Sins & Survivors: A Las Vegas True Crime Podcast - Never Forgotten - The Murder of Jamie Sheldon

Episode Date: September 10, 2024

In 2004, a victim encased in concrete was found in the desert and unidentified until an internet sleuth made the connection. Her name was Jamie Sheldon, an honor student who had vanished two years earlier. But who killed her? And why?We’ve covered quite a few missing and unsolved cases this first season on Sins & Survivors, and so many times we end up mentioning the same thing, that the news media often has very little to say beyond the basic details of a case, and maybe the physical attributes of the victim.Every victim we’ve talked about this season was so much more than what happened to them, and we think it’s important to tell their stories whenever possible.We have a case like that today for you, but happily, we were able to get in touch with some people who were close to Jamie and agreed to share what they remember about her.https://sinspod.co/episode43sourcesDomestic Violence Resourceshttp://sinspod.co/resourcesClick here to become a member of our Patreon!https://sinspod.co/patreonVisit and join our Patreon now and access our ad-free episodes and exclusive bonus content & schwag! Get ad-free access for only $1 a month or ad-free and bonus episodes for $3 a monthApple Podcast Subscriptionshttps://sinspod.co/appleWe're now offering premium membership benefits on Apple Podcast Subscriptions! On your mobile deviceLet us know what you think about the episodehttps://www.buzzsprout.com/twilio/text_messages/2248640/open_sms Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you.Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/sins-survivors-a-las-vegas-true-crime-podcast--6173686/support.

To listen ad-free, visit Zinspod.co slash subscribe. Starting at $2.99 a month, you'll also get access to our exclusive bonus content episodes when you join through Patreon or Apple subscriptions. Thanks for supporting the show. Most of Vegas has never even heard of Jamie. She wanted to have a good future. She wanted to make sure she was prepared to have the life that she wanted. And the fact that they stole it from her is not fair.

It's not fair at all she's not the only person who's gone through this as you can see you have a podcast of forgotten beautiful people who whose lives affected many other lives and do not get it twisted this person this loss was felt for many people and to the point that many people don't connect now because they can't talk about it. They don't want to talk about it. These people are like, oh, it sounds like an episode of CSI. I'm like, it's my life. We've covered quite a few missing and unsolved cases this first season on Sins and Survivors, and so many times we end up mentioning the same thing, that the news media often has very little to say beyond the basic details of a case,

and maybe the physical attributes of the victim. Every victim we've talked about this season was so much more than what happened to them, and we think it's important to tell their stories whenever possible. We have a case like that today for you, but happily we were able to get in touch with some people who are close to the victim and who have agreed to share what they remember about her. Hi, and welcome to Sins and Survivors, a Las Vegas true crime podcast where we focus on cases that deal with domestic violence as well as missing persons and unsolved cases. I'm your host, Sean, and with me, as always, is the one and only John. I am the only John in the room. On February 13, 2004, a man was walking his dog in a remote desert area south of Las Vegas

when the dog started digging in a hole in the sand. When he caught up with his dog, he realized his horror that he was looking at human remains. The site was excavated, and it turned out to be the body of a teenage girl encased in concrete and buried in a shallow grave. The area we're talking about here is about an hour south of Las Vegas. It's about 25 minutes west of Searchlight, Nevada, a small town you probably haven't heard of. Well, you may have heard of it if you've driven from Las Vegas to Lake Havasu,

or if you work for a mining company. Mining is a huge industry in Nevada, also known as the Silver State. Besides silver, the mining industry here in Nevada produces gold, copper, lithium, limestone, and aggregates. The term aggregates just collectively refers to materials like sand, gravel, and crushed stone that are mostly used in the construction industry and are an important part of asphalt and concrete. As you can imagine, in a place like Nevada with vast swaths of open desert, we produce a lot of aggregates and there are a lot of aggregate mines. The remote location of this grim discovery was about 100 yards or so off of a dirt road, which led to an aggregate mine called the Lightweight Mine.

