ORANGE COUNTY, N.Y. -- In October 1970, police discovered a woman's body several hundred yards off Route 94 in Chester.
They recovered fingerprints from the scene. But it took several decades, and a new database, before those fingerprints got a hit last Christmas Eve.
“That definitely started everything with this one particular case,” said Yan Salomon, a New York State Police investigator.
But that match led to several aliases without mugshots. So state police asked a judge to let them exhume the body. Investigators did that work this week.
“As far as missing black females in that age range in that time period, there’s not a lot in our area that we can attribute to any organization,” Salomon said.
State police say they're investigating whether the body is one of several women that went missing from Devernon Legrand's home in Brooklyn. In the 1960s and 1970s, Legrand, who styled himself a clergyman, recruited women to pose as nuns and beg for money in New York City. He collected hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Most of the women recruited either ended up dead or missing, including Ernestine Timmons.
"Ernestine Timmons went missing in May 1970. Our woman was found in October 1970," Salomon said. "She had been in the woods at least four months ... Timing-wise, it’s very close to a possibility."
But investigators warn several other women also went missing from that Legrand's house during that time. Legrand frequently traveled to Sullivan County, where he owned a farm. In the 1970s, police found the remains of several women in Briscoe Lake.
Legrand was later convicted of murder and rape. He died in state prison in 2006.
"Now we’re taking another step with the case, as far as getting DNA from her to match with any living relatives,” Salomon said.
Investigators hope that will bring them one step closer to solving another chapter in this decades-long mystery.