# 59: Murder in the Graveyard

An episode of [Outlore with Eleanor Neale](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1682504024), 13 Dec 2023, 30 min.

Audio: https://traffic.megaphone.fm/APO4930855289.mp3

This case is on an episode I covered back in 2020 called The Murder in The Graveyard, which details the tragic murder of Jessica Keen, a 15 year old high school cheerleader that disappeared after waiting at a bus stop in Columbus, Ohio... Trigger Warning: Sexual assault, Rape Resources: https://linktr.ee/usualdisclaimer Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

## Transcript

[0:06] Hello, my wonderful usual disclaimer listeners.
[0:09] It's Eleanor. Just dropping in to let you know
[0:11] that since there's no new episode this week, we've decided
[0:15] to revisit a case that I first covered back in 2020.
[0:18] The Murder in the Graveyard is the story of 15 year old Jessica
[0:22] Keane, a high school cheerleader that disappeared while waiting
[0:25] for the bus home 1 evening, only to be found brutally murdered
[0:29] sometime later. This is one of those cases that
[0:32] I think about a lot, even years on from when I first covered it,
[0:35] and so I really wanted to add this one to our usual disclaimer
[0:38] catalog. So I hope you enjoy this blast
[0:41] from the past and we'll be back again with a new case for you
[0:44] next time. So today's video is going to be
[0:54] another solved true crime case. However, this particular case
[0:59] wasn't solved for a very long time.
[1:01] It was actually an unsolved cold case for 17 years after it
[1:06] happened, and it wasn't actually solved until the late 2000s.
[1:11] I love seeing cold cases like this finally get solved.
[1:14] And the victim received justice, the family received closure.
[1:18] So I knew I wanted to cover this case.
[1:19] I just just want to give my usual disclaimer that I mean
[1:22] absolutely no disrespect to anyone that I talk about in this
[1:25] video. This video is for educational
[1:27] purposes and everything I'm about to say is just information
[1:31] that I have found on the Internet and I'm compiling into
[1:33] one video. Just a quick warning before we
[1:36] get into this one. This case does involve themes of
[1:38] sexual assault and rape. So if you don't want to hear
[1:42] that, you can click out this video now.
[1:43] I'll be back again very soon with another case.
[1:46] So Jessica Lynn Keane was born on September 24th, 1975 in
[1:51] Columbus, OH to parents Rebecca and James Keane.
[1:55] Jessica was a very nice girl. She was very well behaved.
[1:58] She did well in school, she worked hard, she enjoyed school
[2:03] as well. She was a cheerleader and she
[2:05] was very good at it as well. She was always singing, always
[2:08] dancing. Her dream career was to be
[2:10] either a singer or an actress. She was very fun to be around.
[2:14] A lot of people just remember being very happy around Jessica.
[2:18] She was quite popular, she was well liked and she was just a
[2:21] nice girl. She was a talented musician, she
[2:24] composed her own music, she had a beautiful voice and like I
[2:28] said, her dream career was to be a singer.
[2:31] However, she decided to go for something a little bit more
[2:34] realistic, a little bit more academic.
[2:36] She decided that when she was old enough to go to university
[2:40] that she wanted to study zoology because she was very passionate
[2:43] about animals and caring for them and learning about them.
[2:47] Jessica was incredibly intelligent.
[2:49] She'd worked hard and done well all the way through school.
[2:52] She was an honour student in her early teens.
[2:55] However, when she turned like 1415, her life took a turn and
[3:01] the catalyst in this major life change for Jessica was a boy.
[3:07] She met a boy named Shawn Thompson.
[3:09] He was 18 years old, so a few years older than her, and he was
[3:14] stereotypical bad boy. He dropped out of high school.
[3:18] Some sources say that he committed a few petty crimes.
