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This episode is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Do you ever find yourself playing the budgeting game? Well, with the name your price tool from Progressive, you can find options that fit your budget and potentially lower your bills. Try it@progressive.com Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates Price and coverage match limited by state law not available in all states
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When I need to impress someone with a gift, I go straight to 1-800-FLOWERS. There's a reason they've spent 50 years as the Floral Authority. Every stem is hand selected by a vetted florist and with same day delivery nationwide, 100% satisfaction guaranteed. That's why millions go to 1-800-Flowers to celebrate life's most important moments. Order now for up to 40% off. Don't miss out on this limited time offer. Act now and save up to 40% at 1-800-flowers.com podcast. That's 1-800-flowers.Com podcast. You're listening to DNAID brought to you by Abjack Entertainment. Be sure to check out some of the other great true crime podcasts from this network, including the Murder in My Family, Missing Persons, Scene of the Crime, Zodiac Speaking Beyond Bizarre True Crime, Campus Killings, Below the Surface, and Killer Communications. All of these podcasts are available for you to binge on right now. Wherever you listen to podcasts, subscribe where you're listening to this podcast so you don't miss an episode. On June 3, 1993, a trucker stopped to relieve himself on the westbound side of California State Route 152 on mountainous Pacheco Pass east of Merced in Santa Clara County. Of all the spots in the world the big rig driver could have picked to pee. He picked the truck turnout with a decomposing body lying down the hill off the roadside. The Santa Clara County Sheriff's Office arrived and observed the corpse. It appeared to be a woman. Her head was pointed downhill and wedged under a rock. She was wearing all blue in a conservative collared jacket secured with a large white button, a blue shirt and blue jeans. Deputies at the scene could not immediately determine what had killed this woman and indeed, after an autopsy, the Santa Clara County Medical examiner classified her cause of death as undetermined. He gathered that she was white, she stood about 5 foot 3 and she weighed 130 pounds. She was between 30 and 40 years old. She had medium length brown hair and brown eyes. There was no evidence that she'd born children, which was erroneous, but she had a 5 inch scar on her stomach from gallbladder surgery. She had formerly had dental care, but her teeth had deteriorated and it was evident she hadn't taken care of them for some time. Police also released that she had apparent needle track marks on her body. As I said, the Jane Doe was wearing a blue jacket with a large button, a blue shirt and jeans. She was also wearing white Hanes underwear, a white bra, white Nike socks with blue stripes, and brown tennis shoes. She'd been dead for an estimated one week or so, and based on the fact that she was found off a truck turnout, was suspected to have been killed elsewhere and dumped where she was found. She had no identification on her anywhere. A plastic yellow and black flashlight was found near the body, but that information was not released at the time. Santa Clara authorities did their best to identify Blue Pacheco as she became known, her moniker an homage to her attire and location. They compared her vital statistics to missing persons reports, but learned of none that matched up. I am not clear on whether Blue Pacheco was eventually buried. The investigator that worked this case for Santa Clara, Sergeant Shannon Catalano, was not available to speak with me. But samples were collected from the woman's remains for future DNA testing. And it didn't take long before someone took credit for her murder. Keith Hunter Jesperson was a long haul trucker who lived in Oregon and drove long distances away from home on his trucking routes. In 1990, he met a woman named Tanya Bennett at a Portland bar. He took her back to his place and struck her in an argument. He hit her and strangled her until he killed her, something he later said he meant to do. Then he dumped her body and went about his business. After the details of Tanya's unsolved murder were publicized, a Portland woman named Laverne Pavlinik came forward and told police that her boyfriend, John Sosnowski, had killed Tanya and and forced her to hold the rope that strangled Tanya while he raped her. Laverne provided details she had gleaned from newspaper articles, but also went so far as to produce for detectives a purse she claimed belonged to Tanya and a piece of cloth cut from the fly of the jeans she said Tonya was