RICHMOND, Mo. — When mushroom hunters discovered the remains of a 27-year-old woman last April, Ray County, Missouri Sheriff Scott Childers said he had to call in an anthropology team from Washburn University in Topeka, Kansas to help try to identify her.
The sheriff said victim was known by two different names. Her birth name is Nicole Kasch and she was later adopted and grew up in New York under the name of Collette Green.
Childers said she has no connection to Ray County but does have biological relatives in Jackson County.
When her remains were discovered last year, anthropology investigators estimated she had been dead between six months and 18 months.
“If she was living a dangerous lifestyle that could be involved with drugs or maybe just living from place to place things of that nature. That’s the answers we are seeking right now,” Childers said.
Childers said the woman’s death is being investigated as a homicide but he declined to reveal her cause of death.
There was no missing person report ever filed for her. Authorities say they have already ruled out a possible connection to Timothy Haslett, the Clay County man recently accused of kidnapping and raping another woman.
“We see no evidence that ties the Haslett case to our victim,” she sheriff said. Nothing at all. Obviously that’s something we are aware of due to the fact that we’re talking about a 30 minute difference between where she was found and where his house is.”
Ray County detectives are pursuing search warrants to get social media information from Google, Instagram and Facebook.
Investigators hope technology will help them learn more about a woman that only the killer seems to have known was no longer alive.
Anyone with information about this woman’s life and activities in the metro area should call a hotline set up by the Ray County Sheriff’s Department at (816) 470-0156.