The Identification of Lavender Doe

On October 29, 2006, two men in a Kilgore, Texas, found the body of a young woman in an oil field. She was lying face-down over a pile of brush, and she’d been set on fire.

Early on investigators determined that this woman had been white or Middle Eastern and had been between the ages of 17 and 25 with blonde or strawberry blonde hair. She had $40 in her pockets, indicating that she hadn’t been targeted for robbery. She’d been dead less than 24 hours when she was found. Other than that, they could discern very little.

The unidentified woman was given a name based on the clothing she had on when she died — a purple sweater and jeans. She was called Lavender Doe.

Several reconstructions have been created over the years. In 2013, an artist worked on a new reconstruction in the hope that it would provide additional leads.

In August of 2018, a man named Joseph Wayne Burnette admitted to murdering Lavender Doe, but he thought her name might have been Ashley. Burnette also admitted to murdering Felisha Pearson, a woman he’d been living with. He was already in prison for a sex-related crime.

Felisha Pearson is often overlooked in this case. The 28-year-old had been reported missing on July 19, 2018, and her body was found just a few days later in Longview, Texas.

According to Burnette, he was able to lure Lavender Doe into his vehicle because she was trying to sell something out of a magazine. This may have happened in a Walmart…