Kelly (murder victim)

Kelly was born in 1968 in Virginia to a woman named Brenda, who was married to a man who was not Kelly's father.

Kelly never knew her biological father and it is likely her father was unaware of her existence.

Her earliest years were described as normal and stable until her mother and stepfather separated in 1971.

They divorced the following year.

By this time, Kelly had a younger half-sister.

Four months later Brenda remarried, to a man who was abusive to all of them.

That marriage lasted seven years and produced one child, but Brenda gave the baby away to a nearby farm family.

After that marriage dissolved, Brenda remarried again, but that marriage ended abruptly when that husband committed suicide in December 1979.

For the next two years Kelly and her sister lived with her aunt in Charlottesville, Virginia, while Brenda resided in Virginia Beach.

Kelly and the sister remained with this aunt for about a year and a half until Brenda asked Kelly to move in with her.

She and her mother were forced to move three or four times after the summer of 1983 for non-payment of rent.

At some point between 1984 and 1985 Kelly (who was then living in Florida) asked her aunt if she could move back in with her because she couldn't handle her mother's cocaine addiction.

This living arrangement didn't last long because Kelly herself was addicted to cocaine, having been introduced to it by her mother.

She returned to Florida where she underwent drug rehabilitation in 1986.

During this time she also helped her mother regain her health after multiple abortions, but she also had to endure her mother's troubled lifestyle which included jail stints for drugs, bad checks, credit card theft, grand larceny, and even car theft from a car rental dealership.

After completing rehab Kelly moved back in with the same aunt, this time in Texas, as the aunt's husband was in the military and stationed there.

Kelly's aunt noticed "sexy clothing" in her suitcase suggesting that she had worked as a topless dancer back home in Florida.

Kelly explained to her aunt that she had become a dancer in order to obtain access to drugs and because it earned her a lot of money.

She then lived with a boyfriend, but she later left him and relocated to Little Rock, Arkansas, where she lived from 1986 until 1989.

Kelly then returned to her mother's house in Florida only this time her younger sister stayed with them.

The sister left just a few months later after a humiliating stay during which their mother entered her into a bikini contest for money.

Kelly left her mother in 1990 and moved to Norfolk, Virginia.

She decided to travel to Dallas, Texas, later that year.

Kelly's earliest verified location is Dallas where she was arrested for prostitution.

She also worked at a KFC there.

Kelly (1968 – July 10, 1991) was the first name of a 23-year-old American woman and identity thief who was murdered on July 10, 1991, in El Dorado, Arkansas, in Room 121 of the now-demolished Whitehall Motel.

She used multiple names while alive, including Mercedes (which is how her friends knew her), Cheryl Ann Wick (which was the name on the identification card found with her body), Kelly Lee Carr, Kelly Karr, Shannon Wiley, Cheryl Kaufman, and Sharon Wiley; none of which were found to be her real name.

As an unidentified victim, she was known to have lived in various states prior to her death, including Texas and Louisiana, and was alleged to have engaged in sex work.

While alive, she shared varying accounts of her past, suggesting that she had been arrested at one point, had one or two children, and had possibly been involved in a bank robbery on the East Coast.

Her murderer was identified as her ex-boyfriend and alleged pimp James McAlphin; McAlphin was quickly convicted, but her true identity remained unknown until 2022.

On May 24, 2022, her first name was revealed in an article by forensic specialist Yolanda McClary, who withheld her surname out of privacy concerns.

Prior to her partial 2022 identification, Kelly was known as the El Dorado Jane Doe.

After leaving Dallas, she traveled to Shreveport, Louisiana, before going to El Dorado in early 1991.

She also worked as a topless dancer in Little Rock, Arkansas, prior to her death and was found to have lived with a family in Irving, Texas.

Kelly met James McAlphin while in Dallas.

They eventually began a relationship, during which Kelly would often find herself in the emergency room due to injuries suffered at the hands of McAlphin.

Before McAlphin, Kelly had been involved with other men known as Tyronne and J.D.

Kelly withdrew from high school in the 10th grade and found employment on the beach at a kiosk selling jewelry.

Her mother at one point stole merchandise and the profits from her daughter's job.

Kelly had to return the merchandise in order for her mother to avoid jail.