College students identify Becca Doe, closing 35-year Albuquerque mystery

College students in New Jersey did what decades of fingerprints, database checks and FBI DNA comparisons could not: they gave Becca Doe her name back. After 35 years, Albuquerque police identified the longtime Jane Doe as Becca Mallekoote, the 18-year-old whose death in a Super 8 Motel room in 1991 had remained one of the city’s most haunting unidentified cases.

Police announced the identification on March 6, 2026, one day after what would have been Mallekoote’s 54th birthday. Her body was found in June 1991 at the Super 8 Motel at 2500 University NE in Albuquerque. The room was locked from the inside, and the autopsy determined the death was suicide. Investigators found a suitcase of clothing and $500 in cash, but no identification. For years, fingerprints and unidentified-person databases led nowhere. A DNA sample sent to the FBI’s CODIS system in 2009 also produced no match.

The breakthrough came in December 2025, when an employee with the New Mexico Office of the Medical Investigator reached out to the Ramapo College Investigative Genetic Genealogy Center for help. In January 2026, Ramapo students and staff uploaded a SNP profile to GEDmatch Pro and identified a candidate within days. A Ventura Police Department sergeant then helped locate Mallekoote’s half-brother in California, and DNA from that close relative confirmed the match.

The identification closes a long stretch of uncertainty for a family that never got a final answer to who Becca Doe was. Albuquerque police and the Office of the Medical Investigator said the family was glad nobody stopped working the case, and interim APD Chief Cecily Barker called the identification a sign of the department’s refusal to give up. Heather Jarrell, the state’s chief medical examiner, said the collaboration and the new reach of forensic genealogy may help answer more families’ questions.

Ramapo’s IGG Center says it is the first of its kind nationally and provides pro bono work for law enforcement, medical examiners and defense attorneys. The center has already helped publicize dozens of cold-case identifications, a record that now includes Mallekoote. APD says it still has hundreds of cold cases, while the Office of the Medical Investigator reports 77 cases under review, a reminder that the tools that named Becca Doe could still move other long-stalled files forward.