Thawing Out a Cold Case: Potential justice 45 years too late
“Are you available anytime before 12:30???,” I sent a message to my professor. I left my house and went to campus. Two songs later, I am on campus, in a classroom and complaining about another request pretty much canceled.
I wanted the case file for Joanna Jenkins. I wanted to report on – and bring some justice– to a woman erased from a community’s mind. All I kept hearing from officials is, no information, no open cases, and no problems, but the facts I could gather, at that time, said something different.
In November of 1977, the 23-year-old, petite, blonde, blue-eyed white woman was last seen at the Bridge Inn in Oak Hill. Her missing person poster reports that after moving in with her boyfriend, officials arrested (I couldn’t confirm who made the arrest) for robbery and shortly after Jenkins went missing. We don’t know who arrested her; who reported her missing; or who last saw her. We do know she has been missing for 45 years and the only official information available on her case is her description.
A Summer Tracking Crimes in Cleveland
This summer, I worked with an investigative executive producer in Cleveland on criminal cases for three months. I tracked missing persons, homicides and deaths during a summer of a 13% increase in violent crime city-wide. As part of my research, I compiled state procedures and policies on missing persons.
During my summer work, I became well-acquainted with a database called NamUs. Created in 2007, NamUs is a central resource center for missing persons and unclaimed and unidentified remains cases; the database brings information, forensic science and technology together – resolving more than 36,000 missing persons cases. Thirteen states mandate the inclusion of missing person information in the database, but Ohio is not one of them.
In the Jenkins’ case, NamUs also happened to be my first hit.
No Files, Means No Case?
In February of 2014, the missing persons case of Joanna Jenkins entered the NamUs database.
Here, is the response I received from the Ohio attorney general’s office after requesting Jenkins’ citing the office cannot provide access to nonexistent records.
Missing People In Ohio
I asked once and I asked again, how many people in Ohio have gone missing in the past 20 years, and what the percentage of those cases have gone unsolved. The Ohio attorney general’s office did not reply to that part of my first attempted request. After my second attempt for the information the Ohio attorney general’s office directed me to their annual missing person’s report which claimed there are currently 2,262 cases of persons of any age who are missing under circumstances indicating that their physical safety may be in danger from 2022.
According to NamUs, there are 411 missing persons cases in Ohio, as of Oct. 4.
After officials exhaust what they consider all viable leads, a case is considered cold, according to the Ohio Attorney General’s website.
Email, Phone Call, Back to the AG, and Last Reporter Seemed to Get Nowhere, Too?
The first thread to follow was the Jackson County Sheriff Department, I had sent my first email to Jennifer Hughes, the office’s public records coordinator, requesting the case file. After a follow up email four days later, I got a phone call.
Hughes was eager to help, she was the former managing editor of the Jackson County Times-Journal and said she understood the struggle for access to information. On the phone, she recalled a reporter from a while back who had tried to take a look into the same case I was requesting about, but mentioned that little came from that reporter’s investigation. She finished the call by referring me to the Ohio attorney general’s office as the sheriff’s office had no record of the case.
On Jenkins’ NamUs page, Jennifer Lester, Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation investigator, was listed as a contributor to the case. I gave her a ring. She was unfamiliar with the case, but assured me I would receive a call and get more information from her office.
I sent a request for the case file of Joanna Jenkins to the Ohio attorney general’s office on Sept. 21.
After a week of radio silence, I reached out to Lester again with the same questions.
She seemed surprised that I hadn’t received a message from ‘someone in her office,’ I asked for the email I should be expecting a message from and sent three separate emails over a week.
“A Miracle”After A Cleveland Kidnapping Case
On May 6, 2013, a 911 operator heard the words, “I’ve been kidnapped and I’ve been missing for 10 years. I’m here. I’m free now,” said Amanda Berry, who had been held captive with two other women for over nine years by Ariel Castro in his Cleveland home.
Berry went missing in April of 2003 and finally returned home ten years later, local news deemed the story ‘a miracle.’
Berry’s mother was frequently on local news pleading for help and keeping hope alive for her daughter, until her death in 2006.
Along with Berry was Gina DeJesus and Michelle Knight, all of which were lured by Castro and tortured for nearly a decade, until Berry was able to break free.
Knight’s story was quite different, no news coverage or vigils held, and when her family reported her missing, the authorities deemed her a runaway instead.
Many believe those kinds of practices of the Cleveland police were to blame for the botching of the search. Neighbors reported informing police on suspicious activity at Castro’s home, but with no follow-up. This point is heavily debated between police and community members, along with the necessary standards for a search warrant, but Cleveland columnist, Mark Naymik, suggests the loss of community policing is to blame for the shortfalls.
