MURDERED: Jessica Heeringa

Feb 24, 2020

Jessica Heeringa was a young mom in her mid-20’s who was trying to provide for her family. She was smart, loving, a hard worker… and then, in 2013, she vanished from her job at a local gas station. Sources for this episode cannot be listed here due to character limitations. For a full list of sources, please visit https://crimejunkiepodcast.com/murdered-jessica-heeringa/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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this episode is brought to you by Simply Safe go to Simply Safe.com crime junkie to build your system today high crime junkies I'm your host Ashley flowers and I'm Britt and today I want to tell you a story about a woman who could have been any of us she was a young mom in her mid-20s who was trying to provide for her family while also trying to beat that quarter life crisis and figure out what direction she really wanted to take for her future she was smart and loving a hard worker

and then she just vanished without a trace this is the story of Jessica Herring a

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Jessica Herring a didn't have any time to go out and party on weekends she has a three-year-old boy and her fiance Dakota recently lost his job so while Dakota stays at home to watch their son seven Jessica treats Friday night like she usually does by going to work the closing shift at an Exxon gas station on Sternberg Road in her hometown of Norton Shores Michigan now as anyone who's worked any sort of retail or food service job will tell you it's not a job for everyone but Jessica tries to look on the bright side she's a smart girl

all very introspective I mean she's literally known for journaling every single day and she loves math she wants so badly to continue her education but with a young kid at home and bills to pay that's just not an option right now and life for her in Norton Shores is duller now that Jessica's mom Shelly and one of her sisters Samantha have both moved out of town so really she gets a lot of her social interactions from the people who frequent the gas station where she works like she literally got this whole group of regular customers who will wait for her

a chef before they actually come in so on the night of April 26 2013 one of Jessica's regulars this guy named Craig swings by the Exxon station to fill up his car now it's dark outside like 11 p.m. and since Craig doesn't need to buy anything else besides gasps he just goes ahead and pays at the pump now there's one problem the pump doesn't activate and now this doesn't worry him because he knows Jessica's getting ready to close up for the night she's probably like taking inventory or something so he goes inside to let her know that he's here

need the pump back on but when he walks into the front door of the store he's a little surprised when he doesn't see Jessica behind the counter so he starts looking around poking his head around the corners to see if maybe she's in the office or something but nope not there eventually Craig start calling out her name but when she doesn't answer he begins to search everywhere I mean she's not stocking the shelves she's not in the back walk-in cooler the store is totally empty as if she just like up and

left but then Craig notices something strange there by the cash register is Jessica's purse and even stranger is how the register drawer is open just a hair and right at that moment Craig knows something is very wrong and listen I know we talked about intuition a lot on this show and we always encourage women to trust there's but guys this a hundred percent goes for you too because as California reported for ABC News

Craig actually almost left the gas station just to go fill up somewhere else because again even though didn't feel right he also didn't see any signs of a struggle nothing seemed out of place like he felt kind of silly thinking something bad had happened but his gut instinct told him something bad did happen something was very very wrong and that he needed to call police and again intuition does not have a gender crime junkies listen to yours yeah it really is so important and like you said this guy was one of her regulars

like he knows Jessica and this is not something that she would just walk away from exactly so Craig decides to call 9-1-1 and here I'll play you a cup I want you to listen and tell me what you think

Muskegon I'm on one where is your emergency I don't know if it's an emergency I just go work I'm at the Exxon gas station on the road kind of remembered no Grand Haven okay and there's nobody here we weren't allowed me to pump gas but I did walk inside there's nobody there's car here there's a note card out fun

but it just is very suspicious why there's nobody here

yeah and even in that call you can kind of hear him second-guessing how serious this is like I don't even know if it's an emergency yeah right he's not panicking but you can hear in his voice that he just has this bad feeling he'd rather be safe than sorry and sure it's true she could have left early but I mean we know a little bit about her background her fiance's unemployed the family struggling financially as it is there's no way she would have risked her job by closing the store early now like we have seen so many times before the

protocol for police in that area would be normally to not get involved until 24 hours after Jessica was first reported missing but the scene at the gas station was so suspicious that they knew right away something was wrong here so other than Jessica just not being there what about the scene made it look out of the ordinary well when the first officers arrived they find Jessica's jacket in the back room and her car still in the parking lot which Craig pointed out in that nine one one call

all plus we had talked about the cash register which is a little bit open all of the money is still in the cash register and there's a $400 in cash in Jessica's purse which makes it incredibly clear to everyone that robbery wasn't the motive here and they decide to make the decision to call in more officers and treat this as a potential crime scene like a crime probably was committed here so when they bring in the team to process the gas station they noticed that outside behind the gas station like out

