South Carolina cops solve mystery of unidentified Jock and Jane Doe (2024)

For more than four decades, cops believed the young couple shot to death and dumped off I-95 in South Carolina were Canadian.

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A slew of clues pointed them in that direction, including statements from the young man who claimed his father was a surgeon in Canada.

Cops even called the male “Jock Doe” after a witness told detectives the man said his name was “Jacques” and he was from “French Canada.”

One man told investigators he was told by the male victim that he and his girlfriend had bailed on his wealthy family in Canada and headed south. Jock Doe said his dad was a well-known doctor.

Those riddles have now been put to rest.

The Sumter County Sheriff’s Office says they have finally identified the remains of two homicide victims shot on Aug. 9, 1976. Their bodies were discovered by a passing trucker.

Their names are Pamela Buckley, of Colorado Springs, Colo., and James Freund, of Lancaster, Pa.

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“We have some closure that we can provide to the families and their loved ones who have been missing all these years,” Sheriff Mike Dennis said.

According to cops, the two victims were each shot three times in their upper chest. At the time of their murders, Buckley was 25 and Freund was 30.

Dennis told WMBF News that the former coroner exhumed the bodies for a DNA sample in 2007.

The samples were sent to the DNA Doe Project in the summer of 2019 and the lab was ultimately able to make a positive identification of the tragic couple.

“To the families who had to struggle and endure with 44 years of not knowing where their loved ones are at, now they can at least put them to rest,” Sumter County Coroner Robert M. Baker Jr. told the outlet.

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The families had reported the pair missing in 1975.

Eventually, when the bodies couldn’t be identified, the sheriff at the time decided to bury them together in a cemetery behind a church he regularly attended. A funeral service was held and they were embraced by the community as their own.

Flowers on their grave are regularly changed. The church now plans to add their names to their headstone.

Now, cops have to find their killer and have said they have a list of suspects they intend to interview. They always suspected the cold-blooded slayings were isolated.

bhunter@postmedia.com

@HunterTOSun

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