The 2000s brought financial problems and downsizing for Cleveland police, and in 2010 in a letter to the Plain Dealer, the Cleveland Police Patrolmen's Association decried the budget cuts and layoffs and expressed worry for the city’s safety.
As a kid in Cleveland, myself, along with my friends, remember exactly where we were when those girls escaped. All of Cleveland became entrenched with this story and gleamed with hope after their story changed. Now, all three women are working towards their own recovery and activism for other missing persons cases.
New Evidence: Uninvestigated and Underfunded
My second hit, an article published in the Chillicothe-Gazette.
In 2003, Bill Reese, the former brother-in-law of Jenkins, who also happened to be a retired Los Angeles County sheriff's sergeant, came to the Jackson County Sheriff, at the time John Shasteen, with new information pertaining to Jenkins’ disappearance, according to a 2005 article.
Reese had found a witness who asserted to have given Jenkins a ride one night. The witness claimed to have been told by Jenkins of a physical altercation between her and a date that had threatened to kill her. Reese’s witness then asked the ‘date’ for more information and the date shared that he had killed Jenkins and threw her body into a well, according to the same 2005 article.
The Jackson County Sheriff Department was ill-equipped to further investigate the case at the time, Lt. Tony Robinson cited massive budget cuts and the weakness of the case to secure a search warrant for Jenkins’ remains or pass it along to the state, according to the Chillicothe-Gazette.
The 2005 Chillicothe-Gazette article also noted a quote from Virginia Jenkins, Joanna Jenkins’ mother, that she wants justice, even if it was 30 years later.
The Obstacle of Time and My Obstacle of “No”
The major obstacle for investigating a 45 year-old case is time; almost every person involved in the investigation or related to the 1977 case has since passed. Both parents of Jenkins passed while still holding out hope in finding their daughter.
I was still holding on to the hope that I could complete my assignment, that I could seek the truth and report it for a woman lost to time. Every step of the way I was hitting walls and dead ends: unanswered emails, messages on answering machines and surface level responses. I carried on to get some semblance of a proper ending for Joanna Jenkins.
A Surprise: A Phone Call from Jackson County Sheriff
On September 25, I received a call from Jackson County Sheriff Tedd Frazier, surprisingly.
In very few words, I didn’t even have time to turn on my Otter.ai that instantly transcribes audio from my phone, Frazier assured me that funding problems had not halted or lessened any investigation during his time serving as sheriff.
Jackson County received $191,862.72 from the governor’s office last year for retention bonuses and technology for intelligence gathering.
As for missing persons investigations, Frazier boasted of having zero impediments to solving missing persons cases in Jackson County. When asked if his office has used NamUs in the modern search of missing persons, Frazier said he had never heard of the database, despite the website being listed on the Ohio Attorney General missing person resource page.
I also requested the statistics for missing persons cases and the budget from Frazier’s time as sheriff from Hughes the same day.
Jenkins’ Sister is Alive: Connecting through Social Media
My last hit: Facebook.
In a group called, ‘Jane Does and Missing 1970s-1980s’ the little information on Jenkins’ case was posted in December 2020. One of the comments, by Vickie Canter Childers, read: “I knew Joanna personally.”
I sent her a Facebook message. She hits back in under an hour telling me she visits Jenkins’ sister once a week in the nursing home. Jenkins’ sister, Teresa Maynard, had recently lost her leg and had a long road of recovery ahead of her, but she was willing to talk to me.
On Oct. 3, after dinner, I returned her missed call, she was blunt answering all my questions.
She firstly mentioned her little sister’s boyfriend at the time: “He was a creep.”
Maynard recalled Joanna coming home once, between her going missing and her suspected death, she says it had looked like she had run through the woods or a bush, she was covered in scratches and had two black eyes. “I begged her not to go back,” Maynard says.
Joanna’s sister described her as ‘different.’ She had strange behaviors, strange boyfriends and had even left the state with one, only to be picked up by her sister and her father a few months later. Maynard said it wasn’t out of the ordinary for Joanna to not come home.
When describing Joanna, she said she had a deep fear of death, “Maybe she knew she was gonna die.”
Maynard even recalled an instance where her mother checked her into the hospital, and said she had suspected mental health issues with her sister.
She also said the
Jenkins answered tips from neighbors and searched for Joanna day and night because in 1977 the police refused to, “they called her a runaway, wouldn’t even look for her.”
Her mother would call the police station nearly daily, with little to no response from police.
