Identified! TX - Huntsville, 'Walker County Jane Doe', WhtFem 14-16, 91UFTX, Nov'80 Sherry Ann Jarvis

[Vital Forces]

I think the prison is an accidental red herring and whoever pointed out that she might have been using it as a landmark because it was near where she was going was right.

Are prisons in the habit of letting unaccompanied minors visit prisoners? Even back then? She must have known they wouldn't believe she was 18.

Where was she going to stay after making the visitation?

There doesn't seem to be very much near the prison except a couple of neighborhoods and a church, and we don't have a convenient way of knowing what the area looked like in 1980.

Someone traveling on Highway 980 would be able to reach those neighborhoods but would not get a good view of the prison, but they may have seen a sign pointing in that direction. She could have been in the area before visiting someone and remembered the sign.

Her murder must have been a big deal in Huntsville at the time. If she knew someone living in the area, they must have heard about her.

 

[Vital Forces]

More thoughts...

Are we reasonably sure she arrived from a point south of Huntsville? She claimed to be from Rockport. Was the vehicle she exited from seen arriving from the south?

Why did she claim to be from two places, Rockport and Aransas Pass, when asked?

Huntsville is north of Houston, a major port. If she was killed by a truck driver, then he probably dropped off a cargo container in Houston on Halloween, picked up another container, headed north and stopped in Huntsville for the night. From there he headed towards Dallas and then on to his next destination.

 

[CarlK90245]

More thoughts...

Are we reasonably sure she arrived from a point south of Huntsville? She claimed to be from Rockport. Was the vehicle she exited from seen arriving from the south?

Why did she claim to be from two places, Rockport and Aransas Pass, when asked?

Huntsville is north of Houston, a major port. If she was killed by a truck driver, then he probably dropped off a cargo container in Houston on Halloween, picked up another container, headed north and stopped in Huntsville for the night. From there he headed towards Dallas and then on to his next destination.

Yes, the gas station where she was first seen was on the south side of town. From there, she headed north. That would seem to imply (though not prove) that she was headed north from Houston, not south from Dallas.

Aransas Pass and Rockport are adjacent to each other. Perhaps she was from an area in between.

 

[CADwrest]

I think the prison is an accidental red herring and whoever pointed out that she might have been using it as a landmark because it was near where she was going was right.

She DID say she had a friend there, though, which implies the prison is her actual destination.

She could have been lying, of course. Personally, aside from the fact that she's trying to get to Ellis, I tend to think everything she said to the waitress was a lie, to one degree or another. I think she didn't like the amount of interest the waitress was showing in her and was trying not to give her any information that could be useful.

 

[CADwrest]

I keep thinking about the question that keeps getting asked,“Why has no one ever come looking for her?” She seems like the girl next door, someone people would miss and ask about. She stops showing up at school, the administration starts calling the house. She’s not seen around the neighborhood, the neighbors start asking where she is. Her friends notice she isn’t around anymore, they stop by the house to see what’s going on. And so on. Lots of people notice she’s gone, so why do none of them file a missing person report or at least alert law enforcement that they’re concerned something might have happened?

What I come up with is that all of those people DID notice, but were put off by her immediate caregiver/guardian.

My theory is that she’d had a pretty good life up to that point living with her mother and stepfather. Her mom dies, and since her and stepdad don’t get along, she decides she doesn’t want to stay in his house anymore. Her father is in prison, but she hasn’t seen him since she was a small child, so she takes off trying to find him; I’m not clear on what she’d think he could do for her, being locked up. Maybe point her in the direction of his extended family?

Anyway, stepfather’s glad to see her go, and doesn’t want her coming back. But that’s obviously an incredibly irresponsible and negligent choice to make, so he can’t come out and tell people that’s what happened. But he tells them SOMETHING, and whatever it is satisfies the questions. If people don’t know the father’s in prison, maybe he just tells them she went to live with her father, or if they do, he tells them she’s with her paternal grandparents. No, he doesn’t have her new address or her new phone number, she specifically didn’t give it to him. So people aren’t real happy they’ll never hear from her again, but he’s telling them she’s safe and he would know.

So months later, when there are reports of a young girl being brutally murdered in Huntsville, no one puts it together, and the stepfather damn sure isn’t going to open his mouth about it THEN.

 

[carbuff]

She DID say she had a friend there, though, which implies the prison is her actual destination.

She could have been lying, of course. Personally, aside from the fact that she's trying to get to Ellis, I tend to think everything she said to the waitress was a lie, to one degree or another. I think she didn't like the amount of interest the waitress was showing in her and was trying not to give her any information that could be useful.

I agree that she might not have been telling the truth much. Her answers are evasive at best.

 

[cvaldez1975]

which the waitress picked up on and why she was described as street wise.