[3:21] I'm not 100% sure about that, but overall he was just a bad
[3:25] influence on Jessica. She started skipping school a
[3:28] lot to spend time with Sean and so in turn her grades started
[3:32] dropping. She wasn't doing as well in
[3:34] school, she wasn't as well behaved, she didn't study as
[3:37] much as she used her. She even quit cheerleading,
[3:40] which was something that she loved.
[3:42] It seemed as though Jessica was turning her back on everything
[3:46] that she loved, everything that was her identity, and it seemed
[3:49] as though she was just going through this really rebellious
[3:51] stage where she just wanted to shake up her life and become a
[3:55] different person. And as I'm sure you can imagine,
[3:58] all of this led to Jessica's parents not liking her new
[4:02] boyfriend, Shawn Thompson very much.
[4:04] Of course, for the obvious reason that this boy had come
[4:07] into their daughter's life and completely shaken it up and
[4:10] changed her for the worse. However, some people believe
[4:13] that racism could be a factor in their dislike for Sean.
[4:18] This was the very early 1990s and racism then just like it is
[4:23] now was a huge issue and a lot of parents did have an issue
[4:28] with their children dating outside of their race.
[4:31] But I thought that it was worth mentioning because a lot of
[4:33] people do discuss that element when they discuss this case and
[4:37] Jessica's parents feelings towards her boyfriend.
[4:40] But like I said, I don't have any solid evidence for that.
[4:44] Jessica and her mother would get into arguments about this
[4:47] boyfriend almost every single day when they'd never really
[4:50] argued through Jessica's life at all, and now it was like they
[4:54] couldn't even be in the same room as each other without
[4:57] arguing. Jessica's mother, Rebecca,
[4:58] actually tried to ban her from seeing Sean until her grades got
[5:03] better. She said that once Jessica
[5:05] started putting in a bit more work, a bit more effort, and her
[5:08] grades started getting better than she could see Sean again.
[5:10] But of course, this is quite a hard ban for her mother to
[5:14] enforce. She couldn't monitor her
[5:15] daughter 24/7 and so Jessica still found ways to see him.
[5:20] Jessica refused to break up with Sean.
[5:22] She was obsessed with the boy. All she ever did was talk to her
[5:25] friends about him and she, she was actually really happy with
[5:28] him. But there was no denying that
[5:30] this relationship was very destructive.
[5:32] It was tricky because Jessica's family did only want what was
[5:36] best for her. And what was best for her was
[5:38] her focusing on her school work and getting her grades up so
[5:42] that she could get a scholarship and go to college.
[5:44] But she didn't seem to care about any of that anymore.
[5:47] But in Jessica's eyes, she just kind of saw this as her parents
[5:51] don't want her to be happy. She's finally happy with her
[5:53] boyfriend. She's found a man that she
[5:55] really likes, but her parents want to take that away from her.
[5:59] She would always tell her friends that her mother was
[6:01] horrible and that she wanted to run away from home, but she
[6:04] didn't really know what she was going to do if she did run away
[6:07] from home, so she was never actually going to do it.
[6:09] And when she would have arguments with her mother, she
[6:12] would always tell her that she didn't want to live with her
[6:13] anymore, she wanted to move out. Jessica's relationship with Sean
[6:17] really just put a toll on every aspect of her life.
[6:21] Her family relationships, her schoolwork, her future plans to
[6:25] go to college, her out of school clubs.
[6:28] And so it eventually got to the point where her parents decided
[6:33] to put her into a home for struggling girls.
[6:35] This wasn't against Jessica's will.
[6:37] It wasn't like her parents were putting her in and she didn't
[6:39] want to go. Jessica wanted that kind of time
[6:42] away from her parents. Like I said, she no longer
[6:44] wanted to live with her mother. These arguments got so bad and
[6:47] it was just for a bit of a cool off period so that they could
[6:50] both calm down and maybe get a little bit of counseling, a
[6:54] little bit of help with this relationship.
[6:56] And it wasn't a permanent thing either.
[6:57] It wasn't even a long term thing.
