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The Abduction and Murder of Jennifer Day · Gone Cold - Texas True Crime

0:01
Speaker 1: Gone coll Podcasts may contain violent or graphic subject matter.
0:05
Speaker 1: Listener discretion is advised. Even North Dallas can be quiet
0:11
Speaker 1: in the early hours in the suburbs. Sometimes the only
0:15
Speaker 1: sounds you'll hear are sprinklers, air conditioners, and the low
0:19
Speaker 1: hum of traffic from the highways and main roads. On
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Speaker 1: one Sunday morning in June of nineteen eighty five, someone
0:28
Speaker 1: still unknown, took advantage of the relative stillness, moving both
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Speaker 1: beneath it and brazenly out in the open. Before the
0:38
Speaker 1: first rays of heat touched Preston Road, a teenaged girl
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Speaker 1: unlocked the door to a small doughnut shop tucked inside
0:46
Speaker 1: a sleepy strip mall. She'd done it many times before.
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Speaker 1: The smell of glaze soon filled the air, the coffee hissed,
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Speaker 1: and the hum of the refrigerator and fluorescent lights drowned
0:58
Speaker 1: the silence. Sometime after six point twenty, the shop went
1:03
Speaker 1: quiet again. A customer walked in minutes later to find
1:06
Speaker 1: the girl's purse on the counter, the register untouched, and
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Speaker 1: no one behind it. By the time the sun burned
1:14
Speaker 1: off the morning haze, a child was missing, and three
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Speaker 1: days later, a city's sense of safety would vanish with her.
1:50
Speaker 1: In nineteen eighty five, Dallas was shining. The skyline glimmered,
1:56
Speaker 1: new glass towers caught the sun, cranes hung over downtown construction.
2:02
Speaker 1: Oil money still flowed, banks were bold, and the city's
2:06
Speaker 1: boosters swore Dallas had become the business capital of the Southwest.
2:12
Speaker 1: Even the nation saw the city through a kind of
2:15
Speaker 1: glossy filter. The TV show Dallas was still one of
2:19
Speaker 1: the most watched programs in America, a primetime soap opera
2:23
Speaker 1: about power, greed, and family betrayal that made South Fork
2:28
Speaker 1: Ranch a household name. That year, viewers gasped as Bobby
2:33
Speaker 1: Ewing was killed off, only to learn a season later
2:37
Speaker 1: it had all been a dream. For the rest of
2:39
Speaker 1: the country, the twist was pure melodrama, but in Dallas, Texas,
2:45
Speaker 1: it felt fitting. The real city was living its own dream,
2:50
Speaker 1: one that looked too good to last. Away from the
2:53
Speaker 1: bright lights and skyline shots, cracks were showing. The same
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Speaker 1: boom that built the towers also strained the streets below them.
3:03
Speaker 1: Real estate speculation had turned frantic. Banks were over extended,
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Speaker 1: and in neighborhoods south and east of downtown Oak Cliff
3:13
Speaker 1: South Dallas Fair Park, poverty and drugs were creeping in fast.
3:18
Speaker 1: The crack cocaine epidemic had just arrived, and with it
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Speaker 1: came violence that Dallas wasn't ready to face. In nineteen
3:27
Speaker 1: eighty five, the city logged three hundred and one homicides,
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Speaker 1: nearly one every day. Detectives worked long nights, juggling cases
3:36
Speaker 1: that blurred together domestic killings, bar fights, robberies gone bad,
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Speaker 1: young people caught in the crossfire of drug violence. More
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Speaker 1: than half of those murders happened inside homes, quiet and personal.
3:52
Speaker 1: Others played out on the streets of neighborhoods struggling to
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Speaker 1: hold on to outsiders. Dallas was still the place of
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Speaker 1: cowboy hats, cadillacs, and high stakes business deals, a symbol
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Speaker 1: of the Texas dream. Inside the city limits, the line
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Speaker 1: between ambition and desperation was wearing thin. Developers called it growth,
4:16
Speaker 1: police called it stress. Reporters called it a paradox, a
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Speaker 1: boomtown built on shifting sand. By the summer of nineteen
4:26
Speaker 1: eighty five, Dallas stood between two versions of itself, one
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Speaker 1: reflected in mirrored skyscrapers and television screens, the other in
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Speaker 1: police reports and more glogs. And just like that famous
4:39
Speaker 1: TV twist, the one where death was only a dream.
