After exiting a car in Florida’s Sumter County on February 19, 1971, twenty-year-old John Marglin and eighteen-year-old Charles Sutton began walking across the Interstate 75 Bridge over Lake Panasoffkee, approximately fifty miles northwest of Orlando and sixty-five miles north of Tampa. The two young men from Illinois had hitched a ride to the locale and planned to further hitchhike to New Orleans for Mardi Gras, but their plans were soon put on hold.

While walking near what is now mile marker 322, the hitchhikers noticed a partially submerged body in the water, lying approximately two-hundred feet from shore. They flagged down a passing patrol car, triggering an investigation into the woman’s death.

The original autopsy determined the woman was in her late teens to early twenties and had been dead for approximately one month. She carried no identification and her cause of death could not be determined, but a man’s thirty-six-inch belt buckle wrapped around her neck indicated strangulation. Because she was found fully clothed, her murder was likely not sexually-motivated, and the several items of jewelry on her ruled out robbery.

The identity of “Little Miss Panasoffkee” remained unknown for nearly fifty-five years.

Little Miss Panasoffkee

The bridge over the mostly stagnant water where the woman was found is nearly 4,500 feet long. Because her body was so close to shore, investigators believe she was carried, likely by more than one person, from the bridge to the shore, probably under the cover of darkness between midnight and dawn when traffic was light.

It was surmised that the woman may have been a prostitute or a runaway, or, like those who had found her, may have been hitchhiking along the Interstate, a common practice of teenagers and young adults of the time.

A Map Of Where The Body Was Found

From The Tampa Tribune

Little Miss Panasoffkee’s attire consisted of a white and green floral poncho or shawl with green and yellow flowered print with a fringed border, a solid green shirt, green plaid pants similar to the clothing shown in the photo, and a bra and nylon underwear.

 Approximations Of Little Miss Panasoffkee’s Clothing

The woman was also wearing a white gold ladies’ Baylor wrist watch on her left hand, and a small gold necklace. The yellow gold ring with a clear stone worn on her left ring finger suggested she may have been married or engaged.

Enhanced Likenesses Of Little Miss Panasoffkee’s Jewelry

The unknown woman was buried in Wildwood Florida’s Oakwood Cemetery under a plain headstone simply marked “Jane Doe 1971.”

Buried In Sumter County

As forensic science progressed, Little Miss Panasoffkee’s remains were twice exhumed, in 1986 and 2012.

Following the first unearthing, forensic anthropologist Dr. William Maples found the unidentified woman had had orthopedic surgery performed on her right ankle. In what is known as a Watson-Jones technique, a surgeon had wound a tendon through holes drilled in her ankle bones. The operation was probably performed within the three years prior to her discovery (i.e. between 1967-70), to fix an instability which caused her to have sprained her ankle several times as a youth or teenager.

Example Of A Watson-Jones Technique

Further findings gleaned from Dr. Maples’ examination determined the Jane Doe to be from seventeen-to twenty-four-years-old, approximately five-feet-two-inches to five-feet-five inches tall and weighing one-hundred-ten to one-hundred-twenty pounds.

She had:

• Dark hair and (likely) brown eyes
• Received extensive dental work including several tooth fillings as well as a porcelain crown on one of her upper right teeth
• Given birth to at least two children
• Periostitis, inflammation around the tissues and bones, in her lower right leg, likely causing her to walk with a limp.

In addition, one of her ribs had been fractured at the time of her death, suggesting her killer had knelt on her while strangling her with his belt.

A Bust Rendering of Little Miss Panasoffkee

Investigators initially believed the woman to be either of Indian or Native American ancestry, but the second exhumation and examination of her remains in 2012 determined she was more likely of European descent. Another significant finding was the discovery of “Harris Lines,” high-density strands in her bones, suggesting an illness or malnutrition had hindered her childhood growth.

The second exhumation produced new likenesses of her.

   

New Images  

As the technology further progressed, forensic anthropologists applied isotope analysis in an effort to identify the lady in the lake. The process of measuring the ratios of naturally occurring stable isotopes in environmental samples is most often used by geologists to find chemical elements in rocks and soil that can indicate geographic origins. In this instance, scientists applied the method to bone and hair in an attempt to match to a location.

Lead accumulates in children’s teeth as they mature, until the tooth enamel seals off. Examining the lead isotopes in Little Miss Panasoffkee’s teeth scrapings led University of Florida geochemist Dr. George Kamenov to surmise she had grown up in Europe where lead was added to gasoline in various regions during the 1950s.

The oxygen isotopes in Little Miss Panasoffkee’s teeth further pinpointed her having likely grown up close to a sea in southern Europe. The fishing port and mining town of Laviron, Greece, forty miles (sixty-six kilometers) south of Athens, was zeroed in as the most likely venue. The town of approximately 10,000 people is also known and Lavrio and Laurium.

Is Little Miss P From Greece?

Forensic examination of the woman’s hair suggested she had been in Florida for less than two months before her death. Operating on the assumption that she may have lived in Greece, investigators theorized she had traveled to the United States to attend an Epiphany celebration. The Greek Orthodox event which annually attracts thousands to the coastal community occurred approximately one month prior to her discovery, at about the time it is believed she was killed. The Florida communities of Tarpon Springs, Clearwater, and New Port Richey, approximately seventy-five miles southwest of Lake Panasoffkee along the Gulf of Mexico shore, have large Greek-American populations.

