DNA helps ID woman 2 decades after body found 2,500 miles away from her home

The body of a missing Canadian woman was identified using modern forensic tests, nearly two decades after her remains were found in 2005 about 2,500 miles away from her home.

Tammy Eileen Penner was last seen early that year, with an official missing person report filed to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police on Feb. 7, according to Othram, a U.S.-based company that works with law enforcement to help resolve unsolved murders and disappearance cases by identifying victims through investigative genetic genealogy. Canadian authorities used the company's services to identify Penner, whose remains until recently were known only as Rockwood Jane Doe.

Citing law enforcement involved in the case, Othram said Penner's body was originally found in August 2005 in the picnic area of a rest stop off of a highway between Guelph and Rockwood in the Canadian province of Ontario. At the time, authorities determined the remains belonged to a woman who was potentially as young as 25 or as old as 45 when she died. They said her left cheek, nose and eye socket had all been broken before her death and had time to heal while she was still alive.