4:43
Speaker 1: The city's illusion of prosperity would soon wake to something
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Speaker 1: far darker. Jennifer Lee Day was born on June thirtieth,
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Speaker 1: nineteen seventy, the second child of Dawn and Patsy Day,
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Speaker 1: and little sister to Jeff. The Day family lived a
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Speaker 1: few blocks off Preston Road in North Dallas, close enough
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Speaker 1: that you could hear rush hour traffic rolling down the
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Speaker 1: busy thoroughfare, or on the weekend's Sunday traffic spool up
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Speaker 1: after church. The doughnut shop where Jennifer worked sat on
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Speaker 1: Preston Road, a small place inside a quiet strip center
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Speaker 1: where the routine rarely changed, and only a couple blocks
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Speaker 1: away from home. Jennifer, fourteen years old in June of
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Speaker 1: nineteen eighty five, had done the early shift for about
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Speaker 1: a year. She was the responsible kid who took off
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Speaker 1: her rings to work dough kept her purse on the
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Speaker 1: counter where she could see it, and called the manager
5:42
Speaker 1: as soon as she had the lights on and the
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Speaker 1: first pot of coffee going. She had just finished eighth
5:49
Speaker 1: grade at Saint Rita and planned to start at Ursuline
5:52
Speaker 1: in the fall. Both Catholic academies, following the track her
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Speaker 1: mother knew well. Jennifer's brother had worked at the donut
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Speaker 1: shop before her, and for both of them, Sunday mornings
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Speaker 1: were predictable. Sunday, June twenty third, nineteen eighty five was
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Speaker 1: no different. Not at first. Jennifer was inside before sunrise,
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Speaker 1: lights on the coffeemaker, hissing, perhaps thinking longingly about her
6:20
Speaker 1: upcoming fifteenth birthday, which was exactly a week away. At
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Speaker 1: around five thirty five am, she checked in with her
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Speaker 1: boss after opening. By six twenty am, she had served
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Speaker 1: at least two customers, but at about six thirty five
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Speaker 1: am a customer, a former employee, found the store empty.
6:42
Speaker 1: Jennifer's purse and hand to jewelry were still on the counter,
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Speaker 1: Her apron was on the floor just behind it. The
6:50
Speaker 1: register still held cash. Nothing was broken, nothing rifled through,
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Speaker 1: just a room that looked like work had paused mid tap.
7:01
Speaker 1: When the owner arrived, he called police. They came quickly
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Speaker 1: and found their only witnesses within minutes. Across Preston Road,
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Speaker 1: a roofing contractor had been waiting with his crew. They
7:15
Speaker 1: reported a white late nineteen seventies General Motors sedan, possibly
7:21
Speaker 1: a Pontiac Catalina or Lamond's. A blonde female had gotten
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Speaker 1: in the driver's side door, first, followed by a man,
7:29
Speaker 1: after which the car sped away. The report was consistent
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Speaker 1: with someone being taken against their will abducted beyond the lookout.
7:39
Speaker 1: Alerts were issued, but searches were a shot in the dark.
7:45
Speaker 1: Back at home, Patsy Day was still asleep when her
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Speaker 1: husband down kissed her goodbye just before leaving to play golf.
7:54
Speaker 1: At six fifty three am, the phone rang. On the
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Speaker 1: other end was Fred hit, the owner of the donut shop.
8:02
Speaker 1: The day family nightmare began. Jennifer's brother, Jeff, was also
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Speaker 1: sleeping when the call came in. Patsy woke him up
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Speaker 1: and asked if he knew where Jennifer might be. Her mind,
8:15
Speaker 1: refusing to give in to her darkest thoughts, Jeff told
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Speaker 1: his mother that he had no idea where she was,
8:22
Speaker 1: closed his eyes and went back to sleep. About fifteen
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Speaker 1: minutes later, he woke up again the question of where
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Speaker 1: his sister could be repeating over and over in his head.
