September 23, 2024 • 38 mins
Jennifer Cooke was a kind, loving, mother whose life was moving forward. She was getting a promotion from work and had a new boyfriend who seemed to be a good guy. Unfortunately, finding Mr. Right would prove to be difficult for Jennifer. Her first marriage ended, but she and her ex-husband seemed okay with the mutual split and agreed to co-parent their daughter. Jennifer, feeling lonely quickly got into another relationship that moved quickly to marriage, but as fast as the relationship moved at the beginning, it ended just as fast. This one did not end quite so easily. Her new ex-husband was very controlling and did not agree with the breaking of this relationship. He would often arrive at her home without notice or show up in the same place Jennifer was even if Jennifer tried to not let him know. To this day there is the question of who killed Jennifer Cooke? Was one of her relationships a case of Mr. Wrong?
Contact Information:
Located in: Grandview Heights City Hall
Departments: Marble Cliff Police Department
Address: 1016 Grandview Ave, Columbus, OH 43212
Phone: (614) 488-3157
Contact Information:
Cold Case MHS: 513-398-5025 Ext. 33304
coldcase@masonohioschools.com
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Welcome to Cold Case MHS, Monsters and Demons. We're Real Education, Metro Life. I'm your
(00:07):
host, Randy Hubbard. And I'm your co-host, Lydia Lisco. And we thank you for listening.
(00:37):
We're the Dark. Make downs in memory. Let's find the enemy. We won't leave it behind.
Behind every shadow, a story to be told. Whom lies I was special? But some hearts have grown cold.
(01:02):
And the depths of the darkness of the guru remains. Behind every cold case, there's people fighting day to day.
Welcome to Cold Case MHS. We appreciate you being here for this episode. Earlier we keep talking about the different types of backgrounds people have and whether their life is high risk or low risk.
(01:30):
And many of our victims have put themselves in a really high risk situation. But we've had a couple, especially this one, in which the risk seemed very, very low. And it was almost impossible that this was a random act of somebody or it was because of their connection with bad people.
I think it was just the fact that maybe it was a bad choice. And I'm going to let students introduce themselves and talk a little bit about the case.
(01:58):
I'm Heather. I'm Shria. So tell us a little bit about your case.
Yeah, so our victim was a 35 year old woman named Jennifer Cook. She lived in the Grandview Heights area just off of like OSU campus. And she unfortunately was murdered on August of 2013.
(02:19):
So we talked about low risk. So why was she low risk? Tell me about Jennifer.
She was a great mom. She was very known for being involved in her daughter's life. She wasn't really involved with any drugs. She wasn't known to be in prostitution, anything like that. She was very well educated. She even worked at OSU Wexner. She had a nice job. She didn't live in a particularly dangerous neighborhood.
(02:47):
The place that she lived in was more of a cheaper neighborhood where a lot of people went to kind of restart. But there wasn't anything in that neighborhood that was really like, you know, there was a lot of prostitution or murder cases or general crime. So like it was a relatively safe area.
What about the city overall? We know that some cities like Springfield have very high crime rates.
(03:09):
Well, I mean, she was right next to downtown Columbus, like right near OSU campus. But you know, the part that she lived in wasn't exactly classified as like a very high risk or dangerous area.
The part she lived in was Grandview Heights. Before her murder, the first murder that happened was 10 years ago. So it wasn't like there was a lot of murder happening in that specific area. But of course, yeah, downtown Columbus being close by.
(03:36):
Well, and we have found that all towns, whether they're big or small, have secrets and things like this unfortunately happened. So what did it do to the town when this happened?
Yeah, it really like shocked pretty much everyone living there. Grandview Heights is mainly classified as like a smaller area. You know, everyone kind of knows everyone there. A lot of people knew Jennifer as like, you know, the mom who was really involved with Girl Scouts.
(04:05):
Or like the woman who used to ride her bike around town. So when she, when news of her murder and just how brutal it was, got around, it really like shocked the community. They set up so many like memorial funds.
They had a lot of services and everything. Everyone in the community was just very supportive of her family and everything after this horrifying event that occurred.
(04:29):
So tell me a little bit, maybe more around the event. Tell me what happened before it, what happened more of day of, and then what about some stuff that happened afterwards?
So before the event occurred, we know that her life was kind of looking up. She was looking at promotions. She was looking at a new relationship that she was very happy in.
(04:50):
Yeah, I mean, with her job and everything, she worked as a clinical research data coordinator. She loved her job. She was getting into a new type of cancer research that they were looking into in her division.
And by the way that her mom and her closest friend like described what they found going through some of her stuff after her passing was that she was like very involved just in her own personal life.