you're the back door there is this small dark stain smudged into the concrete that looks very much like it could be blood so they get a small sample they want to send it off for testing right away I mean they're trying to confirm whether this is Jessica's is it an assailant is it blood at all komori completely unrelated like I mean it could have happened anytime you don't but doesn't tell you when it was dropped there so those results are going to take a while but even without those results officers are fearing the worst that the target wasn't money merchandise

ice it really was Jessica so right away they make two calls to people that they want to talk to that they think might hold the key to Jessica's location the first is Jessica's fiance Dakota as soon as Dakota gets a ride to the gas station police immediately want to know his whereabouts like where were you this entire night can you account for them and Dakota's like listen I was home the entire night with her son and I don't know that I can prove it like it was just me but also we only have one car which is

sitting here in the gas station parking lot I wasn't able to get here now there's nothing in Dakota's past that really stands out to them as far as they know they have a great relationship they're going to verify his Alibi was cell records but we know that that's going to take time but for now they don't really see any reason to continue to look at him so the second person that police call was Jessica's manager Suh police want to know where she was more to see like okay I mean where were you at the time but has anything been going on

on recently any weird activity any weird customers like is there anything you can tell us that can give us a clue as to where Jessica might be now here's the thing in a real Stroke of Luck Sue just happened to be driving by the gas station that night like totally unrelated and she was driving by at the perfect time because she says that at the time she drove by she saw a strange minivan parked out back of the gas station

and and she tells police this was so suspicious to her that she actually stopped and watched because she thought someone was maybe stealing from the station so her and her husband who was in the car with her pulled over to check it out and see what was going on they didn't see any theft like nothing crazy that jumped out but they did see something weird because a man went to the trunk of the vehicle to adjust something quickly and then he's back in the car like in the driver seat and slams the door now Sue didn't get a

license plate number but she could see that it was a silver Town and Country minivan which is confirmed later by security footage is like from the nearby businesses in the area did she see the driver at all so not a great look at the driver but good enough that she can describe him as a white male about 6-feet tall she said that he was most likely between 30 and 40 years old with this wavy light brown hair and she says I don't recognize him like I don't recognize him as a regular customer he's definitely not someone that works there

but she does sit down with a sketch artist who puts together a composite of the man driving the van and here I'm going to send you the sketch really quick it looks like he kind of has small features like a thin nose maybe smaller close-set eyes the wavy hair is there I mean it's pretty much the guy you described yeah and I got I don't know if we're just getting like a little jaded I feel like all of these are blending together like seeing a lot of composite sketches lightweight actually ever been caught by a sketch because I'm feeling like no right so

so this isn't like a lot but here's the thing it is better than nothing so they show this composite sketch to the family and Shelly and both of Jessica's sisters don't know who this guy is he looks nothing like Jessica's fiance Dakota doesn't look like anyone she might have known so police are forced to release the sketch to the public on May 1st in hopes that someone is going to see this maybe recognize this guy and then come forward so hundreds of people see this sketch and actually hundreds of people actually come

forward with tips and the Norton Shores police are swamped trying to follow up on every single one but they are coming up empty-handed every single time and they're not able to find any trace of where Jessica might be okay but like what about the security footage from that night like I feel like that'd be the first place that you would go to find anything out so you think but that's the thing at the time there were no security cameras at the Exxon and Jessica's mom Shelly actually used to kind of pester her about that but Jessica would always tell her like wasn't it's fine but

but now it's not fine because there's no way for police to tell what happened in that store or who was there so without the footage investigators take the transaction records from the cash register and they use that to start putting together a timeline of what was happening at the station before Jessica went missing so one of the detectives on the scene that night tells the producers of disappeared episode someone is watching that Jessica had sold a lighter at 10:54 p.m. then Craig makes that

call at 11:07 p.m. so there's just a 13-minute window of time that's unaccounted for yes but I mean really it's even smaller than that because he got there looked for her and then called yeah I mean you're right like it we're talking seven eight minutes maybe wow well and it's even crazier because the manager drove by like right around the same time right yeah she also she drove by when this guy's fan who were presuming possibly took Jessica is like behind you so what

are the odds now even though everything seems like it should be in our favor we have a super small window we have somebody who was there during that window of time but even with that were just coming up empty but then on May 8 this is 12 Days After Jessica went missing investigators get the news that they've been dreading they get their DNA test results back the dark stain found behind the gas station was in fact blood and as Kevin dolak reported for ABC News the DNA was a match