[6:59] I think Jessica was only supposed to be in the home for
[7:01] like 2 weeks and then she was going to go back.
[7:03] So on March 4th, 1991, when Jessica Keene was 15 years old,
[7:08] she was moved into this home for struggling girls named
[7:12] Huckleberry House in West Jefferson.
[7:14] OH, and after just a short period in this home, Jessica
[7:18] began blossoming again. She was social, she was less
[7:22] irritable, she was kinder, she was working hard in school
[7:26] again. She was getting in her grades
[7:28] back up. Everything was going so well.
[7:30] It really seemed as though Shawn was the issue here.
[7:33] It wasn't just Jessica growing up and becoming a teenager and
[7:36] just going through that kind of hormonal, rebellious stage
[7:40] because as soon as she was away from Shawn Thompson, she was her
[7:43] old self again. Almost two weeks into her stay
[7:46] at Huckleberry House on March 15th, 1991, Jessica calls her
[7:51] boyfriend, Shawn Thompson, and the two of them are talking for
[7:54] a while, and then this call turns into an argument.
[7:58] And this argument got so bad that the two of them actually
[8:01] ended up breaking up over the phone that day, then and there.
[8:05] And after this phone call, Jessica was feeling overwhelmed.
[8:08] She was feeling, you know, very sad.
[8:10] Obviously, she really liked this boy.
[8:12] And so she wanted to go out. She wanted to go for a walk, go
[8:16] somewhere and clear her head. There was a mall just a short
[8:18] bus journey away from Huckleberry House where she was
[8:22] staying. And she'd been once before.
[8:24] So she decided that she was going to go to the bus stop, get
[8:27] on on the bus and go to the mall and just have some time to
[8:30] herself, some self-care time. She let her friend at the house
[8:34] know where she was going before she set off and then she left
[8:37] Huckleberry House to go to the bus stop and that would be the
[8:40] last time that anyone would see Jessica Keane alive. 11:00 PM
[8:44] that night, the house staff were doing their routine check to
[8:48] make sure all the girls were in the house and they were ready
[8:50] for bed. However, when they got to
[8:53] Jessica's room, she wasn't there, so the staff called her
[8:56] parents to see if they knew where she was or if, you know,
[9:00] they were with her or if she'd gone home or something.
[9:03] And her mother, Rebecca, answered the phone.
[9:04] And Rebecca hadn't seen or heard from Jessica in a long time.
[9:09] And so she decided to call the police and report Jessica as
[9:13] missing just a few hours after she'd left the home.
[9:15] Jessica had last been seen at that bus stop, ready to get on
[9:19] the bus to go to the mall around six, 6:30 PM-ish.
[9:23] And then there was no sign lightings of her after that.
[9:25] Not on the bus, not at the mall or anything.
[9:28] And bear in mind, it was now midnight, so it had been about 6
[9:31] hours since Jessica was last seen, so she could be anywhere.
[9:35] Anything could have happened to her.
[9:36] So immediately, this does seem like something maybe Jessica
[9:40] would do because she often skipped school, she often
[9:43] misbehaved. However, remember the reason why
[9:47] she was doing that was Shawn Thompson.
[9:49] She wanted to see her boyfriend, she wanted to spend time with
[9:51] him. But now they'd broken up, she no
[9:53] longer had a needing to go see him.
[9:56] So why would she still be misbehaving and going out past
[10:00] the time that she was allowed and stuff?
[10:02] She'd been well behaved her whole time at this house.
[10:04] She'd never once kind of gone out when she wasn't supposed to
[10:08] or stepped out of line. And she even told one of her
[10:10] friends at the house that she was going to the mall.
[10:14] Why would she lie to a friend at the house?
[10:16] So police spoke with her friends, her family, all the
[10:19] other girls at Huckleberry House.
[10:21] And they initially theorized that maybe this was a runaway
[10:25] case. Her mother, Rebecca insisted
[10:27] that Jessica would never do anything like that.
