October 13, 2025 • 28 mins
Jessica Starr was 26 years old when she was murdered outside the trailer she was staying at in 2011. Despite friends and family having theories as to what happened, they feel that police in Elkhart, Indiana, have all but abandoned them in their search for justice.
Crime Junkie is hosted by Ashley Flowers and Brit Prawat.
Text Ashley at 317-733-7485 to talk all things true crime, get behind the scenes updates, and more!
Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
- If you have any information about the murder of Jessica Starr, you can contact the Elkhart Police Department by calling 574-295-7070 or you can submit tips to us by emailing tips@crimejunkie.com.
- To learn more about the Elkhart County Safe Haven and the work of YWCA North Central Indiana, visit their website by following this link.
- Instagram: @crimejunkiepodcast | @audiochuck
- Twitter: @CrimeJunkiePod | @audiochuck
- TikTok: @crimejunkiepodcast
- Facebook: /CrimeJunkiePodcast | /audiochuckllc
Crime Junkie is hosted by Ashley Flowers and Brit Prawat.
- Instagram: @ashleyflowers | @britprawat
- Twitter: @Ash_Flowers | @britprawat
- TikTok: @ashleyflowerscrimejunkie
- Facebook: /AshleyFlowers.AF
Text Ashley at 317-733-7485 to talk all things true crime, get behind the scenes updates, and more!
Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
High crime junkies. I'm your host, Ashley Flowers, and today
Britt and I are going to divide and conquer because
two Indiana cases recently came across my desk that are
both pretty recent and both in need of some eyes
and ears. So you get two episodes in your feed today,
one from me and then one from Britt. And if
you follow me on social you'll know I was recently
(00:22):
back near my hometown scoping out an area in Elkhart,
Indiana that was once a crime scene because I just
needed to see it for myself. How did someone lay
in wait blitz attack a young woman, then drag her
to the side of her trailer and cut her from
ear to ear without a single witness seeing it didn't
(00:44):
seem possible. And how have police not tracked down her
killer after fourteen years. Well, being at the scene and
doing some digging of our own has made it pretty
clear that the police bungled the investigation and it might
be up to all of us now to help the
family get justice. And we might be close because our
(01:06):
digging led to someone who said that they know what happened,
and based on who they're connected to, they could be
telling the truth. This is the story of Jessica Starr.
Speaker 2 (01:50):
Bring one wears your emergency.
Speaker 3 (01:54):
It's better cook anana on long anyway our counting on
the couch and uh, one of my mom's friends getting
home from work on a run out the.
Speaker 2 (02:09):
Deck and it looked scringing and then she like she
got like her an cooked on her mouth and she
got through the way. Let me come on to get
right away.
Speaker 1 (02:26):
That was part of a call that an eleven year
old named Jeff made to dispatchers just after eleven thirty
pm on August eighth, twenty eleven, from inside his trailer.
He'd been home with his mom and little brother, expecting
his mom's roommate and co worker, Jessica Starr to be
coming home any minute like any other normal night, but
he's pretty sure that he just heard her getting attacked
(02:48):
in front of their home, and now having called the police,
he is staring out the open front door into the
pitch black night, watching his mom call for Jessica from
the front porch with her gun in hand, afraid that
someone might still be out there, but it is now
completely silent. They can see Jessica's two door Pontiac part
(03:11):
close to their front porch in front of the house,
but the driver's side door is wide open. Just then,
Jeff and his mom, Terry, heard this rustling sound at
the side of the house, almost like someone was running off,
but her children's safety was her first priority. Terry stays
on the porch, gun in hand, waiting for police to arrive,
(03:33):
and thank god, it's not long. Police cars pull down
the dark road and as soon as their cars are
in part cops are scouring the property and it's when
they walk to the side of the house, the side
where Jeff and Terry heard that rustling.
Speaker 4 (03:47):
That's when they find Jessica, and it's bad.
Speaker 1 (03:50):
She's got bruises on her arms, her throat has been
cut and she'd been stabbed, so by the time they
get to her, it's too late, already gone. Police are
baffled by the brazen attack, and the fact that there
were witnesses, i mean, in the house that she was
headed towards makes it all the more confounding but also
(04:11):
promising for the now homicide investigation.
Speaker 4 (04:15):
So police go to Jeff.
Speaker 1 (04:17):
Like, tell us everything you saw and heard he told
us recently what he shared with them fourteen years ago.
He said that he was laying in the living room
with his brother, waiting for Jessica to get home. He's
on his game boy when he hears this noise by
the front door. Now, all these years later, he says,
he can't exactly remember what that noise was. But he
(04:38):
got up and looked out this little window at the
top of the front door, except he couldn't see anything.
It was like completely dark. Now at the time, it
didn't occur to him that it shouldn't have been pitch
black because his mom always left the porch light on.
But young boy, oblivious to that kind of detail. He
just went back to lie down and kept playing his game.
(04:59):
Except that didn't last long. Soon after, he started hearing screaming,
and not just any screaming, I mean this was primal,
guttural screaming coming from somewhere in the front yard. At first,
he thought it might be some sort of animal like
cats fighting, before he had that chilling realization that it
was Jessica. And whatever happened next happened very quickly, like
(05:23):
within minutes. Jeff says that it sounded to him like
Jessica made it to the front porch, but someone put
their hand over her mouth. To muffle her screams and
dragged her away once the screaming stopped. Jeff says that
he was almost in shock for like a couple of seconds,
but when he snapped out of it, he snuck to
his mom's room to tell her what was happening. Now,
(05:43):
she's sound asleep at the time, and from there, the
loud fan that she kept running likely was drowning out
all the noise. But any parent knows that a paniced
shake from your child will jolt you right awake. So
that's when she told Jeff to bring her her gun
and call police. Based on jeff story and what police
see in front of them, Jessica's immediate family believe that
(06:05):
police built out this theory. Jessica's car is parked to
the right of the house Dora a jar, and police
see that there are groceries in the back seats, so
it looks like Jessica got home and parked and maybe
it was about to take the groceries out when she's attacked.