match for Jessica with real fear for her safety now that the abduction scene so painfully likely the search goes into overdrive but even with multiple searches in and around Norton Shores all of the tips about the man in the sketch that silver minivan again it's as a Jessica vanished Into Thin Air the days go by time stretches on fewer and fewer people start coming forward with tips and eventually every lead is exhausted and the case goes cold but the police

never forget about it they can't forget the lead investigator on the case Detective Mike Kasher keeps in touch with Jessica's mom Shelly over the passing weeks and months to keep her updated on any new developments and to basically reassure her that they're never going to give up no matter how long this takes and then about seven months after Jessica vanishes Detective Mike is talking to Shelly and Shelly happens to ask him about Jessica's journal the one that she wrote in everyday she never read it and so she's asking to

the mic like listen were there any clues in there like did anything come of it like it had her most inner thoughts it had everything about her life like I was for sure thinking that something would be in there right and Mike's totally blown away because he's like what Journal I've never heard of a journal now this makes no sense to Shelley because right when Jessica went missing Shelley brought up that journal to Dakota and she asked him wasn't make sure that that gets turned over to police right

a way this is going to help them find her I really think so now Dakota had promised her that he was going to turn it right over to police but now she's learning that after seven months he has been keeping that journal a secret and there's no reason to have kept that a secret all this time unless he has something to hide

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as it turns out Jessica's fiance has been hiding more than just her journal Detective Mike sits down to read it as soon as Dakota hands it over and almost from the moment he opens the book and turns the very first page it becomes very clear that Dakota is not the loving and sensitive partner Jessica's mom and sisters believed him to be Mike is honestly shocked that her journal hasn't been destroyed or quote unquote lost because Jessica had written many times about Dakota being

very controlling and how unhappy she was with him like it is all they're tucked away between the pages were Jessica kept the secrets of her life and her relationship in between caring for her son and working full-time she'd stolen the precious few moments she had yourself each day usually late at night after she traded her contacts for her glasses to journal and that is where she poured her whole heart out about how trapped she felt how she worried about her future slipping away and how her relationship with Dakota

OTA had started to sour into something really ugly and wasn't Jessica's Family is horrified like they've known Dakota for years and they've spent so much time with him and through all of that they had no idea that any of this was going on that he was being controlling that sometimes he could be physically abusive like they thought that he and Jessica just shared the car and a cell phone to save money but they actually learn that it was a way for Dakota to track where Jessica was going and who she was communicating

with yeah and we know that monitoring communication is a major red flag when it comes to like domestic violence and a relationship not be in a good place okay I mean it's practically textbook plus Dakota was restricting her friendships like he doesn't like Jessica being on Facebook isolation he's in control of all of their money even though Jessica's the one actually going out and making the money so all of this is really like troubling signs of a controlling partner now most worrying of all though is an

incident that Jessica wrote about where Dakota had her pinned down like on the ground and their little son seven like toddled into the room right when all of this is going on so even Zevon wasn't like immune from all of this like he got exposed to it as well so by this time and we're seven months out police have gotten his cell phone records they have confirmed that he was at home where he said he was the entire time with the only cell phone they owned it was the only car they had he wouldn't have had any way to get there so though he has a good alibi

by now that they have this I mean this pain Sam in a totally new light so armed with this knowledge and you know the whole idea that he lied about this and I lied about their relationship police actually named him a person of interest for the first time now when questioned by police Dakota admits okay yes like I had jealousy issues yes our relationship was super Rocky even though we put on a happy face for friends and family but I swear I never got physical with her I had nothing to do with her disappearance

Curren and as shady as he looks as bad of a guy as he might have been Dakota's Alibis still holds firm the Norton Shores chief of police spoke to em live several months after the journal gets put in police's hands and he says listen while no one's been officially cleared since Jessica's gone missing Dakota has fully cooperated with the investigation and even though no one really likes him and even though her family is super upset about how they feel like he betrayed them

even they can't argue with the evidence like we've got to move on from Dakota the answers don't lie with him the problem is we still don't know where they lie and again her case kind of goes cold without Dakota ever being indicted with anything without any charges being filed against him there's just nothing lead after lead like this tapers off until investigators are at a standstill while Jessica's absence leaves a gaping hole in their lives her

only tries their best to carry on and to keep hope alive if nothing else in for her son but months and months passed with no new updates no new leads and no sign of Jessica until February of 2014 about 10 months after Jessica vanished when investigators finally get a break detective might told disappears producers back in 2016 that an investigator in Kalamazoo Michigan which is just over 80 miles south of where Jessica went missing

