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A Texas teenager murdered in Faribault County 35 years ago was identified this week partly due to the help of a local woman who adopted her cause.

Deborah Anderson heard about the "Jane Doe" — 

now identified as 18-year-old Michelle Yvette Busha

 — buried in Riverside Cemetery in Blue Earth, Minn., about 13 years ago. She didn't have any background in police work or forensics, but she felt obligated to help find the young woman's name.

"God forbid something happen to my child, I would hope that people would do all they could to bring her home to me," Anderson said. "If I'm going to expect that of others, I should be willing to do it too."

Busha's body was found in a ravine near Blue Earth in Faribault County on May 30, 1980. Busha was a native of Bay City, Texas. Her family had reported her missing earlier that month. Although former Minnesota state trooper Robert Leroy Nelson confessed to killing the young woman, he didn't reveal her name. 
 
Anderson tried to share information about the body wherever she went. She even put up fliers while on vacation in the southern United States.
 
"I felt like, the more people who hear her story, the more likely we would be able to give her name back," Anderson said. "You just never know when that one person may see it and say, 'That's my sister.'"

The Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension exhumed Busha's body in August to gather DNA. She was identified after matching relatives in a national missing persons database.  

Law enforcement officials are making arrangements to return Busha's body to her family in Texas in coming days.

"She was somebody's child, she had a right to have her name back and go back to her family," Anderson said. "People are not disposable."

Thanks to a stranger, Jane Doe is identified

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The identity of a murder victim who had been unidentified for 35 years has been revealed, thanks in large part to the efforts of Deborah Anderson.

One woman's long quest to identify a victim's body

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