Death of Marcia King

Marcia Lenore Sossoman King was born June 9, 1959, and was 21 years old when she was murdered around April 22, 1981. On April 24, 1981, three young men discovered her body in a ditch along Greenlee Road in Newton Township, near Troy, Ohio. She was found in a fetal position on her right side, without shoes or socks, wearing a distinctive handmade buckskin poncho, blue Wrangler bell-bottom jeans, a brown turtleneck sweater, and a white brassiere. No identification was found on or near her body.

An autopsy conducted the afternoon of her discovery determined she had suffered extensive blunt force trauma to the head and neck and had been strangled to death approximately 48 hours before her body was found; her liver was also lacerated. She had not been sexually assaulted. She was described as being between 5 ft 4 in and 5 ft 6 in tall, aged 18 to 26, with reddish-brown hair braided into pigtails, light brown eyes, freckles, and a ruddy complexion suggesting significant time spent outdoors. She showed a high level of personal hygiene and dental care, including a porcelain crown, and had several scars, including one beneath her chin.

Despite obtaining fingerprints and dental records and distributing a composite drawing that generated roughly two hundred leads, investigators could not identify her, and she became known as "Buckskin Girl." The case became a cold case, though investigators periodically revisited it. Over the following decades, authorities pursued various theories, including that she was a runaway, foster child, or transient, and considered possible links to a February 1981 murder, to the "Redhead Murders," and to a suspected unidentified serial killer active in the region between 1985 and 2004; none of these links were confirmed, and some evidence contradicted them, including the absence of sexual assault and her well-groomed appearance.

Forensic advances gradually narrowed the investigation. A DNA profile was developed in 2001 and entered into the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System in 2008, ruling out 226 potential matches. A 2016 forensic facial reconstruction and isotope and pollen analyses of her hair, fingernails, and clothing suggested she had spent time in the Southwestern/Southeastern United States and possibly originated from or spent time in the Northeastern United States or Canada, and had been in an arid climate shortly before her death.

On April 9, 2018, the Miami Valley Regional Crime Laboratory announced she had been identified as Marcia Lenore King of Little Rock, Arkansas, through DNA analysis conducted by the DNA Doe Project with Full Genomes Corporation, matching a sample from a first cousin. She had never been formally reported missing, though her family had searched for her, and she was believed to have frequently hitchhiked, with ties to Pittsburgh and Louisville, Kentucky. Investigators later gathered eyewitness accounts placing her in Louisville about two weeks before her death and in Arkansas shortly before that, with a possible connection to the religious organization The Way. As of February 2020, the Miami County Sheriff's Office stated the investigation into her murder remained active, with efforts continuing to obtain a nuclear DNA profile from hair evidence recovered at the scene.