calls him with a familiar story a story about a young blond woman in her early 20s who was abducted dragged into a car and then sexually assaulted now this woman survived the ordeal and she was able to eventually identify her attacker someone that they had in custody named Brad Allen Mason now when they looked at him he was a convicted sex offender and a serial rapist with a penchant for kidnapping and indecent exposure okay I mean that's kind of familiar but

but Jessica was never found this girl got away and without having Jessica we have no idea if she was sexually assaulted I get that they're looking for any connection at this point but this doesn't feel very close now I I agree I mean I think again we're ten months out I think they're grasping for straws a little bit here it's at least a little similar with her we know this guy had a van she's gets this other girl gets put into a vehicle but I think what caught their attention was

him in relation to the sketch that they put out here I'm going to send you Brad's picture and you can tell me what you think I mean I guess I can kind of see it like the eyes or maybe similar but I mean it's definitely not a Dead Ringer no no and I mean it looks like he's a kind of similar I get why they need to look into it I mean especially again 10 months out right probably don't have much to go on you might as well look into this so when they look into this Brad guy he had a pretty long criminal record which I read about

on Fox 17s website so he spent six years in jail for felony criminal sexual conduct involving children before he was let out on parole in October of 2012 so according to disappeared when he was paroled and I think this is the interesting thing he was actually released to a halfway house not in Kalamazoo where that crime took place but in Norton Shores so his halfway house was literally right down the road from the Exxon gas station where Jessica worked and not only that

but many of his victims matched a very similar profile they were petite young white women in their mid-20s with blond hair and glasses which was exactly Jessica's like profile so I think it was that the idea that she matched his victim profile so much and he was right down the street when this happened that really had police looking at him now listen police like us they're not convinced but this is the best tip that they've had a long time and considering Brad's record it wouldn't be a shock to anyone

he had reoffended so with that in mind they want to find Brad Mason right now so they can follow up on what could be the lead that they've been waiting for and like maybe just maybe they're going to get to bring Jessica home but the problem is he's deceased Brad actually died by officer assisted suicide after he drew this very realistic fake gun on police when they came to arrest him for like his most recent rape charge so he had like modified this gun to make it look super

realistic he took off they always have that orange tip when they're fake he took that off he refused to drop it numerous times when officers asked him to and even in death Brad is still considered a person of interest in Jessica's disappearance like during this time he's not there to talk to they can't rule him out but because they can't talk to him and they can't rule him out eventually like the heat kind of dies everything cools off and they can't find anything like that was left behind actually linked him to her or prove that they'd ever even met

and it was extra hard to try and connect him because Brad didn't keep any kind of credit cards he kind of kept off of the grid so there was no way to use his like credit history or any kind of like Electronics to like tie him to the area or the place like literally just like seem like it could work but that was all they had just as if this feeling that maybe it could be him so once again investigators are forced to watch as a promising lead turns cold time keeps passing and in Jessica's absence the

you're hearing a family is kind of in flux at this point John Hogan reports for ABC 13 that Dakota gets arrested in 2014 and charged with several counts of selling marijuana Jessica's sister Samantha Who by this time has moved back to Norton Shores files for custody of their sons Evan and I mean she has this nasty custody battle with Dakota and Dakota's parents eventually she wins and the family you know it's a win but they're still trying to like struggle to adjust to their new normal without Jessica right

and then in 2016 just two weeks before the third anniversary of Jessica's disappearance something terrible happens and the aftermath of this changes everything for the Herring a family and the investigation

early on the morning of Saturday April 16th this is 2016 now a 16 year old girl in Muskegon County Michigan is abducted so this girl who's never been named publicly because she's a minor is lost after leaving a party and so she's walking along the side of the road to find her way back towards her house when according to ABC 13 this guy pulls over and asks if she wants to use his cell phone and she's like yep it sure like I'm lost that that's great and she reaches out for it but instead

giving it to her this guy says know if you want to use it you have to come in my car first and use it in here so I mean again she's lost she feels a little bit desperate she's eager to call a friend to her parents like anyone familiar anyone who can come help her so she gets into his 2013 silver Chrysler Town and Country minivan that's the same van that the manager saw parked behind the gas station right exactly as soon as she gets in

she is flooded with fear when the man locks the doors and pulls a gun on her before driving off the terrified girl manages to jump out of her attackers moving car and she runs screaming to a nearby house for help with the man calling after her now thanks to a Good Samaritan who lets her in their house she survives this awful encounter with only some minor scrapes and bruising so once police are called she's able to describe both the car and her would-be kidnapper according to her