(05:17):
Like she was taking notes. She was looking really forward to it. And then yeah, along with what Heather said about her relationships and everything, she was in a new one with a boyfriend too.
Like we heard worked at OSU probably as like a grad student or a teacher's assistant. But yeah, he was described as like pretty nice.
So you mentioned that she was a mother obviously was her daughter's father in the picture. You know, you mentioned she was also in a new relationship. So there's some sort of male figure in her daughter's life.
(05:48):
Yeah, her daughter's father was still in her life a little bit because her daughter would often see her father. But we know that the relationship wasn't bad.
They had a pretty neutral relationship if anything it might have been good. We just know for a fact that her friends seemed okay with him that there was no particular bad blood between them despite having a divorce and having a kid like custody between the two of them.
(06:13):
Did he live close?
We don't know exactly where he lived. We think it was close to Grandview because they did have a custody agreement that said that he would see their daughter like most weekends even after their divorce. But like we know it wasn't like hours away outside of Grandview.
So talking about Jennifer's murder where her daughter's father and her boyfriend could they have been potential suspects because he mentioned was like a crime of passion like definitely not a random act of violence.
(06:42):
So the timeline with Jennifer's relationships are kind of where everyone gets drawn into when they look into this case because obviously when you first look at it like this was just a nice mother who unfortunately got stabbed to death in such a brutal way.
So the main couple of suspects were you know like you guys mentioned her first ex-husband the father of her daughter the new boyfriend that she had recently got involved with. But there was another person in between those two who was a second ex-husband.
(07:16):
We'll talk about a little more later. But yeah in terms of the person that she co-parented with her first ex and the new boyfriend they were kind of cleared fairly quickly because I mean when we talk about more into the day of the murder her first ex was actually like trying to drop off their daughter as agreed on with the custody agreement.
(07:39):
And her boyfriend at the time wasn't in town I believe and you know he didn't live close by either so you know in terms of like the timeline of how she was found or like when she could have died none of them kind of fit and they had pretty solid alibis.
So tell us the timeline and what happened to her and how she was found all those kind of things.
(08:03):
So unfortunately we do not know the exact time that this happened but we know she was found on August 11, 2013.
She was basically found because her neighbor noticed her back door was slightly opened and then her car was missing so she called the police. She was like she wasn't sure where her neighbor was.
At the same time one of her best friends was called by her mom who also hadn't heard anything from Jennifer for a few days so she went looking for Jennifer, couldn't find her, even reached out to some other people to see if she could get any information on her.
(08:37):
So there were two different things happening at the same time where people were looking for Jennifer and had no idea where she was. Obviously the neighbor called the police who connected a welfare check and that's when they found Jennifer.
So do you have an approximation for how long she had been dead when her body was found or is that something you guys don't know?
When we got access to the autopsy reports and everything that we were able to find from the coroner, they didn't exactly give like she was dead for this long before she was found but we know it wasn't like a couple days.
(09:07):
So before we continue on you mentioned that from the coroner's reports we're able to access that kind of stuff. Were the police willing to give you that information Jennifer's case?
Unfortunately the police didn't give us that much information. We were able to contact a different coroner's office who got us a coroner's report. We were able to see toxicology and autopsy report from the coroner. That kind of stuff.
(09:31):
So what did the autopsy show you? What did it prove to you?
When we got the autopsy report just the number of injuries that she had on her body was just awful to see. We tried to map out each of the injuries that she had sustained and these were like anything ranging from like bruises on her skin to slight lacerations to simple cuts
(09:54):
and to later like very deep stab wounds that ultimately probably killed her and these totaled up to 30 different injuries which if this wasn't a crime of... like this kind of led us to believe that it was a crime of fashion because
no random act would constitute like that much amount of effort into just absolutely like desecrating her body. It was awful.
(10:19):
And her house was anything taken from it?
When the police first conducted their welfare check from the neighbor that called them, they did look inside the house and initially they thought, oh this might have been a robbery because they saw some like upturned furniture.
They saw just a kind of slight disarray in the house so they were just like, this is probably a robbery. I don't think we ever were able to find out from the police if anything was actually taken from her home.
(10:48):
It just kind of looked like a struggle had occurred.
And you mentioned the reason why her neighbors called is because her back door was open. Was there any signs of forced entry or was that the only point that was timbered with?
From what we know there was no forced entry so it seemed like she let in whoever did this or maybe they had a key or some other way of getting in.
(11:11):
I feel like we've been avoiding the elephant in the room that is her second ex-husband so why don't we take some time and let's dive into that.
Yeah, so instead of referring to him as the second ex all the time we're going to give him an alias that being Daniel.