8:34
Speaker 1: Jeff went to the kitchen and asked Patsy what was
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Speaker 1: going on. After being filled in, he drove to the
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Speaker 1: donut shop where the Dallas police were dusting for fingerprints.
8:45
Speaker 1: When he saw that, he knew this wasn't just his
8:48
Speaker 1: sister's teenaged brain finally kicking in. Something was terribly wrong.
8:55
Speaker 1: By the next morning, detectives were reporting the worst to
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Speaker 1: the local per Foul play was suspected, though there were
9:03
Speaker 1: no signs of a struggle, and Jennifer Day had vanished
9:07
Speaker 1: during a tight time window of about fifteen minutes. The
9:11
Speaker 1: Dallas Police Department Youth Division's Lieutenant David Clary put it simply,
9:17
Speaker 1: based on who she was and what she left behind,
9:20
Speaker 1: they were almost certain it was an abduction. The neighborhood
9:24
Speaker 1: tried to help. The shop posted a twenty five hundred
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Speaker 1: dollars reward, An anonymous donor added ten thousand calls, rolled
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Speaker 1: in tips, guesses and things someone might have seen. None
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Speaker 1: of it turned into a viable lead, let alone a name.
9:43
Speaker 1: At the Day home. The hours stretched, the family fielded
9:47
Speaker 1: calls and waited for a doorbell that never rang for
9:51
Speaker 1: the reason they so desperately hoped. That's the part the
9:55
Speaker 1: papers never got quite right, the way time behaves when
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Speaker 1: a child is missing. Seventy two hours of dread, awkward
10:03
Speaker 1: kindnesses and prank calls, a small stack of hopes that
10:08
Speaker 1: don't always hold. Before the week ended, the searches center
10:14
Speaker 1: of gravity moved north off Preston Road, passed the county
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Speaker 1: line into a field near the New Highway Wednesday, June
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Speaker 1: twenty sixth, nineteen eighty five, eleven and a half miles
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Speaker 1: north of the donut shop where fourteen year old Jennifer
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Speaker 1: Lee Day was last seen. The construction site off Preston
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Speaker 1: Road and State Highway one twenty one was supposed to
10:49
Speaker 1: be quiet that morning. Bulldozers idled in the sun. The
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Speaker 1: ground was still slick from earlier rain. At around seven
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Speaker 1: fifteen am, an operator looked up from his cab and
11:03
Speaker 1: noticed something in the grass. When he got closer, he
11:07
Speaker 1: realized his eyes hadn't deceived him. It was the body
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Speaker 1: of a girl. Police from Plano arrived first, then Dallas detectives.
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Speaker 1: What they found lay in two foot tall weeds east
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Speaker 1: of Preston Road, north of Carpenter Road, and south of
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Speaker 1: the new one to twenty one extension. The body was
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Speaker 1: nude and was already decomposing. Investigators believed it had been
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Speaker 1: there since Sunday, even before official confirmation, police knew the
11:41
Speaker 1: body belonged to Jennifer Day. Justice of the Peace Tom
11:45
Speaker 1: Kelly later confirmed the cause of death multiple stab wounds
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Speaker 1: to the neck. Dallas Police spokesman Bob Shaw told reporters
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Speaker 1: that there were few leads and no suspects. The department
12:00
Speaker 1: was getting plenty of phone calls from people who were
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Speaker 1: trying to help, but so far no solid leads had developed.
12:08
Speaker 1: The autopsy was grim. Jennifer had been stabbed four times
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Speaker 1: through the throat, her head struck with a blunt object.
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Speaker 1: Her clothes blue jeans and a pink shirt with checkerboard trim,
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Speaker 1: were missing, but her confirmation pendant still hung around her neck.
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Speaker 1: Rain and heat had stripped away what little evidence might
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Speaker 1: have been left behind. The Days were notified around ten
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Speaker 1: thirty am that a body had been found, but the
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Speaker 1: positive identification didn't reach them until five that evening. Between
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Speaker 1: those hours, the family lived in that suspended state familiar
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Speaker 1: to every parent who's ever waited for confirmation they prayed
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Speaker 1: would never come. Lieutenant David Clary told reporters, we're still
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Speaker 1: as concerned about it now as we were from the start.