wearing. Laverne actually had nothing to do with the crime, and neither did John. Her rationale for making up the story is unclear. She may have wanted to get revenge against John for breaking up with her. Other reports indicate that the relationship was abusive and she wanted to get out of it. Either way, both Laverne and John were convicted of the crime and sent to prison after John pleaded no contest to felony murder and rape to avoid the Death penalty. Laverne had tried to recant her story, but too late. Well, none of this sat well with the man who had actually killed Tanya, Keith Jesperson. He did not appreciate others taking credit for his kill and the vast amount of media attention they received after confessing. So he did something about it. He went into a Livingston, Montana Greyhound bus station bathroom and defaced the walls with graffiti, confessing to the rape and murder of Tonya Bennett. He wrote, I killed Tanya Bennett Jan. 21, 1990, in Portland, Oregon. I beat her to death, raped her and loved it. Yes, I'm sick, but I enjoy myself, too. People took the blame and I'm free. He signed the message with a smiley face. Jesperson left another graffitied message in an Umatillo truck stop bathroom two months later, writing, killed Tanya Bennett in Portland. Two people got the blame so I can kill again. Cut button off jeans. Proof. Nothing happened after he wrote these messages. In 1994, a letter came to the Washington County Courthouse. According to the book the Happy Face Murderer by Jack Smith, the note detailed where Tanya Bennett's body had been dumped, the exact wound she had, how she'd been tied up, where her Walkman and purse could be found, the position she was in, and the fact that the buttons were cut off her jeans. It read in part, quote, I killed Ms. Bennet January 20, 1990, and left her one and a half miles east of Latourell Falls on a switchback. There was no media coverage of this letter, so Jesperson sent a second letter to the Oregonian newspaper and a third. Some of the letters indicated he had five victims in several west coast states and others. None of them were solved. The Tanya Bennett case was a false conviction. Details of the dump sites and the crimes matched Jesperson's claims, and some of the details in the letters were not publicly available information. For example, it was not released to the public that Tanya Bennett had been left facing downhill with the buttons of her jeans cut off. Jesperson also wrote that he would kill again. One of the letters written to the Oregonian said, it all started when I wondered what it would be like to kill someone. And I found out what a nightmare. All were signed with a smiley face. According to a series of articles in The Oregonian From 1994, the handwriting in the letters matched the handwriting in the two messages in the truck stop bathrooms. It was at this point that the investigators began to recognize that they had a serial killer on their hands. He was not afraid and was not going to stop. Jesperson later said he did not want to get caught but that he started to get thrills from killing and dumping the bodies rather than risking capture and loving the game. In March 1995 though, he finally slipped up and killed someone who could be linked to him, 41 year old Julie Ann Winnington in Washington State, who was Jesperson's girlfriend at the time. Among Julie's possessions were found documents signed by Jesperson. Clark County Sheriff's Office Detective Rick Buckner pulled Jesperson in for a six hour interview, photographed him and took fingerprints and blood samples. But Jesperson denied strangling Julie, saying they had an argument and she left. Buckner was extremely suspicious because Jesperson did not react normally to the news of his fiance's death and didn't even ask how she died. But he had no choice but to let Jesperson go. According to Jack Smith's book, back in his truck he tried to take his own life at a truck stop by consuming pain pills. But Jesperson was 6 foot 6 and 250 to 300 pounds. The pills failed to kill him, so he called up the Clark county detectives and the reporter who had coined the Happy Face Killer namesake Phil Stanford from the Oregonian, and confessed to Julie's murder. He was arrested on March 30, 1995 and would never see the light of day again after police learned that he was the Happy Face Killer.
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This episode is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Do you ever find yourself playing the budgeting game? Well, with the name your price tool from Progressive, you can find options that fit your budget and potentially lower your bills. Try it@progressive.com Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates Price and coverage match limited by state law. Not available in all states.