So initially, this unknown victim, who was determined to be female, was known as Jane Lightweight Doe. Remember, this was 2004, so DNA was an increasingly useful tool in identification, with the FBI CODIS, Combined DNA Index System, which we've talked about a lot, having been established six years earlier. It was clear to the investigators that our victim was murdered, and then encased in the concrete. So their approach was to essentially pull a mold from the death mask on the interior of the concrete to recreate a model of her face. From that, a plaster model was made, and then a forensic artist worked off of that plaster model.

As we mentioned in the episode about Tammy Terrell, in the early 2000s, the Clark County coroner was posting forensic artwork and autopsy photos on their website to help facilitate inidentifications. So in this case, they posted the forensic artwork, which was pretty good, way better than many of the ones we've shared. Unlike the cases we've shared recently, this one was solved with the help of a web sleuth who was able to connect the forensic artwork and a photo of a missing teenager named Jamie Sheldon. Investigators got dental records and DNA from her father, and they were a match and led to her positive identification. It was Jamie. Looking through

the newspaper archives, we found only one mention of her discovery and then nothing else until she was identified, and even then there were only a couple of articles with some basic information. There were no leads on who murdered her or why. Jamie Sheldon was born on February 19th, 1985. She was petite at 5'3 and 115 pounds, and she had been missing since May 6th, 2002. She lived at the Desert Sky Apartments with her dad, Gary Sheldon, and her stepmother, Pam Sheldon, and we know she was an honor student. That's about all we were able to learn about Jamie as a person, but that's really not acceptable. Of course, she was so much more. We're happy to tell you, as we mentioned in the intro, that we were able to get in touch with some of Jamie's friends. And at this point, we're going to play portions of the interviews we had with Heather and Zoe.

Zoe was a close friend of Jamie starting in elementary school. Here's what she had to say about Jamie and what it was like growing up in Vegas 20 years ago. Las Vegas was just kind of, it really was the wild, wild west when we were kids. I mean, this is still the edge of what you would call the latchkey kids. You know, my brother and sister are Xers, they're older, and I was kind of the only child call the latchkey kids you know my brother and sister are xers they're older and i was kind of the only child but the youngest child so at this point the come home when the street lights came on is the kind of kids we were there was not a phone or slashed it was like hey mom and dad i'm going to jamie's house i'll see Sunday. Yeah. So it is funny when you say this now,

parents, they scoff. It's like, but my child back then, it was like, why are you home? Like child somewhere and leave. You know what I mean?

So we started, Jamie and I became friends in the first place. We met the first time in third grade, but we didn't really realize we met. And it wasn't until probably fourth or fifth grade that we started to have bonding going on, playing on the playground and getting really close. And then at some point, her parents had decided they were going to move. I thought they were going to leave Las Vegas. We were childhood best friends in elementary and we were devastated by that. As far as I knew, when she left elementary, I was never going to see her again. And that's kind of where our

chapter phases out until sophomore year of high school. Like I said i was already in the academy um for my freshman year i started 1999 and i'm class of 2003 obviously she's the same class but she came in a year later so we didn't meet till pe class and we just happened to be dressing near each other we finally turned in was like are you and then are you and then it was like okay you know back to like besties instantly like instant um she was always huge energetic presence i think she had a cool calm quiet demeanor kind of like the cool girl vibe kind of um and she had a big deep raspy voice no one expected because she was so tiny in her frame so when she spoke she sounded like me but she was like her stature which is kind of interesting i always kind of think after uh she left us that certain attributes became my

attributes i don't know she just like passed her soul stuff to me or whatever, but I appreciate having her sass and her energy to back me up in my life. So you both were at the Academy. What was your specialty? Were you singers, dancers, instruments? I'm a singer. I was a choir major and Jamie was a Japanese major. So Jamie was Thai, Chinese and white, but she spoke Japanese. She picked up things very quickly. She was extremely intelligent. Actually, she was projected to graduate a year early.

