DADE COUNTY, Ga. — Authorities in north Georgia said Thursday they had identified a body found 33 years ago as a woman who'd gone missing in Michigan.
The Georgia Bureau of Investigation identified the victim as Stacey Lyn Chahorski of Norton Shores, Michigan.
The GBI said she was reported missing in Jan. 1989, just a couple weeks after a body was found on I-59 in Dade County, Georgia.
The bureau said its agents and investigators in Dade County worked for years to identify the victim found Dec. 16, 1988 five miles from the Alabama state line.
The case was reassigned in the mid-2000s when investigators found additional evidence and sent it to the FBI lab in Washington, where a DNA profile was created and entered into a missing persons database.
It was reassigned once more in 2015, with a GBI forensic artist putting together age progression clay renderings and composites of the victim.
Eventually the GBI was able to utilize a newer type of genealogy technology that "had been credited with assisting in solving other cold cases, particularly homicide investigations" and were able to finally identify Chahorski.
She would have been 52 years old this year.
The GBI said she was at one point buried in a Dade County cemetery and now her body will be reunited with her family.
"Now, investigators turn to the search for Stacey’s killer," the GBI said.
The bureau did not say if there were any current suspects.
A press conference was held Thursday at the Dade County Sheriff's Office, which you can watch here.
