True Crime with Kimbyr - Part 1: Young FUNERAL DIRECTOR Found DEAD in Bedroom Closet | Rachael Anderson

Episode Date: January 30, 2026

A 24th birthday should have marked a new chapter — instead, it ended in tragedy. In this heartbreaking episode of True Crime with Kimbyr, we examine the mysterious disappearance of young funeral director Rachael Anderson from Warren, Ohio. After celebrating with loved ones, Rachael vanished without warning, only to be found days later in her own bedroom closet. With hauntingly few clues and unanswered questions, True Crime with Kimbyr unravels the timeline, relationships, and unsettling details behind a case that still defies explanation. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Her life was just beginning. Her passion was helping those whose lives just ended. Own it all. Pay off your home, travel for life, drive a Ferrari. In celebration of the world premiere of the Monopoly Big Board Buckslot Machine by Aristocrat Gaming, Yamava Resort and Casino at San Manuel is giving one person a $1.6 million dream package. The biggest prize in Yamava's history.

Club Serrano members can earn daily instant prizes and secure a spot in the finale May 29th. Don't pass go and own it all. Only at Yamava, celebrating its 40th. You win? Details at yamava.com must be 21-20. Please gamble responsibly. Monopoly is a trademark of Hasbro. Hasbro is not a sponsor of this promotion. She could have never expected that her 24th birthday would bring not wishes and hopes and dreams, but death. Hi everyone, welcome back to my channel. My name is Kimberlea. If you've never been here before, nice to finally meet you. It takes an exceptional person to want to work in the funeral industry. For

one, they must be okay with being surrounded by death daily. Empathy and compassion are two of the most vital characteristics for anyone that wants to enter the funeral industry. They must understand when to give family space and respect the grieving process. Rachel Nicoletta Anderson was one of those people, a person with a pure heart whose passion was to help those who just lost their loved ones or their lives. Rachel was born in Warren, Ohio, on January. January 28th, 1994 to William Bill and Patricia Trish Anderson. Rachel had one younger brother, John Anderson, and they grew up in Warren, Ohio. Warren is a relatively small city. It's in the northwest Ohio area along the Mahoney River. General Motors and Packard Electric are two of the

area's biggest employers. Warren has a number of museums, including the Trumbull County Museum and the National Packard Museum. Golf courses, breweries, a drive-in-threat. theater, those things are all nearby as well. And the city is described as hip meets blue collar with a lot of character. In downtown Warren, Dave Grohl Alley honors the former Nirvana drummer and Fu Fighters frontman Dave Grohl, who's a native of Warren. Many people are actually surprised to hear that he's from Warren because they assume he's from the Pacific Northwest like Kurt Cobain was.

Public artwork lines Dave Grohl Alley and among the works on display are murals, sculptures, and the world's longest drumsticks. which measure 23 feet long. The local high school Warren G. Harding, named after the U.S. President born in the city, produces excellent athletes. People in Warren love sports, especially local sports, and they spend a lot of their time playing and watching them.

Scrappers is a minor league baseball team, and it's quite popular among the locals during baseball season. And this is where Rochelle Anderson grew up, and she graduated from Warren G. Harding High School in 2012. When Rachel was in high school, she was a member of the National Honor Society. However, Rachel was more than just a talented student. She was an exceptional athlete. She played soccer and volleyball.

And she also played in the school band. During high school, Rachel worked at Giant Eagle grocery store. And Giant Eagle is a local neighborhood grocery store with chains in West Virginia, Indiana, Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Ohio. And Rachel loved her job. Anything she did, she did with joy. And to know her was to love her, she would come to work every day with a giant smile on her face. The locals knew Rachel, and she touched the lives of her coworkers and all of her customers. Rachel was beautiful. She had long, blonde hair and green eyes, but it wasn't just her physical beauty that drew people to Rachel.