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A Mochi moment from Sadie who writes I'm not crying, you're crying. This is what I said during my first appointment with my physician at Mochi because I didn't have to convince him I needed a GLP one. He understood and I felt supported, not judged. I came for the weight loss and stayed for the empathy. Thanks Sadie. I'm Mayra Amit, founder of Mochi Health. To find your mochi moment, visit joinmochi.com Sadie is a Mochi member, compensated for her story. The GLP1 pill you've been waiting for is now on ROE. Yep, it's finally here. With the same clinically proven ingredient now in a pill and now on Roe. It's the first FDA approved GLP1 pill for weight loss at the lowest price available. That's one daily GLP one pill for big results now on Roe go to Roe Co. Listen to see if you qualify Rx only. Go to Roe Co Safety for serious side effects and boxed warning associated with GLP1s. The five women Jesperson was initially convicted of killing were Cynthia Lynn Rose, Julie Ann Pentland, Angelina Soubriz, his girlfriend Julie Winnington and Tonya Bennett, whose purse was found where Jesperson said it would be. After Jesperson led investigators to Tanya's real purse, the false confessors, Laverne and John, were released, having served about five years in prison for the five Washington and Multnomah county victims known to authorities at the time. Jesperson received three life without parole sentences for murder and aggravated murder and was sent to prison at the Oregon State Pen in Salem. So who is Jesperson? Keith Hunter Jesperson was born on April 6, 1955 to parents Leslie and Gladys Jesperson in Chilliwack, British Columbia, Canada. He was the middle of five Jesperson children. A lumbering, awkward teen, Jesperson grew to 6 foot 6 inches tall. Because of his size and personality, Jesperson was picked on at school and his own siblings called him Igor. As a result, he was a loner with few friends, according to interviews with both Jesperson and his siblings. Their father, Leslie, was a violent, abusive alcoholic who whipped the kids with belts and used electric shocks to punish the children. Jesperson felt that his father's rage was often directed at him and he was bullied by both his father and his siblings. He started killing animals at a young age and has said that pretty quickly he started to wonder what it would feel like to kill a person. He tried it, attacking two boys in separate incidents as a teenager, but both attacks resulted in injury, not death. A foot injury that required multiple surgeries put an end to Jesperson's dreams of joining the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, and he started a series of menial jobs before turning to trucking. He met his wife, Rose, when he was 19 and she was 17 and he was working at a fast food restaurant. They married in August 1975. Jesperson and Rose had three kids, two girls and a boy. The family lived on a farm in Washington State. Jesperson was actually a doting father and did not lay a finger on his children. His daughter, Melissa Moore, has penned a bestseller about growing up unknowing that her father was a serial killer. She wrote in an article, he never molested or beat any of us. It was just a feeling that something was building seething beneath the surface. As a child, Melissa and her siblings witnessed their father killing kittens and a cat that the kids were playing with. Jesperson's wife, Rose, left him in 1990 and and he started killing people. This from Melissa Moore's article about a visit with her father in 1994. Quote, one of the things about my dad which made me very uncomfortable as a young woman was that he was very explicit about his sexual relationships. For example, he sometimes went into graphic detail about what it had been like sleeping with my mother. He would leer at women in public, make lewd remarks about them and harass them. That morning at Denny's diner was no different. I remember him flirting horribly with the waitress while we sat in a window booth. It was during this meal that my dad said, not everything is what it appears to be, Missy. And I said, what do you mean, dad? I watched him wrestling with something internally. Then he said, you know, I have something to tell you and it's really important. There was a long silence before I asked him what it was. I can't tell you, sweetie. If I tell you, you'll tell the police. I'm not what you think I am, Melissa. It was a few months after that trip to the diner in March 1995 that my mother told us I3 kids, that he