Criminology - Jennifer Kesse

Episode Date: November 29, 2020

24-year-old Jennifer Kesse vanished without a trace from her Orlando, Florida condo in January 2006. Her case made national headlines and received extensive media coverage. Despite a massive search, Jennifer Kesse has never been found.   Join Mike and Morf as they discuss the disappearance of Jennifer Kesse. The investigation conducted by the Orlando police department has come under scrutiny. Jennifer's family does not feel that they have done everything they can do to find her. In fact, they hired their own private investigator who uncovered some startling information. One key piece of evidence is surveillance footage of a possible suspect, but the person's face cannot be clearly seen. What happened to Jennifer Kesse? You can help support the show at patreon.com/criminology An Emash Digital Production Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

If you love chilling mysteries, unsolved cases, and a touch of mom-style humor, moms and mysteries is the podcast you've been searching for. Hey guys, I'm Mandy. And I'm Melissa. Join us every Tuesday for moms and mysteries, your gateway to gripping, well-researched true crime stories. Each week, we deep dive into a variety of mind-boggling cases as we shed light on everything from heist to whodunit. We're your go-to podcast for Mysteries with a Motherly Touch.

Subscribe now to moms and mysteries wherever you get your podcast. Criminology is a true crime podcast that may contain discussion about violent or disturbing topics. Listener discretion is advised. Everyone and welcome to episode 137 of the Criminology podcast. I'm Mike Ferguson. And I'm Mike Morford. Mr. Morford, what is going on? I'm doing good.

I'm hanging in there. How about you? I'm doing good. I'm getting ready for the Thanksgiving holiday. We're taping this prior to Thanksgiving. It'll come out. after Thanksgiving. So hopefully everybody had a good holiday that celebrates it. Yeah, it's the fun time with the turkey and the gravy and the cranberry sauce. You can't get enough for that stuff.

That's all good, man. I mean, let's not, let's be honest. You and I like to eat. I don't think making, had made any bones about that. We like Thanksgiving. Yeah. And hopefully for everyone out there that's with their family or not with their family, whatever the situation may be, hopefully everyone out there does have a great Thanksgiving. More if we continue to see some Patreon support. So let's give some shoutouts. We only have three names this time, Colleen Holt, James Dugan, and Brian Moran. So we thank all of those folks for supporting us on Patreon.

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All right, Morph, it's time to jump into this episode. And we're talking about a pretty well-known missing person's case. Vibrant 24-year-old college graduate Jennifer Kessi vanished without a trace from her Orlando Florida condo in January 2006. Her case made national headlines and has been featured on television programs such as CBS's 48 hours and CNN headline news with Nancy Grace. Despite a massive search and at times what a lot of people have called a questionable investigation, Jennifer Kessie has never been found. Orlando, Florida is homed over 100 lakes and numerous theme parks, including the world famous Walt Disney World. The city of nearly 300,000 residents attracts millions of visitors each year.

The tourism industry is strong in Orlando and provides many of its residents with jobs. Despite being a beautiful and sought after destination, with a crime rate of 57 per 1,000 residents, Orlando has one of the highest crime rates in America. It was here where Jennifer Kessie made her home. And I think more when you hear that, Orlando has, you know, a very very high crime rate, it does seem a little strange at first, right? When you think Orlando, you automatically think Disney, Universal, you know, this destination for so many people to go on vacation and Disney brings out these images of kind of a wholesome, fun-loving place. But that doesn't mean that there's not crime. And Orlando definitely has its share.

I've never looked into it, but I've always wondered if the glitz and the glamour of big draws like that also draw on criminals because they know there's potential targets and money and victims that they can go after. I'm sure that's a part of it. You know, there's so many people that are away from their home and maybe get targeted because of that very fact. Jennifer Joyce Cassie was born at Jersey Shore Medical Center in Neptune, New Jersey on May 20th, 1981 to Drew and Joyce Cassie. She has a brother, Logan, Cassie. At some point during her childhood,

the Cassie family relocated to West Central Florida. Jennifer graduated from Gather High School in Tampa in 1999. While there, she belonged to the Fellowship of Christian students. and the Spanish Honor Society. After graduation, Jennifer attended the University of Central Florida and graduated with honors in 2003 with a finance degree. Jennifer was described as an extremely responsible person, and she had been since she was a child. She was highly intelligent, but she had both book smarts and street smarts. She was a strong, confident, beautiful young woman who knew what she wanted in life and was planning for her future. In 2006, Jennifer worked as a project manager for Central Florida Investments Timeshare Company in O'Cohy, Florida, which was owned by billionaire David Siegel.

