Jane Doe May Be Missing Louisiana Woman

GULFPORT, Miss. (AP) — A Harrison County judge has been asked to sign an order to exhume the body of an unidentified woman some believe to be a Louisiana woman reported missing 20 years ago.

The Sun Herald reports that Hancock County Coroner Jim Faulk wants a forensic team to dig up the remains of a Jane Doe buried 15 years ago near Diamondhead.

Faulk, a Calcasieu Parish sheriff's investigator and relatives of Nelda Louise Hardwick of Lake Charles, La., believe Hardwick was the woman buried as the Jane Doe.

Hardwick, a mother of four children, was 34 when she disappeared from her Lake Charles home in 1993.

The woman buried as Jane Doe was hit by a vehicle on Interstate 10 in Hancock County in 1998.