had been arrested for murder. It was like there was another Keith Jesperson. I had caught glimpses of this other man, but I also remembered when my dad came home from long haul truck drives, he would be so doting and kind. He seemed like such a good dad at times. End quote. All that from Melissa. But there were signs of the malignant, murderous sociopath that was hidden beneath Jesperson's veneer. The kittens, duct tape kept in his truck. And one time he told Melissa, I know how to kill someone and get away with it. While Jesperson sat in prison doing his time for the five murders he'd been convicted of, he decided to confess to some more. Jesperson eventually confessed to a total of eight murders in Washington, California, Nebraska, Oregon, Florida and Wyoming. His victims were vulnerable women he met at truck stops or bars. Transients, sex workers, addicts. And here's where things come back around to our Jane Doe Blue Pacheco. Jesperson sent a letter to the DA's office and to Statesman Journal reporter Jan Davies, copying to murdering a woman whose name he didn't know. Jesperson said that in May 1993, he raped and strangled a truck stopped sex worker and threw her body over a hill off a dirt turnout between Dinosaur Point and El Toro on Highway 152 in Santa Clara, California. She was approximately 39 years old and might have been named Karla or maybe Cindy. The non public details Jesperson provided allowed the authorities to figure out that he was talking about the doe on Pacheco Pass, although her name would turn out not to be Carla or Cindy. This is a long excerpt from the Bay Area newsgroup about Jesperson's confession. Quote During a five hour interview with Santa Clara Sheriff's Detective Ronald Bruce, Jesperson provided chilling details about his encounter with the woman, which began at a trucker's rest stop off Interstate 5 in Corning, about 20 miles south of Red Bluff and ended just inside Santa Clara county lines. Jesperson, a long haul trucker who authorities believe murdered 10 to 12 women, said he targeted the woman the moment she walked through the restaurant door. He described her to Bruce as looking road hard and said she stared at plates of food as though she were starving to death. She was wet from the rain and looked like a drifter, he told one detective. She looked like a drowned cat. He said she reminded him of his teachers in school and he decided to take her. He pulled the waitress aside and told her he'd pay for lunch for the woman anonymously. She ate and when she looked around he gestured for her to come over to his table. Carla or Cindy begged Jesperson to take her along on his route. Once he told her he was headed to Salinas, she wanted to make it to Sacramento where she had relatives. She said he agreed and paid the bill and brought some orange juice along. They went to his truck and got in. She dried her wet hair using the heater on his truck dash and eventually they stopped at a truck stop gas station in Williams. She went to the bathroom and Jesperson said when she came back she had put on makeup, brushed her hair and unbuttoned her blouse. One thing led to another, he said, and they had sexual intercourse in the bunk of the truck. As they discussed sleeping in the truck, Jesperson told her that he was going to kill her. She stared at him in disbelief and he raped her and strangled her. According to a confession Jesperson made to Detective Bruss, quote unquote, I looked at her, put my hands around her throat and said now you're going to die. She got this absolutely frightful look. He choked her unconscious and brought her to five times before she finally died. He drove another five hours with the body in his cab before dumping it over the edge of a hill on Highway 152 about 20 miles east of Gilroy. He covered her with rocks and brush and drove off. Jesperson described details of the body positioning that only the killer would have known, and he described the black and yellow flashlight that was found near the body as well as an aside. In a separate interview, Jesperson said that he strangled many of his victims by simply placing his massive fist right on their throats and pushing it down until they died. Once everyone was satisfied that Jesperson had indeed killed Blue Pacheco, he was extradited to California and in exchange for all that information he relayed about the murder of Blue Pacheco, he avoided the death penalty and pleaded guilty to first degree homicide. In 2007, he received a life sentence in California and was returned to Oregon to serve his sentences there.