[10:30] She would never run away from home and go missing like that
[10:33] off her own accord. However, to people that don't
[10:36] know Jessica, it kind of looked like she would.
[10:39] It looked like the kind of thing that she would do.
[10:41] As much as police wanted to believe Jessica's mother when
[10:44] she said that Jessica would never run away, a track record
[10:48] suggests otherwise. And so they still had to treat
[10:51] this as though it was a runaway case.
[10:53] So they asked all of her friends and family, people that knew
[10:56] her, where she might be if she had runaway.
[11:00] And all of them said Shawn Thompson, she'd be with Shawn
[11:03] Thompson. Yes, they'd broken up that day,
[11:05] but maybe that's all the more reason for her to meet up with
[11:08] Shawn Thompson. Maybe he wanted to win her back.
[11:11] Maybe they wanted to kind of talk it out.
[11:13] And, you know, maybe she'd met him at the mall and maybe they
[11:16] were still together somewhere. Maybe they'd gone back to his
[11:18] house. So police planned to question
[11:21] Sean as soon as they possibly could.
[11:23] But they were kind of hoping that Jessica would just come
[11:25] back in her own time and that this would just be a big
[11:27] misunderstanding where she'd kind of gone away for the
[11:30] evening and not got back into lit.
[11:32] However, two days later, the worst case scenario became a
[11:36] reality. Jessica Keane was found dead on
[11:40] March 17th, 1991. A man had been walking through a
[11:44] graveyard named Foster Chapel Cemetery.
[11:47] Now this was around 20 miles away from where Jessica was
[11:52] staying at Huckleberry House. Her body was found almost
[11:55] completely naked. The only clothes that she had on
[11:59] her body was one sock and her bra which was very twisted.
[12:03] It had clearly been messed with and moved around and other than
[12:07] that she was found naked immediately.
[12:09] From just looking at her body, police could tell that Jessicas
[12:13] cause of death had probably been bludgeoning because she had so
[12:18] many injuries to her head. This cause of death was later
[12:21] confirmed in her autopsy. Jessica had been beaten to
[12:24] death, and pathologists also found as they were examining her
[12:28] body that she'd also been raped before she was killed.
[12:32] Jessica's skull was fractured and she also had a bunch of
[12:36] other smaller injuries all over her body, probably from the
[12:39] struggle, A lot of cuts, scratches, bruises.
[12:42] The autopsy also confirmed that she had no drugs or alcohol in
[12:46] her system at the time of her murder, and it actually only
[12:50] took minimal blows to kill her. However, her attacker kept going
[12:55] after she was already dead. The murder weapon was quickly
[12:58] identified as a tombstone from that graveyard.
[13:02] This killer had ripped up a full headstone from the ground and
[13:07] hit Jessica Keene of the head with it.
[13:09] Her killer had hit her so hard over the head with this huge 70
[13:15] LB tombstone that it had actually cracked and split in
[13:19] half, and one of these pieces of the tombstone was later found
[13:23] close to her body, covered in blood.
[13:26] Based on crime scene evidence, police could tell that this had
[13:29] been a very long, very drawn out, very traumatic ordeal for
[13:34] 15 year old Jessica. It seemed as though she'd been
[13:37] running naked through this graveyard for some time before
[13:41] she was finally caught and killed by her attacker.
[13:44] For example, her other sock that wasn't found on her body was
[13:48] found right at the entrance of the graveyard, possibly having
[13:51] slipped off when she was trying to run from her attacker.
[13:54] They also found footprints, presence of Jessica's size all
[13:58] over the graveyard, showing that she'd run from her attacker for
[14:00] a long time. She was really trying to get
[14:03] away. And behind at least one of the
[14:05] tombstones in this graveyard, they found knee imprints in the
[14:10] mud. And that told police that
[14:12] Jessica had been hiding behind these tombstones, behind these
[14:16] headstones, crouching, trying to hide from her attacker.