She was very bubbly, friendly, and had a really infectious laugh that would make you crack up just hearing it. She really did light up a room when she entered. Rachel's ambition was a little bit different than a lot of other. high school graduates she had an ambition to become a funeral director and embalmer and that led her to enroll a Youngstown State University after graduating from Warren G Harding High School. Despite sometimes being confused for one another funeral directors and embalmers are two different positions or two different careers and bombers sanitize and prepare bodies for their burial. Funeral directors work with the grieving families. They assist with funeral planning services

and they oversee all of the burial or cremation arrangements. Even though both occupations require deep respect for the deceased, and Balmers focus more on the science of death, while morticians concentrate on delivering that personalized care to the families. After completing the prerequisites at Youngstown State University, Rachel applied to the Cincinnati College of Mortuary Science. This is an acclaimed institution. Joseph Henry Clark founded the Cincinnati College of Mortuary Science in 1880,

to train embalmers during the Civil War. In time, CCMS, as it would be known, was the father of embalming schools. In 1980, CCMS received authorization from the Ohio Regents to grant students an associate of applied science degree. All that to say, the College of Mortuary Science at CCMS became the very first private college in the nation to offer a bachelor's degree of mortuary science in 1986. And to this day, CCMS has maintained its regional and professional professional certifications. It's the go-to school if you want to study mortuary science. According to the mission statement, the Cincinnati College of Mortuary Science is an institution which endeavors to develop professionals who can function with distinction within their chosen

profession and within the community of life. They strive to provide the best education possible and that's exactly why Rachel was excited to enroll. While in mortuary school, Rachel worked at a funeral home which is so hard for me to pronounce every single time. but I'm going to try it for you. Nagala, Kleb, and Islandorf funeral home in Norwood, Ohio. The staff at this funeral home taught Rachel a lot, especially the owner, Bernard,

who has owned the business since the 1970s. Jackie and Tara, the funeral director and the embalmer, became Rachel's mentors and friends. They were like a second family to her. After graduating from CCMS, Rachel became a member of the Ohio Funeral Directors Association and spent her internship with the Shaw-David funeral home in Columbus. Rachel had never been happier. The owner of this funeral home she was

working at treated her like family. She loved her colleagues and she told her mom, I will work for them forever. Rachel had no idea what was going to happen. As Rachel got closer to her 24th birthday, her internship at the funeral home was almost completed. But she wasn't stressed about finding a job because the owner had already offered her a full-time position, which she would have accepted if given the chance. She had plans to be there permanently. She even recently moved from Warren to Columbus earlier in the month to be closer to this job. Her new apartment was on Allegheny streets on the east side of the city. Here it is right here. These are cute two-story apartments in Cardinal Creek apartment complex located at 3044 Allegheny Avenue. Rachel's younger brother,

John Anderson, wanted to throw her an awesome 24th birthday party. So he got mutual friends together and they decide to have it at one of Rachel's friends houses, Jonathan Kennedy and his wife Tina. They were more than happy to host her birthday party. They lived across the city on the west side of Columbus. The party was planned for the night before Rachel's birthday on Saturday, January 27th. Jonathan Kennedy was Rachel's very close friend from Warren G. Harding High School. She also had a close relationship with Jonathan's sister when they were growing up and they spent a lot of time together. Her brother, John Anderson, still lived in Warren, Ohio, so he had to drive almost three hours to Columbus for Rachel's birthday. So he planned to spend the entire weekend with her.

He arrived on Friday, January 26th, the night before the party, and just hung out at Rachel's apartment with Jonathan and Tina. Because Rachel had to work the next day, she gave her brother her primary key. That way he could come and go while she was gone. Now, Rachel's spare key was already with Tina for emergency purposes. After finishing her shift at the funeral home, Rachel returned home to get ready for her birthday party. I don't always do this, but sometimes I ask if you are 24. If you're not, that's fine, but do you remember where you spent your 24th birthday, what you were doing on your 24th birthday? Or if you're not 24, what were you doing in 2018 in January?