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This episode is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Do you ever find yourself playing the budgeting game? Well, with the name your price tool from Progressive, you can find options that fit your budget and potentially lower your bills. Try it@progressive.com Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates Price and coverage match Limited by state law not available in all states
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in 2016, Santa Clara county investigators were still trying to identify Blue Pacheco. Detective Ronald Bruce was this cold case investigator on case this from the East Bay Times. Quote, Bruss likes to think the woman had a family, that someone once loved her and wonders what happened to her. So this summer, Bruce will pack his car with copies of her sketch and hit the road. He will spend his own time and money in one last effort to put a name to the face. She was a human being. She had a history and nobody could care less about that woman, said Bruce. I care. She's entitled to somebody standing up for her. Detective Bruce did not believe that Blue Pacheco was from the area where she was found. Someone would have identified her. He suspected that she was a transient and was likely brought into the area and dumped by someone eager to separate himself from her. The detective made posters with sketches of Blue Pacheco done from her autopsy photos and drove north on I5 well into Oregon. He disseminated the poster at truck stops, shelters, jails, rest stops and convenience stores, hoping someone would recognize Blubacheco. It didn't happen. Blubacheco remained under the jurisdiction of the Santa Clara County Sheriff's Office, where Shannon Catalano became a detective in 2015. Once IGG came around, the sergeant obtained a graduate degree in IGG from the University of New haven and in December 2019, she got the DNA DOE project to take on the Blue Pacheco case. You've heard me discuss the DDP many times. The group is an all volunteer nonprofit that works to identify John and Jane does through IgG. A SNP profile was obtained from Blue Pacheco's blood sample via whole genome sequencing conducted by Hudson Alpha Discovery and was uploaded to GEDmatch and Family Tree DNA. The top match shared only 106 centimorgans of DNA with Blue Pacheco. Lesser matches trailed off significantly. The IGG was very complicated because one set of Blubacheco's maternal great grandparents were born in Ireland, which has spotty records and on her paternal side her grandfather and all her great grandparents were born in Norway. Some family names were Macaulay, Mead, Thorsgard, Skipple and Irvine and there were no apparent connections to the west coast of the United States Once the top matches were identified and family trees commenced, sergeant Catalano's role was to handle outreach to suspected family members and possible reference testers. She worked closely with Karen Binder and Harmony Branson from the DDP to flesh out the extended family tree of Lupacheco. Sargent Catalano told the Murder Police podcast that she spent 2020 and 2021 calling people out of the blue, providing some limited information on who she was and what she was doing and requesting family tree details and some reference testers to take a free DNA test and upload the results to the open source databases. This was all a very lengthy, tedious and time consuming process complicated by the fact that some of the relatives were in Canada. Sergeant Catalano reached out to the Calgary Police Service Historical Homicide Team where Detective Ken Carriere agreed to assist the effort to contact Blut Pacheco's relatives in Canada. He told me in an email quote In September of 2020, I was contacted by investigators at Santa Clara County Sheriff's Office in relation to one of their ongoing genetic genealogy investigations. They were searching for vital statistics in relation to several families in Canada who may have a genetic relationship with their unknown victim. I was aware that Canadian vital statistics are not readily available due to our federal privacy laws and was eager to assist them in the investigation. The Historical Homicide Unit with the Calgary Police Service relies on the expertise of a criminal analyst embedded with our unit. Analyst Amy Lemieux was tasked with hunting down all of the genetic relatives provided by the Sheriff's Department. She utilized provincial vital statistics, local databases and social media to compile the information required by the Santa Clara Sheriff's personnel. This information was provided to them to continue their investigation. We were very happy to do our small part. We realized the IGG is a team sport and it's our responsibility to help out when we can. End quote. All that from Ken Carriere. So amassing data from people In Canada, the U.S. and