She had recently earned a promotion, and Jennifer purchased a condo in the upscale Mosaic at Millennia Complex on Americana Boulevard in Orlando, which was a game. aided and fenced condominium complex with 24-hour security. Jennifer was someone who was always aware of her surroundings, but felt safe living in the complex. Life was going well for Jennifer. She maintained a long-distance relationship with her boyfriend, Rob Allen, who lived in Fort Lauderdale, three hours from Orlando. The two had been dating for a year.

They met when Jennifer and several of her friends went to the Tiki Bar, a popular meeting place in downtown Orlando's nightclub district. Despite the distance, the couple was together on most weekends. On January 22nd, 2006, the couple returned home from a vacation in St. Croix in the U.S. Virgin Islands and settled back into their regular busy routine. Rob returned to Fort Lauderdale shortly after. The next day, Monday, January 23rd, Jennifer called her mom on her way to work and told Joyce about the trip. Joyce later said Jennifer sounded happy.

Jennifer left work at 6 p.m. that day and spoke with her father on the drive home. And then later that night, around 10 p.m., Jennifer chatted with Rob on the phone. In what later, Rob would say was an admittedly emotional conversation regarding their long-distance relationship. She felt the distance was starting to take its toll. The next day, on Tuesday, January 24th, Jennifer hadn't sent Rob any text messages. She usually did that every morning before she loved her work. When he tried calling her phone, it went straight to voicemail.

Rob felt that it was odd, but he didn't really have a reason to think something was wrong. When Jennifer failed to show up at work, her employer called Drew and Joyce Kessie at around 11 a.m. It was entirely out of character for Jennifer not to let anyone know of her whereabouts. Drew and Joyce knew immediately that something was wrong, and they made the nearly two-hour drive to Orlando from their home in Bradenton, arriving at Jennifer's condo at around 3 p.m. Jennifer's car wasn't in the parking area. They had the building manager unlock the door so that they could enter the condo. When the Kessies entered the condo, nothing seemed out of the ordinary. It was clean except for the bathroom where they found Jennifer's belongings, make up a curling.

iron. You know, all this was kind of scattered all over the bathroom vanity. The shower was wet and a damp towel was found, indicating that Jennifer had taken a shower that morning. Drew and Joyce noticed that Jennifer's cell phone, keys, and purse were missing. But other than that, everything seemed to be in order, except for the fact that Jennifer was nowhere to be found. The Kessies contacted the Orlando police department. But the department didn't take Jennifer's disappearance seriously at first. They assumed she had gone out for the night and just hadn't returned home, or that she probably got into a fight with her boyfriend and needed to cool off. She was an adult, which meant she was free to come and go. When Jennifer failed to return home that evening, police finally declared her missing.

Their initial theory was that Jennifer was abducted from her home the night before, despite evidence indicating that she or someone had been in the condo that morning. Authority said that when cell tower data was analyzed, it indicated Jennifer was out of her apartment and not home the night before. The Kessies insisted that Jennifer would not have been gone this long without letting someone know of her location and that she was okay. After further examination of the cell tower data, police realized that they had misinterpreted interpreted the data, and Jennifer was home the night before. Her parents speculated that

Jennifer had gotten ready for work and was abducted sometime after leaving her condo. Frustrated with police, the Kessies, along with Rob Allen, and about 20 of Jennifer's friends and relatives, set up a command post at Jennifer's home, unaware they might be contaminating a possible crime scene. Between 5 p.m. and 7 p.m. on Tuesday, January 24th, the group distributed posters, asking for the public's assistance in locating Jennifer. Meanwhile, police officers patrolled nearby streets looking for Jennifer's car, a black 2004 Chevy Malibu. A couple contacted police telling them that they saw a car matching Jennifer's swerving out of a mosaic at millennia, her condo complex. At around 7.40 a.m. the morning she disappeared. It appeared to the couple that someone was fighting over control of the car.