reporter for the Detroit Free Press this girl was also able to pick out a face in a line up right away with 0 hesitation which gives police an actual name Jeffrey Willis he's 46 years old a married man who works an overnight shift at the local Herman Miller Factory in Muskegon County now while Jeffrey doesn't have a criminal record or any convictions he's shown up on law enforcement's radar sort of intermittently for years for like little stuff like speed

and tickets or whatever and he also had the cops called on him back in 2007 for filming a woman in a Sam's Club parking lot without her consent that's a little bit different than the speeding ticket yeah and once he got fired from a job as a janitor at an elementary school for looking at porn on the school's computer which if you ask me warrants more than a firing life feels like a red flag of some sort but yeah how do I know so even without a record something about Jeffrey's

it's off alarms in investigators Minds because his name sounds awfully familiar so they go back and look in their files and sure enough there is the connection waiting for them in one of their most baffling cold cases it literally sends shivers down their spines because not only was Jeffrey Willis question back in 2013 in connection with Jessica Herring as disappearance but police had also made note in the case File that at the time he

he had recently cleaned out his van and Britt I think he looks even more like the sketch than Brad did and here I'm going to send you a side-by-side you guys can all see these pictures as well they're on our blog if you want to check them out crime jerky podcast.com but but what do you think oh my gosh yes way more than Brad like those small features that I mentioned earlier the narrow nose they closed that eyes they're all there and his hair color even matches better than Brad yeah this is way more effective

before I couldn't see what they were looking for between Brad and the sketch I a hundred percent see the similarities between Jeffrey in the sketch definitely so police get a search warrant looking for anything to connect Jeffrey to the attempted kidnapping of this 16 year old girl police like turned his house and his van inside out and what they find is honestly horrific because what looks like a typical family car on the outside is actually a nightmare on Wheels because according to the Detroit Free Press police turn up

up rope handcuffs a long metal bar with wrist restraints attached to them chains a ball gag pornographic material of women tied up Viagra video cameras sex toys lubricant rubber gloves batting gloves a 22 caliber semi-automatic pistol with ammunition and the serial number filed off he had insulin five syringes and one including like it was full with liquid that they suspect was a set

have now Jeffrey's house in Muskegon is just as creepy I saw pictures of it while I was researching for this case and it is so much worse because I feel like I've how normal it looks like from the outside it's this bright yellow door a welcome mat like nothing that would make me side eye if I were driving by but again the inside is just as disturbing and it's Jeffrey's computer that gives police a window into a truly Disturbed mind police recover

child pornography off the computer along with hundreds of videos of women being raped tortured and even murdered so according to crime watch Daily some of the videos are acted out like clearly fictional but some are not oh so he's like into snuff films oh yeah I mean Geoffrey is the worst of the absolute worse and you have to think that the girl who got away I mean she really got away with her life I mean it seems to me like Jeffrey's dark and like messed up fantasies were

to spill over into his daily life and he was basically trying to turn his fantasies into the worst kind of reality on May 17 this is about a month after that girl escaped her abductors clutches Jeffrey is arrested and charged with attempted kidnapping during this time he's also officially named as a person of interest in Jessica's disappearance but as the investigation continues police find evidence that he's connected to multiple cold cases in the area all involving missing or murdered young women in

including the unsolved shooting death of a woman named Rebecca blech now Rebecca was shot in the head back in 2014 in broad daylight she was literally just jogging in Dalton township Michigan which is about 20 miles north of where Jessica went missing from and according to the Detroit Free Press shell casings were found near where she was killed and they were matched to the 22 caliber pistol that was found in Jeffrey's van now in addition to that police also find her DNA on the batting gloves in Jeffries

one as well and that alone is enough for a murder charge and Jeffrey is ordered to stand trial for Rebecca's murder now meanwhile back in Norton Shores Jessica's Family is waiting anxiously obviously they've heard about this guy they've heard about the possible connections and after three agonizing years with no trace of Jessica honestly at this point it's almost like too much for them to hope that this connection is going to bring them answers even though they're glad this Killers off the streets like I think they're looking at this with like a little bit of skepticism like we don't want to get our hopes up again

yeah but they're about to learn that police found something on Jeffrey's computer that could lead them to the answers that they have waited so long for

in addition to the horror show of snuff films and child pornography on his laptop right there on his hard drive is a folder labeled VI C s-- fix which police believe is short for victims and their in the folder is a sub folder labeled Jay LH Jessica hearing a JH right Jessica Lynn Herring a jlh

inside that folder are more child porn and pictures of Jessica herself now the file name ends with d z13 like clearly a code but not like a genius code it's pretty easy to decipher because basically each letter corresponds with a number and Lynn Moore reported for MLive that you know they basically matched everything up they decipher the code again not a super card code to decipher but when they look at that code