13:01
Speaker 1: By then, the Preston Road Donut shop had a handwritten
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Speaker 1: sign taped to its glass door, closed until further notice.
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Speaker 1: In God We Trust, jurisdiction fell to Plan OPD, but
13:15
Speaker 1: Dallas Homicide worked beside them. They all said the same thing.
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Speaker 1: Robbery was ruled out as a motive. Jennifer's purse, jewelry,
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Speaker 1: and the cash register had all been left untouched. By
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Speaker 1: June twenty seventh, the reward fund reached forty two thousand
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Speaker 1: dollars after the shop's initial twenty five hundred dollars and
13:37
Speaker 1: an anonymous ten thousand dollars had grown with community donations.
13:43
Speaker 1: Captain William Gentry told The Morning News the family asked
13:47
Speaker 1: to cap it there enough money. He said that anyone
13:51
Speaker 1: who truly knew something should come forward. It was a
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Speaker 1: sum worth around one hundred and twenty five thousand dollars
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Speaker 1: in twenty twenty five money. The newspaper headline the next
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Speaker 1: day called it simply. No new leads were reported in
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Speaker 1: probe of girl's death. Dozens of tips had poured in
14:11
Speaker 1: hundreds of phone calls, but nothing solid. Police still hunted
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Speaker 1: the white nineteen seventy seven sedan seen leaving the area
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Speaker 1: around six thirty am Sunday, investigators searched for any sign
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Speaker 1: Jennifer knew her abductor. They found none. Witnesses customers said
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Speaker 1: she hadn't looked afraid. She'd made multiple register entries as usual.
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Speaker 1: She apparently had several customers come in the store. Police
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Speaker 1: spokesman Bob Shaw repeated they didn't think she was under
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Speaker 1: any kind of duress. By week's end, the story had
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Speaker 1: left the front page, but not the city's nerves. Parents
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Speaker 1: kept their children close. The local papers ran pieces under
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Speaker 1: headlines like hours is a Dangerous World and inside the
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Speaker 1: day Home. Laughter was replaced by silence. By Friday, June
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Speaker 1: twenty eighth, the day family was in seclusion. Friends answered
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Speaker 1: their phone, telling reporters they'd asked for time to be alone.
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Speaker 1: One neighbor said, softly, everybody is pretty shook up about this.
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Speaker 1: She was a good kid. Police weren't saying much either.
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Speaker 1: They had no suspects, no motive, and no clear crime scene.
15:33
Speaker 1: The question hanging in detectives conversations was where where had
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Speaker 1: it happened? Plano police spokesman Stephen van Notte told the
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Speaker 1: Fort Worth Star Telegram that they couldn't say whether Jennifer
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Speaker 1: had been slain in that field or dumped there later.
15:51
Speaker 1: Even the experts weren't sure. The only certainty was that
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Speaker 1: she'd been gone from the shop before six thirty five
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Speaker 1: that Sunday morning, and the field had hidden her for
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Speaker 1: days under the sun. Lieutenant David Clary, the Dallas Youth
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Speaker 1: Section veteran who had first called it a kidnapping, told
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Speaker 1: reporters he still couldn't believe that after all the media attention,
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Speaker 1: no one had reported seeing something. We're as concerned about
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Speaker 1: it now as we were from the start, he said
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Speaker 1: about solving the case. The Dallas Morning News captured the
16:25
Speaker 1: quote beneath a photograph of police combing through the weeds.
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Speaker 1: The autopsy gave them little to build on. Four stab
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Speaker 1: wounds to the throat, at least one heavy blow to
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Speaker 1: the head, no clothing, no personal belongings. Yet, according to detectives,
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Speaker 1: Jennifer had not been sexually assaulted. Other than that, evidence
16:48
Speaker 1: and witnesses were scarce. Officers from Dallas, Plano and the
16:53
Speaker 1: Collin County Sheriff's Office compared notes, hoping someone had missed
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Speaker 1: a small detail the other might catch they hadn't. The
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Speaker 1: roofing crew's siding of a white car speeding away with
17:06
Speaker 1: a blonde passenger remained the only actionable lead, and even
17:11
Speaker 1: that was fading fast. Police asked that anyone who had
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Speaker 1: been in the Preston Forest shopping Center early Sunday come forward,
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Speaker 1: but calls that followed were the kind that frustrate investigators,
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Speaker 1: most psychics, dreamers, neighbors convinced they saw something long after
17:31
Speaker 1: it could possibly matter. Lieutenant Clary told the press that
17:35
Speaker 1: there still wasn't much to work with. He had investigated
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Speaker 1: child abductions before, but this one had a different waight.