The witnesses couldn't say which direction the vehicle I headed to once it turned on to Americana Boulevard. This rings a bell to me. I know we've talked about similar situations in previous episodes where witnesses see a couple fighting or two people in a vehicle. It looks like there's an altercation, but they don't want to get involved. And this just seems like another one of those instances where I wonder why someone didn't make a better note or call the place. police or something when you see people fighting for control of a moving vehicle. It just seems odd that you wouldn't take the time to reach out to police. Yeah, I think it kind of goes to that individual person that sees it, right? Some people witness something and they say, oh,

that's, that's not me. That doesn't have anything to do with me. I don't want to get involved with that because, you know what? I don't know exactly what I'm looking at. And, maybe these individuals will turn their wrath on to me, you know, if I make a big deal about it. And then, you know, other people would say, no, this doesn't look right. Okay. I'm going to call the police. The worst thing that can happen is the police come. They find out that there's really nothing wrong.

No harm, no foul. But, you know, I think people look at and view this type of situation very differently. and it really comes down to an individual's way of looking at things and dealing with things. And I don't want to make it sound like I'm blaming these people because unless we're in that situation, we might not know what that experience is like and if we would in turn call the police. Yeah, and I didn't take it that way more if that you were you were blaming them. I think by asking the question, you're doing the right thing. You know, why didn't these people do that? And then you start to talk about some of the possibilities.

You know, I don't know what the percentage would be, to be honest with you, of adults that would witness this same type of thing. Now, granted, let's not forget, it's pretty early in the morning. So, you know, a lot of people might be on their way to work. They might be late. They're rushing. You know, it's kind of the society we live in, too. I think all that's got to be factored as well. At 8.10 a.m. on Thursday, January 26th, authorities found Jennifer's car. After someone who had seen a picture of it on the local news came forward and tipped them off to the car's location. The abandoned car was in the parking lot at the Huntington on the green apartments near the intersection of Americana Boulevard in Texas Avenue. This is about a mile directly.

east of Jennifer's residence, the vehicle was parked between a white Dodge pickup truck and a Jeep Cherokee. The complex is known to police as a place that criminals often ditch stolen vehicles. Detective summoned Jennifer's boyfriend Rob Allen to meet them at the Huntington and on the green complex. When he arrived, they asked him to look inside the car and inside the trunk. It seemed like an odd move for detectives, considering Rob was 200 miles. away in Fort Lauderdale when Jennifer vanished without a trace. Drew Kessie later told CBS's 48 hours that he thought the investigators wanted to see Rob's reaction if Jennifer had been found in the trunk. However, when the police opened the trunk, Jennifer wasn't there. Further examination of the car

revealed it didn't appear that there was a struggle in the car and everything seemed normal. Jennifer's cell phone charger, a pair of sandals, and one pair of shoes were inside the vehicle, but nothing inside the car appeared disturbed. Police said it didn't appear that there was a robbery, car theft, or carjacking. Despite the statement from police, Jennifer's cell phone, purse, and car keys were never found. Authorities hauled the Malibu away on a flatbed tow truck for forensic examination of the car's interior and exterior. Homicide detectives and crime scene technicians thoroughly examined the car, including the trunk. They didn't find any fingerprints.

in the car, not even on the steering wheel. They vacuumed the car's carpet and took samples from each section of the vehicle. The collected samples were sent to a lab for analysis, but later came back inconclusive. Authorities had no physical evidence to work with. Regarding Jennifer's case, it seemed pretty obvious that someone had wiped the car down, probably to hide potential evidence that could lead back to or ID them. And I think that's pretty obvious, Morp. I mean, you know, no matter what happens, if you're...

In the suburbs of D.C., a woman fails to show up for work and is found brutally murdered. I wonder what's emergency? We just walked in the door and there's blood in the foyer. For the next two decades, the case remained unsolved until new technology allowed investigators to do what had once been impossible. A new series from ABC Audio in 2020. Blood and water. Listen now, wherever you get your podcasts. You're dusting a car, you would at least expect to find the owner of the vehicle's prints all over that car. So, you know, to not find anything kind of screams out that somebody wiped this thing down.

