She Never Stopped Looking for Her Mom. The Truth Was Hidden in the Hills — and a Red Dress No One Could Explain

Officials have ascertained the identity of a woman whose remains were found nearly 60 years ago — finally giving closure to her family members, who had been searching for her since she vanished.

The woman, Dorothy Vaillancourt, was found in a red cotton dress and an off-white trench coat on a San Francisco-area hillside in 1966, but authorities didn’t know who she was. She was buried in an unmarked grave and referred to as “Marin County Jane Doe.”

Penelope Vaillancourt was 15 years old when her mom disappeared, and spent decades looking for her across the San Francisco area, she told SFGATE. While riding the bus in the city, she would see women walking around who resembled her mom. 

“I’d jump off the bus, run after them and look them in the face,” Penelope told the outlet. “But it was never her.”

In 2022, the Marin County Sheriff’s Office, working with the California Department of Justice, submitted evidence to Othram Labs in Texas, which used advanced DNA testing to build a profile and identify relatives of Vaillancourt, according to a statement from the lab. 

Vaillancourt grew up in Tasmania, an island state of Australia off its coast. She was a nurse in Sydney during World War II, where she met Penelope’s father, Francois Vaillancourt, she told the outlet. The two married and ended up in San Francisco, where they had seven children. 

Soon after, their family life fell apart, Penelope told the outlet. They divorced and Dorothy Vaillancourt struggled with alcoholism, and was placed in a halfway house. Due to her inability to hold a job, the children were placed in different orphanages in San Francisco. 

The last sighting of Vaillancourt was in December of 1966 when she wandered into a fire station asking for money for a taxi or to stay the night. The fireman refused, and said he last saw her walking down the street. 

Three months later, Vaillancourt was dead — only her family never knew.

Penelope and other family members spent years searching for her mother, reaching out to the FBI and San Francisco cold case investigators but had no luck, she told SFGATE. 

Some surviving family members of Vaillancourt believe that a man with whom she was once romantically involved had something to do with her death, but firm answers remain elusive. The cause of Vaillancourt’s death is still unknown.

“I don’t know how she ended up there. Was she killed? Did somebody hit her with a car? Did she slip and fall?” Penelope said.

The Marin County Sheriff’s Office did not immediately respond to inquiries from PEOPLE about the case, or whether the office is still investigating.