confirmed the relationship.
After 52 years, Huntington Beach Jane Doe had her name back.
Anita Louise Piteau.
Twenty-six years old.
Originally from Augusta, Maine.
One of seven children.
The Phone Call
Imagine receiving that call.
A relative disappeared in 1968.
For decades, the family has no grave.
No final location.
No explanation.
Maybe she started another life.
Maybe something terrible happened.
Maybe she is still somewhere.
Years become decades.
Her parents grow old.
Siblings grow old.
Children become adults.
Nieces and nephews inherit the story of the aunt who vanished.
Then, more than half a century later, police call.
They know where Anita has been.
She was in California all along.
She died only weeks after her last letter home.
Her family had been waiting for her to return in May 1968.
She had already been buried under another name.
No name at all.
Jane Doe.
For 52 years.
The Last Letter Changes Meaning
Anita's February letter now became heartbreaking evidence.
She had written about work.
California.
Returning home.
Normal future plans.
There is no indication in that letter that she believed she was about to disappear.
No farewell.
No suggestion that she intended to cut off her family.
She expected to be back.
The family had been correct all along.
The silence was not Anita choosing another life.
Someone had ended it.
Bringing Anita Home
In July 2020, Huntington Beach investigators and members of the Orange County District Attorney's Office accompanied Anita's remains back to Maine.
Her family held a memorial service.
After more than half a century, the unidentified woman buried in California returned home under her real name.
The police officers who had inherited the case from detectives before them attended.
That detail matters because almost no investigation lasts 52 years in the hands of one person.
This case belonged to generations.
The officers who found Anita were long retired.
Some had died.
Evidence technicians changed.
Detectives changed.
Police chiefs changed.
Prosecutors changed.
Forensic science changed.
But the box of evidence stayed.
The cigarette stayed.
The clothing stayed.
And eventually the technology arrived that could read what those objects had been holding since 1968.
The Boys
And somewhere at the beginning of that entire chain were three boys in a field.
One of the boys who discovered Anita reportedly later became a Huntington Beach police officer himself.
For most people, discovering a body as a child would be a story carried privately for life.
In this case, the discovery became tied to a mystery that followed the police department for generations.
The image is difficult to forget.
Three children.
An open California field.
Something in the dirt that looks like a fallen scarecrow.
They approach.
Then realize the shape has hair.
Shoes.
Hands.
A face pressed toward the earth.
That discovery created a case file.
But nobody in 1968 understood how long the file would stay open.
The Crime Scene Clues That Waited 52 Years
The most extraordinary part of the case may be how ordinary the decisive evidence appeared.
A cigarette butt.
Clothing.
Biological evidence.
Nothing futuristic.
Nothing mysterious.
The technology simply did not yet exist.
The cigarette did not become more informative over time.
Humans became better at asking questions of it.
In 1968:
It was a smoked cigarette beside a body.
In 2010:
It contained a male DNA profile connected to the assault evidence.
By the era of investigative genetic genealogy:
That profile could lead through relatives and family trees toward Johnny Chrisco.
The evidence had waited longer than many of the investigators' entire careers.
Why Preservation Matters
Imagine if someone had thrown the cigarette away in 1975.
Or if the clothing had been destroyed to create storage space.
Or if biological samples had been discarded because the case looked hopeless.
There would be no guarantee Anita's killer could ever be identified.
The detectives who collected those objects in 1968 deserve attention precisely because they could not know what the future would make possible.
Good evidence preservation is an act of faith.
A belief that tomorrow may know something today does not.
This case proved it.
The Wrong Purse
It also proved the opposite lesson.
Evidence can mislead.
For decades, police thought photographs in a purse found near the scene might identify Jane Doe.
The connection seemed logical.
A woman's body.
A woman's purse nearby.
Family photographs inside.
Surely they belonged together.
They did not.
The purse was simply near the scene.
That difference cost investigators time.
Then social media eliminated the lead almost instantly.
A clue is not a fact until the connection is proven.
The Wrong State
The shoes created another theory.
A New York-linked brand.
The "Rosie" identification.
Possible Brooklyn or Bronx origins.
Police followed it because they had to.
There was evidence pointing that direction.
But Anita came from Maine.