DZ 1 3 and they attach numbers to that like a is 1 B is 2 DZ 1 3 is 4 26:13 that's the day that Jessica disappeared now the folder with Jessica's name isn't the only one there's another folder labeled RSB for Rebecca Sue blech with copies of articles about her death a wanted poster for her killer and according to MLive a picture of a woman in a

Keeney laying on a bed who looks a lot like Rebecca now this file has got the same type of code at the end as well in this case it was f z+ c 1 for which using the same formula is 6 29:14 which unsurprisingly is the day that Rebecca was murdered now we talked before about how serial killers keep trophies of their victims so with only two victims Jeffrey doesn't appear to be a serial killer

quite yet but clearly I mean we can see him leaning towards sadism and the documentation on his computer seemed to point like to someone well on their way and Beyond the van and the photos of Jessica on his hard drive Witnesses come forward during the investigation who actually placed Jeffrey at the gas station where Jessica worked not necessarily at the time that night but like in the past so there was this reporter Heather Walker who talked to some of Jeffrey's co-workers for WOD TV and they

call going with him to that exact Exxon station where Jessica worked since it was just about five minutes away from the factory that he worked at and right on the way between where Jeffrey lived and the factory where he worked so it's like a natural spot on his commute exactly and we know now that for sure he went there he would have had some interaction with her now another one of Jessica's regulars a woman named Brenda puts Jeffrey inside the Exxon stored the night before she disappeared this is according to court records

this Brenda woman says that she was talking to Jessica and she was actually sharing the same fears that Jessica's mom Shelly had just about her working at the store so late at night that you know your boyfriend should be looking out for you like aren't you scared and at this point while she's having this conversation Brenda says that Jeffrey interrupts their conversation and said that Jessica's customers were looking out for her too and she said that when she saw Jessica like here this that she could tell Jessica seemed totally

put off by his response like literally started shivering she was so put off by it and Brenda said that she got such a bad feeling from Jeffrey and Jessica's reaction that she waited in her car outside the gas station just to make sure that he left that night and the very next day Jessica disappeared in September 2016 this is three months after he's charged for Rebecca's murder Jeffrey is officially charged with jessyca's murder as well okay I mean that's great news but we still don't have Jessica

no and that is still the big hurdle to overcome we all know that nobody cases are so much harder to take to trial and often they don't ever get taken to trial for that reason I mean just look at the case of illicit Ernie I Sarah has been fighting till she's blue in the face she believes it is so clear what happened to her sister which just a little side I don't know if you all know this but Sarah has started her own podcast called voices for justice where I mean she's going into so many details about her sister's case it's insane you have to listen but in that case there's still nobody so

East and prosecutors are hesitant to take that to trial and I mean it's got to be a concern in Jessica's case as well for the da I might it's you know you're trying to prove motive you're trying to prove where she is and I'm sure it leaves a door open for the defense to be like you can't prove that she's been murdered yeah how can how can you send this guy to jail if you can't even prove that that she's for sure dead maybe she walked away so while you know it's great that we have this guy were pretty sure we know what happened I think we still need to find Jessica so that it can

like be a shoo-in to take to trial but more than anything Shelly Angel Samantha they want to know where Jessica's body is to they can finally bring her home and lay her to rest but nobody knows where it is well maybe I should say it's never been recovered because there actually might be someone who does know according to court records Jeffries first cousin and good friend a guy named Kevin Bloom got a phone call on April 27th telling him to come over because they were

a party at Jeffrey's plays at this place that he owned and maybe have a foursome so you know like usual party so Kevin says that he went over there he goes into the basement where he sees Jeffrey standing next to a naked woman that Jeffrey called quote gas station girl and he said that this woman was laying face down on a sheet with her hands tied and once he got a good look at the woman's face Kevin says that it was for sure Jessica she had some kind of like liquid coming from a wound on her head presumably