Leave it in the comments. I love reading through those. and just looking at the juxtaposition between what we were doing in our lives. There were about eight people at Jonathan and Tina's house for Rachel's party, including Rachel, her brother John, Jonathan, and Tina. Throughout the night, everyone hung out, they relaxed, they enjoyed themselves, they smoked a little weed, drank a little alcohol, just celebrating Rachel's 24th. Later in the night, though, a few of them, including Rachel, John, and Tina,

left the party and went to a nearby club to dance, drink, hang out a little bit more, while the rest of the guests remained behind. That night, after returning from the club, Rachel and her brother decided to crash at Jonathan and Tina's house. But the next morning on January 28th, Rachel's birthday, she and her brother drove back to her apartment after leaving Jonathan and Tina's. Rachel's brother didn't want to leave right away.

He had to like kind of decompress after everything they did the night before. So we hung out at her apartment for about an hour before hitting the road to drive back to Warren. Remember, it's a three-hour drive. So then when he gets home, He's changing, getting settled in, and he realizes he forgot to give Rachel her key. He immediately calls her to let her know. This call was made at 158 p.m.

And just a minute later, after talking to her brother, Rachel is texting Jonathan to arrange to pick up her spare key later in the day at Tina and his place. Jonathan and Tina had to drive one of the party guests who attended Rachel's party the night before back to their house in Athens, Ohio. But they told Rachel she could stop by when they returned home. and they let her know when they got back. So after she got off work, Rachel texted Jonathan. This was at 6.17 p.m. to let him know she was done with work and he said,

come on over. She told him, okay, I'll be there in about 20 minutes. So Rochelle arrived at Jonathan and Tina's around 6.30 p.m. She stayed for about 10 minutes, said goodbye and thank you and left to go back to her place. On the way home, Rachel called her mom and they talked on her way back. The call lasted about 10 minutes. The following day, Monday, January 29th, Rachel didn't show up to work at the funeral home. And this was highly unusual.

Isn't that the way a lot of people in these stories find out that something is wrong? So many people work from home now. I feel like things have changed so much even from just 2018. It would take longer to know if someone went missing or something wasn't right. Rachel was close to her boss and his family, so she wouldn't miss work without informing them. So in this case, they knew something wasn't right. The funeral parlor manager sent another employee, Trent Snyder, to check on Rachel. This was around noon.

Trent arrived at Rachel's apartment and knocked on the door for several minutes without getting a response. Trent walked around and found the apartment complex manager on site, and he asked to go inside Rachel's apartment to check on her, but the complex manager refused. At this point, Trent decided to call the police. after he wasn't able to get anyone to assist him in checking on Rachel. As Trent spoke to the 911 dispatcher, he was looking through Rachel's living room window, and he saw a candle that was lit sitting on her coffee table.

That did not seem right, especially for someone like Rachel, who was very responsible. Then Trent looked out into the parking lot, and he saw Rachel's car was not in her usual parking spot and said it was parked around the corner from her unit rather than in front of it. so he gave all of this information to the dispatcher. After some time, the apartment manager came back to speak with Trent,

and they said that there was another person listed on the lease, and that that person would need to give them permission to enter. So Trent asked who. The manager explained it was a guy named Sean Griggs. Trent was not aware that anyone else lived with Rachel, but he had no choice but to wait. The complex manager gets a hold of this Sean person, who is actually Rachel's former roommate and ex-boyfriend.

Even though Sean no longer lived with Rachel, he still had a key to her apartment and he was still on the lease. Sean gave the property manager permission to enter Rachel's apartment, and she did. Upon opening the door, she entered the apartment and briefly inspected it. Nothing seemed out of place. There wasn't any signs of a struggle and nothing really worried her. There was no broken glass or overturned furniture. so she just walked around, peeked into different areas, blew out that candle, and left to meet with the police and Trent outside.