I mean, there's even fresh mud that's kicked up on
the side of that open door, so it looks like
there was a struggle. But what they don't see there
(06:28):
is any blood. The cut that Jessica suffered to her
throat would have been super bloody, so that obviously didn't
happen at the car, which means that they likely would
have had to incapacitate her in some other way, either
just by overpowering her and grabbing her or with a weapon.
And they actually think it's probably option B because of
(06:50):
the extensive bruising that she had to her arms and
laying in the yard close to her body, they actually
find a baseball bat size branch, and all of this
had to have been premeditated. The branch likely came from
a brush.
Speaker 4 (07:07):
Pile at the back of the trailer.
Speaker 1 (07:10):
So a weapon was picked beforehand. Not to mention, the
killer obviously had a knife on them, which they did
not leave behind like this branch. And then just off
to the right, if you're looking at the trailer straight on,
they see an area where some of the grass is
like stamped down, like someone was almost like crouching there
for a while, but from the street, Jessica probably wouldn't
(07:32):
have been able to see someone waiting for her if
they were tucked into the brush enough. And then finally
there's that sound that Jeff first heard it turns out
the reason the porch was so dark when Jeff looked
out the window that first time was because the porch
light bulb was missing. Now, Terry was sure that the
light had been on when she went to bed that night,
(07:54):
so likely the first sound that Jeff heard was either
someone tall enough unscrewing the bulb and but just being
loud about it, or someone shorter, maybe with the help
of something, or someone like being hoisted up to remove it.
So whoever this is, they got their weapons, they made
sure it was dark, and then they laid in wait
(08:15):
for Jessica. They blitz attacked her at her car, and
from Jeff's account, it sounds like she tried to run
up to the front door and she screamed for help,
but they got a hold of her and dragged her
off the porch to the side of the house, where
they swiftly and thoughtlessly slaughtered her. And then they took
off into the night with just the knife and the
porch's light bulb. They left everything else, including Jessica's purse,
(08:40):
which leads me and Jessica's family to believe that this
wasn't a random robbery. Jessica was targeted they knew her routine,
where and when she lived, when she'd be coming home,
where she would park, when she did. This was about
killing her, so it was now going to be about
finding who would have motive for that. Except if physical
(09:03):
evidence was the way to do that, police dropped the
ball right from the beginning. Jessica's family told us that
when they showed up outside the trailer the very next
evening for a candlelight vigil, Jessica's car was still just
sitting there. Police hadn't taken it. They hadn't moved it,
hadn't even taped it off. In fact, most of the
(09:25):
scene isn't taped off. So of course as people are grieving,
they're like putting their candles on her car, they're walking
all over the yard, and I mean to no fault
of their own, like by the way, because how would
they know not to go anywhere or touch anything if
the police in charge don't tell you not to. It's
not a citizen's job to collect and preserve evidence. They're
(09:47):
trusting the police to do that. Now, did they do
that at all? Did they process anything the first night?
Maybe I can't tell you because the police wouldn't talk
to us for this episode. They denied our foyer request
as well, But in talking to Jessica's family, they have
their doubts whether the car was even fingerprinted, because I mean,
(10:09):
you would usually tow the car if it's part of
an investigation, but her family told us that they never
even moved the car from where Jessica parked it, and
when her family got it back a few days after
her death, they told us that they didn't see any fingerprint, dust,
or any evidence that they had done any real processing
of the vehicle. But that's just the start of their
many complaints about how Elkhart Peedi seemed to just not
(10:32):
care about finding Jessica's killer. From their perspective, it seems
like police just leave a bunch of potential evidence behind,
like blood on the ground where Jessica was found, or
possible footprint by her car where that mud was kicked up.
Jessica's family even mentioned a handprint on the top of
the car, although they clarified that they aren't sure if
it was from the attack or if it was there before,
(10:55):
but worth checking. I think Jessica's dad also doesn't think
that they asked neighbors for any camera footage or from
the grocery store that she was working at before she
went home. I mean, it's basic stuff that just doesn't
seem like it was done. And even though we couldn't
get the files, you might think, oh well, Ashley, you
(11:15):
guys talk to the family. Surely the police at least
told them what was or wasn't done. Nope. According to
Jessica's family, police weren't keeping the family updated, so they're
assuming the worst. Now. I grew up right around here.
Elkhart is kind of a small town. People talk what's real,
(11:35):
what's rumors? You never really know. But Jeff told our
reporter that he thinks he remembers hearing something about police
getting DNA from under Jessica's fingernails, which makes sense because
after her autopsy they said her arm was broken, and that,
combined with the bruising, makes me think that she fought
like hell. But if they did get something, they have
(11:57):
never spoken out publicly and said that. So is their
DNA profile? Was it good enough for Cotis? Was it
ever compared to anyone specifically? Was it ever compared to
Jessica's ex because immediately that is who her family became
suspicious of. Thirty two year old Tavares Browning, who everyone
(12:18):
calls Bey. They was actually the reason Jessica was living
with Terry in the first place. They had dated for
a few years. They had been living together, but they
broke up a couple of months before this in April,
and then Terry offered Jessica a place to stay while
she got back on her feet. Now everyone has something
to say about Bee, specifically about how tumultuous their relationship was,
(12:41):
when her family and friends told us that they never
saw or heard of any physical abuse from him towards Jessica,
but he was allegedly a verbal and emotional abuser, and
according to Jessica's friends, after he and Jessica broke up,
he started stalking her. He even showed up at her work.
Now her coworkers were aware, and they didn't let her
(13:02):
leave or walk to her car without someone else with her.
One of her friends told us that there had been
talk of a restraining order at some point, but she
doesn't think Jessica actually got one, and I think that's
correct because we couldn't find record of one with local courts. Now.
