Updated

Authorities in Tennessee this week identified the remains of a 17-year-old girl that were found in 1985, about three weeks after she was murdered.

The partially decomposed body of Elizabeth Lamotte, who was last seen alive in New Hampshire, was found along Interstate 81 in Greene County the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation said. It remained unclear how she ended up in Tennessee.

An autopsy revealed she died of blunt force trauma to the head.

Lamotte had been placed in the Manchester (N.H.) Youth Development Center, but left on a furlough to Gill Stadium in the city in November 1984 and never returned, the New Hampshire Union Leader reported. Her case was discharged from the development center in 1985 and she wasn't reported missing until 2017, according to the paper.

A sample of Lamotte’s DNA was submitted in 2006 to the University of North Texas Center for Human Identification for testing and the results were entered into the Combined DNA Index System (CODIS).

New Hampshire authorities found two of Lamotte’s brothers in 2017 and obtained DNA samples from them, leading to her identification.

“The likelihood of a match was determined to be 194.4 million times more likely than the unidentified remains originating from another individual in the United States,” the office of New Hampshire Attorney General Gordon J. McDonald said.