FL FL - Jennifer Marteliz, 7, Tampa, 15 Nov 1982

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I submitted Jennifer as a potential match to a Jane Doe case in the Los Angeles area from 1994. I spoke with Tampa PD about it before I submitted it to the agency handling the Jane Doe case, which is Los Angeles Medical Examiner-Coroner (LAMEC). I asked TPD if Jennifer's dental records were available for comparisons to unidentified decedents. Doe Network lists Jennifer's dental records as "available," but I wanted to make sure this info was correct before I contacted LAMEC to submit the potential match. TPD took a bunch of my info (full name, my occupation, birth date, etc.) but they did not tell me whether Jennifer's dentals were available. So, I just submitted the potential match to LAMEC anyway.

I submitted the potential match to LAMEC on May 29th. According to LAMEC, a comparison could not be made because Jennifer still had most of her baby teeth, and Jane Doe had none of her baby teeth. Also, there is insufficient DNA for profiling in Jane Doe's case. Only fingerprints and dental records are available for Jane Doe.

Here is info on Jane Doe:
CA - CA - Tujunga, Hisp/AsianFem 440UFCA, 14-24, wig & St Christopher medallion, Aug'94
The National Missing and Unidentified Persons System (NamUs)
Have you seen this child? JANE DOE1994
440UFCA
Can You Identify Me? Do You Know Me?: Lila Doe – I Just Want to Be ME Again!
CAF940807
LAPD hopes forensic sketch can ID Jane Doe | ABC7 Los Angeles | abc7.com
Los Angeles County Medical Examiner-Coroner
 
Here for Jennifer.
I hope this will be solved, despite all of the years gone by.
 
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Having trouble accessing some of the old links. Here is the current YouTube link to the movie preview.

 
Another YouTube video with an interview with her Mom. Lots of comments too.
upload_2020-11-27_12-55-41.png
 
Interesting that they are promoting this movie to churches. I still haven't found a link that works to the actual movie. It seems all the old websites and movie connections are gone. I'll keep poking around.

SHE COULD BE YOU
It’s been twenty-seven years since seven-year-old Jennifer Marteliz disappeared as she walked home from school. Her mother, Kathy, is walking in the mall rolling an old suitcase behind her. It contains all the information she gathered while searching for her child. She is here to tell her story to another reporter. Though she has done this many times before, she wants her story told knowing that her daughter is still out there and maybe someone seeing the story would recognize her and say “she could be You”.

As Kathy starts telling the reporter her story we are brought back in time to see a newborn Jennifer. Life is not good in their home. Her husband is an alcoholic who beats and threatens her. When her other daughter, Toni Lisa, tells Kathy she is afraid of her father, she knows it’s time to leave.

Kathy gets a job and buys a home for her and her daughters. Toni Lisa is happy in her new arrangements but as Jennifer gets older she misses her father and wants to live with him. After seeing a counselor, kathy unwillingly agrees to let Jennifer live with her father for awhile.
 
I cannot get the audio to work on this blog but it looks like it is 1 hour 39 minutes long.

BRING THEM HOME NOW-VANISHED Jennifer Martilez from Florida
Jennifer Marteliz' disappearance on Nov. 15, 1982, marked the beginning of a search that would eclipse all others in Tampa's history. LONG BEFORE "AMBER ALERTS" DNA Technology, PUBLIC CAMERA'S and SOCIAL MEDIA, this precious little girl appears to have JUST VANISHED.

SINCE SHE VANISHED, there has been several articles written,she was placed on milk cartons, a book written, and a Movie made called "IT COULD BE YOU."

TONIGHT ON OUR SHOW, we will bring the whole story to our audience, about the little girl that vanished without a trace. Jennifer's sister TONI LISIA JOINS US LIVE.

The 7-year-old's smiling face beamed from TV screens, billboards, fliers, and milk cartons, becoming as familiar to residents as their own children's. The granddaughter of a wealthy, politically connected businessman, Jennifer would become the focus of an increasingly frenzied investigation spanning more than a decade.

Hundreds helped: from neighbors to psychics to Interpol's international police force. Each hoped, some even believed, he or she would find Jennifer. Little girls, after all, don't simply vanish.

That Monday afternoon in 1982, Jennifer walked home with her friend Theresa Hall. They usually left school between 2:15 and 2:30 p.m., but on this day it may have been as late as 2:40 p.m.

Theresa lived in an apartment on 97th Avenue, just south of the Marteliz duplex that hugged the railroad tracks. The girls walked down 15th Street to 98th, where they parted as usual. Theresa didn't often go to Jennifer's to play after school because her friend's stepmother was so strict.
 
The rest of the article is behind a pay wall.

https://www.bizjournals.com/tampabay/stories/2009/04/20/tidbits1.html
Apr 20, 2009, 12:00am EDT Updated Apr 17, 2009, 7:00am EDT
Two years ago, Nancy Tunstall of Tunstall Consulting Inc. in Tampa wrote and directed a film about the 1982 disappearance of her niece, Jennifer Marteliz. Entitled “She Could Be You,” the movie is now in consideration to enter the Cannes Film Festival and is set to premiere in May at the festival’s Film Market business counterpart.
 
Why did Jennifer want her friend to watch her walk the rest of the way home? Obviously she was scared of something or someone. And what a damn shame that at that very moment, the friend didn't see a thing. Was Jennifer expecting something bad to happen? I would surmise that if she was, it means she was familiar with that something or someone and it was not random.
 
Her mother still holds out hope that she'll be found alive 40 years later. So sad.

Updated: 10:56 PM EDT July 22, 2021

Where is Jennifer Marteliz? She's been missing since 1982 | wtsp.com

Snips:
TAMPA, Fla. — Jennifer Marteliz was just seven years old when she vanished on her way home from Shaw Elementary School in Tampa on Nov. 15, 1982.

Police searched the Sulphur Springs neighborhood on the ground and by air.

More than one thousand neighbors helped with the search.

Despite that extensive effort, there was no sign of Jennifer.

Tips have even led investigators as far as Pennsylvania to search for possible remains. But nothing was found.
 
how life can change in an instant....the friend, who I assume was a girl, has no responsibility for what some sick moron did to this girl and can't be blamed, but I'm sure this moment left a mark on his life...

When Jennifer asked a friend to watch her on the way home, it makes me think she had an awareness and understanding of stranger danger. Unless a random person put her in a car, it seems Welnicki might have been able to catch her because she was familiar to her and her family. I'm guessing they didn't search his house because he wasn't an official suspect, which is unfortunate, because a potential suspect bringing up his "psychic visions" of a child's murder is pretty shady and I'm willing to believe he was careless in many others senses....
rest in peace
 
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