Bey is a drug dealer with a history of battery charges,
(13:24):
although those battery charges were from years before he and
Jessica even dated, and he was only ever convicted of
two of those charges, one in nineteen ninety eight and
one in nineteen ninety nine. But the timing of what
happened to Jessica stands out to me. I mean, not
only is leaving an abusive relationship one of the most
dangerous times for a victim, but also Jessica just started
(13:47):
seeing someone new, so maybe that's motive.
Speaker 4 (13:51):
But here's the thing.
Speaker 1 (13:53):
According to Jessica's family, police told them that they went
to Bay's home the night that Jessica was killed, because
I mean, that's how quick they were hearing about him.
And when they arrived, he was in bed with another
woman and looked like he had just woken up. Based
on Jessica's brother's recollection, he thinks that detectives assumed he
wouldn't have been able to get back to wherever he
(14:15):
was staying and clean up and stuff before police got
there that night. Although honestly, I'm a little skeptical about this.
I'm not sure exactly how long it was between when
the murder took place and when police turned up at
Bay's door, but police likely have the details that we
are lacking, and based on what they have and know,
they quickly rule him out. And maybe the other thing
(14:37):
that they have is DNA, and maybe they know that
the profile they have is in a.
Speaker 4 (14:42):
Match to him.
Speaker 1 (14:43):
To me, that would be worth saying publicly, but they haven't,
so I'm not making any assumptions. They very well could
have just ruled him out based on him being home.
There's also a world where he's involved directly or indirectly,
but didn't actually do. Jessica's family laid out a couple
of scenarios for me. They're thinking is that if it
(15:06):
wasn't Bee, he may have orchestrated it, or someone may
have killed Jessica in.
Speaker 4 (15:12):
Order to hurt him.
Speaker 1 (15:14):
Despite being a small time drug dealer, Jessica's family told
us that he had this way of luring people into
his web and manipulating those around him. So maybe he
ticked someone off or got on someone's bad side enough
to where they killed Jessica to get back at him.
I mean, he was clearly still attached to Jessica in
some way and maybe someone else knew that. Now to
(15:37):
his credit, the one thing Jessica's family does say is
that he was absolutely distraught when she died, so if
he was involved, it actually makes way more sense to
them that this was someone else who carried it out.
And really that's even more based on what they know
about the attack. They don't think that Bee would have
(15:59):
needed a true branch to take Jessica down. I mean,
he's pretty tall and she's on the shorter side, so
they think his bare hands would have been enough. You
use the tree branch if you need help overpowering her, say,
if you were smaller, physically weaker, maybe a woman around
Jessica's same size, which makes something a neighbor kid heard
(16:22):
the night of Jessica's murder all the more interesting. When
police interviewed neighbors, one seventeen year old kid in the
home across the street did remember hearing something that night.
He claims he heard screaming and then after he heard
a woman's voice saying, well, we got to get out
(16:44):
of here now. In the moment, his brain was trying
to put what he was hearing into context of his
normal life, so he thought that may have been someone
calling for their dog, but he didn't see anything.
Speaker 4 (16:56):
Now this is super.
Speaker 1 (16:57):
Interesting because there is a group of women in Jessica's orbit,
who her family learned about within a few months after
her death. You see, Jessica actually had two jobs when
she was killed. The first was at a grocery store
and the second was at a local factory, and Jessica's
dad hears that some of the women she worked with
at the factory ran in the same circles as Bey. Now,
(17:22):
they weren't happy that she'd broken up with him. Allegedly,
they told her that she needed to go back to
her man and it wasn't right that she left him. Now,
the thing is, I don't know if police ever looked
into this group of women, despite Jessica's family reporting all
of this to them. It's one of the questions I
wanted to ask them most if they would have agreed.
Speaker 4 (17:42):
To talk to us.
Speaker 1 (17:43):
But if they didn't look into this, it's probably because
they directed their attention to more obvious suspects like this
guy named Josh. And listen, it's for good reason that
they looked at him early on. Even if the incident
that makes him so suspicious happened nearly a decade ago,
it is still horrific. So, according to Jessica's brother and
(18:05):
sister in law. This guy, Josh went to high school
with Jessica back in two thousand and one when she
was eighteen, and he was really into her, but she
wasn't in to him, which apparently pissed him off. So
one morning before school, he came to her house, grabbed
a tire iron out of her garage, and beat her
with it while also allegedly attempting to sexually assault her.
(18:30):
Now he got caught that very day because dude literally
went to school with her blood still on his hoodie,
and he's served almost three years for that. But as
unhinged as this man is, police end up finding out
that he was in Michigan at the time that Jessica
was killed, so they rule him off the list too.
(18:52):
But the list of potential suspects keeps growing the more
they learn about Jessica. Not because she was into anything bad,
I'm quite the opposite. Actually, she took every bad thing
that happened to her and used it as a drive
to do good. Her family told us that she had
worked as a legal assistant in the prosecutor's office shortly
before her murder, and she sometimes stepped in as a
(19:14):
liaison for victims of domestic violence, which can be a
dangerous position. So I mean I kind of wondered, like, oh,
what if she got involved in a case where someone
else's abusive partner would want to retaliate against her. So
I had our team reach out to the former prosecutor
who Jessica worked under, But unfortunately he doesn't remember any
cases that she would have helped out with where that
(19:35):
could have been a concern. I mean, he's familiar with
Jessica's case, obviously, and in his opinion, that's not a
likely scenario, he said, based on what he knows, he
thinks it likely would have been someone close to Jessica.
And so we're right back to where we started. Over
the years, without anywhere to place blame, people just go
(19:58):
looking for it. Many times it's fallen on Terry. I mean,
some of Jessica's friends can't help, but wonder if Terry
could know more than she's saying. They also don't like
that Terry didn't go looking for Jessica when she went
out onto the porch with her gun. But let me
stop you right there. Like first of all, fight flight freeze,
you don't know till you're in it. I mean, the
(20:19):
fact that she's even on the porch with her gun,
to me is a lot, and she is a mom
with two little kids in the house. I don't blame
her for not wanting to leave the doorway open when
there is a mystery assailant outside. And those are the
same feelings that Jessica's family shares. They understand how Jessica's
friends might find that suspicious, but they don't think that
(20:40):
Terry had anything.
