Ima Jean Sanders, a 13-year-old white girl from Warner Robins, Georgia, disappeared on August 1, 1974. In April 1976 skeletal remains of a young female were found in a wooded area off Georgia Highway 96 in Peach County but could not be identified and were kept at the state crime lab for decades.

In 2011 DNA from Sanders’s biological mother and sister was run through the national missing persons DNA system and matched the Peach County remains. Investigators concluded Sanders was most likely killed during the 1974 multistate murder spree of Paul John Knowles. A transcript from Knowles’s recorded audio diary describes raping and strangling a young female hitchhiker he called Alma in August 1974 and leaving her bones near Macon; that account, the remains location and timing, and the investigative review led authorities to name Knowles as the likely killer. Knowles died in December 1974 while fleeing custody, so there was no arrest, indictment, or trial specific to Sanders.

The family received her remains for burial after identification. Does anyone have information about Ima Jean’s last known movements in Middle Georgia or remembered sightings from that summer?