She told them that nothing appeared to have happened or seemed out of place. So all three of them left because it was nothing else they felt they could do at the moment. At this point, Rachel's boss called Jonathan, and he was made aware that Rachel did not show up for work. He tried calling her phone several times and did not get an answer, but was informed that the property manager had spoken to Sean. So he called Sean, but Sean said he had no information for him. At this point, Jonathan is very concerned. He gets in his car and drives over to Rachel's apartment. He banged on the door and got no answer. He tried to open both her front door and her back door, but they were both locked and he couldn't get into them. So he walked around and peered into her windows. He was growing more concerned

as every minute passed. It worried Jonathan that Rachel's car wasn't where it should have been. She would not have parked it in someone else's spot. She had a designated spot in front of her unit. After several unsuccessful attempts to contact Rachel by phone again, Jonathan happened to see a police car. So he flagged it down and explained the situation

and that he wanted them to do a welfare check on his friend. Every time I read something like this, I always think that I hope I'm never. in this position where I'm asking to do a welfare check on my friend. But at least Rachel has friends like this who care. So the property manager returned and opened Rachel's apartment door again in front of the police and Jonathan. Jonathan walks right in and he goes up to the second floor while the manager and the officer remained in Rachel's living room. Suddenly while Jonathan's upstairs, a blood-curdling scream rang out.

And in a rush, Jonathan runs down the stairs and out the door, screaming to police that Rachel is lying lifeless in her bedroom closet. The officer on scene was Frank Scloffani, and he immediately radioed for backup. Meanwhile, he was tending to Jonathan, who was looking pale and totally freaked out and just out of his mind. Of course he was. He just found his best friend seemingly deceased. Officer Slophani went back inside Rachel's apartment. and made his way upstairs. The bedroom closet was already opened.

He peered inside and could clearly see Rachel was wrapped up and would look like a comforter. He could also tell that she had been gagged with something. There was a garment of some kind over her head and another around her neck that was tied to the doorknob of the closet. When the Columbus police detectives arrived, they called the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigations,

BCI, for assistance. A BCI investigator agent Joshua Durst searched the apartment and found no signs of forced entry on either the front or the back door. There seemed to be no evidence of a struggle on the first floor. No blood was found and nothing looked out of place. Upon closer inspection, he did locate Rachel's purse on the floor in the living room. And it did appear as though it could have been rummaged through and dumped out. Her driver's license and a receipt from Arby's were among the items that were on the floor. When Agent Durst looked at the receipt, he noted that it had a January 28th date on it.

The time was 732, but he couldn't tell if it was AM or PM because the ink was dull in that area. Durst also noticed some remnants of food from Arby's in the living room, a French fry box, an Arby's drink cup, and an open and used ketchup packet. Here are the items he asked the CSI team to collect. a cell phone, a laptop computer, a water bottle, a Pepsi can, a few cigarette and cigar butts, and a glass smoking pipe. They were all bagged as evidence. The team did not find any cash, and no credit cards or debit cards were in Rachel's purse or anywhere in the home, which seemed odd. This could have very well been some kind of robbery, but the person would not have broken in. Maybe they could have followed her in, or maybe someone staged it to look like it was a

robbery when it wasn't. They weren't sure. They needed more information and they were about to get it. In Rachel's bedroom, Agent Durst found Rachel lying next to a pillow in the upstairs bedroom closet where Jonathan had told the officer that he found her and where Officer Frank Scloffani informed Durst he confirmed by peering inside himself. Durst noted that there was a very large saturated portion of the floor near the foot of Rachel's bed. There was a clothing iron like a steam iron with its cord cut and knotted up and when he looked closer there appeared to be hair attached to it as well as what looked like blood. Around the doorknob on the outside portion of the closet was another knotted up cord. This one belonged to a heating blanket. A pair of black leggings