[14:26] So detectives now began discussing potential motives for
[14:30] this crime. Of course, there was a sexual
[14:32] motive here. Jessica was found naked.
[14:34] She was raped. There was definitely a sexual
[14:38] element to this. But was that the only motive?
[14:41] You know, why did they kill her? And why Jessica?
[14:43] Why her specifically? Was she targeted specifically?
[14:47] Or was she just in the wrong place at the wrong time?
[14:50] And someone was just looking to do this to a young girl.
[14:53] And, you know, on the other side of that, if it was Jessica that
[14:57] was specifically targeted, who was it and what did they have
[15:00] against her? And why did they want to hurt
[15:03] her and kill her? One thing that police did rule
[15:06] out pretty quickly was the possibility that this was a
[15:09] robbery, like a robbery gone wrong.
[15:11] Jessica still had her watch on. She still had some jewelry on.
[15:14] I think she had rings on, maybe a necklace.
[15:17] And so, you know, if this was a robbery, surely they would have
[15:20] taken those things. But something that Jessica's
[15:22] friends pointed out to police was that she she was actually
[15:25] missing one piece of jewellery, just one out of the lot that she
[15:29] was wearing. And that was a necklace that
[15:32] Shawn Thompson had bought her. This necklace was a gold plated
[15:36] kind of word necklace and it just said taken on it.
[15:40] Now, there's always the possibility that maybe she just
[15:42] took it off before she left that day because she'd broken up with
[15:46] Shawn. Maybe she didn't want to be
[15:47] wearing the jewellery that he bought her.
[15:49] But police did have to keep that in mind, obviously, because it
[15:52] could be of use to the investigation.
[15:54] It was unclear at this point whether the absence of this
[15:57] necklace was actually evidence or a clue.
[16:01] So now police had to try to establish a timeline of events.
[16:06] What had happened to Jessica Keene once she left Huckleberry
[16:09] House? That meant she ended up 20 miles
[16:12] away, murdered in a graveyard. Well, the last sighting of
[16:17] Jessica was at that bus stop at 6:00 PM on the day that she left
[16:21] the house, and there were no other sightings after that
[16:24] point. So this told police that
[16:26] something must have happened to her as she was on her way to the
[16:29] mall. Did she even get on that bus?
[16:31] Did something happen to her when she was on the bus?
[16:34] Did she get off at a different place than she was supposed to?
[16:37] So one of the theories that was put forward and then later
[16:41] adopted as the official theory of this investigation was that
[16:45] Jessica had been picked up at the bus stop.
[16:48] Someone had somehow gotten Jessica in their car and my
[16:52] managed to drive her 20 miles away.
[16:54] Maybe they were offering her a lift of some sort.
[16:56] Maybe this was someone that she knew, someone that she trusted
[17:00] getting into a car with. Or maybe she was coerced in
[17:03] somehow. Or maybe she was forced into the
[17:07] car. No one knows.
[17:08] They believe that Jessica was held hostage in this car for six
[17:13] hours while her abductor undressed her and raped her.
[17:17] And then they think that somehow when the car was in West
[17:20] Jefferson, Jessica managed to escape the car and escape her
[17:25] attacker. And she just began running in
[17:27] any direction that she could. And she went down this dirt path
[17:31] that led to the graveyard. There was a farmhouse relatively
[17:35] close to the graveyard. So it's believed that maybe this
[17:37] farmhouse had a light on and maybe that was where she was
[17:41] trying to go and seek refuge. They think Jessica was just
[17:46] running in the pitch black. She lost her sock as she was
[17:49] running into the graveyard. And eventually, her attacker was
[17:53] catching up behind her, and so she began hiding behind
[17:57] gravestones. Some sources say that she jumped
[17:59] a fence somewhere. However, I don't know where this
[18:02] fence could have been because I know that she got into the
[18:05] graveyard fine because her sock was found at the entrance.