Norway, the genealogists built Blue Pacheco's paternal family tree back to 1700s Norway. All in all, Sergeant Catalano contacted hundreds of people. The reference testing continued to either eliminate branches of Blubacheco's family tree or determine where more intense focus was warranted. Then, in one of her later phone calls to a potential close family member of Blubacheco, Sergeant Catalano found what she was looking for. She talked to a family member who knew of a woman in the family who had gone missing. And the woman had been born in Oregon to a father named Skipple who had moved to Oregon from Minnesota. In 2021, they finally had a potential name for Blue Buteyko. Sergeant Catalano arranged for Detective Jim O' Connor from the Oregon State Police to reach out to an Oregon man named Don Benson. His aunt had gone missing in the 1990s. DNA testing confirmed the identification. In April of 2022, dawn shared DNA with Blubacheco consistent with an aunt nephew relationship. Patricia Skipple was born on May 29, 1948 in Clackamas County, Oregon to parents Alma Skipple and Jane McCauley Schiphol. Her father, Alma, was born in Minnesota to parents who emigrated to the US From Norway. He worked as a grinder man at the local paper mill. Jane was born in Iowa to parents born in Iowa, but one set of her grandparents was born in Ireland. Patsy was raised in Colton, Oregon with her siblings Gloria, Karen and David. The Skibbles were working class folk who toiled long hours to put food on the table. The family was close and the kids grew up running around outside. Family photos show a mischievous group of kids with Patsy always right in the mix. On December 14, 1968, at age just 20, Patsy married Dennis Albert Underhill in Colton. They had two children together. The marriage didn't last and Patsy and Dennis divorced. According to Bay City News, Patsy worked as a nurse's aide and in canneries near Colton. Her sister Gloria White said of Patsy, quote, she was a good person, quiet, a good mom. She was a good person all the way around. But all was not well with Patsy for unknown reasons. One night in 1992, she left her home in Molalla in the middle of the night, leaving behind her kids and support Network. Some reports say that she left after an argument with her ex. I can't verify that, but according to sergeant Catalano, Patsy's ex Dennis was never considered a suspect in her sudden exit from her own life, for it does seem that she left on her own. Patsy was about 44 years old at the time, quite late in life to make a clean break and start over. Her family never heard from her again and we now know that she was dead by June 1993.
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This episode is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Do you ever find yourself playing the budgeting game? Well, with the name your price tool from Progressive, you can find options that fit your budget and potentially lower your bills. Try it at progressive.com progressive casualty insurance company and affiliates price and coverage match limited by state law not available in all states
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when Sergeant Catalano received the kinship testing results proving that Lubacheco was a close relative of Don Benthan, the son of Patsy's sister Gloria, she and sergeant Noe Cortez, whom I worked with on my episode on Leslie Perlov and Janet Taylor, went to Oregon and contacted Patsy's living family members. Sgt. Catalano told the Murder Police podcast that the family was gracious and welcoming and their reactions to hearing about what happened to Patsy ranged from surprise and shock to resignation. Patsy's siblings and her son, her daughter had died during COVID related the shock suffered by the family when Patsy simply vanished one night. They all said they'd wondered over the years what had happened to her, and they all had incidents where they caught a glimpse of a face they thought could be her, but it turned out not to be. She was never formally reported missing. Patsy's nephew, Don Benthan, whose DNA confirmed her identity, and his sister Linda grew up with their aunt Patsy, who was close to their own age. They fondly recall hanging out at their grandma's house and riding horses, playing outside and drawing with Patsy. Don told KGW.com of locating Patsy after all these years. Quote it's exciting and sad all at the same time. A relief to finally have an answer. It was just like without a trace, you know, he said to kptv. Quote it's still kind of overwhelming to find out she just didn't disappear. She was murdered and left and was unidentified for 29 years. That's a long time to be named just a Jane Doe. I'm very grateful they were able to get a match and to finally identify her. Dawn's sister Linda commented to KPTV.com, it's unreal. There are angels in this world and those guys are it. My sweet