So the one thing that she talked about constantly, either being a veterinarian or being a chef, when she got older, the two things she really enjoyed. She loved food, and she was the messiest eater ever she really was like you always knew what jamie ate that day because it was usually on her shirt and with no shame whatsoever amazing what kind of stuff did you do after school together or what were you both into we were really heavily into music i mean big time obviously we went to a performing arts school already now yeah um tons of teenage angst and yeah on another level of angst really i won't say that i won't say we had the best reputation for being the nicest kids i wouldn't say that but i would definitely say intelligent. And you knew, I think we had boundaries before people understood what boundaries were.

And I don't think we were ever afraid to tell somebody they were just full of shit. That just was a thing that just naturally, once I was around her, she was like, don't be nice to people just to be nice. And I think that was one of the things I admired the most but also got me in trouble the most with her for sure you know but when I think about her I think I have a lot of happy memories because I mean Jamie and I were inseparable for the time that she was back in my life to the time she was gone there was only a very small window when we were not connected by the hip. So I still have a hard time with this.

So hopefully, you know, you're getting some useful information and not just babble. No, I got a really clear picture of you two, you two in high school in the early 2000s. Remembering that was around the time when I moved here, remembering what the what the city was like then. And it was before really it was before smartphones. It was before the iPhone. So, of course, you know, you know, we were going to our big concert together. We were going to like, yes, we were at a party. We were at like different shows um at the

hunterage it was a different time go book and candle after school we'd go kick it like so many different places blueberry hill smoking cigarettes like like just just weird weird like teenage silly things middle of sandy valley weird weird everything but we had a good we had a good time and we were always laughing lover of culture a lover of life not the not the biggest lover of humans but she was a 16 year old in the early 2000s what do you want like i mean we're the daria kids you know six side world it is what it is um like you know yeah that's just what we were like it we we were the the anti you know everything like but we we had the best times we stayed up way too late you know like we stapled a black sheet against

my wall so my room would stay black all night and all day was a goal to see the sun come up on summertime just to drink too much dr pepper and smoke cigarettes and live in front of my house like we could do that like we had the right to do so you know my nephew was was um like our kid my nephew we shared him and we watched him constantly and we got paid in blueberry hill money and rides by my older sister nice um we had a we had a blast like we smoked weed we we did things we shouldn't have we kissed boys we were boy crazy and we were all over the place and and um she was funny as hell i will say that she was as hell and she had the worst walk she walked like she had cowboy boots on we're always busting jokes we were always having a

good time i was a choir major but i had stage fright and she always thought i was gonna be a singer and she was gonna go on the road with me and be my manager and she was going to like sell me to crowds like she was like I'm going to be your hype woman we're going to do this and you're going to like come out there and so for party drink like party tricks we would go out and um she used to make me sing songs with her but she would make me the first line and then she would sing the second line and I'd sing the third and she couldn't sing for the world so it always sounded like a cat gnawing next to like a train singer but it was a lot of we had a lot of fun and um I I cannot say anything but there was a lot of just like laughter and a lot of like really genuine fun in our relationship. And our childhood, we had a really good final years of elementary school together.

You know, even she had like performed at one point in like the talent show. And, you know, I did the talent show and you know, I did the talent show and I was like, but she wore like, um, I think she actually did dress up as a cowgirl and might've had like little guns or something and did like a dance or something like that. Yeah. So she was, she was a lot of fun.

She was a cool, she was really cool. She hated makeup. She hated like being fancy, you know, if you did anything with her, she was super awkward, but she would do it. She was super awkward. Art, music, food, just living life out loud.

I'm unapologetically loud. And just the funnest person. But I mean, her favorite bands, there was a lot of things like, you know, Incubus and Deftones and like things of, you know, like. But yeah, like I said, Nine Inch Nails, we were like random, the most random rock and roll and hip hop kind of things you can put together. Yeah, I just I hope that that gives you kind of a scope on like how diversely like fun she was and she was trying to speak other languages she was i don't know i just feel like she was ahead of her time a little bit she was and she was so ready to get out of school because she was like it she found it pretentious and stupid and she was too smart for it heather was very close to jamie's older sister and as