And if someone did do that, I wonder if that's an indication that perhaps they didn't plan on abducting her and taking the car. and they didn't happen to have gloves with them because maybe they would have just worn gloves if that was the case. Before the car was taken away by investigators, Orange County Sheriff's Office Sergeant Jeff Brown took a bloodhound named Bo to sniff around the car. The dog took a sniff of the driver's seat and then followed the scent for about a mile in the direction of Jennifer's condo complex. The scent trail bypassed the complex's only entrance and led to a stretch of fence that separated the public. sidewalk from the complex's private grounds. Once Bo entered the complex grounds, he picked up

the scent inside the fence and went straight to a flight of stairs that led to Jennifer's second-floor condo. Authorities then searched storage closets in the three-story building where Jennifer resided and the nearby woods. Another search took place at Huntington on the green condominiums. Crime scene technicians picked through a nearby trash container and photographed a gym-style bag along with several pieces of discarded furniture. Later that evening, investigators returned to Huntington on the Green to inspect a security camera system with a view of the spot where the car had been parked. When authorities checked the footage, something interesting appeared. Around 12 p.m. on the day Jennifer disappeared, one of the cameras captured a person pulling

Jennifer's Malibu into a parking spot adjacent to the pool area. The driver who appeared to be a man backed out to straighten the car in the spot and then sat there for about 32 seconds. After that, he got out of the car and walked away. 20 seconds later, the man was seen walking. walking by a gate at the apartment complex wearing a white shirt, light pants, and dark shoes. His clothing appeared to be the kind worn by someone who was a painter or some type of maintenance worker. According to Sergeant Roger Brennan, the camera captured images every two to three seconds as it was filming. It wasn't streaming footage. Investigators could only see the suspect on one side of the gate and then the gate's opposite side. His face was obscured by the

post on each side of the gate. And for anyone that wants to see this video, you can find it on Google pretty easy by searching for it. I think you'll see that the quality is just not very good and you can't see a lot of definition. So if you're looking, trying to find something, it's, it's pretty hard to do, in my opinion. And I think, Morf, that is the problem with that type of compressed video capture. system. And again, I think I don't know if they still do that today as much, but, you know, in the late 90s, 2000s, I think that was pretty common. Some of the systems could

only hold so much data. So, you know, they would compress it or, you know, in this case, they would only capture every few seconds. It would show things, but not, you wouldn't have that fluidity like you would if there was no compression or if it was capturing everything. And in this case, as we mentioned, it was just bad luck that it happened to snap pictures in between the spots where the face would have been more visible. Authorities including a few mounted police officers from the Orlando Police Department and the Orange County Sheriff's Office returned to the densely wooded area near Huntington on the green and they meticulously searched the woods for evidence, such as clothing, that could better determine what happened

to Jennifer Kessie. They also used boats to search nearby canals, but nothing was found during the searches. On Saturday, February 4th, about 1,100 volunteers from the Orlando area gathered at the mall at the millennia near Jennifer's home to help search and distribute more flyers. Most of them did not even know the young woman, but felt a strong design. A lot of desire to help find her. That same day, investigators released two still images of the man walking by the gate, hoping that the public would recognize him. By mid-February, the FBI had joined the investigation. On February 14th, investigators from the FBI and the Florida Department of Law Enforcement spent a considerable part of the day at the Huntington on the Green Complex. Orlando

detectives also asked the FBI to verify the height and other characteristics of this mysterious man seen in the grainy surveillance images. Officials determined that the height of the man was likely between 5 foot 3 and 5 foot 5. That sounds pretty short, Mike. Yeah, I mean, it's definitely a little bit below average. I think the average for males is what more, what would you say, 58, 59, I think. Five, nine, probably. Yeah, somewhere around that. So I mean, 5-5, okay, 5-3 that you're really getting, you know, on the short side. Now, I know there are a lot of guys out there and definitely don't want to alienate them that are, you know, 5-2, 5-3, 5-4. But it does help narrow down the suspect pool if you can conclusively say that this person is between 5-3 and 5-5.

You'd have to say that because the majority of men are five, six, and above. It was learned that at the time of Jennifer's disappearance, there was a lot of renovation being done in her condo complex. Jennifer had told her parents the construction workers made her feel uncomfortable because they would stare at her or cat call and whistle at her. Investigators then checked for security cameras in mosaic at the millennia, but there were none. just a security guard who was supposed to log visitor names and license numbers.

When they went through the logs, police found them to be incomplete. Logan Kessie, Jennifer's brother, said he wondered about the construction workers' involvement from the beginning. But they left soon after Jennifer disappeared. It appears that many of them were Hispanic, and police said they have never questioned them due to a language barrier. And it's unclear why they never used the services of an interpreter. Jennifer Kessie's disappearance rapidly made national headlines due to its mysterious circumstances and because there was actual video or photo evidence of the likely suspect.

