Authorities to announce 'recent results' in Berkeley cold case
Maria Jane Weidhofer was raped and strangled while jogging on the Nimitz trail in 1990, police said previously. She was just 32.
Authorities plan to share a break in a 34-year-old cold case involving Maria Jane Weidhofer, a Berkeley woman whose body was found in Tilden park in 1990.
Representatives from the East Bay Regional Park District Police Department, FBI and Contra Costa County DA's office say they will announce "recent results" from the case in a press conference Wednesday morning.
The Scanner plans to attend the event.
Weidhofer "was a free-spirited artist and baker who loved life and worked hard to stay healthy by jogging every day in the East Bay hills," the San Francisco Chronicle reported in 2005, the same year police and relatives put up a $10,000 reward "in hopes of sparking new interest in the investigation."
Authorities said Weidhofer was raped and strangled while jogging on the Nimitz trail on Nov. 15, 1990, according to media reports from 2005. Her body was found "on a trail in a redwood grove," the Oakland Tribune reported that year.
She was 32 years old.
"It's been a long frustrating case," park district Police Chief Tim Anderson said in 2005. "We would really like to get some help from the public."
Anderson described how he had "distributed flyers to trail users in hopes of finding witnesses" as a rookie cop in 1990, the Chronicle reported.
"The young woman had moved from Southern California to Berkeley to be closer to like-minded people and to pursue her art," according to the East Bay Times. "Weidhofer, a vegetarian, lived in a macrobiotic collective with three housemates and worked evenings at a natural foods business in Oakland. Quiet and shy, she kept her personal life private."
East Bay parks police took the lead on the case, which repeatedly made headlines over the years, including in 2017 when authorities shared images depicting the alleged attacker.
Those images — which turned out to be 3D renderings that were altered in Photoshop to reflect witness descriptions — later generated criticism from civil liberties experts, Wired magazine reported last year.
Weidhofer's mother, Jane Weidhofer, commented on the case in 2005 during at least one press conference.
"For family members it is not a cold case because we have had to live with the loss of a daughter and a sister every day of our lives,” she told reporters. "We are denied her friendship, her companionship and the chance to see her develop and share our lives with her."
The Scanner's attempts to find a working phone number for Jane Weidhofer, who would now be 97, were unsuccessful Tueseday afternoon.
Stay tuned for ongoing coverage.