Speaker 4 (20:41):
To do with this.
Speaker 1 (20:42):
And Terry herself also denies knowing more than she's let on.
But speaking of Terry, she actually has her own theories.
And she gave me something that I was desperate for,
the name of a woman, because I can't get over
that female voice saying we ought to.
Speaker 4 (20:58):
Get out of here.
Speaker 1 (21:00):
She says that briefly, while Jessica was living with her,
they had another roommate, Anna. She was only there a
hot second because Terry had to kick her out because
she wasn't following house rules, doing things like inviting a
guy over without permission. And according to Terry, Anna blamed
Jessica for her getting kicked out, and I'm not sure why.
(21:21):
Maybe Jessica was the one who told Terry that this
stuff was happening, or maybe she was just feeling replaced,
or maybe Jessica was just a great example of following
the rules and made a glaring example of what a
bad roommate she was.
Speaker 4 (21:32):
Who knows, but Terry told our.
Speaker 1 (21:35):
Team that she's suspicious of Anna because of one really
specific reason. Anna would have known that Terry slept with
that industrial size fan to block out noise, which would
have prevented her from hearing anything. Now, we asked Jessica's
family what they thought of Terry's theory, but they don't
really buy it. Still, our team connected with Anna just
(21:58):
to get her take, and not only does she deny
having anything to do with Jessica's death, she actually gave
us a whole new story that sent me spiraling. Anna
told us that this guy she was dating, who, by
the way, also ran in the same circles as Bay,
this guy assaulted her some time after Jessica's homicide, and
(22:20):
during this assault, he threatened her with a knife and
allegedly said, quote, do you want to end up like
jess Now?
Speaker 4 (22:28):
I had all the questions.
Speaker 1 (22:29):
After learning this, like did he just say this because
he knew what happened to Jessica, like specifically how she died.
I mean, her cause of death isn't a secret, so
it's very likely that he knew she was killed with
a knife or did he maybe no more than he
was letting on. Did he have more insight into what happened? Now,
We've tried to confirm any part of this with other people,
(22:50):
and in doing so, we talked to some of Jessica's friends,
but they couldn't corroborate this threat. To me, it would
still be worth looking into, as are the women at
the factory, especially when it seems like police don't have
anything else. The people in Elkhart are still talking about
Jessica's homicide to this day, and her friends and family
(23:13):
are keeping their ears to the ground for any chatter,
turning over any rumors that they here to police because
like any good crime junkie, nos, people don't keep secrets forever.
And actually the most recent tip that they turned over
was just from like a year and a half ago.
That's when one of Jessica's loved ones had a run
in with this woman who also happens to run in
(23:36):
the same circles as Bay, and she was going around
claiming that she knew who did it, so again all
the questions, does she actually know more? Is she just
saying that to get attention or to make people mad.
We've been trying to get in touch with this woman
to follow up on these claims, and I know all
of this has been reported to the police, but no
(23:57):
one knows if they've done anything with this. So many
rumors still seem to revolve around Bey, but police have
never connected him to this. Bee is currently serving a
pretty hefty sentence for dealing cocaine and we reached out
to Bee for a comment, and he denies having anything
to do with Jessica's death. He also denies stalking and
(24:19):
verbally or emotionally abusing her. Jessica's family worries that they're
never going to be able to tie anyone to the
crime because of how royally they think Elkhart police screwed
up the investigation from the start. They even say that
police ghosts them when they ask for updates, which I
am sure feels terrible when all you want is answers,
But honestly, like for el cart PD, it doesn't feel
(24:43):
like much of a surprise. I mean, if you look
into them, they have a history of bad investigations and corruption,
not to mention a long list of civil rights violations
by himself. Was even a victim of police brutality. Several
years before Jessica was killed. He was supposed to be
arrested for not paying child support, and the confrontation ended
with him being tased multiple times, including on his genitals,
(25:07):
and he suffered severe burns as a result.
Speaker 4 (25:10):
Without Elkhart police.
Speaker 1 (25:12):
Communicating with them, Jessica's family is still waiting for justice.
Her brother said that whoever did this didn't just kill Jessica.
Speaker 4 (25:19):
They killed the whole family.
Speaker 3 (25:21):
I mean.
Speaker 1 (25:22):
Jessica's mother died just a month after her from health
complications compounded by grief, and her father spent the rest
of his life searching for answers.
Speaker 4 (25:30):
I mean, he died just earlier this year.
Speaker 1 (25:33):
Her brother told us that their dad filled notebooks upon
notebooks of theories about who could have killed his daughter
and notes on his own investigation. Unfortunately, he'd like isolated
himself after her death, so he didn't share much. And
even when they got his books after he died, they
were like in pretty bad shape and nothing really useful
came from them. Listen, her family wants Jessica to be
(25:56):
remembered as the type of person who used the bad
things that happened to her for good, like how she
helped victims of domestic violence at work. She would tell
people that they could survive what was happening to them
because she had. She even kept a photo of her
eighteen year old self in her desk to show people
what they would come back from. And she would have
(26:18):
wanted her death to be used for good too. Her
family honored her that way by organizing a donation drive
for a local women's shelter that she'd helped with as
a part of her work at the prosecutor's office. They
ended up filling like three to four semitruck trailers full
of donations in her honor, and we had Audio Chuck
have made a donation to that same women's shelter. It's
(26:39):
called Safe Haven Elkhart County. We're going to link to
that in the show notes. If you want to join us,
Jessica's killer could still be out there and someone knows something.
If you have any information about the death of Jessica Starr,
you can submit tips to us at tips at Audiochuck
dot com. You can also contact the Elkhart Police Department
(27:00):
and we're going to have their contact information in our
show notes. You can find all the source material for
this episode on our website, crime Junkie dot com. And
(27:22):
if you want to listen to this episode and all
of our episodes completely ad free, be sure to join
our fan club. You'll also get early access to new
episodes every week.