[18:09] Of course, there's no way of knowing how long this kind of
[18:12] chase was going on and where she was going as she was trying to
[18:16] run away from this person. It's believed that at some point
[18:19] during this ordeal, because it was pitch black, it was the
[18:22] middle of the the night. It's believed that Jessica, as
[18:25] she was running as fast as she could to try to get away from
[18:27] her attacker, she ran into a gatepost.
[18:31] She tried to get up and keep running.
[18:34] However, that time that she was knocked back gave her attacker
[18:37] the chance to catch up with her. And this is when her attacker
[18:41] decided that instead of trying to get Jessica back in the car
[18:45] and continue with whatever the original plan was, that they
[18:49] were just going to kill her then and there, the killer grabbed
[18:52] one of the tombstones close by and ripped it out of the ground
[18:56] with brute strength. Like I said, this tombstone was
[18:59] 70 lbs, and gravestones are very secured into the ground.
[19:03] They don't just sit on top of the ground.
[19:05] They're like stuck in there. So this killer ripped it out of
[19:08] the ground and hit Jessica so hard over the head with it that
[19:12] it cracked into two. This person then continued to
[19:15] beat her with one of these halves of the gravestone until
[19:20] they were sure that she was dead, and then they left her
[19:22] there for her body to be found two days later.
[19:26] When police asked Jessicas mother about Sean Thompson, they
[19:29] received a very negative character description, of
[19:32] course, because that's all Jessicas mother had seen of this
[19:35] boy. This boy had come into her
[19:37] daughters life and changed her for the worse.
[19:40] There was a motive there. Maybe he wasn't happy with the
[19:43] breakup. Maybe he didn't want the
[19:44] breakup. And you know, he was trying to
[19:46] get Jessica back. They were arguing and then this
[19:49] argument ended in murder. Maybe he felt like he had
[19:53] ownership over Jessica and when she tried to split up with him,
[19:56] he didn't like that and he was trying to assert his dominance
[19:59] over her by sexually assaulting her and.
[20:03] Beating her on top of that, the only piece of jewellery missing
[20:06] from Jessica's body was the necklace that Sean bought her
[20:11] that said, taken on it as well. And now that she was no longer
[20:14] in a relationship with Sean and he was no longer going to be
[20:17] dealing with Jessica, maybe he took that necklace back.
[20:20] So police tracked down Sean Thompson and went to speak with
[20:24] him. However, they quickly found that
[20:26] Sean wasn't even in the state of Ohio on the night of Jessica's
[20:30] murder. Sean and all of his friends had
[20:33] gone on on a short trip to Florida, and they were asked to
[20:36] bring in any kind of documentation that could prove
[20:39] that they were out of the state at that point, and all of them
[20:42] were able to do so. They all had something that
[20:45] indicated that they'd been in Florida that weekend.
[20:48] Just to be certain, Shawn Thompson was asked to give ADNA
[20:51] sample so that his DNA could be tested against the DNA sample
[20:55] found on Jessica's body, and the results of that test came back
[20:59] negative. Shawn Thompson wasn't the
[21:01] murderer. So now Shawn and all of his
[21:03] friends were ruled out as suspects in this case, but who
[21:07] else was there to look into? Police really thought that this
[21:10] case was going to be easy to solve.
[21:12] They thought they had the killer with Sean Thompson because this
[21:15] boy had suddenly come into Jessicas life.
[21:18] Shaking it up changed it for the worst, and now suddenly she'd
[21:22] turned up dead. It seemed as though this guy was
[21:24] a bad guy with his past and you know his image, so they thought
[21:29] it was going to be him. But now they were back to square
[21:31] 1, and Sean was the only really questionable character in
[21:35] Jessica's life. All of her other friends were so
[21:38] sweet, they were so well behaved.
