In the news Possible match of missing girl from 9/28/1983 Bambi Lynn Dick

Davenport teen, missing 25 years, may be Texas Jane Doe

Bambi Lynn Dick went to the Quiet Riot and Axe concert at the Col Ballroom in Davenport on the night of Sept. 28, 1983.

Her family never saw the Davenport West High School senior again. They spent year after agonizing year trying to find the girl they thought would have never run away, hiring a private investigator, combing the Internet hoping for the smallest of clues.

Ten days after the concert, a biker found a young woman dead hundreds of miles away. She was strangled from behind, dragged and stuffed into a culvert outside of Amarillo, Texas. Investigators pursued hundreds, maybe thousands, of leads trying to figure out who she was.

They buried her as a Jane Doe in Amarillo's Memory Gardens Cemetery, with donated clothes, a donated plot, a donated casket and a donated headstone.

The Dick family never gave up on Bambi coming home. Investigators in Amarillo never gave up their quest to find out who their Jane Doe really was.

This week, 25 years later, they all learned they may finally have their answer.

On Thursday, a detective knocked on the door of the Dicks' west Davenport home. He talked with Edward and Evelyn Dick, now in their 80s, for a couple of hours. He took swabs to test their DNA.

Bambi Dick may be Amarillo’s Jane Doe.

Jane Doe

Investigators in Amarillo knew a lot about Jane Doe.

Jane was between 16 and 30 years old. She was between 5 feet 6 inches and 5 feet 8 inches tall. She weighed somewhere between 100 and 140 pounds. She had shoulder-length, slightly curled hair that was light brown. She had hazel eyes. She wore contacts that were tinted blue. She had double-pierced ears.

She had some sort of mark on her left arm, and a third nipple below her right breast.

Jane Doe wore Britannica size 5 blue jeans, a white bra, pink underwear with the word Thursday stitched in red and white cotton socks. She had well-manicured nails.

She wore three rings. One was a gold diamond friendship or promise ring, one was a wedding band that was wrapped with a Band-Aid because it was too big for her finger, one was a gold ring with a red garnet or ruby birthstone and a diamond chip on the side.

Jane had a gap between her top front teeth.

She was dead 24 to 30 hours before the biker found her. She was not sexually assaulted and did not have any drugs or alcohol in her system.

The Jane Doe file in Amarillo is thick. Police still have her clothes, her rings. They sent out letters to thousands of optometrists trying to find out who prescribed her contacts. They put her in missing persons databases, matched her up with hundreds of missing females, said Lt. Gary Trupe of the Potter-Randall Special Crimes Unit. They kept her DNA.

They also kept a video of her funeral, just in case her family was found, he said.

Then last week, an organization called The Doe Network contacted the Amarillo police. They thought they might have a possible match with one of its Does.

That’s because Paul Dick had just put his sister’s description into the North American Missing Persons Network, a sister site of The Doe Network.

Now the Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation and Davenport Police Department are helping, too.

Bambi Lynn Dick

Here’s what Bambi Lynn Dick’s family remembers about their missing girl:

She was 17 years old. She was tall and weighed about 110 or 120 pounds. She had beautiful hair that fell to her shoulders. She had hazel eyes but had just taken a trip to the eye doctor with her dad to get blue-tinted contacts.

She had a burn on her left arm. She had a third nipple below her right breast.

Bambi had a hard time finding jeans that fit because she was tall and thin. Britannica was her brand. She had double-pierced ears. Her birthday was Jan. 4, 1966. Her birthstone is a garnet.

Bambi had a gap between her front teeth.

Her mom, Evelyn, filed a police report about her missing daughter. It mentions a boyfriend, a friend, the concert, her getting into a car. It says Bambi gave no indication of running away, but that they doubt foul play was involved.

The report was cancelled in 1984. It gives no explanation as to why. Bambi would have been 18 by then.

“Bambi was beautiful. She’s a gorgeous girl,” Lorie Dick said. She is Paul Dick’s wife. They live in Massachusetts now. “She was the sweetest, sweetest girl. Bambi would not just run away. She would have tried to find us because she loved us so much.”

What happens now

The Dick family has already decided that if Amarillo’s Jane Doe is their Bambi, that she will stay buried there. A new gravestone will mark her final resting place.

They are overwhelmed by the care and concern the city gave to this young woman, even if it ends up not being Bambi.

“She could not have been in a better town,” Lorie Dick said. “She was with angels.”

It may take months to get the DNA results back, Lt. Trupe said.

“I would love to put a name to her. I remember when she was found,” he said, adding that the lead investigator on the case just came back out of retirement, with the hope of figuring out the identity of Jane Doe. “There is a good chance it's her. It’s about as close as any we have had.”

Paul Dick said he is “happy and sad at the same time” about the possibility that Jane Doe is his sister.

“I am hoping this is her and it is over and done with and we can move on to the second stage of this … that would be bringing her killer to justice