were also wrapped around this closet doorknob. As Agent Durst followed the cord, it stretched into the closet and then around Rachel's neck. It wasn't just draped around her neck. It was very tightly wound and then nodded. As Agent Durst pulled a thick comforter-like blanket off Rachel, it exposed the rest of her body, and he could see that her wrists and her ankles were bound together in a hog-tie fashion with cords from her window blinds, her hair dryer, curling iron. It's interesting. The fact that all of these items came

right from her room. It just seems really personal. There was also a black t-shirt that was over her head positioned like a hood. A black piece of material was sticking out of her mouth and it had been stuck down her throat. Rachel was found only wearing a black tank top. She was not clothed from the waist down. As Durst kneeled down to let the CSI team move in and retrieve Rachel's body, a black pair of underwear was found underneath her. The cord and the items binding Rachel were removed,

and that was when the sheer brutality of this crime was revealed. There was a deep stab wound to her neck and at the base of her skull. She was transported to the coroner's office for a full autopsy report. And meanwhile, investigators were diligently sweeping through Rachel's entire apartment collecting potential evidence. BCI agents dusted for fingerprints. They took swabs of all the cords, as well as various surfaces all over her apartment, and her car, which we know was not in the right parking spot.

The investigators were hoping to find what they call touch DNA. It's also referred to as trace DNA. It only requires a very small sample and usually consists of skin cells or even sweat that's left behind on an object when it's just casually touched. The dark stain at the foot of the bed is also swabbed to test for blood. It was big enough to assume that it was blood and it was leading from the foot of the bed into the closet. Rachel's body was also swabbed and in doing so, it was obvious that male DNA in the form

of seminal fluid was present inside of her as well. as on the outside of her pelvic region and on her inner thighs. It was also indicated by injury to that area that Rachel suffered forced intercourse and struggled for a prolonged period of time. Her scalp had several lacerations and fractures, and the wound to her neck was so forceful that it broke off a piece of her skull. There were defensive wounds on her hands. And because Rachel's wrist and ankles were red,

the medical examiner believed that she was alive when she was bound, probably so she would stop fighting. There were hemorrhages on her eyelids where the vessels in her eyes had become so overfilled that they basically broke due to the circulation being cut off. The autopsy report also determined that Rachel's cause of death was either the wound to her head or ligature strangulation. Either one of them could have been a direct cause. When investigators noticed Rachel's debit card was missing, they immediately contacted her bank

and identified all the places where her card was accessed after Saturday. Rachel's bank records indicated her car was used at a food mart that was about a mile away from her apartment on January 28, 2018, and 9.43 p.m. In surveillance videos of the grocery store, Rachel's car is seen pulling into that parking lot. Afterward, a man gets out of Rachel's car. From the passenger side, he enters a store, uses the ATM, and returns. Investigators could see a hand on the job.

driver's side of the car, but the person on the driver's side never got out. Video footage from that evening shows Rachel's debit card being used several more times, and the same pattern continued. A man would get out of the passenger side, use an ATM or make a purchase, and then return to the car and drive away. So it was time for investigators to start interviewing people close to Rachel, starting with Rachel's brother. Obviously being her brother, he was very close to her. They wanted to gather some information and see if he could point them in a direction of possible suspects. Considering he wasn't in town at the time of her murder and was back home in Warren, he was not initially a suspect of any kind. They were interviewing him to gather more information about Rachel.

And even though it was very tough for John to speak to investigators, he knew how important it was to provide them with any possible information that he could think of. And the first name that came out of his mouth was Jonathan Kennedy. Now, I don't like to jump to conclusions, but when I'm reading about these cases and I'm doing my initial research, there are things that jump out at me. And one of those things that I thought was just a little bit odd was how close Rachel seemed to be to another woman's husband. I understand they are friends from high school and that Rachel was really good friends with Jonathan's sister growing up. But the fact that they were so close and she was the one who would call him asking to coordinate, you know, getting the key and things like that. He was also a contact that her boss knew about. It seemed like they were more than friends.