[21:39] They were all good people, just like Jessica, so who else could
[21:44] have wanted to do this to her? Well, the fact that Jessica's
[21:47] body was found 20 miles away from where she was last seen
[21:51] told police that maybe the killer lived in that kind of
[21:54] area. Maybe they lived far away from
[21:57] where they picked up Jessica, and maybe they were trying to
[21:59] take Jessica back to their house or back to a location near where
[22:03] they lived. Maybe the killer just happened
[22:05] to be there in the area at the time, and Jessica was in the
[22:08] wrong place at the wrong time, and this attacker saw this as an
[22:13] opportunity to abduct a young girl and assault a young girl.
[22:18] And if this was accurate, then maybe Jessica didn't know her
[22:21] killer, or maybe she only barely knew them.
[22:24] So this meant that this case was going to be all the more harder
[22:27] to solve. And there was always the fear
[22:29] that this person could strike again, this person could kill
[22:33] again. Because if this murder had been
[22:36] purely out of impulse and opportunity, they just saw
[22:40] Jessica at a bus stop and decided to abduct a murderer,
[22:44] then they can do it again. Who knows how many more attacks
[22:48] this person could carry out, or how many they had carried out
[22:52] before Jessica that just hadn't been connected.
[22:54] Jessica's case was all over the news.
[22:56] It was all over newspapers. Crime Stoppers raised a $3000
[23:00] reward for anyone that could bring forward any information
[23:04] that led to her killer being charged.
[23:06] This reward money just kept going up and up as well.
[23:09] As soon as her family could raise a bit more money, or as
[23:11] soon as a little bit more money could go into this case, the
[23:14] reward money just kept getting higher and higher.
[23:16] They were desperate for any information.
[23:18] But really at this point, as soon as they'd ruled out Shawn
[23:22] Thompson, this case was at a standstill.
[23:25] There were no other leads to go off.
[23:27] There were no suspects. There was no clues at the crime
[23:30] scene. There was nothing.
[23:31] There was absolutely no direction that police could take
[23:35] this in. And before long, the case of
[23:38] Jessica King's murder became a cold case.
[23:41] In the years following Jessica's murder, every time a young girl
[23:45] was attacked in like a 30 mile radius of the West Jefferson
[23:48] area, this case was looked into as a possible connection to
[23:53] Jessica. They would always get her case
[23:55] file out and check it detail by detail next to these other cases
[24:00] to see if there were any patterns to see if they could
[24:02] identify a suspect. But nothing ever came of this.
[24:06] There were never any patterns or similarities between Jessica's
[24:09] murder and any other murders or attacks or sexual assaults in
[24:14] that general area. Now, you often see in cold cases
[24:18] like this one, where DNA samples are collected from the crime
[24:22] scene, that these DNA samples can be resubmitted into the
[24:26] database periodically to see if any matches come up because new
[24:30] DNA samples are getting added to this database every single day.
[24:34] You know, what if the killer didn't have their DNA in the
[24:37] database when the DNA was first submitted, so a match didn't
[24:41] come up? But what if the killer had
[24:43] committed another crime since then, and now their DNA was in
[24:46] the database? It's worth running the DNA
[24:49] samples from crime scenes again to see if there's a match in the
[24:53] system. Around the late 90s or the early
[24:55] 2000s, a new law was passed that said that every violent
[25:00] criminal, every person that commits a violent crime has to,
[25:03] by law, give a DNA sample so that it can be put in this
[25:07] database for that exact reason. Whether their crime specifically
[25:11] needed a DNA sample to test or not, they had to give it just in
[25:15] case this person committed another violent crime and it
[25:18] needed solving in the future. So it was worth rechecking DNA
[25:21] samples from crime scenes every few years.
[25:24] And that is exactly what they did with the DNA found at
[25:27] Jessica Keane's crime scene. And eventually on March 17th of
[25:31] 2008, exactly 17 years to the day that Jessica's body was
[25:36] found, a match was made. The DNA sample matched with a
[25:40] man who had just been released from prison for committing
[25:44] another violent crime. And this man was Martin Lee
[25:48] Smith. Junior Smith was 51 years old.