she explained she spent a lot of time with the family and thought of jamie as family how did you know jamie i guess we'll just start we'll start there like how did you first meet her or how do you know her i've known i well i knew jamie um since she was about 11 years old, um, me and her sister were really good friends in high school. And, and after for years, that's where my friend Kim, she was also like, there was a three of us. So like, she was our little sister. We would just, she would tag along with us, like the movies and things like that. And, you know, she was treated like the little sister as big sisters do sometimes, you know, should have been a lot nicer, but we were kids. And unfortunately, like, I look back and I, like, I regret some of the things,

but it really was her own sister that did the worst. We just kind of would, like, tease her, oh, you're the little sister, you have to do what we say, kind of a thing. Sweetest, most kind person you can meet. I mean, yeah, she was a teenage girl, but that didn't change who she was as a thing. Sweetest, most kind person you can meet. I mean, yeah, she was a teenage girl, but that didn't change who she was as a person. And she was just so bright and happy.

Always had a smile on her face. And she always tried to have a smile on her face even when she was upset. You know, she tried to, like, see the bright side of things. And that's one thing that I always loved about her is that she did that. Like she didn't let things completely drag her down. She always wanted to look at the positive aspect of things.

From Zoe and Heather, we were able to learn that Jamie had three siblings, two sisters and a brother, as well as step siblings. Her mom and dad worked all the time, and the kids operated pretty independently. Jamie's mom and dad divorced when Jamie was in middle school, and we learned that her dad, Gary, had been a great single dad, and that he had tried to bond with his kids and their friends. When Jamie was in eighth grade, Gary started dating a woman named Pam, and the two of them eventually married. They both shared with us that the home environment was a bit strained as Jamie was a teenager and family dynamics with step parents can be difficult at times. Here's more from Zoe. Did she have sisters and brothers?

She does have sisters and brothers. This is where things get a little touchy. I love everyone so much. We were close. Like I said, I was always at her house. She was always at my house. You know, there was a lot of back was always at my house you know there was a lot of back and forth for a few years and there was a lot of love there her older she has an older

sister and she has a younger sister and a brother those are full siblings and then her father married pam later on and pam has her own kids as far as i, one of her daughters was very fascinated by this situation and started to do her own investigative digging and started going at this pretty hard. And I mean for a few years and, you know, the reason we're

saying this now is because over the course of the last 10 years the only person poking me for information or prodding me has been her. The hardest part about that is because of this being such a painful chapter of my life and not being able to openly mourn her with anyone who knew her. When these things come up, it's kind of like opening Pandora's box, right? Before we continue, we're going to pause here to share with you a new podcast called Love, Lust, Fear, brought to you by Jake Deptula from Strictly Stalking. When you're done here, make sure you go to subscribe because we are really excited about this one.

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We're looking forward to collaborating with Jake next season, so be sure to follow his new show on all the socials. Now back to Jamie. The last known sighting of Jamie was the night before she went missing, May 5th, 2002, by her parents. Metro's theory, and her family's theory, seemed to be that Jamie had run away. At the time, Jamie's relationship with Carlos, her boyfriend, led to rumors about her having left with him back to New York, where he was from. We asked Zoe and Heather about her disappearance and the investigation. When she disappeared, did folks think that she had run away? Was something going on that would have made her made people think 100 um jamie was like i like i shared a little bit with you earlier we were independent types of kids okay um our parents worked a lot our parents had multiple jobs our parents had multiple kids her her sister was

responsible for them when her dad was at work there was a lot of like and her sister was of age 18 at that time there was a lot of um of us being independent and doing what we did needed to do even jamie and i had to audition for our school to get into our school it's not like we were regular kids i can't say we weren't i mean maybe now if you watch like shows like euphoria, it doesn't seem like that odd. Right. But, but this was real life. We were kids, we were running around, we were going to rock concerts, we were getting messy.