I mean I would think blood and he says that she wasn't moving and from what he could tell she was already deceased and Jeffrey admitted to him at least he says that yes I sexually assaulted her now he also saw that there was a video camera setup as if Jeffrey had been making like some horrific videos of his own I mean we talked about the stuff on his computer I mean I guess I think he was clearly taking it from a point of being an observer to now as a parent acting this out yeah and making his own stuff that you know who knows where he was planning on Distributing this

if you didn't already right in the end Kevin says he actually helped Jeffrey Barry Jessica's body okay so he knows so I think he knows but eventually later on Kevin claims that he made all of this up which to me feels super Shady because normally I mean we've talked about this in so many cases like there's usually this like order to how confessions come about and usually it's like I had nothing to do that nothing I kind of know someone okay I kind of did it and

he's almost like in the reverse like he comes out being like I did everything I helped her beriberi her body and now he's saying like JK made it all up so I have a hard time believing that maybe he didn't like get cold feet about like his confession or being honest but honest the first time around are not according to MLive there's nobody in the burial spot that Kevin takes investigators to I mean so he did lead them somewhere and I don't know the order of how this happened maybe he led them there they didn't find her and then he's like JK made it up I mean but they had cadaver dog

which indicated that like a body had never been there at all and in addition to that the location doesn't match like cell phone tower ping so obviously they're trying to like match up his story with some kind of evidence and none of it is adding up Plus in another Shady move Kevin wipes all of the data off of his phone and removes the hard drive from his computer before he hands them over to police which just makes me think that he's lying even more like if you're being honest if you had nothing to do with it what are you afraid of them finding

Ting I mean in my mind I almost think he was involved in the same kind of stuff that Jeffrey was yeah and plus like cousins are not no one just calls up a friend to come over after they've committed a ton of sex crimes and murder in their basement unless they know for a fact that person is going to participate or help them in some way I'm with you I think he had possibly something more to do with jessyca's murder than he's letting on and police agree So eventually Kevin is charged with lying to police and being an accessory after the fact

act now he just spends a little over a year in prison and gets five years probation and an electronic GPS monitoring to track his whereabouts at all times now even though this GPS tracker doesn't lead police to the truth I mean I'm sure there was part of the Hope like he would go back to the scene of the crime and Kevin has never admitted the real location where Jessica is buried it doesn't matter in the end because Jeffrey Willis is found guilty of murdering both Rebecca blech and Jessica Herring a and he is sentenced to life without

Parole in both charges despite a new tip that came in just in October of 2019 Jessica's body still hasn't been found and although Jessica's murder is in prison for his crime you know I don't feel like her family is fully at rest because this past December another Christmas Past without bringing their daughter home and I think every day they're going to continue looking for her until they can find Jessica

if you want to see any of the pictures we mentioned in this podcast you can find all of that along with our source material at our website crime junkie podcast.com and be sure to follow us on Instagram at crime junkie podcast will be back next week with a brand new episode but if you want a lighter story stick

round or prophet of the month

crime junkie is an audio Chuck production so what do you think Chuck do you approve okay Ashley you said we have a lighter story about a profit which we do but I am going to give a little content warning it gets a little bit dark in the middle there are no I see your face there are no dead dog this is the first time we've ever recorded profit of the month in person I might get to see you cry so today we are talking about

about cash who was submitted by his mom and our listener Jenna and Jenna was finally moving out of her apartment and getting ready to rent a house with a garage which like the dream and she could finally get a profit of her own and there are chickens on the property so she was like okay I have to make sure that like the dog is going to be okay with chickens and like Charlie would kill all the chickens I love Charlie yeah I was yeah my dogs are the same way

so she found his cattle dog who actually was living in a foster home that had chickens and she called the shelter and they like oh yeah he'd be great why don't you come out and meet him here at the shelter will get the foster dad to bring him in all that stuff so she talked to her boyfriend and he's like well like it's going to be hard to find a rescue who's good with chickens like we should probably at least check it out of course checking it out turns into filing adoption papers and possible look at puppies all right so they meet this dog and Jenna knew immediately that she was in love with him she called her boyfriend

Rod over his dog Sage to make sure like the pups both got along and they were a perfect match Sage her boyfriends dog loves playing Fetch and this puppet had zero interest in Fetch but loves herding dogs apart playing fetch so they got along right off the bat and like what more could you ask for it was getting late they couldn't adopt him that night but she was talking to the foster dad and he was like you know this dog just came available for adoption just like oh

like that's cool he's like yeah he was in evidence like in evidence yeah like I read this from my little crime junkie ears perk up and like that makes the dog better I am only like imagine him in the Box taped up with his lies I know that's not how he was but I like the foster dad doesn't know much or it doesn't disclose much that he's just like yeah he was part of an animal abuse case and he was evidence in the trial and so Jenna was like oh that's that's really interesting but like they couldn't fill out the paperwork that night the the shelter was closing so she's like okay tomorrow we're going to finish this

