GUILTY OH - Janean Brown, 19, raped & murdered, Whitehouse, 18 Nov 1983

Three days after a young woman from Whitehouse was found with her throat slit, buried in a Swanton Township ditch, investigators searched a mobile home and van belonging to a man who lived nearby — Andrew Gustafson.

At the time, authorities said they lacked the evidence needed to charge him with the murder of Janean Brown, 19, but... nearly 30 years after her brutal slaying, Mr. Gustafson, now 56, was arrested at his home in Birch Run, Mich., and charged with two counts of aggravated murder and one count of murder. “The bottom line was we didn’t have the capabilities of DNA back then,” Lucas County Sheriff John Tharp said.

Ms. Brown, who was working as a nurse’s aide at the Whitehouse Country Manor nursing home, went missing in the early morning hours of Nov. 18, 1983. Some 36 hours later, her body was found in a shallow grave in a drainage ditch near 12404 Archbold-Whitehouse Rd. Investigators said she had been stripped of her clothing, whipped with a belt buckle, and nearly decapitated by the stab wounds to her throat. While more than 100 people were interviewed during the following weeks, months, and years, no arrests ever were made — until now.

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Ms. Brown was later seen walking west toward her home when she ran into one of her nursing home patients, Chester Roberts, who was out for a pre-dawn jaunt. She made small talk with Mr. Roberts until they parted ways at the nursing home lot. A van then pulled into the lot. Ms. Brown talked to the driver and got in the passenger-side sliding door.

Several workers at the nursing home who recalled seeing this didn't get a look at anybody inside, but they remembered the van as clean, a late model - possibly tan - with a big picture window. Police asked Mr. Estep and others if they knew of anyone who owned a van that fit that description. In response, they mentioned Andy Gustafson.

Standing up from his stool at the Moose Lodge he manages, Mr. Gustafson shrugs when he thinks about all the things that have been said about him the past 20 years. He's been called a spoiled rich kid. He's been called a drug abuser. And he's been called a killer. "People will say what they want to say," the 47-year-old said nonchalantly."I didn't do it, and I don't know who did."

Back when he was thinner, his hair was thicker, and gray hadn't yet crept into his beard, Mr. Gustafson was a 26-year-old father of two when Ms. Brown's body was found on property next to his mobile home - about 36 hours after she disappeared. Finding the 5-foot-2 woman badly beaten and nearly decapitated, authorities began canvassing the area for witnesses. Within a day, they approached Mr. Gustafson.

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Andrew Gustafson pleaded guilty to involuntary manslaughter and rape charges Monday in a Toledo courtroom. A judge sentenced to him to 15 years in prison.

Gustafson, of Birch Run, Michigan, had once lived outside Toledo near where Janean Brown's body was found in 1983. She'd been beaten and nearly decapitated.

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katydid23 said:

Kind of glad they are not going ahead with the trial. It is really hard to get a conviction 30 yrs later. Even with DNA, it can be an uphill battle. It is not a very long sentence, but at least it is over and done with.

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