So Daniel is kind of where the case takes a very dark turn. They met around 2010. They met very quickly. They got together very quickly. They married very quickly.
(11:42):
So it was a very fast relationship. He was significantly older than her and when we talked to friends about how did they even get together?
Because he had two other sons. He also had previous ex-wives. You know, she had her own daughter, her own past relationships.
And they kind of talked more about how like Jennifer was still a pretty young mother. So when she moved to Grandview all alone she was kind of searching for a sort of stability in her life.
(12:14):
Daniel, he was pretty successful. I mean he had his own business in the community. He was older. He had a fair amount of money. So when they got together we think it was a lot of just like a young mother seeking stability.
Founded in a man and then they got together pretty quickly. Just as fast as they got together they got divorced like just a year later. Their separation took around like six months.
(12:39):
2012 is where like they just separated. So did they, does anybody know why they got a divorce or why they were separated?
One of the main reasons that we know of was because of his treatment towards her daughter. So Jennifer's daughter was the most important thing in her life.
When we were told that he had kind of a militant parenting style towards her, Jennifer didn't like that at all. She was very kind to her daughter.
(13:04):
Really loved her so much that anyone who didn't treat her daughter the right way, she immediately did not like. That was a main issue.
Some more on that, there was a little bit of controlling in the relationship that we know even followed after they divorced.
Between the two of those, those seemed to be the main reasons for their divorce.
(13:25):
We think the main breaking point is how Daniel kind of mistreated her daughter a lot. Like there was nothing super serious, but you know, Jennifer's first priority was always her daughter.
That was the number one thing that she looked for in all of her partners. We'll talk a little more about this, but like he was very controlling over Jennifer's personal finances, where she went, her social life and everything.
(13:50):
We know that was definitely a factor, but the breaking point was definitely just how he treated Jennifer's daughter.
So before we go into after their separation, what about Daniel's past? Did he have any previous records, domestic violence, anything like that?
So we did look into his previous marriages. We found that an ex filed a restraining order against him, and we know from one of his friends that he had an ex who fled the state to get away from him.
(14:25):
So we think there's some history there, but unfortunately we weren't able to track her down, so we didn't get a direct perspective on this.
Yeah, the first ex who fled. Well, like we looked into it, but we couldn't find much, but the way that one of Daniel's friends described it was just, yeah, like she gave him pretty much everything just to get away as fast as possible.
(14:49):
So we don't know exactly what could have contributed to this, but like further into Daniel, we found a extensive history of stalking.
Multiple women have either filed like restraining orders or have just complained in the community.
So you said he was a little bit older. Was he still in the midst of his, you said he had his own business, is that what you said?
(15:13):
Yeah. Was he still in the midst of that, or was he like losing money from that?
I mean, it seemed that his business was still doing fairly well. I mean, up to Jennifer's death, he still seemed pretty successful. He wasn't having many money issues.
We didn't find anything that supported that. The only thing that we found was that like after Jennifer's death and, you know, once the news got involved and like the police started suspecting him of some things,
(15:43):
he did kind of complain a lot to, this was very weird, but he complained to Jennifer's mother actually about this, this whole publicity and everything is bringing really bad press to my business and I'm struggling with this,
which we thought was off because, you know, to the mother of a victim, you don't exactly complain about your personal inconveniences.
(16:06):
So why do you think he did that? Why did he spend so much time talking to her mother?
So her mom lived in Arizona and obviously when Jennifer passed away, like her mom had to come collect her things and everything.
The strange part about this was that Daniel had possession over a lot of Jennifer's things. Like, for example, Jennifer's mom while she was in Grandview was just like, hey, I need to get around to places.
(16:35):
Jennifer has a car. Do you think I could, you know, use that as I'm trying to like navigate everything? And he's just like, no, you can't. I paid for the car.
That was off. He also made her go to his house to collect a lot of her personal belongings that Jennifer had left behind, which is where he did a lot of complaining and stuff.
(16:58):
He behaved very apathetic after Jennifer's death.
So you mentioned how earlier, how he had control over Jennifer's finances and now you just brought up this car. How involved was he after the two separated before Jennifer's death? How involved was he in Jennifer's life?
He was fairly involved still. Like, when they separated, he only moved about a street away from her. He would often show up at her house unannounced and sometimes he would invite himself, quote, unquote, invite himself to go to the grocery store with her.
(17:29):
And he wouldn't like it when she would go grocery shopping without him because he wanted to know what she was getting and how much she was spending and everything like that.
He definitely kept track of her finances in some way. We think that he followed her to a lot of places because she would go on dates with people out the way and he would just happen to show up at the same time.
