Episode 97 Doe ID: Ada Fritz

In May, 1976, a group of boys fishing along Sessions Creek in Grand Bay, Alabama when they found what appeared to be a mannequin in the water. Closer examination told them that it was the dead body of an older woman, and they ran to get help. Police retrieved the dead woman from the water and found that she had been shot in the head. She carried no ID, and her hands and dentures were missing. Police were not able to match her to any specific women that were missing and she was cremated and her ashes place into a mass grave. That might have been the end of ever finding out who the dead woman was had it not been for a crucial piece of luck and old evidence from the case that was re-examined. Police eventually were able to get a DNA profile from the dead woman, and genealogy determined that she was Ada Fritz who seemed to drop from sight not long before her body was found. While police couldn't prove who killed her, they had a good guess. They believed that a Mississippi man named Henderson James Williams was responsible. In 1994 he had been convicted of killing his mother, whose body was found in water off Hall Road in Grand Bay. The details of both crimes were very similar. Although police have yet to prove Henderson Williams is responsible for Ada's death, they were happy to give her her name back. It's Ada Fritz, and this is her story.