Investigators have identified the second of two women found buried in a shallow grave in the dirt floor of a basement nearly 40 years after the discovery.
Forensic genetic genealogy identified the woman as Toni L. Gordon, a 31-year-old Nashville resident who was discovered in 1987 in the basement of a home rented by her killer, James Shaffer, the Metropolitan Nashville Police Department announced in a Monday, November 9, news release.
Gordon was buried alongside another woman, identified in 2025 as 23-year-old Sheila Cummings, in the dirt floor of the basement in Nashville, according to police.
Investigators believe Shaffer murdered Gordon and Cummings two years before they were found.
Their identities remained a mystery, with Shaffer only referring to Gordon as “Lil’ Bit,” police said.
Shaffer confessed to the murders following the discovery of their bodies and was sentenced to serve two life sentences, according to police. He died behind bars in 2004.
“Family members believed that Gordon moved out of state and lost contact with them,” police said in the news release.
Authorities notified them of the identification of her remains.
By the time a tenant discovered both women’s skeletal remains at the Nashville home, Shaffer was imprisoned in Kentucky in connection with the rape and kidnapping of a teenage boy, according to the Nashville Banner.
When Shaffer confessed to the killings, he claimed the women were sex workers and that he murdered them out of anger when he discovered they had allegedly tried to steal something from him, the news outlet reported.
In January 2025, the remains of both Gordon and Cummings were exhumed for a forensic analysis, The Tennessean reported.
Cummings, who was from Elgin, Illinois, was identified months later after a DNA sample was collected from her adult daughter, according to the newspaper.
The woman had previously called cold case investigators about her missing mother, who she said vanished in 1984, the newspaper reported.
Nashville police worked with DNA Investigative Solutions, Bode Technology, the National Missing & Unidentified Persons System, a medical examiner’s office and the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation to identify both women.
