MONTEREY – More than nine years ago, Monterey police responded to the death of a local woman. Ultimately, the case was deemed non-criminal. She died from starvation – no foul play was suspected.
But her death left authorities with questions that have gone unanswered for the better part of a decade. Until now.
Thanks to new DNA technologies and processes, investigators have solved the baffling case, the Monterey Police Department announced Monday.
On Feb. 4, 2014, Monterey Police officers found a woman dead in her apartment on the 1100 block of Fourth Street according to a press release from the police. Per her California Driver’s license, she was identified as Francesca Linda Jacobs, with a birthdate in 1955. With no suspicions of foul play, that was it.
Then authorities found decomposed remains of another person inside Jacobs’ virtually empty apartment.
According to police, officers from Monterey, as well as the Sheriff-Coroner, located the remains – the body of a fully clothed woman – inside a box under Jacobs’ kitchen table. Authorities also found Jacobs’ will, which outlined that the body in the box was her mother, identified as Florence Jacobs.
Still, the questions circulated. Police said that due to the condition of remains in the box – which appeared to have been in there for years – no cause of death could be determined. And foul play could not be ruled out. Jacobs herself also stirred some confusion.
In death, police said, Francesca Jacobs appeared much older than her potential age of 58 years. Further, authorities found that her driver’s license photo seemed to show a much older looking woman. Records for “Francesca Jacobs” only turned up results dating back to the 1990s, when she started living on the Monterey Peninsula. Likewise, police found almost no records for her mother. That’s where the leads ran dry.
Fast forward to 2022, local agencies started taking a second look at all unknown human remains cases in Monterey County. The effort was born of a partnership between the Sheriff-Coroner’s office and the District Attorney’s Office Cold Case Task Force. A fairly new endeavor itself, the Cold Case Task Force was established in 2020, to bring fresh eyes and technology to local investigations left unsolved.
Bringing the Coroner’s Office into the fold, the task force had another shot at solving the case. Investigation resumed and, late last year, samples from both deceased women found in 2014 were made into DNA profiles. Local agencies worked with Texas-based company Othram to process the DNA.
Othram’s DNA profile work revealed that the woman, previously identified as 58-year-old Francesca Jacobs, was actually Linda Rae Jacobs, born in 1942 – a full 12 years older than police originally thought.
The California Department of Justice, which helped fund this cold case investigation, confirmed through DNA analysis that Linda Rae Jacobs and Ida Florence Jacobs were really daughter and mother.
With more information to go off of than was available nine years ago, police said detectives were able to contact relatives of the deceased women. That included a previous husband, who helped confirm the true identities and “the unusually strong life-long bond between the daughter and mother,” police said.
After seeing new leads through, police said no foul play is suspected in the death of Ida Florence Jacobs, whose remains were found in the box. As for why she was in the box, or why Linda Rae Jacobs assumed a new identity, is still a mystery. And likely, it will say that way according to police.
“Many who have shed light on other details as a result of knowing both women earlier in their lives, have also passed away,” police said. “The reasons Linda Rae Jacobs assumed a new name or why she would keep her mother’s body in a box under the kitchen table will likely never be known.”