But with national exposure came other obstacles in the form of armchair detectives. People across the country contacted police offering a list of possible suspects in theories in Jennifer's abduction. Some would call crime line, central Florida's tip line, or they would post comments on social media or forums. The main problem was that authorities had to investigate every single lead they got, no matter where it came from or how absurd. And more if this is one of those things that I struggle with when it comes to these types of cases, you know, that fine line, you know, between wanting to get as many tips as you can. can, but then also realizing that you have to go through and work all those tips. You know, you and I have done a number of cases where police didn't have anything, not a single person

coming forward to say, hey, here's a clue, here's a tip, check this out. Now we've got a case here where they're being bombarded. And so you definitely want tips. But in saying that, it means that you're going to have to put up with, it's not really the right word, but deal with some tips that may be off the wall. And then really, you know, what system do you use to weed through things or do you have to, you know, go full bore on every single thing you get? Yeah, I think in some cases, maybe too many tips.

can be just as bad as no tips and sort of take the investigation down the wrong path. And I think people are well-meaning and want to help and put this information forward to police, but you just mention all the downsides to it. At the end of April 2006, Jennifer Kessie's employer, David Siegel, put up a $250,000 reward for Jennifer's safe return. He previously had put up $150,000 anonymously. but that reward was retracted after he got into a dispute with crime line administrators. He put a deadline of May 24, 2006 on the new reward, but unfortunately, that came and went without any new leads. In May 2007, after pleas from the Kessie family, and after all previous leads had been exhausted,

investigators released to the public, the grainy video footage of the person who parked Jennifer's car at Huntington on the Green. Previously, they had only released two still images. They were positive. Someone out there knew something about her disappearance, and they hoped the footage would bring information on the man's identity, but no breaks in the case came as a result. On the second anniversary of Jennifer's disappearance,

the Kessie family organized an event called Beacon of Hope for the Missing. It featured 32 groups ranging from law enforcement, agencies to families of the missing, such as the family of two-year-old Trenton Duckett, who had disappeared a few months after Jennifer. That same year, Jennifer's case was featured on CBS's 48 hours for the first time, and Drew Kessie met with a convicted killer named David Byron Russ, who claimed he had information in Jennifer's disappearance. While in jail, Russ saw Jennifer's photo and information about her disappearance on a deck of playing cards that were handed out to prisoners.

The Florida Department of Law Enforcement's website states that FDLE, Department of Corrections, and the Attorney General's office, joined forces with the Florida Association of Crime Stoppers to put into place a new and innovative way to crack Florida's unsolved cold cases. Each playing card featured a photo and information about an unsolved homicide or missing persons case. In July 2007, 100,000 decks were distributed to Florida jails. which resulted in two cases being solved. The two editions featured 104 unsolved cases from across the Sunshine State. In 2008, a third edition was distributed to 65,000 inmates in all 67 county jails,

which is how Russ ended up seeing the card with Jennifer Kessie's case on it. It was Christmastime 2008 when Drew Kessie sat down with David Byron Russ at Seminole County Jail. On May 7, 2007, Russ murdered 58-year-old Madeline Linen in her Longwood area home. He pleaded guilty, saying that he was on a cocaine binge at the time of the murder. He later wrote to his judge stating he is a, quote, cold-blooded killer and would have murdered again. Had police not arrested him, one of Russ's lawyers contacted Drew Kessie and delivered a handwritten letter from Russ, who wrote that he needed to meet with Drew in person because he had information regarding Jennifer's disappearance. After Drew met with Russ, he passed the information he received

onto the Orlando police. But spokeswoman Sergeant Barbara Jones told the Orlando Sentinel that detectives had no plans to meet with Russ and that the information had been obtained and looked into several months before. Jones refused to comment further, and it's unclear what tips, what information Russ gave to Drew Kessie. In 2009, Orlando Detective Joel Wright took a fresh look at the Jennifer Kessie case. He interviewed a woman who hadn't been interviewed by 2006 investigators. She was a former housekeeper at Jennifer's complex and needed an interpreter for the interview as she spoke Spanish. Wright showed her the security camera photo of the unidentified suspect and asked her if she recognized the person. She responded that, quote, it looks like Chino. The woman said the way the

suspect walked, his clothing and hairstyle, all resembled Chino, although she wasn't 100% sure it was him. Wright hadn't heard the name Chino before her or seen it in any files. He soon found that the Chino had done work inside Jennifer's condo a week before she vanished. He then put Chino's name into a leads tracking system, and he got a hit. A crime line tip surface that had been received during the first week of the investigation, but it didn't appear that police had followed up on it. The tip was anonymous and suggested that Chino might have been involved in Jennifer's disappearance. Detective Wright then tried to find Chino, which turned out to be a quick search.