We were on the bus. We were, you know, we were doing everything we could to get everywhere we could within a two or three days span and then do it again, you know, at the next weekend, you know,

but she, she handled her, her business. I will say that jamie wanted to be successful so regardless of how much angst or whatever her issues were she went to school she followed through she got she got things done you know but yeah there was definitely an era Jamie left on her own accord. So it sounds like police and possibly, possibly

her father and Pam thought that it was possible that Jamie could have run away. Do you remember her behavior when she was 16? Was she the, was there something going on that would make people, okay. That's where I'm from. There's no way. She was going to Was she the, was there something going on that would make people.

Okay. That's what, that's where I'm going. There's no way. She was going to graduate school early, almost two years. If I remember correctly early, I think about a year and a half.

And she had plans to go to Japan and, and like learn, get into her arts degree. And she was in straight A student. And like I said, two years ahead of herself, of her class. There was no way she would have ran away from home.

She threatened, but that's her being a teenager, but she never would have actually done it because she knew what it would do to her family because Amy used to constantly run away from home. She knew that it messed up the house a lot. There's not a chance.

They never came and interviewed you? Asked you when you last saw her? Anything like that? As I mentioned, we couldn't even call her missing or thought she was missing because it was before the 48-hour statute. Actually, when they were calling my house,

we were going back and forth already in that time frame and we couldn't report her officially until i think 72 hours after the fact um even though she was 16 yeah and and at that at that particular point i had said i had i saw her walk past me and not want to look me in the eye at school and that was the last time i ever saw her was at the end of the school day and she just literally walked past me and that was the last time I saw her again and I'm pretty sure her folks saw her a few hours later and that was the end of that now like I said the detectives never said anything to me until we called them after the body was identified and did they do an interview

with you yes at that okay at that point yes and i came in and i offered anything i had left to offer just you know asked anything they would be willing to answer and that was pretty much it it wasn't until i don't know probably almost 10 years later almost 10 years later that I even met a police officer that worked on that case and she was in forensics. So, and the only reason she recognized the case is because when I talked about the concrete,

she recognized that she worked on this case. You know, it's considered a cold case now. Yeah. Is it being actively worked by anyone in Metro? No. As far as I know, no,

I've never, ever, ever heard from the police department again. Let me be clear. Not a word. Not a freaking word. Not when she went missing. There was no Amber Alert child services. There was no nothing. There was never.

The belief to us was poor minority. No one gives a shit like and at that time it felt almost like because she could possibly have left nobody cared they gaslit us the whole time that she didn't run away because they didn't want to look for her i was told repeatedly by my friend who was a metro officer that she ran away and there's nothing they could do about it because running away from home is not illegal. So we're not going to just go and take her back. And when they finally ID'd her, I got barely maybe a sorry and he's like, well, I just went off what they were telling me. Like this is a human being. And if they had done something, I know it's probably not likely, but I still have the hopeful feeling that if they had done something, they possibly could have found her alive still.

I have a lot of insight and I'm a lot closer to the actual person than somebody. And what I say might offend somebody else because they didn't know this version or they didn't want to share this version. I understand. But one thing I want to be clear is the reason I took this phone call and the reason I'm even having this discussion is because my best friend never had justice. Okay. I don't care. Our friendship was where it was nonchalant about it. And I was angry.

So, of course, I just felt like she was already gone. I can't explain it to you, But I felt like there's no way after six months, no one's heard a thing. No one knows a thing. No one's saying a thing. I've got the worst feeling. And that's just what I felt. And then eventually, I came home from work one day, and my mom sat me down. And here was the article in the paper. And, you know, like like it was like everything i had already thought was confirmed for me within an instant and that took years to come back from psychologically and there are still times where you know without solution there's not always there's not healing there's just um you become like you operate with this as part of your d. It just becomes part of who you are.

