The Denizens of Potter's Field

10/31/2025

by M.P. Pellicer | Stranger Than Fiction Stories
Nearly 30 years ago the body of a teen female was found in the Arizona desert. She was unidentified, and the police department dubbed her Apache Junction Jane Doe. Finally her name and origins became known. She was only one of dozens who spend years unnamed and buried in a potter's field.

Reconstruction of Apache Junction Jane Doe

In August 1992, west of Idaho Road and south of US-60 a man walking his dog found the remains of girl that was believed to have died five weeks before she was discovered. The area is known for transient activity. Due to the state of the corpse, the cause of death remained undetermined. She was dubbed Apache Junction Jane Doe.

She was believed to be of Hispanic, African American and Caucasian descent. She was around 5 feet tall, with an unknown weight and had protruding teeth that were poorly maintained. She wore her coarse, brown hair in a ponytail. She was wearing Levi denim cutoff shorts, and a Team Gear soccer T-shirt with soccer balls on front and back. She wore a yellow metal ring on her left ring finger, and a Phoenix transit system token, "valid for one student fare."

Stephanie Bourgeois a crime scene technician with the Apache Junction Police Department took the case over in 2008. Along with the help of DNA Doe Project (DDP) there was an effort made to identify the girl.

T-shirt Apache Junction Jane Doe was wearing

In 2018, Jane Doe's fingerprints and hair strands were submitted to databases for possible matches. Police were able to connect to possible family members. They found Jane Doe's cousin who gave information about Jane's half-aunt, who learned she had a half-brother named Bernhard Lyon Neumann via a birth certificate left by her father. Neumann was born in 1953 in Germany. His father was an African American soldier stationed in Germany, and his mother was a German woman named Else Neumann.

Armed only with his birth date and the name of his biological parents, the U.S. Department of State helped to locate him in North Carolina. He was told that he had a relative who was unidentified for almost three decades. He did not find out he was adopted until he was 18 and enlisted in the military. He never even used the name of Bernhard, and his present name taken from his adoptive parents, remains undisclosed.

After his DNA was uploaded to a global database the match indicated he was Jane Doe's full uncle, and he had a full sibling of an unknown age. It's unknown if this individual was older or younger than Bernhard. Was he also adopted by someone in the United States as well? The only fact at that time was that he was Jane Doe's father, he was half African American and German, possibly adopted by a family in the military with ties to New York.

The DDP looked for other children born with the same biological parents, but none were found then.

Apache Junction Jane Doe was identified as Melody Harrison from Phoenix

In 2023, the Apache Junction Police Department announced they had identified Apache Junction Jane Doe. Her name is Melody Harrison, 15, from Phoenix, Arizona.

The identification was achieved after five years of research by the DNA Doe Project, which utilized genetic genealogy to overcome challenges posed by her mixed Mexican and African-American ancestry, populations underrepresented in DNA databases, and the adopted status of her father.

Her family had reported her missing in 1992, but different persons came to the family and told them they had seen her alive, and the missing person report was withdrawn in 1996. They had no idea her remains were found two months after she disappeared.

With her identity established the police are now seeking to find who ended her life, and why she was in Apache Junction during the time of her disappearance in 1992. Her cause of death is unknown.

There are questions as to whether she was a victim of two serial killers that were operating in the area in the early 1990s.

One of them was Scott Lehr, who was convicted of murdering three women whose ages ranged from 19 to 40 years old. Lehr was also charged with several rapes and brutal attacks on women. He earned the moniker of the "Baby Seat Rapist" since he drove around with a baby seat in his car.

Bryan Patrick Miller with his Zombie Hunter Car (Source-Maricopa County Court)

The other individual is Bryan Patrick Miller who was known as the "Zombie Hunter" or the "Canal Killer". He was a weird character, who owned a modified police car decorated with fake blood and steampunk gear, with "ZOMBIE HUNTER" painted on it in large letters. He was often spotted around Phoenix. He would wear elaborate costumes, taking pictures with people around town, as well as some local police officers, all before he was eventually charged with murder.

After spending many years at large, Miller was arrested in 2015, after he started stabbing a woman he had given a ride to. She escaped and police arrested him. His DNA once entered into the national database were a match for two unsolved murders, that of Angela Brosso and Melanie Bernas.

He was convicted in 2023 of the murders of Brosso, 23, and Bernas, 15. Both women disappeared while riding their bikes along a canal. Brosso's decapitated body was found floating in the canal in November, 1992. Her head was found 11 days later. Bernas' body was also found in the canal in September, 1993.