He was in a Florida prison for the statutory. rape of a teenage girl in 2008. Wright went to the prison and interviewed Chino about Jennifer. Chino confirmed the work he and his crew did in her condo before her disappearance. He said Jennifer was present during the work and that she had let them into her apartment. Wright then showed the pictures of the unidentified suspect to Chino and asked if it was him, to which Chino replied no. Wright asked if there was any reason why someone would say it was him, and Chino said, nope, not really. Chino was five foot nine, several inches taller than the suspect's estimated height.

He was very cooperative with Wright and even took and passed a polygraph test. Wright then interviewed Jennifer's building manager to see if there were any issues between Jennifer and Chino or someone else, and he said no. Wright then re-interviewed another coworker who had worked with Chino at Jennifer's condo, and that man said that everyone got along fine and had a normal conversation. Jennifer let them know exactly what needed to be done in her unit. Despite Detective Rights efforts at trying to solve the case, he hadn't made much headway, and in 2010, he was rotated off the case. It was another blow to the Kessie family, who by this time didn't feel as if investigators

had done their best to find Jennifer. Frustrated and downright fed up. The Kessie. family filed a lawsuit in 2018 against the Orlando Police Department to get Jennifer's case files. The department's new police chief Orlando Roland gave his investigators a six-month deadline to work the case. When that investigation led nowhere, Chief Roland handed over the case files to the Kessies. The files contained more than 16,000 pages of documents and 67 hours of video and audio. Under this agreement, the Orlando PD would no longer lead the investigation. So the Kessie's hired private investigator Michael Touretta and handed him the massive case files. After reviewing the documents at least three times, Toretta was dumbfounded at what investigators did not do

and who they chose not to interview. The first thing Toretta did was interview people who had lived at the complex at the same time Jennifer did. He discovered other women felt uneasy around the construction workers, just like Jennifer did, and for the same reasons, cat calling, whistling, and staring. One woman, known only by her first name Tammy, told CBS's 48 hours that she had caught one of the workers pleasuring himself in the corner of her patio. He took off in a white van, but police never found it. I don't know firsthand, Morph, but I can imagine that, that that's not really what a woman wants to come home to find, is a construction worker pleasuring himself on her patio.

I'm going to go out on a limb there on that one. Yeah, I think you'll always have some people that are jerks and will make women feel uncomfortable, whistling, that kind of thing, staring. That's bad enough. But when you break the law and actually start doing something like that in public, you're definitely crossing a line. and you deserve to get in trouble for it.

Another woman named Ashley said she had become good friends with Chino, but they never talked about Jennifer Kessie. About nine months after Jennifer's disappearance, Chino suddenly moved out of the apartment complex in the middle of the night. That's when Ashley first suspected that he might have been involved in Jennifer's disappearance. So she called crime line and gave a statement, but nobody followed up with her. 48 hours found Chino at his last known address

and CBS correspondent Peter Van Zan asked him about Jennifer Kessie. Chino maintained his innocence in her disappearance but refused to answer where he was on the morning she disappeared. He again denied being the man in the photo taken by security cameras and said he didn't know who the person was.

Michael Toretta told Peter Van Zerner. San, his theory on what happened to Jennifer Kessie. He said some workers had lived in the apartment across from Jennifer's at the time of her disappearance. Toretta said, quote, what I'm thinking is Jennifer comes out, she locks the door. Of course, she has her back to the apartment behind her, and then is abducted by those individuals across the way. He further said that she probably didn't see it coming and that the individuals dragged her into the other apartment, where they likely attacked and killed her. Touretta attempted to find those individuals, but there was never a list of who stayed in each condo or apartment. He discovered that a witness had seen a person dumping a rolled-up six-to-eight-foot piece of carpet in the Lake Fisher around the time of Jennifer's disappearance.