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Speaker 1: It turned out to be a homicide, and it was senseless.
17:47
Speaker 1: The Day's house on Preston Haven Drive became a gathering
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Speaker 1: point in the days after the funeral, neighbors dropping off food,
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Speaker 1: church friends coming to sit with Patsy. Beyond those gestures,
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Speaker 1: the quiet grew heavy. The investigation seemed just as quiet.
18:08
Speaker 1: By mid July nineteen eighty five, a story out of
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Speaker 1: Louisiana stopped Dallas detective's cold. In Baton Rouge, twenty five
18:18
Speaker 1: year old Teresa Moore had vanished from the grocery store
18:21
Speaker 1: where she worked alone in the pre dawn hours. Days later,
18:25
Speaker 1: her body was found in a field, stabbed through the
18:28
Speaker 1: throat and back at the store, money still in the
18:31
Speaker 1: till and purse still on the counter. Dallas homicide detective
18:37
Speaker 1: JJ Coughlin called the parallels too close to ignore. A
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Speaker 1: woman working a small business at dawn, abducted without robbery,
18:46
Speaker 1: discovered days later in an open field. Even the car
18:50
Speaker 1: sounded familiar, a light colored sedan driven by a white
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Speaker 1: male in his twenties. The Dallas Morning News quoted detective
18:59
Speaker 1: Coughlin saying quietly, if it's a traveling killer, he'll be caught,
19:04
Speaker 1: but not before he kills more people. Investigators traded photos
19:09
Speaker 1: and reports with Baton Rouge police. They found no physical overlap,
19:14
Speaker 1: no shared suspects, but the coincidences were enough to keep
19:19
Speaker 1: the Dallas phones ringing. Editorials began to link the two
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Speaker 1: cases under a single fear randomness. Both girls one fourteen
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Speaker 1: one twenty five had done everything right. Both disappeared between
19:35
Speaker 1: one customer and the next. Both were found face down
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Speaker 1: in fields within sight of new highways with constructions stretching
19:43
Speaker 1: toward the suburbs. In a morning News column, Dallas is
19:47
Speaker 1: described as a city that prides itself on safety, but
19:51
Speaker 1: added that it may be time to admit that violence
19:55
Speaker 1: does not stop at the city limits. For detectives, The
19:59
Speaker 1: column hid a nerve North Texas had entered a new
20:03
Speaker 1: era where the line between urban and suburban danger had disappeared.
20:08
Speaker 1: The years that followed scattered attention across a grim constellation
20:13
Speaker 1: of similar crimes. After the investigation into the abduction and
20:29
Speaker 1: slang of fourteen year old Jennifer Lee Day went cold,
20:33
Speaker 1: her case continued to come up again and again for
20:36
Speaker 1: reasons most unfortunate and tragic. In nineteen eighty six, Christie Proctor,
20:42
Speaker 1: nine years old, disappeared from Garland. Her remains surfaced in
20:47
Speaker 1: a field off Plano Parkway, several miles south of where
20:51
Speaker 1: Jennifer's body was found in April of nineteen eighty eight.
20:56
Speaker 1: Even considering the differences in age, police compared the case.
