Another victim of a brutal murder who went unidentified for decades, Lina Reyes Geddes was found near a spring in the vicinity of Lake Powell, Utah, in 1998, shot, bound, and wrapped in a sleeping bag. The main problem with positively identifying her was the fact that her fingertips had been cut off, and entreaties to the public for help yielded nothing, according to The Salt Lake Tribune. Nothing, that is, until 2018, when an amateur cold case enthusiast came forward with one tiny detail after police reopened the case.
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That detail was a small mole on Geddes’ right ear, which was enough for police to make a tenuous connection to Geddes. Acting on the suspicions of her family in Mexico, authorities examined trace DNA from the ropes used to bind her, comparing it with DNA given by the family of Edward Geddes (pictured), Lina’s husband, who had died by suicide in 2001. A match was made, confirming Edward Geddes as the murderer and giving a modicum of closure to the family of Lina Reyes Geddes, who for 20 years had been known to Utah law enforcement only as the “Maidenwater victim,” after the area in which she was found.
