The woman at the center of what police in Howard County, Maryland, have for decades simply called “The Jane Doe Case” has finally been identified, and that breakthrough has reunited two of her children, who hadn’t seen each other for more than 70 years.

Sarah Belle Sharkey, whose name at birth was Sadie Belle Murray, was found unconscious and beaten in a Woodstock field in July 1971 and died in the hospital from her injuries two months later.

Until Thursday, the identity of the victim in the Howard County Police Department’s oldest cold case homicide remained a mystery. While the question of who killed Sharkey remains, her identification brought closure to two people who had been searching for it for a lifetime.

This breakthrough was made with the help of genetic genealogy, which uses DNA and existing ancestry databases to establish familial relationships and build family trees. After submitting Sharkey’s DNA to a private company in October, investigators found out Charles Sharkey was a direct familial match. He was initially thought to be a distant cousin of the victim.

Then, Howard County detectives were able to locate Charles’ sister, Mildred Cantwell.

Sarah Belle gave birth to Charles and Mildred many years before her death, and both children were placed in orphanages at a young age. They hadn’t seen each other in more than 70 years, and while they had vague memories about being taken to orphanages, neither knew what happened to their mother or siblings.

“Learning about my mother was closure for me,” 81-year-old Mildred, who now lives in Springfield, Illinois, said in a news release. “I always wondered … and I am glad to have that closure. Being reunited with my brother is awesome. He’s the only thing in that family that I remember. The closure is worth everything because I always wondered what happened to her.”

Charles and Mildred now talk nearly every day and are planning to meet in person in the coming months, according to Howard County Police Chief Gregory Der.

“It’s something that I thought would have never happened,” Charles, who’s now 79 and lives in Cleveland, said. “I thought I’d never connect again with my family. I tried there for a while, even traveling to Pennsylvania where we were born and Cleveland where we were adopted. I got nowhere. There was nothing.”

While investigators now know Sarah Belle’s identity, there’s still a lot they don’t know about her and what happened to her. Police believe she was living in Pennsylvania, and aren’t sure why she was found in Howard County.

“The work doesn’t stop here, this is really now where much of the work begins,” Howard County police spokesperson Sherry Llewellyn said at a news conference.

Anyone with information about Sarah Belle Sharkey or what may have happened to her should call the Howard County Police Department at 410-313-7867.