A Doll’s Hair Grew Six Inches in Three Months — DNA Revealed the Truth About a Missing Girl Who Vanished in 1998

October 2024, Portland, Oregon.
A storage facility manager named Darnell Washington opens an abandoned unit that hasn’t been paid for in over a decade. He’s used to finding forgotten furniture, boxes of old clothes, sometimes even family photos. But this time, tucked away among boxes of medical supplies and taxidermy tools, he discovers something that chills him to the bone—a life-sized memorial sculpture of a sleeping child.

At first, it seems like an eerie but innocent piece of art: a young Black girl, serene, eyes closed, dressed in 90s clothes, her hair in box braids. But something about it feels wrong. The skin looks too real. The fingernails, the eyelashes, even the beauty marks—everything is disturbingly lifelike.

Darnell photographs the sculpture for documentation and places it in the office. Over the next few weeks, staff members pass by, all drawn to the unsettling realism. But then, eight weeks later, something impossible happens. The doll’s hair has grown—six inches longer, now cascading past her shoulders.

Darnell is unnerved. He compares photos, measures the braids, and confirms the impossible: the hair is growing. He calls his sister Kesha, a nurse, who examines the sculpture and makes a horrifying discovery. The hair is real human hair, with root follicles. The skin has pores, veins beneath the surface. This isn’t a sculpture—it’s a preserved human body.

Police are called. Forensics confirm the truth: the “sculpture” is the body of a 12-year-old girl, preserved using a bizarre combination of embalming, desiccation, and polymer coating. The preservation is failing, causing the skin to contract and expose more of the hair shaft, making it appear to grow.

DNA testing matches the body to Jasmine Louise Mitchell, a Black girl who vanished in Portland in October 1998. Her case had gone cold after police dismissed her as a probable runaway. The name on the storage unit rental, “R. Finch,” is an alias. The real renter, Richard Finch, was a taxidermist and “memorial artist” who died in a car crash in 2003. He had been dead for over twenty years.

A System That Failed Jasmine

Detective Laura Bennett, a cold case specialist, takes up the investigation. She finds that Jasmine disappeared walking home from the library, just weeks before Finch rented the unit. The original detective had written off her disappearance, assuming Jasmine had run away because she lived in a single-parent, working-class Black household. Leads about a suspicious van and a stranger offering “preservation services” were ignored.

Lorraine Mitchell, Jasmine’s mother, never stopped searching. Her home is a shrine to Jasmine—photos, flyers, letters to officials. She kept Jasmine’s room exactly as it was, waiting for her daughter to return. When Bennett delivers the news, Lorraine’s heartbreak is mixed with vindication: “I always knew she didn’t run away.”

Jasmine’s diary, found after her disappearance, reveals a happy, hopeful child excited for Halloween, eager to carve pumpkins and go trick-or-treating with her best friend. Not a child planning to run away.

The Monster Behind the Memorial

Digging into Finch’s past, Bennett uncovers a disturbing pattern. Finch operated “memorial preservation services” in several states, always near Black neighborhoods. His journal, found in the unit, details his obsession with “preserving beauty”—specifically, Black children. He fetishized their features, believing their skin preserved better, and targeted communities where police were unlikely to investigate thoroughly.

Cross-referencing missing children cases with Finch’s locations reveals a chilling truth: in every place Finch operated, Black children vanished, their cases closed as runaways, their families dismissed.

With painstaking detective work, Bennett and her team track down other storage units Finch rented under aliases. In Spokane, Sacramento, Denver, Boise, and Las Vegas, they recover five more preserved bodies—Marcus Johnson, Shayla Barnes, Brianna Washington, Terrence Moore, and Kendra Phillips—all Black children, all dismissed as runaways, all hidden away for decades.

Justice, Grief, and Change

Lorraine buries Jasmine in December 2024 at Mount Olivet Baptist Church. Hundreds attend, including families of other victims and activists fighting for justice for missing Black children. Lorraine’s eulogy is a powerful indictment of the system that failed her daughter:

“For 26 years, I searched for Jasmine. I called the police every month, hired private investigators, never stopped hoping. But nobody listened. The detective assigned to her case decided within days she was just another runaway Black girl. He didn’t search. He didn’t investigate. He just closed the file and moved on.

My daughter was murdered by a monster who targeted Black children because he knew nobody would look for them. He counted on that indifference—and he was right.

We have to demand better. We have to demand that Black children’s lives matter as much as anyone else’s. We have to refuse to accept a system that treats our children as disposable.”

Detective Bennett and Darnell Washington help launch the Jasmine Mitchell Foundation, advocating for missing Black children and pushing law enforcement to change how these cases are handled. Bennett works with departments in multiple states, uncovering more evidence, and fighting to ensure no child is ever dismissed as a runaway without a real investigation.

Six families finally get answers, closure, and a chance to honor their children. The memorial service for the victims draws national attention, forcing police departments to confront their biases and change their protocols.

A Promise Never to Forget

A year after Jasmine’s funeral, Lorraine stands at her daughter’s grave, surrounded by flowers and letters from strangers moved by her story. She promises to keep fighting—not just for Jasmine, but for every Black child whose case was ignored, every family told to move on.

Some truths take decades to surface. Some families never stop searching. And some victims are forgotten because the system decided their lives didn’t matter enough to investigate. But Jasmine Louise Mitchell, Marcus Johnson, Shayla Barnes, Brianna Washington, Terrence Moore, and Kendra Phillips—
Their lives mattered. Their stories matter. They are finally remembered.

If you’re moved by this story, share it. Let’s make sure no child is ever forgotten again.