Her mother and her other sister, Diane, had gone to Joanna’s boyfriend’s parents’ home looking for answers, looking for Joanna. Maynard says they were chased off with shotguns.
Joanna Jenkin’s school photo. Provided by Vickie Canter Childers.
Maynard said her father would often turn the car around if he spotted a blonde girl while driving, just in case it was Joanna.
But What About Reese’s New Evidence From 2003?
“They didn’t like him. I think it was because he came from California.”
Maynard said Reese had been doing private investigative work since his retirement and eventually knocked on the door of Isaac Davis, “He said ‘I’ve been waiting years for you to come to my door.’”
Reese, Davis and a lawyer who Maynard couldn’t recall the name, all gathered to record Davis’ testimony.
Davis went on to share that one day Joanna came home to the Oak Hill trailer that she and her boyfriend shared, but he was with another woman. Joanna got upset and he returned with a blow to her head.
“Isaac said he never heard a scream like that before,” Maynard says.
Joanna proceeded to leave the trailer, the boyfriend followed but came back alone. Joanna’s boyfriend told the other woman that if she did what Joanna had done, she would end up just like her, at the bottom of a well.
“I hope she was dead when she hit the bottom of the well.”
Maynard also shared that the boyfriend’s ex wife had told Reese that she found Joanna's social security card in his back pocket.
Police still didn’t look further into Joanna’s case, “they blew her off like she wasn't even a person.”
“Do I have some hope? No.”
Reese and Davis have both since passed away. Maynard says Joanna’s then-boyfriend still lives in Oak Hill, but advised me not to pursue him.
“I’d like to see (him) in prison for the rest of his life.”
“It bothered mom because he got to live free and Joanna was dead.”
Still Working on It
At the time of publishing, I am still working on it. My information requests that did get fulfilled directed me right back to the beginning: the Jackson County Sheriff’s office.
When someone has gone missing for forty-five years and officials are not held accountable to use tools that may solve a case, this is the best I can do as a student journalist. My journalism professor reassures me that I am doing my best and that every story deserves an ending, journalism professor, Victoria LaPoe, says.
One Reporter’s Notebook on a Missing Case: A timeline of the process as it stands: 10/5/23
9/14/23 First email sent to Jackson County Sheriff Office Public Records person Jennifer Hughes
9/18/23 Follow-up email sent to Jackson County Sheriff Office Public Records person Jennifer Hughes (cc’d Sheriff Frazier also)
9/18/23 Phone call from Jennifer Hughes- did not have the case file for Joanna Jenkins and directed me to the Ohio Attorney General’s Office
9/18/23 Phone call made to BCI investigator Jennifer Lester and was told someone from her office would reach out
9/21/23 Request sent to the Ohio Attorney General’s Office via it’s online request interface
9/22/23 Request recognized by AG office via receipt emailed
9/25/23 Phone call from Jackson County Sheriff about case file, funding, and current cases
9/25/23 Itemized budget for 2023, overall budgets from past 10 years, and all missing person cases (solved, unsolved, ongoing) requested from Jackson County Sheriff Office Public Records person Jennifer Hughes via email
9/18/23 The NAMUS Regional Program Specialist, Amy Jenkinson, request for info sent via email
9/18/23 response from Amy Jenkinson, directed to NIJ’s media representative, Sheila Jerusalem at Office of Justice Programs, via email.
9/18/23 Email sent to Sheila Jerusalem, automatic out of office reply.
9/20/23 Follow-up email sent to Sheila Jerusalem, Response from Jerusalem–told cannot comment on individual cases, only can provide what is avail. On NAMUS and given contacts to NAMUS people for further questions.
9/25/23 Reply to Sheila Jerusalem+cc’d NAMUS contacts to request permission to use the photo on NAMUS website.
9/25/23 Response from Donia Slack (one of the cc’d NAMUS contacts from Sheila) directed to Jennifer Lester
9/25/23 phone call to Jennifer Lester, told me Steven Irwin would reach out
9/25/23 email sent to Steven Irwin
9/26/23 email sent to Sheriff of Jackson County in 2005 John Shasteen
9/26/23 Facebook message sent to Vickie, friend of Joanna Jenkins
9/26/23 Response from Vickie saying she visits Joanna’s sister weekly and will request permission for an interview when she sees her on 10/1/2023
10/2/23 Vickie confirms want for an interview
10/2/23 response from AG office–file doesn't exist, directed to sheriff department
10/3/23 response from BCI, no record of case file
10/3/23 call from Teresa, Joanna’s sister
10/4/23 response from Steven Irwin, on missing persons numbers in Ohio
10/5/23 additional call from Teresa Jenkins