I get this dog and content warning right now because we're going to find out why this dog wasn't evidence and it gets a little bit gruesome so the next day when Jenna's filling out all the paperwork to adopt the desk clerk at the children was like Hey like you heard the song was in evidence do you know anything about it and she was like no you know they just kind of mentioned it and the desk clerk kind of goes through what had happened to this dog and this dog had been owned by these two guys and he hadn't been neutered and a lot of times when that happens dogs especially me

all dogs get a little aggressive a little aggressive a little bit curious they don't always stick around they wander around looking for looking for someone to hook up with like getting you do I have no idea but it her dog did you used to roam looking for people look away I've known your whole life you don't get it anyway these two guys decide that they're going to they're gonna they're gonna take care of this problem by stop I don't I'm done okay by taking matters into their own hands

and it didn't go well oh my God and they basically left him for dead but this is How brave this profit is he's basically bleeding out he runs to the neighbor's house the neighbor recognizes the dog confronts these two guys who tell the neighbor what they did and this Angel neighbor goes right back into their house calls 9-1-1 and immediately there's a deputy arresting the two guys and rushing this dog to an emergency vet where

his life was saved so he he are you okay no I just who does that monsters like I even have here my nose like supposedly these men are humans I am not convinced of it to be completely honest do you have any idea like any follow up on these guys I think are they still in prison or did they get a slap on the wrist cause I'm about to I'm about to flip this table Jenna actually included a couple of Link's about the case and about the trial they did play were charged with it I believe they were convicted but this

goes into foster care and starts getting rehabilitated he eventually comes up for adoption and Jenna gets to adopt him and he's helping his best life and actually a couple days after she adopted him the news found out that this dog who was involved in this case got his forever home and they came out and did a story on him and we'll link to that on our website and the dog seems cash now and he's living his best life he's come a long way he had a huge fear of men

which like same now I mean lately understandable right and really really bad separation anxiety he went I'm literally chewed through the front door when Jenna wasn't at home because he's so badly wanted to be with her but he's such a good dog he has amazing recall like he comes back to her all the time and like she's like I don't this dog would have never run away I don't understand like if that's the reason they did that horrible thing that's not the dog she has today and he knows a ton of

and he recently started agility training which he absolutely loves and he also loves stuffed animals and this like oh just made me warm all over he doesn't shred them like my dogs do like my dog's systematically dismember them like take all the stuff out know they take a leg off like no like it's dark they take one leg off and they take another leg off and they take the art that's like reverse hangman but he loves them and he doesn't shred them he has a huge basketball and whenever Jenna grabs a leash to take him on a walk or a

car ride or to the dog park he goes to his little basket and shuffled around to find a new stuff defriend to take on their adventure with him and tries to take a special stuffed animal friend with him wherever they go and his favorite is this giant chicken stuffed animal and it's literally almost the size of cash himself let me show you a picture real quick my God he's adorable he's so cute and we'll have pictures of cash and his big chicken friend on our website

um along with the links to the news articles about this amazing Brave Little profit I just feel like there's so much we can learn from dogs about forgiveness oh 100% the stock has no reason to ever look at a human kindly let alone lovingly I mean when you say it all the time like we don't we don't deserve them but just that I mean I know he's scared of them but that he would like open after I got cry you're gonna cry just that he would like open up to another human and like he

he still wants to be around her when he like knows what we're capable of you know as like a species like some of us are so awful yeah I love dogs so I reached out to Jenna and like Ashley said we don't deserve dogs but dogs still need homes and there are millions of people out there who love them and give them loving homes so I reach out to Jenna to talk to her about the shelter that she got cash from and she sent me a link give me their names and

found a senior prep it which like you know we love you yeah we special place in our heart and I'm not sure I know how to pronounce his name is I might put you up his name is like hi he is a border collie Newfoundland mix which is just like the biggest fluffiest boy in the world again he's a senior so he's a little bit older but he was surrendered because his owner had to move into a residency that didn't allow dogs or at least talks of his eyes because he is a big boy

oy but if you just want like a new best friend and get to skip like all the puppy stuff this is your boy he's a social butterfly he loves other dogs and other people and he really just wants to hang out with you and I think like something great about like those bigger breeds and especially as they get into their senior years like they don't actually require a ton of physical activity the way like consider cuddling a physic I know I'm like the way like Charlie is I mean even even though Charlie is almost nine now I mean he's like requires so

much physical activity he's a hard dog to own but like some of these older especially big breed dogs like they just want to lay around and they want to Netflix and cuddle yeah yeah and something I was reading about loci in his like little profile which again will link to on our website is his adoption fee has been reduced which usually means that he's been there for a while when he's harder to place which a senior big dog is so you guys check out like I check out the rescue he's from willing to all of it at our website check out the shelter where he is it's

in Phoenix organ they have a ton of adoptable pets there you know it was open your heart open your heart open your home