Aunt Patsy would appreciate every second and every minute that all these people spent looking for her. Although Patsy was found, answers for the Skipples were fairly unsatisfying. No one had any idea what happened to Patsy and how she went from loving, hard working single mom to a victim of the Happy Face Killer dumped off a truck turnout in California. Even IGG cannot tell us what drove Patsy to abandon the only life she had ever known and the family she loved to start traveling the highways of the west coast alone. The DNA DOE project team leaders made a statement after the family was notified. This case was exceptionally challenging due to recent Norwegian ancestry which resulted in very distant DNA matches on Gedmatch and family tree DNA, said Karen Binder. We thank the voluntary DNA testers who tested and or uploaded to Gedmatch in order to assist us in solving this case. Co Team leader Harmony Branson added. Every single DNA match made a difference in this difficult case. But the Skibble family had more to say. They told Sergeant Catalano that there was another woman missing from their family. Patsy's sister Gloria's daughter went missing in 1990. This was Martha Evans, who was 33 years old when she was a bridesmaid at her friend's wedding on February 10, 1990. Martha was a divorced mom of two who was living with her own mother and her kids after the breakup of her marriage. After the wedding reception, she went back to her mom's house and made an emotional phone call to an unknown person still wearing her bridesmaid's dress. She borrowed some cash and her brother's truck and went to the Lager Bar. Her friends who met her there said that she was upset, but they didn't know what about. After the bar, she used the $4 in cash that she'd borrowed to gas up the truck. But then the truck wouldn't start, so one of her siblings had to come and help her get it working. Then she drove off down Highway 30, supposedly headed to a restaurant to meet her sister. She never showed up. The next day her family called the police reporting that Martha was missing and so was the truck she'd borrowed from her brother. She's not believed to have had anything with her other than the black leather jacket she was wearing. Neither Martha nor the truck has ever been found. The roadway she was driving apparently has waterways, lakes, sloughs and other possible hazards. But water searches by Adventures with Purpose have come up empty. Martha's disappearance apparently affected Patsy deeply. Her family said she began to unravel after her niece Martha disappeared in 1990 and she began spending time alone before vanishing herself herself in 1992. Okay, let's touch on another DOE case. On September 14, 1994, the skeletal remains of an unidentified female were found by an inmate work crew in a row of trees near Interstate 10 in Holt, a community located in Crestview, Okaloosa County, Florida. Analysis of the remains showed that they were of a white female, about 5 foot 6 inches tall, 110 pounds between the ages of 35 and 55. Her bleached hair was naturally brown. She was wearing a full length floral button front Brandywine Creek dress that was missing two buttons and an intricate sequined floral print jacket. She was also wearing quite a bit of jewelry, including a beaded bracelet, a silver ring, a heart shaped ring, a charmless charm bracelet and a cord necklace with geometric pendants. An autopsy determined that the Jane Doe was the victim of a homicide. A lot of work was done to try to identify this Jane Doe. A facial reconstruction was made by a forensic artist early on and a second more technologically advanced one done in 2007. In 2008, samples from her autopsy were analyzed for DNA and entered into CODIS unidentified human remains database. In 2018, specimens were sent for isotope analysis at the University of Florida. At this time, samples were also provided to the FBI laboratory for DNA analysis and Jane Doe was entered into into the National Missing and Unidentified persons database as up 1129 along with her DNA. None of it worked. Why am I talking about this Jane doe? Because in February 1996, Keith Hunter Jesperson told Okaloosa County Sheriff's Office investigator Glenn Barbary that he had killed a Jane Doe in Florida in August 1994 and dumped her body near the Holt exit on I10. Jesperson admitted to giving a ride to a blonde woman named Susan or Suzette, whom he picked up at a store near Tampa in August 1994 after he had delivered a truckload of aluminum coils. He guessed her to be around 30 years old and said she described herself as a fortune teller who used tarot cards. The woman did not have a specific destination, but she wanted to get out of Florida. Jesperson drove them to a truck rest stop on the Florida Panhandle and pulled over. Susan or Suzette agreed to sleep with him in the truck as long as they both kept their clothes