For more than 50 years, the identity of a Pennsylvania woman found assaulted, semiconscious and lying on a dirt road off Route 99 east of Woodstock, and who later died of her injuries, has remained a mystery.

Until now.

Howard County officials announced Thursday that the Jane Doe tied to the police department’s oldest cold case has been identified as Sarah Belle Sharkey.

“Sadie was a daughter, a mother, a member of our larger Howard County Family, and today she is no longer forgotten,” County Executive Calvin Ball said Thursday. “She’s no longer anonymous. She’s remembered for the dignity, identity and honor she deserves.”

Sharkey was born as Sadie Belle Murray on Sept. 7, 1924, in Pennsylvania, police said Thursday.

In July 1971, two young boys found Sharkey suffering from exposure. She was hospitalized at Ascension Saint Agnes Hospital in Baltimore in critical condition, according to reporting at the time.

Sharkey remained unconscious due to injuries from an apparent assault and died two months later on her birthday, Sept. 7, 1971. Police were never able to identify or speak with her.

Last fall, police teamed up with Loyola University Maryland interns to create a more accurate image of Sharkey in the hopes of identifying her. The team, working with NamUS, a national database for missing and unidentified people, used artificial intelligence to generate an image of Sharkey.

Last October, police also submitted histology slides from the case to an unnamed private company that conducted an advanced forensic analysis. DNA was removed from the slides, and police, working with the company’s forensic genealogy team, were able to build out a family tree.

Authorities found two of Sharkey’s surviving adult children: Mildred Marie (Sharkey) Cantwell, 81, of Springfield, Illinois, and Charles Leroy Sharkey, 79, of Cleveland, Ohio. The siblings, who were placed in orphanages at young ages, were reconnected by Howard detectives in July.

“Learning about my mother was closure for me,” Cantwell said in a statement. Cantwell and her brother were not able to travel to Howard County for the announcement, but they have plans to reunite in person with each other, according to a police spokeswoman.

Charles Sharkey, first thought to be a distant cousin to his mother, tried for years to connect with his family, traveling to Pennsylvania and back to where he was adopted in Cleveland.

“I thought I’d never connect with my family,” he said in a statement.

Howard Police Chief Gregory Der thanked the department’s cold case unit for working for more than 10 months to identify Sharkey.

“As a result, her children now have some closure. They now have answers,” Der said Thursday morning.

While identifying Sharkey is a big break, her case remains open. County detectives assume she was last living in Pennsylvania, but it remains unknown why she was in Howard County and whom she may have been with.

Police do not have any information about Sharkey’s marital status at the time of her death or any children who are deceased.

Doctors at the time determined that Sharkey had recently suffered a stroke on her left side. She was identified as a Jane Doe with brown, graying hair and blue eyes, age 42 to 50. She was about 5 feet tall and weighed between 110 and 120 pounds.

The area where Sharkey was found, off Route 99, is near where the Howard County Conservancy is now located. It is north of U.S. 70 and near a community fixture, the Woodstock Inn.

“We’ve come one step closer to solving Howard County’s oldest cold case, healing a wound that has been open for more than a half a century,” Ball said.

The county police cold case unit has closed three cases since 2021.