The lake is more than a mile from where Jennifer was last seen. The men that were in the apartment across from Jennifer's were laying carpet that day she disappeared. In 2019, a dive team searched Lake Fisher for the rug, but found nothing. sure seems like a long time. You know, 2019 back from when investigators originally had this information, if that's the case, wow. You know, what do you expect that many years later? Your chances of finding something go down, right? I mean, it is a lake. So you would think if it's saying to the bottom, maybe it would still be there. But I think if you're looking at it from the perspective of the family, all this stuff coming out discovered by your private investigator,

you really got to be thinking, man, police didn't really do what they should have done if you're the family, wouldn't you think? Yeah, I can see why they'd be upset and think that the police hadn't done all that they could be doing. And I think we all know after hearing so many episodes and covering everything under the sun that time and water are two big enemies in finding evidence that might be able to help solve a case. Yeah, no doubt about it. Now, there were some events that took place after Jennifer vanished that are worth noting. In 2008, her father helped pass Senate Bill 502, the Jennifer Kessie and Tiffany Sessions Missing Persons Act. George Diaz of the Orlando Sentinel wrote that the bill expands the Amber Alert system to send out notifications within

two hours of any missing person under the age of 26. The bill passed earlier that year with the help of Hillary Sessions, whose daughter Tiffany disappeared on February 9th, 1989 in Gainesville, and has never been found. Interestingly, that same year, Jennifer Kessie's employer, billionaire David Siegel lost a sexual harassment lawsuit in Orlando federal court. It had dragged on for four years. Don Myers was fired from Siegel's company, Westgate Resorts, after 14 years of service. She alleged that Siegel offered her $1 million to have a threesome with him and his wife, Jacqueline. In what Orlando magazine called, quote, the Orlando version of indecent proposal. When Don turned down the offer, she said Siegel fired her. She further claimed that

Siegel had repeatedly groped and sexually harassed her in the 1990s in 2000 while she dated one of his sons. Seagull denied Don's allegations in court, but the judge awarded her $5.4 million. Both sides said they would appeal, but the outcome is unclear. In 2006, Seagull had put up a large sum of reward money in Jennifer's disappearance. In December 2009, a man with a user ID catch Me Killer posted YouTube videos claiming he had murdered Jennifer Kessie and more than a dozen other people, including Tara Grinstead, a high school teacher who disappeared from Georgia in 2005, at one time investigators thought that Kessie and Grinstead cases might be related due to their similarities. However, Ryan Duke was arrested in Tara Grinstead's case in 2017 and later

convicted. The YouTuber was eventually identified as Andrew Haley and he was charged with tampering with evidence and providing false statements connected with two YouTube videos where he claimed he was a serial killer. In a Georgia courtroom, Haley testified that the videos were a hoax. It turns out that it was Jennifer's father, Drew Kessie, that had led investigators to the videos. So, more, I'll just be honest with you. This is something I don't understand. I get it. Young people, they're into, you know, some of these videos and now you've got the TikTok and, you know, you think back to the tied ball challenge where people were, you know, kids were getting hurt from things being posted on YouTube. You know, I guess kids of a certain age think certain things are fun

that, you know, us being older, having more life experience, think, no, that is not funny at all to post something that could get someone hurt, to post a video that says, you're a serial killer and that you murdered people. That's not a hoax to me. That is just stupid. Yeah, I don't know if it was just seeking attention or looking for 15 minutes of fame, but, You know, it's shameful, in my opinion, to do this to the family and sort of mock their pain like that. But here we have a case where this person's interfering and breaking laws and that wound up costing them. And I think that's most likely what this person didn't get, right? So he's thinking, oh, I'll get a little bit of fame or my friends will think this is funny.

Well, like you said, not thinking about the fact that Jennifer Kessie, Tara Grinstead, they have families. They have families that are mourning them, wondering what happened to them. So, you know, it just, it's cruel to do that to them. And then it's really kind of dumb to do it for yourself. And we know eventually this guy, this kid ended up in a Georgia courtroom for doing it. In 2016, the state of Florida legally declared Jennifer Kessie dead. In October 2020, CBS rear of the 2008 episode of Jennifer's case with updated material. In November of this year, Fox News obtained evidence photos from the Orlando PD that suggests a violent struggle may have taken place on the hood of Jennifer's Chevrolet Malibu.