on. But as she slept, Jesperson could not control his urges and and started to touch her. She started screaming and Jesperson, noting a security guard stationed nearby and his trucking company's rules about him not having passengers in his rig stopped her screaming and breathing by pushing his fist into her throat. He then tied zip ties around her throat and raped her. Then he drove off with the body, disposing with her at the Holt exit, hiding her body in some brush along the I10 roadside. Despite the Okaloosa County Sheriff's Office, Florida Department of Law Enforcement and District 1 Medical Examiner's Office working decades to positively identify the Jane Doe believed to have been killed by Jesperson, her name remained a mystery. That changed in 2023. Jane Doe's case was submitted to Othram Labs in early 2023. Testing was funded by NamUs. A SNP profile was produced and an IGD analysis pointed to the name of a woman who was missing. Jane Doe was Suzanne L. Schellenberg. Born on October 8, 1959. She was 34 when Jesperson killed her. Her family in Wisconsin was notified that she'd been identified. Jesperson was charged with Suzanne's murder after she was ID'd. In April 2024, he pleaded guilty to second degree murder in Florida but was not extradited from Oregon. The plea and additional life sentence were a formality as far as any impact on Jesperson, but were an important symbolic gesture for Suzanne's family and all Jesperson victims. Speaking of his victims, Suzanne was the penultimate one to be identified again. Here is a list of Jesperson's known Tanya Bennett, Cynthia Lynn Rose, Lori Ann Pentland, Patricia Skipple, Angela Soubrese, Julie Winningham, Suzanne Schellenberg and finally, one last unidentified woman, a Jane doe found in August 1992 near Blythe, California. Jesperson was convicted in Riverside county of this murder in 2010, but the Doe remains unidentified. Let's hope IGG comes to the rescue and provides another family with answers. Let's bring this all back around to Patsy Skipple. KGW.com interviewed her older sister Gloria White, who said, quote, it's just a really hard pill to swallow to know she was lying there for and also that she was unidentified for so long. Gloria still has to struggle daily with the fact that her daughter Martha remains missing. Has she too been found and is sitting in an ME's office somewhere, not only by a case number or nickname. Karen Binder, then a team leader for the DDP and now at the Ramapo College Igg center, said, quote, the does deserve to have their names back. They're humans. They have families, they have names, they have stories. Being a part of that. I mentioned that Keith Jesperson's daughter, Melissa Moore has written a book about what it was like to grow up with him as a father and to find out at age 16 that he was a serial killer. The book is titled Shattered Silence the Untold Story of of a Serial Killer's Daughter. I highly recommend it. Melissa also has a podcast and a TikTok account at LifeAfterHappyFace that has millions of views. The earliest possible release date for Keith Hunter Jesperson is March 1, 2063. Let's hope he's worm food long before that. Thanks for listening to this episode of dnaid. Before you leave, please let me tell you about some important things related to the show. If you'd like to support this podcast and in the process get access to early and ad free episodes as well as bonus content like crime scene photos, you can sign up for a Patreon subscription for only $5 a month by heading over to patreon.com dnaid. Of course, you're welcome to contribute more than $5 a month. We rely on Patreon funds to pay for the original source materials. I use the to research each episode. If Patreon isn't your thing, you can also show your support with an ABJAC Insider subscription through Apple Podcasts. It costs just $4.99 a month or $49.99 a year. Your ABJAC Insider subscription will give you the same benefits for not only DNA ID but for all of the shows on the ABJ Network like Killer Communications and Campus Killings. Head over to Apple Podcast Podcasts and find the DNAID page or look for the abjak Network to get started. If you're on social media, we'd love to interact with you there. DNAID is on every major social media platform. Search your favorite platforms for DNAID Podcasts to find us. We also have a YouTube channel and our website is DNAIDpodcast.com. you can find links to all of these anytime in our show Notes. If you need to reach the show, contact us by emailing DNAID podcast gmail.com finally, if you want to pick up some fun DNA ID merch and represent the show, visit the store at www.customizedgirl.coms DNAIDpodcast. DNAID is researched, written and hosted by me, Jessica Bettencourt. It's produced by me and Mike Morford of Abjack Entertainment, music by Connor Betancourt.
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