[25:51] He served nine years in prison from 1991 to 2000 for the rape,
[25:56] kidnap and robbery of two other young girls.
[25:59] The law that meant that violent criminals had to submit their
[26:03] DNA was actually brought in while while he was in prison.
[26:06] So they, for the people that were already in prison that had
[26:09] committed violent crimes, they were just doing the DNA sample
[26:12] on their way out. So when he left prison in 2000,
[26:16] his DNA sample was taken and put into the database.
[26:19] And then eight years after that, in 2008, they ran Jessica
[26:23] Keane's DNA sample. Well, the DNA sample found at
[26:26] her crime scene and it matched his DNA thanks to this new law.
[26:31] These two other attacks, so the ones that he was charged and
[26:35] sentenced for actually happened before Jessica Keane's murder.
[26:40] So he'd committed those two attacks on those two other
[26:43] girls. He was arrested and I think
[26:47] charged with those. I don't really understand what
[26:49] Bond is, but he was out on bond at the time and that was when he
[26:53] abducted and murdered Jessica. Keene Smith admitted that he
[26:57] didn't actually go out that day intending to murder someone.
[27:01] He actually went out with the intention of just abducting a
[27:05] girl and sexually assaulting her and then letting her go.
[27:09] But I think it got to a point when Jessica escaped his car,
[27:13] that he knew that if Jessica did successfully escape him, that
[27:17] she would probably go to the police and there would be
[27:20] evidence. And he would get a third charge
[27:23] on top of the other two that he already had.
[27:25] And bear in mind, he was out on bond at the moment.
[27:27] So that would mean that his prison sentence that he would
[27:30] eventually get would be it would be a lot higher than it was
[27:34] already going to be. And so to make sure that Jessica
[27:38] couldn't go to the police and that he couldn't be found for
[27:42] this sexual assault, he decided to silence Jessica by murdering
[27:47] her. In March of 2008, Martin Lee
[27:50] Smith Junior was arrested in connection with Jessica's
[27:53] murder. And luckily, he admitted to
[27:57] every single aspect of this case.
[27:59] He confessed to abducting Jessica, holding a hostage,
[28:03] raping her, and murdering her in 1990, 21 and thankfully, this
[28:08] case could finally be put to rest.
[28:10] Now, because of the severity of this crime, Smith was going to
[28:14] be up for the death penalty. He could potentially be executed
[28:19] over this. So to avoid the death penalty,
[28:21] Martin Lee Smith Junior pled guilty to every single charge
[28:26] against him. He was sentenced to 30 years to
[28:28] life with no chance of parole until 2038, when he'll be in his
[28:32] 80s, although even then, it's unlikely that he'll ever be
[28:36] free. Jessica's family have since, of
[28:39] course, given her a proper funeral, a proper burial, but
[28:42] they've also given her a memorial at the graveyard where
[28:45] her body was found. Right at the entrance to that
[28:48] graveyard, there's a cross that says Jessica Lynn keen on it.
[28:52] And a lot of people often leave flowers and little gifts for
[28:55] Jessica. And that is all I have on this
[28:58] case. I think this has been a pretty
[28:59] short one, but I think it's really important to cover cases
[29:02] like this, cold cases that have eventually been solved many
[29:06] years later, because it gives hope to a lot of other cold
[29:09] cases that maybe one day with advancements in technology, new
[29:13] laws, things like that, that a lot of cases can be solved and
[29:17] will be solved. And justice will be served.
[29:24] Thank you so much for listening to usual disclaimer.
[29:27] At this point, I just want to say that if you've been affected
[29:29] by any of the topics we discussed today, please check
[29:32] the description where we've left some helpful resources.
[29:35] If you want to hear more cases like this one, make sure to
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[29:41] notifications when we post new episodes.
[29:44] And if you really enjoyed, I'd love it if you could leave a
[29:47] rating and a review too. Usual Disclaimer with Eleanor
[29:50] Neil is an Audio Boom Studios production.
[29:53] See you next time.

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