Drew Kessie told Fox News that, quote, It looked like someone was thrown down on the top of the hood, arms spread out, and then dragged back, almost like off the hood, to the point where you can almost see fingers scribbling down the hood. Mike Toretta said the photos look suspicious and show what appears to be a handmark going across the hood.

The Kessie family hopes the photos will bring new tips in their daughter's case. and spark fresh interest. Jennifer Kessie is still missing, and her family continues her search for her and her killer. They run a Facebook page called Find Jennifer Kessi and a Facebook group called Help Find Jennifer Kessi. Recently, they set up a GoFundMe page to raise $200,000 to help with their investigation. So far, they've raised nearly $75,000.

So morph, as we wrap up this case, the disappearance of Jennifer Kessie, you know, I kind of go back to the beginning, which I think really wasn't known until years later, but the folks that were working that construction crew at Jennifer's condominium, the fact that many of them were not interviewed because it was said that, you know, they didn't speak English. I think you even mentioned it. That seemed like a really poor excuse. You're telling me that the Orlando Police Department doesn't have an interpreter that speak Spanish.

That raised some red flags for me right off the bat. I think in large part because that crew moved on, I think, you know, right after Jennifer disappeared. And I don't think it's just me. I think if you look on the internet, there's a lot of speculation that maybe it was someone that was working on this crew saw Jennifer day after day for however long of a period of time and became fixated on her. Because I often think that happens in some of these cases. Sure.

You have predators who just see somebody one time and they select this person as their target. But I also think there are cases where people. see somebody day after day for a period of time and they develop a fixation. And then for whatever reason, in their mind, they decide to do something truly horrible. I think for police, what you just mentioned is sort of a challenge because if a lot of times, most of the time probably when something happens to someone, they start from close within their inner circle and work their way out in the investigation and usually the person that is responsible is going to be in that circle. But if it truly is a stranger that just was fixated on her or a random encounter,

that's going to make it hard for police to solve probably. And this case is just frustrating to me on several levels. You know, you had the incident we talked about where someone very likely saw Jennifer being abducted and nothing came from that. We have an image of the person that likely is involved, yet just the pure bad luck of a picture snapping while they're behind this poll is going to help prevent their identity from being revealed. So there's just bad breaks in this case as well, and that that doesn't help police either, I don't think. No, and I would agree with you, bad breaks for police, but some very good luck, or good,

fortuitous break for this potential suspect. If, you know, if the person that was caught in these images really had something to do with Jennifer's disappearance, I think they got lucky when it comes to this surveillance system and the way it worked and what it actually picked up. And one question I'm left wondering is if this was a one-person crime or were there multiple people involved? As Michael Touretta theorized, could there have been more than one person involved? Because there's been substantial reward money offered in this case over the years.

And to me, that would seem to be a real big temptation if, you know, one person did it and told someone else for that person not to ever come forward and try and get their hands on their reward money. That's something that seems to to sometimes turn people against each other, even if they think they're their best friend, is that kind of money. Yeah, absolutely. And we didn't, we didn't talk about it. We should have when we mentioned the reward money pretty large amount, large enough to get somebody to flip on their compatriot. And again, I do think that's a valid point. When you're talking about this surveillance video and this person that was seen driving Jennifer's car, okay.

So if they weren't involved in her disappearance, then how were they involved? Why were they driving her car? Were they involved, but they were involved to a lesser extent. And maybe there's somebody else out there that they could have or could still flip. on. I don't know. It's what makes some of these unsolved cases so baffling because you can go down this road, that road, and really cover a number of different scenarios. Thanks goes at the Debbie Buck at Truecrimdiva.com for writing and research assistance in this episode. As always, if you love the show, but you haven't done so yet, take a minute, go out, give us a five-star

rating, keep telling your friends that love true crime about to show criminology. That word of mouth really goes a long way. If you're on social media, we'd love to hear from you. You can find us on Twitter with the handle at Criminology Pod. We're also on Facebook to search for Criminology Podcast or join our Facebook discussion group, which is Criminology Podcast, Discussion and Fans. So that is it for the case of Jennifer Kessie. and another episode of criminology.

But Morph and I will be back with all of you next Saturday night with an all new episode. So until then, for Mike and we'll talk to you next week. Take care, everyone.