It just became part of who I became. I will always love her. I will always care for her. Any information I give is only because I'm trying to get justice. At some point, I don't care if it hurts people's feelings from 20 years ago. Get over it. Jamie's parents were interviewed by Las Vegas Metro, and there's some audio of her father in which he says he doesn't know who could

have had the opportunity and knowledge to put her way out there. Her parents are not suspects as far as we're aware, but we will note that Gary does drive a truck for an aggregate mine that is off the very same road nearest where Jamie was found. Investigators also followed up with her boyfriend, Carlos, who

has since moved away to New Jersey. He also is not a suspect, and as of 2024, 20 years later, the case is cold. Police have no suspects. Dino Kelly, who played an important role in finally taking down the black widower Tom Randolph, who we covered not too long ago in a four-part episode, has gotten involved with this cold case. In his follow-up investigation in 2016, the concrete that Jamie was found in was swabbed for DNA in the hopes that the perpetrator's DNA would be found, but the results led to more disappointment. No additional DNA was detected. The follow-up investigation was documented in an episode of Las Vegas Law that aired

on Investigation Discovery. Here's more from Zoe and Heather. The thing that confuses me so much about this case is they covered it in a little bit in that Investigation Discovery episode that I'm sure you saw. Which is weird. That is weird in itself. I moved away from Vegas on that day, the day that it aired on television and i'm born and raised in vegas i'd never left my entire life the day i move away my best friend's show ends up airing on television and i'm like are you serious i feel like anytime i try to put this completely behind me somehow it gets put back maybe she thinks i don't know maybe her soul is

trying to tell me something i don't know maybe her soul is trying to tell me something i don't know what it is but i question it all the time i'm like is this because i'm supposed to be helping other people who have this this kind of grief in their life i don't know what it is but it's an interest it's interesting it's just like i said this is so painful um you know being around people that remind you of somebody who's not here anymore not having solution of where they went not all that other stuff it's like a it's like constantly reopening a wound that's closed you know even talking about the possibility of talking to you guys about this you know there's people who would be like well you know like automatically

you should keep just you know keep that where it is don't don't open that back up and i understand what they're saying don't put yourself back through but i'm gonna be quite honest with you until somebody goes down i don't care how many times i have to be cut back open i really don't because i'm at that point in my life where there's only a few things I'd really like to see really happen in my lifetime. And that is one of them. It was one of them. Cause I just, there's nothing in my, there's nothing over the years that is that situation justifiable, make sense or anything about it about it, sit right with me. So at this point, it's just like who, who, when, where, why? I've had so many ideas, thoughts, or theories in the

last 20 years, you know what I mean? But the biggest thing is I don't want to sit around playing whodunit games and blame games. I want her to get justice so bad. I just, my heart aches for it. I don't feel like I could even, I'll be able to rest in my death if she hasn't gotten justice. With no DNA results and no new leads, Jamie's case is cold.

We asked Zoe and Heather about their experiences and their quest for justice. Here we are 20 years later. I mean, if you would have told me that, that I wouldn't know, that I wouldn't know 20 years later that I wouldn't have any kind of relationship with her sisters. I love them dearly. I wouldn't, I don't think I would have any, any of this like in my head at that time. But I never saw my life without her.

So it like changed the trajectory of my future it really did so i always keep a photo of her with me so that photo and the other photo you have as well um i think of her in the black dress i have both of those here i take them with me they they don't ever leave this house or they never leave my wherever I live. They live with me. Yeah. And then I wrote, I rotate them around depending on, you know, when I need to see a different version of her. Yeah. So it's, it's interesting to talk about that. I mean, we all got tattooed as well when she passed away me and the family we all got together after she we they found the body and we all went to diversity out of all the places to go and we all got bad tattoos of for jamie so she's you're welcome um yeah but they all different versions of memorial tattoos so that was really cool so the core group that really was affected by her, she even has a couple kids with named after her. I think her siblings had kids and

they put Jamie in the name. So she's definitely missed and remembered. So that's one thing. If you don't take anything from this conversation, please understand that she's missed, she's remembered. and if anything, she's kept multi-people separated with that love and that pain. They don't want to live without her. So it's really difficult to live together without her here. I choose to remember her birthday over her death day because I choose to think of her as alive and the beautiful human being she was. I don't want to think about what happened to her. I don't want to remember her for what happened to her, but I want to keep her memory alive as much as I can,

even if I'm the only one on the podium standing and screaming. She deserves better. It's important to remember that she had a whole life before that, before the one horrible thing that happened to her at the end. Right. And it got ripped away from her right before she was about to like achieve her goals. That's really what is just astonishing that they would do that right.