Miller is suspected in the disappearance of Brandy Myers, 13, who disappeared in May of 1992, and the murder of Shannon Aumock, 16, who disappeared on May 27, 1992 from Phoenix. Her strangled body was found in a remote spot near Deer Valley Road in North Phoenix.

Shannon had lived in the foster care system since she was 3 years old. Her biological mother was young when she became pregnant as a result of a rape. After 3 years, she gave her daughter to CPS after realizing she couldn't care for her. A Flagstaff family adopted her, but she was returned to Child Protective Services (CPS) when she was 12 due to behavioral problems. She became a chronic runaway, and police reported that they had contact with Shannon every week from 1989-1991, returning her back to these facilities, only to pick her up the following week. A month before she died, she ran away from her last group home and was not reported missing. CPS had petitioned the courts to relinquish responsibility for her.

Like Melody Harrison she was buried as a Jane Doe in Twin Buttes Cemetery in Tempe, Arizona. Twenty years went by before she was identified via DNA to her biological mother, Tawne Townsend. The sample was compared to 1,600 missing persons reports issued between 1991 to 1994. Despite the astronomical odds the match was made. In 2011, her biological mother buried her at Sunwest Cemetery in El Mirage, Arizona.

Miller reportedly confessed to killing a mentally disabled girl who was selling items door to door, and the description matched circumstances of when Shannon was killed.

He is also a person of interest in the murder of Adrienne Salinas who disappeared in 2013 from Tempe, and who body was found later that year in Apache Junction.

Both Miller and Lehr were sentenced to death and are currently housed on death row.

Bryant Edward Deane (1952-1992)

In October, 2025 a John Doe case was solved via a DNA match.

It all started on August, 17, 1992 when workers were clearing brush near St. John Bridge in North, Portland, Oregon. The skeletonized remains were clothed and were covered in thick brush in the 8400 block of NW St. Helens Highway, north of the west end of the bridge. He was wearing a maroon colored jacket with fleece lining, MacGregor brand ankle boots, thick socks and gray/ brown cotton gloves on both hands. He was not wearing any type of jewelry. By his clothing it could be assumed he died during the winter.

Examination of the skeleton revealed that it belonged to a man probably older than 50 years of age, and that he had a limp since he suffered from Ankylosing spondylitis (AS). This is a chronic inflammatory disease primarily affecting the spine and sacroiliac joints. The condition is associated with the HLA-B27 gene in over 90% of cases in some populations. Over time, it can cause vertebrae to fuse. This makes the spine less flexible and can result in a hunched posture, and chronic lower back pain. His limp was due to the left tibia was shorter than the right.

He had brown hair, and a dental examination showed evidence of restorations.

John Lundy, a forensic anthropologist determined that he was only about 5 feet to 5 feet 3 inches tall.

Fractures on the body indicated he may have fallen from the bridge or been hit by a driver and thrown from the bridge, and had been there about a year before being discovered. His cause and manner of death was unknown.

In 2024, genealogy research from the DNA Doe Projects revealed that the victim was connected to Franklin County, Massachusetts.

In March, 2025 Astrea Forensic completed an enhanced profile, which indicated North Atlantic, Baltic and western Mediterranean heritage.

Originally it was thought to be an easy case, but it turned out to be complicated. Eric Hendershott, the DNA Doe Project’s team leader said, "Misattributed parentage events in the trees of our highest matches, combined with New England pedigree collapse, made this quite the challenging case."

How does one interpret this statement? Were children matched with biological parents that weren't really theirs? What's a pedigree collapse?

What's unusual is there appears not to have been a circular issued in order to identify this John Doe. He had several, unusual physical aspects that could have helped to give him a name. He was a very short man, he had a limp and possibly a hunched back. No sketch was ever produced even though a full skeleton was recovered. He was not entered into NamUs until December, 2010, almost 20 years after he was found.

In August, 2025 a potential match was identified, when possible relatives were discovered. A presumed brother who had no contact, with who was thought to be the John Doe since the mid-to-late 1970s, provided a DNA sample for comparison.

Two months later it was announced his name is Bryant Edward Deane. Born in 1952, to a Massachusetts family, he was the eldest of six children. He had a significant extended family in the area. His father was Roland E. Deane Sr. (d.2017) and his mother was Eleanor Severance (d.2019). His parents died without knowing what had become of their first born.

Strangely only a photo of Deane when he was a child was provided. It's never clarified if his family reported him as a missing person. Was he alienated from his family who lived in New England, and did they know he was an Oregon? Where was he buried during all those years he had no name, and did they take a DNA sample back then? It's not idle curiosity, since it's never been ascertained if he was a homicide victim, or if there was other DNA evidence on his person which could lead to his killer, if indeed there is one to blame. However in the end he is no longer a denizen of the Potter's Field.