A police cruiser. Photo by John Schreiber.
A 27-year-old mystery was solved when officials Thursday announced new technology techniques helped them to identify a drug-using pedestrian with mental health problems as the woman who was killed while walking across Pacific Coast Highway in Huntington Beach in 1990.
Improved fingerprint analysis and a widening database were key to figuring out the identity of the victim after all these years, an Orange County deputy coroner said.
Andrea Kuiper was struck the night of Sunday, April 1, 1990, on PCH in Huntington Beach, just west of Newland Avenue .
She got pinned under one of the cars and later died, but the woman — who recently had moved to California — remained unidentified until a fingerprint match was confirmed last Thursday, Supervising Deputy Coroner Kelly Keyes said.
All investigators knew was she was named Andrea, and that she may have come from Newport News, Virginia, Keyes said.
As recently as eight months ago, Keyes reached out to authorities there to see if they had any missing persons cases that might match the county’s Jane Doe, but nothing came of it.
The big break in the case came when the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System’s database was matched with the FBI’s this year, Keyes said.
Kuiper had applied for a clerk’s job in 1987 with the Dept. of Agriculture, which required her to provide fingerprints, and they were recently uploaded into the FBI’s database, Keyes said.
Improved fingerprint analysis technology also helped match the prints, she said.
“Andrea’s story is one of those in my 20 years here that we’ve all known about,” Keyes said. “This is one case among 90 decedents dating back to the mid-1950s. We’re constantly reexamining these cases to get a name to these people to get that closure for the family. That’s why we do what we do.”
Kuiper’s parents were told the news by police in Fairfax, Virginia, Keyes said. Their reaction was “a combination of shock and relief,” Keyes said.
Kuiper’s family did not want to do interviews, but in a news release from the sheriff’s department, her father, Richard, said, “Andrea was loved and respected. She was beautiful. But she was manic depressive, and, therefore, we had been through quite an adventure.”
Kuiper had a sibling and grew up with a passion for ice skating and art. Her mental health issues led her to start using drugs, authorities said.
On the night she was killed “she did have positive toxicology screens,” Keyes said.
Richard Kuiper said that he and his wife yearned to see their daughter one day drive up in a “car full of beautiful children and say, `Hi, it’s me.’ ”
—City News Service
>> Want to read more stories like this? Get our Free Daily Newsletters Here!