Speaker 4 (27:32):
You can follow us on Instagram.
Speaker 1 (27:33):
At Crime Junkie Podcast, and we will be back next
week with the brand new episode.
Speaker 4 (28:04):
Crime Junkie is an Audio Chuck production. I think Chuck
would approve
High crime junkies. I'm your host, Ashley Flowers, and today
Britt and I are going to divide and conquer because
two Indiana cases recently came across my desk that are
both pretty recent and both in need of some eyes
and ears. So you get two episodes in your feed today,
one from me and then one from Britt. And if
you follow me on social you'll know I was recently
(00:22):
back near my hometown scoping out an area in Elkhart,
Indiana that was once a crime scene because I just
needed to see it for myself. How did someone lay
in wait blitz attack a young woman, then drag her
to the side of her trailer and cut her from
ear to ear without a single witness seeing it didn't
(00:44):
seem possible. And how have police not tracked down her
killer after fourteen years. Well, being at the scene and
doing some digging of our own has made it pretty
clear that the police bungled the investigation and it might
be up to all of us now to help the
family get justice. And we might be close because our
(01:06):
digging led to someone who said that they know what happened,
and based on who they're connected to, they could be
telling the truth. This is the story of Jessica Starr.
Speaker 2 (01:50):
Bring one wears your emergency.
Speaker 3 (01:54):
It's better cook anana on long anyway our counting on
the couch and uh, one of my mom's friends getting
home from work on a run out the.
Speaker 2 (02:09):
Deck and it looked scringing and then she like she
got like her an cooked on her mouth and she
got through the way. Let me come on to get
right away.
Speaker 1 (02:26):
That was part of a call that an eleven year
old named Jeff made to dispatchers just after eleven thirty
pm on August eighth, twenty eleven, from inside his trailer.
He'd been home with his mom and little brother, expecting
his mom's roommate and co worker, Jessica Starr to be
coming home any minute like any other normal night, but
he's pretty sure that he just heard her getting attacked
(02:48):
in front of their home, and now having called the police,
he is staring out the open front door into the
pitch black night, watching his mom call for Jessica from
the front porch with her gun in hand, afraid that
someone might still be out there, but it is now
completely silent. They can see Jessica's two door Pontiac part
(03:11):
close to their front porch in front of the house,
but the driver's side door is wide open. Just then,
Jeff and his mom, Terry, heard this rustling sound at
the side of the house, almost like someone was running off,
but her children's safety was her first priority. Terry stays
on the porch, gun in hand, waiting for police to arrive,
(03:33):
and thank god, it's not long. Police cars pull down
the dark road and as soon as their cars are
in part cops are scouring the property and it's when
they walk to the side of the house, the side
where Jeff and Terry heard that rustling.
Speaker 4 (03:47):
That's when they find Jessica, and it's bad.
Speaker 1 (03:50):
She's got bruises on her arms, her throat has been
cut and she'd been stabbed, so by the time they
get to her, it's too late, already gone. Police are
baffled by the brazen attack, and the fact that there
were witnesses, i mean, in the house that she was
headed towards makes it all the more confounding but also
(04:11):
promising for the now homicide investigation.
Speaker 4 (04:15):
So police go to Jeff.
Speaker 1 (04:17):
Like, tell us everything you saw and heard he told
us recently what he shared with them fourteen years ago.
He said that he was laying in the living room
with his brother, waiting for Jessica to get home. He's
on his game boy when he hears this noise by
the front door. Now, all these years later, he says,
he can't exactly remember what that noise was. But he
(04:38):
got up and looked out this little window at the
top of the front door, except he couldn't see anything.
It was like completely dark. Now at the time, it
didn't occur to him that it shouldn't have been pitch
black because his mom always left the porch light on.
But young boy, oblivious to that kind of detail. He
just went back to lie down and kept playing his game.
(04:59):
Except that didn't last long. Soon after, he started hearing screaming,
and not just any screaming, I mean this was primal,
guttural screaming coming from somewhere in the front yard. At first,
he thought it might be some sort of animal like
cats fighting, before he had that chilling realization that it
was Jessica. And whatever happened next happened very quickly, like
(05:23):
within minutes. Jeff says that it sounded to him like
Jessica made it to the front porch, but someone put
their hand over her mouth. To muffle her screams and
dragged her away once the screaming stopped. Jeff says that
he was almost in shock for like a couple of seconds,
but when he snapped out of it, he snuck to
his mom's room to tell her what was happening. Now,
(05:43):
she's sound asleep at the time, and from there, the
loud fan that she kept running likely was drowning out
all the noise. But any parent knows that a paniced
shake from your child will jolt you right awake. So
that's when she told Jeff to bring her her gun
and call police. Based on jeff story and what police
see in front of them, Jessica's immediate family believe that
(06:05):
police built out this theory. Jessica's car is parked to
the right of the house Dora a jar, and police
see that there are groceries in the back seats, so
it looks like Jessica got home and parked and maybe
it was about to take the groceries out when she's attacked.
I mean, there's even fresh mud that's kicked up on
the side of that open door, so it looks like
there was a struggle. But what they don't see there
(06:28):
is any blood. The cut that Jessica suffered to her
throat would have been super bloody, so that obviously didn't
happen at the car, which means that they likely would
have had to incapacitate her in some other way, either
just by overpowering her and grabbing her or with a weapon.
And they actually think it's probably option B because of
(06:50):
the extensive bruising that she had to her arms and
laying in the yard close to her body, they actually
find a baseball bat size branch, and all of this
had to have been premeditated. The branch likely came from
a brush.
Speaker 4 (07:07):
Pile at the back of the trailer.
