Student-led genetic genealogy identifies woman found dead at Phoenix bus stop
Students and volunteers gave a Phoenix bus-stop Jane Doe back her name after nearly three years. The woman was identified as Jennifer Ann Koons, 48, of Phoenix.
Jennifer Ann Koons, the woman found dead at a Phoenix bus stop in 2023, has been identified after a student-led genetic genealogy effort turned an unidentified decedent into a named case. Koons, 48, was found on or about February 8, 2023, at 711 West Grande Avenue, where she had no identification and fingerprint checks failed to match any known person.
That left Phoenix police and the Maricopa County Office of the Medical Examiner with a dead-end that ordinary records could not break. The case sat unresolved until it was referred in 2024 to the Ramapo College Investigative Genetic Genealogy Center, which Ramapo says is the first of its kind nationally.
From there, the work moved through a layered DNA pipeline. In September 2024, a blood sample was sent to Genologue in Tucker, Georgia, for DNA extraction and whole-genome sequencing. The sequencing data were then sent to Parabon Nanolabs to build a genotype profile that could be used in genealogy work. Students in Ramapo’s Fall 2024 Investigative Genetic Genealogy Certificate Program handled the case first, and a small group of volunteers kept going after the class ended.
By July 2025, the investigation had produced a candidate: Jennifer Ann Koons of Phoenix. In February 2026, Detective Scott Fey obtained a family reference sample that confirmed the identification and closed the loop on a case that had remained open for nearly three years.
Ramapo College President Cindy Jebb said the work shows the center contributes meaningfully to society and helps give families closure. The identification also fits Ramapo’s track record; the center says it previously identified Donald Hadland Jr. in the Nogales John Doe case and Joseph Daniel Pierce in the Saint Louis John Doe case.
What still hangs over Koons’ death is the cause and manner of death, which have not been publicly released. For now, the breakthrough restores her name to a woman who was left unidentified at a public bus stop, and it sharpens the question that matters next: what happened to Jennifer Ann Koons after she was found at 711 West Grande Avenue?
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