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Girl Strangled in an Oakland Hotel in 1969 Is Identified as Joanne Burdick, 16

DNA from her brother gave the Hotel St. Louis Jane Doe her name after 57 years. The suspect police named in 1969, Taylor Teaford, has never been arrested.

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Illustration: aisles of shelved evidence boxes and bags in a police property room

For fifty-seven years the girl found dead in a room at the Hotel St. Louis in downtown Oakland had no name. On October 1, 2026, the Oakland Police Department and the FBI gave her one. At a news conference, Police Chief James Beere identified her as Joanne Yvonne Burdick, known to her family as Joanie. She was sixteen years old when she was killed.

The hotel stood at 539 Seventh Street, about a block from Oakland police headquarters. On the afternoon of October 2, 1969, witnesses saw the girl go into a room with a man a little after 2:45. Less than half an hour later, hotel staff heard a scream. Officers were called at about 3:30 and found her dead. The man was gone. The cause of death was strangulation, and a toxicology test found no drugs or alcohol in her system. She carried no identification, and for decades she was known only as Jane Doe.

Beere said the girl had been "lured in, during broad daylight," and that her murder "shocked the consciousness of the community here in Oakland."

Her family had filed a missing-person report on her. The FBI's San Francisco field office joined a renewed investigation in 2020, bringing forensic analysis, genealogical research and laboratory support. Investigators traced a living relative, her brother, who gave a DNA sample voluntarily, and it confirmed who she was. "Modern forensic tools made it possible to revisit evidence that could not be fully analyzed decades ago," the FBI said, crediting the Oakland police and the coroner's office with restoring her identity. Police released two photographs of her, taken at eleven and thirteen, and gave her date of birth as February 3, 1953.

"Thank you to every single individual who worked on this case, past and present, for caring enough to give Joanne her name and to give her family closure," the Burdick family said in a statement.

The man police named on October 1 is the one the original detectives identified as a potential suspect in 1969: Taylor Morris Teaford. He has never been arrested in Joanie Burdick's death. Teaford was once on the FBI's Ten Most Wanted Fugitives list, number 279, and Beere said he had been named a suspect in the 1967 killing of his own grandmother. The FBI's record states only that federal process against him was dismissed in Fresno in 1972. "He has a significant criminal history," Beere said. "He shot his own sister, and he served time for rape."

Two other women had been found dead in the months before Joanie Burdick died, one near the Oakland Estuary and one at Berkeley's Aquatic Park. KPIX reported that authorities linked both deaths, and hers, to Teaford, who became known as the Crew Cut Killer. Beere said that name came from outside law enforcement.

Where he is now, police do not know. If he is alive he would be ninety-one. "We don't have an actual answer as to where he's at right now or if he's even still alive," Beere said, adding that further searches and new technology would be used to find out.

"We recognize that no investigation can change what happened to Joanie," the chief said. "We hope that today's announcement will provide answers to her family, and we continue to pursue justice fifty-seven years later."

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