As she was about to graduate and go and live abroad. I don't know if it was a jealousy thing or what happened, but it doesn't add up. doesn't make sense she wouldn't she would never run away and let herself lose all of that never in a million years every year on her birthday i'm like she would have been 40 years old or not 39 years old last year i celebrated her birthday for her because i know that my heart tells me somehow she can feel that. And I always want her to know that if nothing else, I remember her and I miss her. As a person who lost someone so close to her, is there things that people could be doing that you want people to understand about your experience?

You said a little bit about this or things that we could be doing to support you more. Or if you want to comment on how you feel about shows like the investigation discovery show, like how that's great. I mean, that's a great, the hardest part about something like this is it's not a, it's not a fantasy.

It's not some elaborate thing. I dreamed up for attention. It's not something that people get to like you. A lot of people get to live their life with with things that happen to them. But there's not a lot of people who have these events happen in this way. When they do happen like this, I feel like a lot of people don't have, they can't live their, this person anymore out loud. Like, the one thing about it is, I think supporting each other in these spaces mean that the memory of these people shouldn't be swept under the rug or forgotten. Just because her death was so heinous doesn't mean her life wasn't beautiful and it doesn't mean that she wasn't a beautiful person and it doesn't mean that there wasn't a lot of joy

there and i think the hardest part is everything about the death overshadows all the other s and then you can't have anything but perfection with this person we live in a very black and white world sometimes nobody expected her parents to be perfect nobody expected her her siblings there's nobody who expected perfection but when you're looking at it from a story scope maybe or a standpoint you start to pick it apart like these people aren't human these people aren't people and they are people and they are real and reality is relationships relationships have up and down and they go through hard times. And a lot of times we get to get past that awkward stage with somebody.

Sometimes it'll be like a couple of weeks, a couple of months, a couple of years. And I'll be like, man, I really messed that up or man, I really miss you because my life went left and right. And who knows if we would have been able to have a different conversation months or years from then where we would have been I think about it all the time like um now that I just turned 39 thinking about where she'd be at 40 because she'd be 40 in February and thinking about who she would have been and how many people and how many things she could have done with that vigor and that audacity. Because trust me, it was audacity for sure. She had the audacity to do a lot of things that she really shouldn't have.

But yeah, I think that's the hardest part is understanding that not everything that we talk about with so many, just because like I get sad or I cry or have like, I don't cry every time I talk about her. This has been in my life for 20 years. There's times where it's like, oh, yeah. There's times that it just feels like it's right there. Like it just like it just happened. It's right there like it just like it just happened and it's right there but yeah i just i'm not angry about shows that teach people what life can do okay i'm not going to be saying that true crime isn't helpful because i do think true crime and these types of stories is imperative to tell

because for a really long time when we were growing up the narrative of a killer looked kind of the same and a lot of people had an idea of what what to be afraid of right you don't know okay it's just it's fate it's just as random as anything else you do not know who is going to be the dangerous thing next to you the person you love the most can turn around and kill you tomorrow. You don't know. And sometimes these are an act of circumstances or a series of events. You know, it might not have been a malicious person. It might have been a really shitty consequence.

Like, I don't know. But I just want to talk about these things and it not be so taboo or so treated like, oh, well, we didn't go through that. So we'd much rather you not. It's not dinner conversation. It's just not it's not something we'd prefer. Oh, you're bringing me down. Like, let me let me talk about how many years I spent in therapy over this because I can't talk about this because I'm bringing people down or I have a depression problem you know um yeah this is like a cloud

that never it's like a thing that just never leaves it just kind of stays in the background you know like I'm hoping to god there's some random situation where someone hears this and then they go oh yeah i was there during this time frame with her and this and this and maybe that opens this case back up i mean that's like a fantasy of mine i have all the time where it's like oh maybe somebody's just got something they're sitting on that they didn't even realize i don't see this as a glamorization i see this as as calling your attention to something that might have been forgotten about. And I think all the cold cases really deserve that because a lot of these things

are cold, not because people didn't care, but because they ran out of places to go. And they just didn't have the right people investigating them at the time, or they didn't have enough to investigate at the time. And man man even if it was two years later the advances she would have had fighting in her favor this person deserves to be this person to have that conclusion she really does and i i just i i hope that i don't end up a an old lady knocking on my dad my my my desk door being like yo like yo, like, finally, you know, I just think, I just think whoever did this, regardless, accident, whatever it was, they had, it's time to pay for it. It's time, honey. You know, it's, we need, yeah, you know, we've gone 20 years now.