(17:50):
So he was still involved in her life, but we don't know if she wanted that. We don't think she did.
Jennifer didn't really want Daniel around after they separated. However, no matter what she wanted, Daniel was always there.
Do you think he had a key to her house?
We know he did when they lived together, obviously. When he left, she changed all the locks and a lot of people, her closest friends, think that he made a new key for those locks.
(18:22):
Great.
Yeah. Also, when they were still together, we're not exactly sure whether this continued after they separated, but he was so controlling over finances that Jennifer had like a debit card or a credit card that she would use to, you know, purchase things and everything.
But she wouldn't get it unless she asked Daniel for permission. It was almost like he was always holding the card for her and he always had to tag along if, you know, she wanted to do something simple like grocery shop.
(18:52):
And this was after they were shut down or after they were divorced.
We're not exactly sure if this continued after they separated, but we knew it was definitely a thing before they did.
Gotcha. So tell us a little bit about after the crime scene, after they found her determinants homicide. Tell us a little bit about what happened that was kind of weird afterwards.
(19:14):
Afterwards, the police collected him to do some questioning. He was one of the main suspects, along with her first ex-husband and then the current boyfriend.
We don't have much about the other two, but we do know the police highly suspected him. There were accounts of questionable statements or things that wouldn't really match up.
(19:36):
He would say things that just didn't really make sense or his timeline was off so much so they did want him to do a lie detector test at one point and then he refused.
He made a bunch of excuses that didn't really make sense.
When Jennifer was first reported missing the night that she was found, her best friend who lived right across the street from her got the call from her mom who was basically saying,
(20:02):
like, Jennifer is supposed to be at the house to pick up her daughter from her ex who's trying to drop her off, but she wasn't there.
So what her best friend did was that Daniel always seems to know where Jennifer is. Maybe this time, no matter how much she didn't want to contact him, she did.
She was like, do you have any idea where she could be? This was one of the very first times that he was just like, no, I have zero idea where she could be.
(20:32):
No clue.
Let me help you search for her.
Isn't that convenient?
So Jennifer's best friend and Daniel kind of met up at her house being like, all right, let's see what we can do.
Let's try calling her. Obviously no answers. At that point, they hadn't looked around the back to see that the door was open and they never figured that out.
(20:55):
It was just her neighbor who did around the same time.
After a bit, Daniel decides, I'm going to go home for a bit, see what I can do, but not even three minutes after he leaves the best friend's house.
He calls her back and says, I just found Jennifer's car.
Now this car was only two streets away.
(21:17):
And the thing about it that her friend found weird was that Daniel did live close by.
However, the time that it took for him to leave the house and the time that he called back to say, I found her car, it wouldn't have made sense if he found it on the drive home because it looked like he took a completely different way to quote unquote get home.
(21:42):
He found the car and then when he did call, she was just like, hey, please don't touch anything.
Like this is weird. She's missing her cars there on a random street like called the police right now to which he said, I'm already in the car.
He had noticed the keys on the seat.
(22:03):
He had touched the steering wheel.
There was a bag in the car.
He had gone through everything.
So you know, forensically, he kind of got his prints on everything.
So do you think this was completely lexical?
You may not have known what it was doing or do you think it was intentional?
We asked a friend about this.
This was someone who was close to both Jennifer and Daniel.
(22:25):
He says Daniel's lack of a better term.
He's not stupid.
So he likely knew what he was doing.
It's highly unlikely that he just panicked and acted.
We don't really know if like maybe he was just reacting to the situation.
But based on what this friend says, it just it does not seem likely that he had no idea what he was doing.
(22:51):
We think he knows exactly what he did.
So in the car, you said he saw our keys.
Was there anything else there?
Was there a purse there?
Was there anything else in there?
Yeah.
So Jennifer's purse was in the car.
Obviously the police, when we tried to reach out to Granby Heights police,
they told us that like, hey, this is an open investigation.
Unfortunately, we can't talk to you.
But it doesn't seem like anything notable was found in her bag that could have pointed to anything to help the investigation forward.
(23:19):
But like he did just go through the bag.
Getting in the car is one thing.
Touching everything in the bag that is linked to a missing person is a bit off.
Well, the unusual part about that is if it was a random robbery that turned into murder and they steal her car,
they're not going to drop it off two streets away.
(23:41):
Yeah.
They're going to take it as far away as possible they can and get away from the scene.
They wouldn't leave her bag or person, anything they would have taken it.
So we have talked a lot about the facts of the case, who Jennifer was, all of this.
So you guys mentioned you did end up getting the coroner's report.