21:01
Speaker 1: Detectives from Dallas, Plano, and Garland met with the FBI
21:06
Speaker 1: to compare notes. Chief Chuck Roar of Plano pointed out
21:10
Speaker 1: the geography both Jennifer and Christie recovered from fields only
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Speaker 1: miles apart. It would be stupid not to look for
21:19
Speaker 1: tie ins. Sergeant W. A. Stepchinsky said they reviewed timelines,
21:25
Speaker 1: composite sketches, and suspect lists. One man stood out as
21:31
Speaker 1: more suspicious than the others, according to Lieutenant Clary, but
21:35
Speaker 1: there wasn't enough evidence for an arrest. The meeting ended
21:40
Speaker 1: the way cold case meetings often do. Polite but frustrated
21:44
Speaker 1: and unresolved. Each department carried its own boxes back to
21:49
Speaker 1: its own evidence room. By nineteen ninety three, the Dallas
21:54
Speaker 1: Morning News revisited the pattern years of child abductions across
21:59
Speaker 1: North Texas. Only a handful solved. Jennifer Day's name appeared
22:05
Speaker 1: again shorthand for the case that first told suburban Plano
22:09
Speaker 1: parents their children were not untouchable. Detective Martha Pania said,
22:14
Speaker 1: the cases take a piece out of you every time
22:18
Speaker 1: another child goes missing. She added, you feel it Plaino
22:23
Speaker 1: officers who had been rookies in nineteen eighty five now
22:26
Speaker 1: carried badge's worn smooth from years of service. When they
22:31
Speaker 1: spoke about their careers, Jennifer's name still came up. It
22:35
Speaker 1: was one of the first major child abduction cases the
22:38
Speaker 1: growing suburb had ever faced. It shaped the way they
22:42
Speaker 1: handled everyone after. Patsy Day told one friend she refused
22:49
Speaker 1: to let anger consume her. We can take that anger
22:53
Speaker 1: and energy and do something constructive to make our community safer,
22:57
Speaker 1: she said, Considering what it had happened to her daughter,
23:01
Speaker 1: she still managed to speak with grace. Within a year,
23:05
Speaker 1: she turned that conviction into work. Alongside other parents of
23:11
Speaker 1: murder victims, she helped build what became Victim's Outreach, a
23:15
Speaker 1: Dallas organization providing counseling, court support, and a place for
23:21
Speaker 1: families whose cases remained unsolved. Patsy became its heart and voice,
23:27
Speaker 1: guiding other parents through the same impossible terrain. In later writings,
23:33
Speaker 1: she confessed what that strength cost. We buried Jennifer in
23:37
Speaker 1: a pink coffin, She wrote today. Months later, I contemplate
23:42
Speaker 1: another box. I'm trying to go through her room to
23:46
Speaker 1: pack things away. I cannot put her life in a
23:49
Speaker 1: box any more than her murderer could. That single paragraph,
23:54
Speaker 1: printed years later, said more than any press conference ever could.
24:00
Speaker 1: Organization Patsy built eventually expanded into a statewide network of
24:05
Speaker 1: victims' rights advocates. She lobbied the legislature for counseling funds
24:11
Speaker 1: and spoke at memorial services for families she'd never met.
24:15
Speaker 1: Police and prosecutors alike described her as relentless but kind.
24:21
Speaker 1: When the media revisited Jennifer's case in the late nineteen eighties.
24:25
Speaker 1: Patsy was no longer simply a grieving mother. She was
24:29
Speaker 1: a force behind the scenes, an advocate who refused to
24:33
Speaker 1: let her daughter's name disappear into a list of cold cases.
24:38
Speaker 1: At home, jeff Day grew into adulthood under the shadow
24:42
Speaker 1: of the loss of his sister. He remembered his mother's strength,
24:47
Speaker 1: her prayers for the man who'd killed Jennifer. She believed
24:51
Speaker 1: forgiveness was the only way to keep from drowning in anger. Still,
24:57
Speaker 1: as anniversaries passed, the absence never changed. Jennifer would have
25:02
Speaker 1: been sixteen, then eighteen, then twenty one. Each milestone sharpened
25:08
Speaker 1: the need for answers that never came. After Patsy's death
25:14
Speaker 1: in twenty fifteen, Jennifer's case had long faded from the headlines,
25:19
Speaker 1: but never disappeared from police mines. The file sat thick
25:24
Speaker 1: and weathered in Plano's archives, but every few years it
25:28
Speaker 1: came back to light, usually when another body was found
25:31
Speaker 1: along the same highway corridor, or when reporters revisited the
25:36
Speaker 1: old North Texas abduction cases. The city changed around it.
25:42
Speaker 1: Plano grew fields turned into subdivisions. The stretch of Preston
25:48
Speaker 1: Road that had once been farmland was now six lanes wide.