Speaker 1 (07:10):
So a weapon was picked beforehand. Not to mention, the
killer obviously had a knife on them, which they did
not leave behind like this branch. And then just off
to the right, if you're looking at the trailer straight on,
they see an area where some of the grass is
like stamped down, like someone was almost like crouching there
for a while, but from the street, Jessica probably wouldn't
(07:32):
have been able to see someone waiting for her if
they were tucked into the brush enough. And then finally
there's that sound that Jeff first heard it turns out
the reason the porch was so dark when Jeff looked
out the window that first time was because the porch
light bulb was missing. Now, Terry was sure that the
light had been on when she went to bed that night,
(07:54):
so likely the first sound that Jeff heard was either
someone tall enough unscrewing the bulb and but just being
loud about it, or someone shorter, maybe with the help
of something, or someone like being hoisted up to remove it.
So whoever this is, they got their weapons, they made
sure it was dark, and then they laid in wait
(08:15):
for Jessica. They blitz attacked her at her car, and
from Jeff's account, it sounds like she tried to run
up to the front door and she screamed for help,
but they got a hold of her and dragged her
off the porch to the side of the house, where
they swiftly and thoughtlessly slaughtered her. And then they took
off into the night with just the knife and the
porch's light bulb. They left everything else, including Jessica's purse,
(08:40):
which leads me and Jessica's family to believe that this
wasn't a random robbery. Jessica was targeted they knew her routine,
where and when she lived, when she'd be coming home,
where she would park, when she did. This was about
killing her, so it was now going to be about
finding who would have motive for that. Except if physical
(09:03):
evidence was the way to do that, police dropped the
ball right from the beginning. Jessica's family told us that
when they showed up outside the trailer the very next
evening for a candlelight vigil, Jessica's car was still just
sitting there. Police hadn't taken it. They hadn't moved it,
hadn't even taped it off. In fact, most of the
(09:25):
scene isn't taped off. So of course as people are grieving,
they're like putting their candles on her car, they're walking
all over the yard, and I mean to no fault
of their own, like by the way, because how would
they know not to go anywhere or touch anything if
the police in charge don't tell you not to. It's
not a citizen's job to collect and preserve evidence. They're
(09:47):
trusting the police to do that. Now, did they do
that at all? Did they process anything the first night?
Maybe I can't tell you because the police wouldn't talk
to us for this episode. They denied our foyer request
as well, But in talking to Jessica's family, they have
their doubts whether the car was even fingerprinted, because I mean,
(10:09):
you would usually tow the car if it's part of
an investigation, but her family told us that they never
even moved the car from where Jessica parked it, and
when her family got it back a few days after
her death, they told us that they didn't see any fingerprint, dust,
or any evidence that they had done any real processing
of the vehicle. But that's just the start of their
many complaints about how Elkhart Peedi seemed to just not
(10:32):
care about finding Jessica's killer. From their perspective, it seems
like police just leave a bunch of potential evidence behind,
like blood on the ground where Jessica was found, or
possible footprint by her car where that mud was kicked up.
Jessica's family even mentioned a handprint on the top of
the car, although they clarified that they aren't sure if
it was from the attack or if it was there before,
(10:55):
but worth checking. I think Jessica's dad also doesn't think
that they asked neighbors for any camera footage or from
the grocery store that she was working at before she
went home. I mean, it's basic stuff that just doesn't
seem like it was done. And even though we couldn't
get the files, you might think, oh well, Ashley, you
(11:15):
guys talk to the family. Surely the police at least
told them what was or wasn't done. Nope. According to
Jessica's family, police weren't keeping the family updated, so they're
assuming the worst. Now. I grew up right around here.
Elkhart is kind of a small town. People talk what's real,
(11:35):
what's rumors? You never really know. But Jeff told our
reporter that he thinks he remembers hearing something about police
getting DNA from under Jessica's fingernails, which makes sense because
after her autopsy they said her arm was broken, and that,
combined with the bruising, makes me think that she fought
like hell. But if they did get something, they have
(11:57):
never spoken out publicly and said that. So is their
DNA profile? Was it good enough for Cotis? Was it
ever compared to anyone specifically? Was it ever compared to
Jessica's ex because immediately that is who her family became
suspicious of. Thirty two year old Tavares Browning, who everyone
(12:18):
calls Bey. They was actually the reason Jessica was living
with Terry in the first place. They had dated for
a few years. They had been living together, but they
broke up a couple of months before this in April,
and then Terry offered Jessica a place to stay while
she got back on her feet. Now everyone has something
to say about Bee, specifically about how tumultuous their relationship was,
(12:41):
when her family and friends told us that they never
saw or heard of any physical abuse from him towards Jessica,
but he was allegedly a verbal and emotional abuser, and
according to Jessica's friends, after he and Jessica broke up,
he started stalking her. He even showed up at her work.
Now her coworkers were aware, and they didn't let her
(13:02):
leave or walk to her car without someone else with her.
One of her friends told us that there had been
talk of a restraining order at some point, but she
doesn't think Jessica actually got one, and I think that's
correct because we couldn't find record of one with local courts. Now.
Bey is a drug dealer with a history of battery charges,
(13:24):
although those battery charges were from years before he and
Jessica even dated, and he was only ever convicted of
two of those charges, one in nineteen ninety eight and
one in nineteen ninety nine. But the timing of what
happened to Jessica stands out to me. I mean, not
only is leaving an abusive relationship one of the most
dangerous times for a victim, but also Jessica just started
(13:47):
seeing someone new, so maybe that's motive.
Speaker 4 (13:51):
But here's the thing.
Speaker 1 (13:53):
According to Jessica's family, police told them that they went
to Bay's home the night that Jessica was killed, because
I mean, that's how quick they were hearing about him.
And when they arrived, he was in bed with another
woman and looked like he had just woken up. Based
on Jessica's brother's recollection, he thinks that detectives assumed he
wouldn't have been able to get back to wherever he
(14:15):
was staying and clean up and stuff before police got
there that night. Although honestly, I'm a little skeptical about this.
