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Missing for nearly 50 years, Lowcountry woman identified as victim of prolific serial killer

It took decades of work and numerous police agencies, but investigators now know what happened to 51-year-old Leola Etta Bryant after she vanished from a North Charleston bar in 1974.

Berkeley County authorities say they’ve solved a nearly 50-year-old cold case after identifying a woman they believe died at the hands of a serial killer.

In a press release Wednesday, detectives detailed their decades long investigation into the death of a “Jane Doe” who they now say disappeared from a North Charleston bar.

The case began in 1977, when a worker clearing brush along Sawgrass Avenue in Goose Creek discovered scattered human remains. They were collected and sent to the Medical University of South Carolina but the gender of the person they belonged to, could not be identified.

Some 40 years later, the remains were transferred to the University of North Texas for analysis by its Human Identification Forensic Anthropology Center. There, researchers were able to determine the victim was likely an African American woman between the ages of 30 and 60 and stood a little more than five feet tall.

Her remains were then sent to the Palm Beach Sheriff’s Office in Florida where a facial reconstruction was created. The FBI, meantime, tracked down someone with potential family ties.

Suddenly, the woman's identity began to emerge.

Berkeley County detectives now say she was 51-year-old Leola Etta Bryant, who vanished in March of 1974. She was last seen at the Midway Bar on Reynold’s Avenue in North Charleston.

Provided
Wise County Jail, Texas

And that’s where serial killer Samuel “Sam” Little, the most prolific serial killer in U.S. history, confessed before his death he’d met an unidentified woman and strangled her.

Little admitted to killing 93 people across the country between 1970 and 2005. Authorities were able to confirm 60 murders, mostly women, but many of the victims’ bodies were never found.

Little began painting portraits of his victims from his prison cell in California and in 2019 the FBI released more than a dozen in hopes of identifying victims.

A sketch of Bryant was among them. Only then, authorities didn't know remains found in Goose Creek 47 years ago, were those of the missing woman.

Victoria Hansen is our Lowcountry connection covering the Charleston community, a city she knows well. She grew up in newspaper newsrooms and has worked as a broadcast journalist for more than 20 years. Her first reporting job brought her to Charleston where she covered local and national stories like the Susan Smith murder trial and the arrival of the Citadel’s first female cadet.