25:52
Speaker 1: Detectives moved in and out of the unit, each one
25:56
Speaker 1: briefed on the unsolved from the nineteen eighties. In some
26:00
Speaker 1: cases ended in convictions thanks to DNA, but Jennifer's stayed frozen.
26:06
Speaker 1: There wasn't enough left to test, or what existed didn't
26:10
Speaker 1: meet the threshold for the technology of the time. In
26:14
Speaker 1: twenty twenty five, nearly forty years after Jennifer's disappearance, Plano
26:20
Speaker 1: detective Aaron Benzick decided it was time to bring her
26:23
Speaker 1: name back into the light. He'd already been cataloging decades
26:27
Speaker 1: old unsolved cases, working to digitize files and see what
26:32
Speaker 1: modern forensics could still reveal. Then an email arrived from
26:37
Speaker 1: Jeff Day, Jennifer's brother. Jeff's message was simple, Is there
26:43
Speaker 1: anything left to test? Benzick replied. The same day, they
26:48
Speaker 1: met at headquarters, spending hours reviewing the file, flipping through
26:53
Speaker 1: yellowing photographs, and typed reports. For the first time in decades,
26:59
Speaker 1: Jennifer's case was officially open again. Benzick founded a nonprofit
27:05
Speaker 1: called Solve the Case, a website devoted to making sure
27:09
Speaker 1: forgotten victims had a presence online. He pointed out that
27:14
Speaker 1: some victims don't exist on the internet at all. If
27:18
Speaker 1: these cases aren't even being talked about, he said, how
27:22
Speaker 1: are witnesses going to be found? How are they going
27:25
Speaker 1: to be reached? He added Jennifer's story to the site.
27:29
Speaker 1: The page included the facts, the timeline, and the number
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Speaker 1: for Plano Police. If the renewed attention brought in any tips,
27:38
Speaker 1: its obvious nun were earth shattering. New DNA analysis, genealogy databases,
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Speaker 1: and trace testing were discussed. The evidence collected in nineteen
27:50
Speaker 1: eighty five was being reviewed for viability. For Jeff the
27:54
Speaker 1: process offered a kind of peace he hadn't expected. It
27:59
Speaker 1: would be nice to have closure, he said. I think
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Speaker 1: it would mean a lot to the community to be
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Speaker 1: able to know who did this. Jennifer Lee Day would
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Speaker 1: be fifty five years old today. Instead, she is forever fourteen,
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Speaker 1: a girl who just wanted to earn her own way,
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Speaker 1: who trusted her community, and who should have worked her
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Speaker 1: shift and made it back home after her mother once wrote,
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Speaker 1: I cannot put her life in a box any more
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Speaker 1: than her murderer could. For every detective who's opened that
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Speaker 1: case file, for every parent who's whispered a prayer for her,
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Speaker 1: and for every listener who hears her name again. After
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Speaker 1: forty years, those words still hold because the story of
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Speaker 1: Jennifer Day isn't only about what was taken. It's about
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Speaker 1: what remains. Love that outlasts silence, and the hope that
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Speaker 1: even after decades, the truth will surface and justice will come.
29:04
Speaker 1: If you have any information about the abduction and murder
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Speaker 1: of Jennifer Lee Day, please contact the Plano Police departments
29:12
Speaker 1: Crimes against Persons Unit at ninety seven two nine four
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Speaker 1: one two one four eight, or go to the Plano
29:20
Speaker 1: Police website, where you can submit a tip anonymously. We'll
29:25
Speaker 1: provide a link in the show notes. We'd like to
29:29
Speaker 1: thank these new Patreon members for their support, Amen and
29:34
Speaker 1: Joshua s. We appreciate y'all. If you're a Patreon member
29:39
Speaker 1: and we somehow missed shouting you out, please let us
29:43
Speaker 1: know by sending us a message there. If you'd like
29:47
Speaker 1: to join con Cold's mission to shine a light on
29:50
Speaker 1: unsolved homicides and missing persons cases, get the show at
29:54
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29:58
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30:03
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30:06
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30:10
Speaker 1: However you choose to support Gone Cold, we appreciate you.
30:15
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening, y'all.