I'm not sure exactly how long it was between when
the murder took place and when police turned up at
Bay's door, but police likely have the details that we
are lacking, and based on what they have and know,
they quickly rule him out. And maybe the other thing
(14:37):
that they have is DNA, and maybe they know that
the profile they have is in a.
Speaker 4 (14:42):
Match to him.
Speaker 1 (14:43):
To me, that would be worth saying publicly, but they haven't,
so I'm not making any assumptions. They very well could
have just ruled him out based on him being home.
There's also a world where he's involved directly or indirectly,
but didn't actually do. Jessica's family laid out a couple
of scenarios for me. They're thinking is that if it
(15:06):
wasn't Bee, he may have orchestrated it, or someone may
have killed Jessica in.
Speaker 4 (15:12):
Order to hurt him.
Speaker 1 (15:14):
Despite being a small time drug dealer, Jessica's family told
us that he had this way of luring people into
his web and manipulating those around him. So maybe he
ticked someone off or got on someone's bad side enough
to where they killed Jessica to get back at him.
I mean, he was clearly still attached to Jessica in
some way and maybe someone else knew that. Now to
(15:37):
his credit, the one thing Jessica's family does say is
that he was absolutely distraught when she died, so if
he was involved, it actually makes way more sense to
them that this was someone else who carried it out.
And really that's even more based on what they know
about the attack. They don't think that Bee would have
(15:59):
needed a true branch to take Jessica down. I mean,
he's pretty tall and she's on the shorter side, so
they think his bare hands would have been enough. You
use the tree branch if you need help overpowering her, say,
if you were smaller, physically weaker, maybe a woman around
Jessica's same size, which makes something a neighbor kid heard
(16:22):
the night of Jessica's murder all the more interesting. When
police interviewed neighbors, one seventeen year old kid in the
home across the street did remember hearing something that night.
He claims he heard screaming and then after he heard
a woman's voice saying, well, we got to get out
(16:44):
of here now. In the moment, his brain was trying
to put what he was hearing into context of his
normal life, so he thought that may have been someone
calling for their dog, but he didn't see anything.
Speaker 4 (16:56):
Now this is super.
Speaker 1 (16:57):
Interesting because there is a group of women in Jessica's orbit,
who her family learned about within a few months after
her death. You see, Jessica actually had two jobs when
she was killed. The first was at a grocery store
and the second was at a local factory, and Jessica's
dad hears that some of the women she worked with
at the factory ran in the same circles as Bey. Now,
(17:22):
they weren't happy that she'd broken up with him. Allegedly,
they told her that she needed to go back to
her man and it wasn't right that she left him. Now,
the thing is, I don't know if police ever looked
into this group of women, despite Jessica's family reporting all
of this to them. It's one of the questions I
wanted to ask them most if they would have agreed.
Speaker 4 (17:42):
To talk to us.
Speaker 1 (17:43):
But if they didn't look into this, it's probably because
they directed their attention to more obvious suspects like this
guy named Josh. And listen, it's for good reason that
they looked at him early on. Even if the incident
that makes him so suspicious happened nearly a decade ago,
it is still horrific. So, according to Jessica's brother and
(18:05):
sister in law. This guy, Josh went to high school
with Jessica back in two thousand and one when she
was eighteen, and he was really into her, but she
wasn't in to him, which apparently pissed him off. So
one morning before school, he came to her house, grabbed
a tire iron out of her garage, and beat her
with it while also allegedly attempting to sexually assault her.
(18:30):
Now he got caught that very day because dude literally
went to school with her blood still on his hoodie,
and he's served almost three years for that. But as
unhinged as this man is, police end up finding out
that he was in Michigan at the time that Jessica
was killed, so they rule him off the list too.
(18:52):
But the list of potential suspects keeps growing the more
they learn about Jessica. Not because she was into anything bad,
I'm quite the opposite. Actually, she took every bad thing
that happened to her and used it as a drive
to do good. Her family told us that she had
worked as a legal assistant in the prosecutor's office shortly
before her murder, and she sometimes stepped in as a
(19:14):
liaison for victims of domestic violence, which can be a
dangerous position. So I mean I kind of wondered, like, oh,
what if she got involved in a case where someone
else's abusive partner would want to retaliate against her. So
I had our team reach out to the former prosecutor
who Jessica worked under, But unfortunately he doesn't remember any
cases that she would have helped out with where that
(19:35):
could have been a concern. I mean, he's familiar with
Jessica's case, obviously, and in his opinion, that's not a
likely scenario, he said, based on what he knows, he
thinks it likely would have been someone close to Jessica.
And so we're right back to where we started. Over
the years, without anywhere to place blame, people just go
(19:58):
looking for it. Many times it's fallen on Terry. I mean,
some of Jessica's friends can't help, but wonder if Terry
could know more than she's saying. They also don't like
that Terry didn't go looking for Jessica when she went
out onto the porch with her gun. But let me
stop you right there. Like first of all, fight flight freeze,
you don't know till you're in it. I mean, the
(20:19):
fact that she's even on the porch with her gun,
to me is a lot, and she is a mom
with two little kids in the house. I don't blame
her for not wanting to leave the doorway open when
there is a mystery assailant outside. And those are the
same feelings that Jessica's family shares. They understand how Jessica's
friends might find that suspicious, but they don't think that
(20:40):
Terry had anything.
Speaker 4 (20:41):
To do with this.
Speaker 1 (20:42):
And Terry herself also denies knowing more than she's let on.
But speaking of Terry, she actually has her own theories.
And she gave me something that I was desperate for,
the name of a woman, because I can't get over
that female voice saying we ought to.
Speaker 4 (20:58):
Get out of here.
Speaker 1 (21:00):
She says that briefly, while Jessica was living with her,
they had another roommate, Anna. She was only there a
hot second because Terry had to kick her out because
she wasn't following house rules, doing things like inviting a
guy over without permission. And according to Terry, Anna blamed
Jessica for her getting kicked out, and I'm not sure why.