If the woman was from Greece, however, it was puzzling that she would travel across the globe to attend an Epiphany event when such celebrations are common across her home country.

Was She In America For The Epiphany?

As authorities believed Little Miss Panasoffkee may be of Greek origin, her case was featured on the Greek crime show Fos Sto Tunel. Following the broadcast, a woman believed the facial reconstructions looked like a girl she had known only as “Konstantina.”

The woman said she and Konstantina were among a group of girls who, in the mid-1960s, attended a prep school training to be domestic help in Kifisia, an affluent northern suburb of Athens. After students completed the course in home economics, they were sent abroad to either Australia or America as part of a two-year work contract.

The woman said after she was sent to Australia in 1970, she lost contact with Konstantina, who had been sent to America. She provided a photo of a group of girls who attended the prep school.

Fos Sto Tunel was funded by the International Organisation for Migration (IOM). They have not found any records of a “Konstantina” enrolled during the time period.

The Group of Greek Girls

“Konstantina” Highlighted

The woman believes Konstantina had a brother serving in the Navy near Lavrion at the time she was in Kifisia.

Konstantina has not been positively identified, but she appears to resemble Little Miss Panasoffkee.

                                              Konstantina          Little Miss Panasoffkee

Age-progression drawings, and now computer-aged images, are commonly used to depict how missing people may look after many years. Believing their Jane Doe may have been estranged from her family for several years, Sumter County, Florida, investigators tried a pioneering procedure in reversing the process.

Using modeling clay to reconstruct the victim’s facial features, forensic artist Linda Galeener created several age-regression images, showing how Little Miss Panasoffkee may have looked at earlier stages of her life.  These renderings marked the first time the technique was used by a United States law enforcement agency.

The drawings generated numerous tips, but none which led to the identity of Little Miss Panasoffkee.

                               

Early Drawings Of Little Miss Panasoffkee

                                   

    Age-Regression Images Showing Common

       Hairstyles For 1950s and 1960s Children

In 2018, forensic genetic genealogy done on the woman’s DNA failed to produce a viable profile. The tests were likely hampered by the embalming fluid used in preparing her body having degraded the DNA and hindering the isotope testing.

Seven years later, the Sumter County Sheriff’s Office acquired the Storm Automatic Biometric Identification System (ABIS), a cloud-based digital fingerprint system created by the French multinational technology company IDEMIA. In October 2025, the biometric database matched Little Miss Panasoffkee’s fingerprints to those of twenty-one-year-old Maureen “Cookie” Rowan. She had been arrested and fingerprinted in 1970 for passing a bad check in Hillsborough County, Florida, sixty miles south of Sumter County, but the prints had not been uploaded to Florida’s database until 2013.

The mother of two small children, Cookie Rowan was born in Maine and living in Tampa, Florida, when she was last seen in November 1970. She was never reported missing because her husband, Charles Rowan Sr., who had recently filed for divorce, told family members she had left voluntarily. The divorce was finalized in August 1971, six months after the woman now known to be Cookie was found murdered.

Following the identification, the Sumter County Sheriff’s Office announced the isotope testing having been contaminated by the formaldehyde embalming gel resulted in the inaccurate theory of Little Miss Panasoffkee having been a Greek immigrant. It was also reported that a family member or friend of Cookie Rowan’s had seen the 1992 Unsolved Mysteries segment on the case and believed the woman resembled her but had not reported her suspicions.

Maureen “Cookie” Rowan

Charles Rowan Sr., who died in 2015 at age seventy-four, is a person of interest in his estranged wife’s murder. Family members described his and Cookie’s marriage as rocky and investigators say his actions and behavior leading up to the separation and following the discovery of Little Miss Panasoffkee’s body were “suspicious.”

Charles Rowan Sr.

Little Miss Panasoffkee has been identified after nearly fifty-five years. The next step is to determine who killed her.

If you have information relating to the murder of Maureen “Cookie” Rowan, please contact the Sumter County, Florida Sheriff’s Office at 352-569-1600.

https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/150645718/little-miss-panasoffkee#

 

Her Name Is Now Known

But Her Killer Is Not

University of Florida forensic anthropologist Dr. William Maples, who made many significant findings of Little Miss Panasoffkee during the 1986 exhumation, was renowned for positively identifying the remains of Incan conqueror Francisco Pizzaro and proving his purported remains displayed for a hundred years in Peru’s Cathedral of Lima could not have been those of the sixteenth-century Spanish conquistador.

Dubbed a “forensic historian” Dr. Maples performed several other examinations of historical figures, including that of Zachary Taylor. His findings dispelled rumors that the nineteenth-century President had been poisoned to death.

The renowned forensic anthropologist also led the group which identified the remains of the Russian Royal Family– Tsar Nicholas II, his wife, three of his children—as well as the family’s entourage and three servants, murdered in 1918. After studying the skeletal remains of Joseph Merrick, AKA “The Elephant Man,” Dr. Maples made photographic studies for comparison with death casts of limbs and skull to ascertain depth of tissue by video-superimposition.

Dr. William Maples died of a brain tumor at age fifty-nine in 1997.

Dr. William Maples

SOURCES:

• Central Florida Public Media
• The Doe Network
• Miami Herald
• NamUs
• Ocala Star-Banner
• Orlando Sentinel
• Tampa Bay Times
• Unsolved Mysteries