But that was just me making assumptions, and I don't like to do that. However, my brain just does it. I'm sure you understand. However, I felt like my assumption was correct when I heard this interview with Rachel's brother. Because guess what he tells investigators? He says that he had a really unusual conversation with his sister Rachel two weeks before her birthday party. Rachel ends up telling her brother that her and Jonathan had been hanging. out with some friends and they did some asset LSD they were tripping and during the night she told

her brother that Jonathan they kind of had this falling out while they were high why well she started feeling like he was coming onto her and in her words she told her brother he was giving her quote sexual vibes unquote then later in the night she tells her brother that Jonathan ends up insulting her by calling her a virus Rachel definitely felt uncomfortable and she told John that she was afraid of Jonathan. So while Rachel's brother is explaining all this, he's also explaining to everyone that there was a birthday party

and it was at Jonathan and Tina's house. So of course, investigators are like, wait a minute. You just told us that two weeks before this party, your sister says she's afraid of Jonathan. Why then are they hanging out again? That was actually something John was a little confused about himself. He said that Rachel just acted like nothing happened after that conversation,

and she never mentioned having any concerns about Jonathan ever again. And at the party, everything seemed completely fine. Everyone was friendly, and it seemed like they were all just good friends, as they'd always been. A detective named Detective Hughes was interviewing John, and he asked if it was okay if they got a swab of his DNA, and of course, he's Rachel's brother, he wants to help in any way he can. He says yes, and they get a swab. They asked him if there was anyone else that they should look into, and John said, yeah, you should also look into Sean Griggs. explained that that was Rachel's ex-boyfriend, still had a key to her place, and was on the lease. But then there was this other person that John told police about. However, he didn't have a name.

He said that Rachel complained about a guy in the apartment complex, just that he seemed off to her. So now Detective Hughes has to go out and interview Jonathan, Sean, and find out who this mystery man is in the apartment complex that Rachel could have complained about. Well, Jonathan is interviewed. He's a mess. He says he has nothing to do with Rachel's murder. She was a very close friend of his since high school. He's married to Tina, but there's nothing going on between him and Rachel. He says he was with Tina the evening that Rachel was murdered.

So his wife is his alibi. We've heard that so many times. Not the best alibi, but an alibi nevertheless. And I like to give you as much information as possible, but as far as Rachel's ex-boyfriend, Sean and the unknown man at the apartment complex, both of those men were ruled out right away because neither one of them were in town at the time that Rachel was determined to have been murdered. However, the investigation kind of goes in a totally different direction anyway before they could even dive in to Jonathan at the time

because of the fact that Rachel's debit cards were missing. That was a huge clue. Like I told you, her not having any cash or cards anywhere around her house definitely raised a red flag for investigators. The first thing Detective Hughes did when he found this information out was he contacted Rachel's bank, and that's why they were able to pinpoint all of the locations that her debit card had been used. They went to those locations, and they were able to get the surveillance footage. The first place that they indicated her card had been used was, like I had told you, a mile or two from her apartment. It was on January 28th at 9.43 p.m. Now remember the Arby's receipts that Agent Durst found on the floor,

and he didn't know whether it was from 7 a.m. or PM. Well, the fact that there were French fries, a French fry box to me, and I'm not a professional investigator, but to me, it seemed like this would be PM because I don't know many people that eat french fries at 7 a.m. I know what can happen, but my guess was probably it was 7 at night. So the fact that her card is being used just a couple hours later at 9.43 p.m. gives them a little bit of a timeline. Two hours later, it was being used at the Food Mart on East Main Street. Now, the thing is, her card was also used at the ATM inside the Food Mart and several other ATMs that evening. Different ATMs at different places, different stores. On the afternoon of Monday, January 29th, her debit card was used on the north side of Columbus at Fair Food Mart on Cleveland Avenue.

The same day, a few miles north on Cleveland Avenue, it was used at City Trends. and at DSW Shoe Store.