(21:21):
Maybe Jessica was the one who told Terry that this
stuff was happening, or maybe she was just feeling replaced,
or maybe Jessica was just a great example of following
the rules and made a glaring example of what a
bad roommate she was.
Speaker 4 (21:32):
Who knows, but Terry told our.
Speaker 1 (21:35):
Team that she's suspicious of Anna because of one really
specific reason. Anna would have known that Terry slept with
that industrial size fan to block out noise, which would
have prevented her from hearing anything. Now, we asked Jessica's
family what they thought of Terry's theory, but they don't
really buy it. Still, our team connected with Anna just
(21:58):
to get her take, and not only does she deny
having anything to do with Jessica's death, she actually gave
us a whole new story that sent me spiraling. Anna
told us that this guy she was dating, who, by
the way, also ran in the same circles as Bay,
this guy assaulted her some time after Jessica's homicide, and
(22:20):
during this assault, he threatened her with a knife and
allegedly said, quote, do you want to end up like
jess Now?
Speaker 4 (22:28):
I had all the questions.
Speaker 1 (22:29):
After learning this, like did he just say this because
he knew what happened to Jessica, like specifically how she died.
I mean, her cause of death isn't a secret, so
it's very likely that he knew she was killed with
a knife or did he maybe no more than he
was letting on. Did he have more insight into what happened? Now,
We've tried to confirm any part of this with other people,
(22:50):
and in doing so, we talked to some of Jessica's friends,
but they couldn't corroborate this threat. To me, it would
still be worth looking into, as are the women at
the factory, especially when it seems like police don't have
anything else. The people in Elkhart are still talking about
Jessica's homicide to this day, and her friends and family
(23:13):
are keeping their ears to the ground for any chatter,
turning over any rumors that they here to police because
like any good crime junkie, nos, people don't keep secrets forever.
And actually the most recent tip that they turned over
was just from like a year and a half ago.
That's when one of Jessica's loved ones had a run
in with this woman who also happens to run in
(23:36):
the same circles as Bay, and she was going around
claiming that she knew who did it, so again all
the questions, does she actually know more? Is she just
saying that to get attention or to make people mad.
We've been trying to get in touch with this woman
to follow up on these claims, and I know all
of this has been reported to the police, but no
(23:57):
one knows if they've done anything with this. So many
rumors still seem to revolve around Bey, but police have
never connected him to this. Bee is currently serving a
pretty hefty sentence for dealing cocaine and we reached out
to Bee for a comment, and he denies having anything
to do with Jessica's death. He also denies stalking and
(24:19):
verbally or emotionally abusing her. Jessica's family worries that they're
never going to be able to tie anyone to the
crime because of how royally they think Elkhart police screwed
up the investigation from the start. They even say that
police ghosts them when they ask for updates, which I
am sure feels terrible when all you want is answers,
But honestly, like for el cart PD, it doesn't feel
(24:43):
like much of a surprise. I mean, if you look
into them, they have a history of bad investigations and corruption,
not to mention a long list of civil rights violations
by himself. Was even a victim of police brutality. Several
years before Jessica was killed. He was supposed to be
arrested for not paying child support, and the confrontation ended
with him being tased multiple times, including on his genitals,
(25:07):
and he suffered severe burns as a result.
Speaker 4 (25:10):
Without Elkhart police.
Speaker 1 (25:12):
Communicating with them, Jessica's family is still waiting for justice.
Her brother said that whoever did this didn't just kill Jessica.
Speaker 4 (25:19):
They killed the whole family.
Speaker 3 (25:21):
I mean.
Speaker 1 (25:22):
Jessica's mother died just a month after her from health
complications compounded by grief, and her father spent the rest
of his life searching for answers.
Speaker 4 (25:30):
I mean, he died just earlier this year.
Speaker 1 (25:33):
Her brother told us that their dad filled notebooks upon
notebooks of theories about who could have killed his daughter
and notes on his own investigation. Unfortunately, he'd like isolated
himself after her death, so he didn't share much. And
even when they got his books after he died, they
were like in pretty bad shape and nothing really useful
came from them. Listen, her family wants Jessica to be
(25:56):
remembered as the type of person who used the bad
things that happened to her for good, like how she
helped victims of domestic violence at work. She would tell
people that they could survive what was happening to them
because she had. She even kept a photo of her
eighteen year old self in her desk to show people
what they would come back from. And she would have
(26:18):
wanted her death to be used for good too. Her
family honored her that way by organizing a donation drive
for a local women's shelter that she'd helped with as
a part of her work at the prosecutor's office. They
ended up filling like three to four semitruck trailers full
of donations in her honor, and we had Audio Chuck
have made a donation to that same women's shelter. It's
(26:39):
called Safe Haven Elkhart County. We're going to link to
that in the show notes. If you want to join us,
Jessica's killer could still be out there and someone knows something.
If you have any information about the death of Jessica Starr,
you can submit tips to us at tips at Audiochuck
dot com. You can also contact the Elkhart Police Department
(27:00):
and we're going to have their contact information in our
show notes. You can find all the source material for
this episode on our website, crime Junkie dot com. And
(27:22):
if you want to listen to this episode and all
of our episodes completely ad free, be sure to join
our fan club. You'll also get early access to new
episodes every week.
Speaker 4 (27:32):
You can follow us on Instagram.
Speaker 1 (27:33):
At Crime Junkie Podcast, and we will be back next
week with the brand new episode.
Speaker 4 (28:04):
Crime Junkie is an Audio Chuck production. I think Chuck
would approve
Popular Podcasts
Las Culturistas with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang
Ding dong! Join your culture consultants, Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang, on an unforgettable journey into the beating heart of CULTURE. Alongside sizzling special guests, they GET INTO the hottest pop-culture moments of the day and the formative cultural experiences that turned them into Culturistas. Produced by the Big Money Players Network and iHeartRadio.
The Joe Rogan Experience
The official podcast of comedian Joe Rogan.
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.