DNA links remains found in 1985 to living Lafayette relative of girl missing since 1978

ELK VALLEY, Tenn. (WISH) — A DNA match with a living relative this week helped investigators identify a girl who’d been missing more than four decades from Tippecanoe County, Indiana, authorities say.

Tracy Sue Walker, 15, was reported as missing in 1978, the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation said in a news release issued Tuesday.

The teen’s remains were found April 3, 1985, in the Big Wheel Gap near Elk Valley, Tennessee. Big Wheel Gap is in the hills off I-75 about a two-hour-drive northwest of Knoxville, Tennessee.

The skeletal remains had been nicknamed “Baby Girl.”

The Tennessee Bureau of Investigation had reopened the “Baby Girl” case in 2013. Earlier this year, scientists from a private laboratory did genetic genealogy testing on the DNA and found the possible match to a living relative in Lafayette, Indiana.

News releases from the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation and the Lafayette Police Department, which helped locate the relative, did not identify the relative.

The Tennessee investigators now hope to learn the circumstances behind Walker’s death. Anyone with information was asked to call 800-824-3463.