It's like longer than her whole life. She deserves justice. I don't think she's going to be able to ever like rest in peace until she has that. I feel like the reason I get this mania and this inability to stop looking for things on her is because she doesn't want me to stop looking. It's my subconscious telling me like, you need to do as much as you can and then keep doing even more. You know, just because you feel like you've found everything you can today doesn't mean you won't find more tomorrow. And I keep that in my head so that I never give up. That's why I left it the chance to do this interview when you emailed me. Because I haven't heard anybody that I don't know bring up Jamie in so long.

There was nothing that was going to stop me from doing it. If anybody can like if they don't remember her or anything can just look into the case and like look her up and see if like you remember anything from around that time that might be helpful, please let us know because I will do anything to solve

her case. I'll do anything in my power to help get her, bring help bring her killer to justice. Ugly happens to us all. And sometimes this ugly situation helps me help someone else through their ugly situation. And I think the tragedies that you go through in life sometimes remind you of what is sweet about life and what's possible to fix in certain spaces and cause and effect is a real thing. Sometimes when you get affected by things, you can't ignore that you were affected before you started causing problems somewhere else. And I think the biggest, the biggest takeaway from all of this situation was understanding that pain is a real thing

and that these things happen and that sometimes they can cause issues for other things for a really long time but you have to understand how to face that stuff up front so that you don't carry it on and turn it into something else for years and years like if if you don't you don't face that demon in that shadow it just becomes a bigger demon and shadow to face later on and i refuse to sit around acting like a demon from 20 years ago is bigger than me it's not i praise her i praise her all the time that's why she's part of my healing space and um regardless of like i said of what might have transpired towards the end we were kids.

And we were in a space that wasn't, it wasn't always easy to be happy in that space. And we protected each other for as long as we could. And I'm just sad that I couldn't be there in a pivotal moment in her life where things could have gone left instead of right. And now that that fork in the road's there, I'll never know if I could be part of a better turnout. But I know that I've been part of a lot of other people's turnouts because of this ugly situation. You know, I hate to say God has a plan for things. But, yeah, I live with that every day. And some part of her still, you know, part of her still gets to live on.

We wanted to give a special shout out to Zoe and Heather for helping us understand a bit more about Jamie and what a wonderful person she was. Anyone who knows anything about this case is encouraged to call the Las Vegas Metro Police Department Homicide Section at 702-828-3521, or to remain anonymous, you can get in touch with Nevada Crime Stoppers at crimestoppersonv.com or by calling 702-385-5555. Please follow us on social media and share this podcast with a friend. We need as many people to know about Jamie as possible. Thank you as always for listening, and remember what happens here, happens everywhere. To be continued... TikTok, and threads at Sins and Survivors. If you're enjoying the podcast, please leave us a review on your podcast platform of choice. You can contact us at questions at sinsandsurvivors.com. If you or someone you know is affected by domestic violence or needs support,

please reach out to local resources or the National Domestic Violence Hotline. A list of resources is available on our website, sinsandsurvivors.com. Sins and Survivors, a Las Vegas true crime podcast, is research written and produced by your hosts, Sean and John. The information shared in this podcast is accurate at the time of recording. If you have questions, concerns, or corrections, please email us. Links to source material for this episode can be found on our website, sinsandsurvivors.com. The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are solely those of the podcast creators, hosts, and their guests. All individuals are innocent until proven guilty. This content does not constitute legal advice. Listeners are encouraged to consult

with legal professionals for guidance.