She DID say she had a friend there, though, which implies the prison is her actual destination.

She could have been lying, of course. Personally, aside from the fact that she's trying to get to Ellis, I tend to think everything she said to the waitress was a lie, to one degree or another. I think she didn't like the amount of interest the waitress was showing in her and was trying not to give her any information that could be useful.

 

[cvaldez1975]

I think she was a foster kid and never reported. Yuma angel baby jane doe ended up that way.

I keep thinking about the question that keeps getting asked,

 

[carbuff]

I think she was a foster kid and never reported. Yuma angel baby jane doe ended up that way.

I think too many of our unidentified young ladies have the same sad back story.

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[Jules Clues]

It seems like in some cases as soon as they do isotope analysis it breaks a case wide open.
Is there any chance they'll do that with WCJD? It would at least (hopefully) answer the question of whether she was from where she said.


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[Roselvr]

It seems like in some cases as soon as they do isotope analysis it breaks a case wide open.
Is there any chance they'll do that with WCJD? It would at least (hopefully) answer the question of whether she was from where she said.


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Isotopes are a tool so are pollen tests. We have a few Doe's who we have decent isotope info for but it hasn't seemed to help solve the case. Buckskin Girl being narrowed to TX/OK, Lyle Stevik revisiting places he was as a child before he passed then we have the Allenstown NH Does.

It would be nice to know isotopes for Walker Jane

 

[MelmothTheLost]

Isotopes are a tool so are pollen tests. We have a few Doe's who we have decent isotope info for but it hasn't seemed to help solve the case. Buckskin Girl being narrowed to TX/OK, Lyle Stevik revisiting places he was as a child before he passed then we have the Allenstown NH Does.

No doubt how helpful isotope analysis can be depends on how much the analysts can narrow the geographic regions down from the results.

From what I've seen of US cases it doesn't seem to help much because the zones identified seem to be so very big. I don't know if that is simply down to geology or to the types of tests being used in the US..

By contrast, the recent results for Norway's Isdalskvinnen show that she almost certainly spent her early childhood in and around the city of Nuremburg and her adolescence in a small arc to the east of Luxembourg.

I suspect one issue is the difference in the historic geographic mobility between the US and Europe. Essentially, settlers in the US have been able to migrate over the whole of the US at will. In Europe, for many centuries until recently (apart from periods such as WWII or other times of war), most people have been restricted in how widely they are likely to travel by language issues and border controls effected by the nation states.

 

[paul1980]

Why the heck do some of the media stories on WCJD have to say that she was "attractive" as if that's somehow relevant?

 

[Dr.Strangelove]

Why the heck do some of the media stories on WCJD have to say that she was "attractive" as if that's somehow relevant?

Sensationalize. I guess some people care more if she was attractive then if she wasn't.

 

[Vital Forces]

Sensationalize. I guess some people care more if she was attractive then if she wasn't.

Journalists are interested in their current readership and getting them to read or watch future stories. They don't usually see themselves as historians.

Most news stories are rarely read or watched again after their initial viewing, but sometimes articles and broadcasts become part of history.

I'm not saying it was appropriate, but the writer probably just wanted to say something nice about her and didn't imagine that his words would be scrutinized nearly four decades later.

The real villains are her murderer and the adults in her life who seem to have neglected or abandoned her.

 

[mcluver23]

Are prisons in the habit of letting unaccompanied minors visit prisoners? Even back then? She must have known they wouldn't believe she was 18.

Where was she going to stay after making the visitation?

There doesn't seem to be very much near the prison except a couple of neighborhoods and a church, and we don't have a convenient way of knowing what the area looked like in 1980.

Someone traveling on Highway 980 would be able to reach those neighborhoods but would not get a good view of the prison, but they may have seen a sign pointing in that direction. She could have been in the area before visiting someone and remembered the sign.

Her murder must have been a big deal in Huntsville at the time. If she knew someone living in the area, they must have heard about her.

Were they having prison rodeos around this time?

 

[Vital Forces]

Were they having prison rodeos around this time?

I must say I had to perform a search on prison rodeos.

The only one I could find was Angola Prison Rodeo, which is performed in Louisiana. My past research indicates that Ellis was by no means a minimum security prison and thus such events would not take place there.

 

[tlorik]

The last Texas prison rodeo was in 1986.

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[mcluver23]

The last Texas prison rodeo was in 1986.

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Grew up in Texas and knew a few acquaintances that had been to one. I was trying to think outside the box. Maybe an event that brought people to the area.

 

[tlorik]

Grew up in Texas and knew a few acquaintances that had been to one. I was trying to think outside the box. Maybe an event that brought people to the area.

Absolutely! Maybe she thought someone she knew was going to be in the rodeo or has seen or read something about it.

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