Janice Kay Matney
Matney, circa 2002
- Missing Since 04/03/2002
- Missing From Ottawa, Illinois
- Classification Endangered Missing
- Sex Female
- Race White
- Date of Birth 10/01/1962 (60)
- Age 39 years old
- Height and Weight 5'2, 145 pounds
- Clothing/Jewelry Description A white sweatshirt, a white t-shirt, yellow sweatpants under blue pants, brown hiking boots, and a green and white jacket.
- Medical ConditionsMatney has a history of depression. She is classified as disabled.
- Distinguishing CharacteristicsCaucasian female. Brown hair, brown eyes. Matney may use the last name Nunez. She has a scar on her lip.
Details of Disappearance
Matney was last seen by her live-in boyfriend at approximately 11:00 p.m. on April 3, 2002, inside her residence in the vicinity of the 200 block of State Street in Ottawa, Illinois. She has never been heard from again. Her boyfriend reported her missing several days later.
Matney has a history of illegal drug use and depression. She never claimed her last Social Security benefit check and never filed for benefits in another city. Matney's boyfriend in 2002 was a registered sex offender, but he has not been named a suspect in her disappearance. He died in 2004.
Matney is originally from Sacramento, California, and she traveled around the country before moving to Ottawa. She carries California identification. Her case remains unsolved.
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DISAPPEARANCE CASE: 7 years later: Daughter, police still wonder about woman
03/20/2009, 7:16 am
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Dan Churney,
danc@mywebtimes.com, 815-431-4050
Ottawa Police have a sample of Zabina Perez's DNA in case they ever come across the body of her mother, who vanished from Ottawa seven years ago.
Janice Matney was last seen March 27, 2002, at her apartment in the 200 block of State Street by her live-in companion, Ken Heermann, who told police several days later she had disappeared. The then 39-year-old Matney was from Sacramento, Calif., but moved around the country before landing in Ottawa. Matney has a daughter and son.
"She was a really generous, energetic person," the 26-year-old Perez remembered, saying she last saw her mother about one year before she went missing.
However, Matney also had a history of illegal drug use and depression, according to police. She never claimed a Social Security benefits check she had coming and never filed for benefits in another town. Heermann was a sex offender, who unsettled Perez a few years after the disappearance when he reached out to her in Sacramento, where she lives.
Perez said she never met Heermann, but he wrote letters to her and phoned, asking if she had seen her mother.
"I didn't feel comfortable," Perez recalled. "I believe he might have done something to her. Some foul play."
Heermann died of natural causes Aug. 16, 2004, in Ottawa. Police said polygraph tests were done on several people in the aftermath of the disappearance.
Ottawa Detective Sgt. Dave Gualandri said the Matney case is Ottawa's only unsolved missing person case still on the books, and tips still occasionally come to his desk.
A volunteer with the Doe Network, a Web site devoted to missing people, contacted Gualandri last fall with information a dead body had been found in O'Hara, Pa., that roughly matched Matney's description,. However, after investigation, Gualandri determined it was not her.
Another lead that went nowhere was a call last year from a California man on parole from prison who knew Matney and learned from online stories she had vanished. The man aroused suspicion, but Gualandri found he had been in jail when Matney disappeared.
Gualandri noted local leads have been "exhausted," but checks are periodically done on bodies found around the country. Police have preserved evidence in Matney's case. Anyone who knew Matney around the time of her disappearance or with other information should call Ottawa police at: 815-433-2131. She might have last been wearing a white sweatshirt, white T-shirt, yellow jogging pantswith blue pants over top, brown hiking boots, and a green-and-white jacket.
Matney's daughter plans to visit Ottawa in about six months to meet with police; the last time she did so was September 2007. She said she took the case to the television program "America's Most Wanted" and to a California-based foundation that helps publicize cases of missing people, but neither was interested, saying the Matney case did not meet their criteria.
"I don't want this to be another case that's cold and forgotten," she said. "It's really, really, really hard to live with. I think about it every day. We never had a service for her."
http://mywebtimes.com/archives/ottawa/d ... ?id=377128
