Killing of Deanna Criswell

Deanna Lee Criswell was born September 20, 1971, and grew up in Spokane, Washington. Her parents divorced when she was three, and after her maternal grandfather's death she became increasingly estranged from her family, running away repeatedly during her teenage years. At age 15, she began a relationship with William "Bill" Ross Knight, then 36. After Knight relocated to Tucson, Arizona, he sent Deanna a bus ticket in September 1987 so she could join him there. She called her older sister after arriving in Tucson but never contacted her parents again.

On November 25, 1987, a homeless man discovered Deanna's body in a culvert along Interstate 10 near Marana, Arizona, and reported it to local police. Tire tracks at the scene indicated she had been killed elsewhere and her body dumped. An autopsy by the Pima County medical examiner determined she had been dead about two weeks, had recently had sex with no evidence of rape, and had been shot five times with a .22 caliber firearm — four times in the torso and once in the neck at close range. A sweater had been placed over her face, which investigators noted was often characteristic of a crime of passion committed by someone who knew the victim. She was buried unidentified in 1989 in the Pima County Cemetery after the investigation stalled.

Because Deanna's father's 1987 attempt to file a missing person report was declined due to her history of running away, she was never officially listed as missing, complicating identification efforts for decades. The case was reopened in 2009 amid advances in DNA technology; her remains were exhumed for further forensic testing. In 2010, the FBI completed a forensic facial reconstruction of the victim at its Quantico laboratories, which was distributed on posters and later posted online, including on the Doe Network under the name "Jane Doe 19." In 2011, a partial DNA profile from crime-scene evidence was matched to William Ross Knight, who had a history of armed robbery and had used a .22 caliber pistol in one such robbery — the same caliber used in Criswell's killing. However, Knight had died in 2005 of liver complications while imprisoned on robbery charges, and he was never charged in Criswell's death.

In 2014, Deanna's paternal aunt and uncle, Ellen and Donald Criswell, reconciled with her father and learned she had never been heard from since 1987. They began searching online databases of unidentified persons in Arizona and came across the "Jane Doe 19" facial reconstruction on the Doe Network, noting its resemblance to a childhood photo of their niece, including a distinctive gap between her front teeth. They contacted Pima County authorities, who obtained DNA samples from Deanna's parents and confirmed the match. The identification was announced by the Marana Police Department on February 11, 2015, more than 27 years after her death. Her family chose to leave her buried in Pima County, and in March 2015 relatives replaced her "Jane Doe 19" gravestone with one bearing her name.