We said he talked to Jennifer's best friend, a mutual friend of both Jennifer and Danielle.
(24:02):
Tell me a little bit more about your guys' process.
How did you guys find information?
What were some roadblocks that you hit?
So we first obviously found this case through the Ohio Attorney General's page.
And it really struck out to us because this looked like a fairly normal woman.
You know, 35, mom of one.
Why is she on a cold case site?
(24:23):
So when we looked into it, we found a lot of articles and when we started this investigation,
it was right around the 10-year anniversary of her death.
So, you know, we had a lot of information to go off of from articles.
And it really struck out to us because in every single article without fail,
and I know there's obviously some bias when you're talking about someone who's passed away.
(24:46):
But all of her friends were just like, this is one of the nicest people I've ever met.
She's fun. She's hilarious. She supports her friends. She supports her daughter like no other mother could.
So we were just like, what led to her ending up as a cold case in such a brutal fashion?
And when we looked more into it, the main thing that struck out to us was just finding information on
(25:12):
how the police were reacting to its suspects.
And one of the articles that we found finally named her second ex as
one of the police's highest suspects.
From there, it was just a lot of like reaching out to friends and families who many of them unfortunately didn't respond.
Reaching out to the police department who again responded but told us they couldn't give us much
(25:35):
because it was still an open investigation and then the source that provided us the autopsy and toxicology reports
as well as the incident report as well.
So you mentioned the toxicology report earlier. Was there anything in her system?
Nope. Her toxicology was clean so that tells us she wasn't drunk, she wasn't drunk, nothing like that.
(25:56):
Were there signs of maybe like a fight, an altercation? Like was she fighting back against her attacker?
When we got the autopsy report, it was very long and when we mapped out all of her injuries,
we tried to see like how she could have sustained a lot of these because a lot of the cuts and stabs were,
the notable ones were, was a really deep laceration across her neck that cut into her voice box,
(26:24):
which we believe could have been one of the first injuries that she sustained because it looked like a lot of the small cuts
that she had were from the result of a struggle and obviously she lives in this like almost a condo
where her neighbor is like right next to her.
We were wondering how did she not hear anything, you know, if you're getting so brutally injured like this.
(26:48):
So we think the laceration across her neck was one of them.
The final blow we think was really deep stab wound into the right side of her heart that we think ultimately killed her.
But yeah, mapping out all the injuries, we think that she was taken by surprise at first,
but she tried to defend herself and a lot of the cuts on her arms and everything were from that struggle.
(27:14):
Makes you wonder if the person was already in the house when she came home or something of that nature,
to surprise her like that because you said there was no sign of forced entry, right?
And if it was forced entry, she would have time to hide, defend herself, something like that.
And even if she let somebody in, she would see them and be able to defend herself pretty quickly,
(27:39):
which kind of shows that maybe that person got in and was waiting for her to come home.
That was definitely a possibility that we considered, but just looking into her ex and everything,
we found that she probably would have opened the door for him because he was nothing if not persistent.
Always knocking on the door, demanding to be let in, she probably would have.
(28:01):
So we're not exactly sure if he was already there or if it just was an argument gone wrong.
Well, that's my next question. Do you know if there was any confrontation that happened prior to that?
Was there any fights or argument that happened right before?
Jennifer and Daniel, even though they were separated, a lot of the times Daniel would demand to speak to her about some things.
(28:26):
We remember that when we were speaking to her best friend, probably she was murdered, I think, on a Sunday,
probably the Thursday before that she saw Jennifer in Daniel's car having a conversation with them,
and she's like, why are you in his car?
And Jennifer was kind of a little dodgy around it and explained it as like, we just went out to lunch,
(28:50):
we just talked about some things, everything's fine.
But like the way that she was a little dodgy about it kind of struck her friend as odd,
especially in hindsight now, considering it was so close to when she was murdered.
Apart from that, like the usual confrontations that Daniel would participate in would be like,
if Jennifer went out on a date, which by the way, Daniel was very controlling about who she was seeing at the time,
(29:16):
if she went out on a date, he would conveniently show up along with another date.
But yeah, I do want to ask, you mentioned how after Jennifer was found, he was complaining of someone
convening for him, he was providing contradictory statements to the police.
Was there anything else that he said that could even put more suspicion on him besides everything else that we're going to discuss?
(29:37):
We know he bragged to some people saying that he managed to delete some things off of the internet before the police could get to it,
and then he also called one of his and Jennifer's friends and he was asking about whether or not they were interrogated as much as he was,
it was like what the investigation was on his end and said, and I quote,
(29:59):
if I get indicted, they will never find any physical evidence.
I hope listeners felt that heart drop that we felt when we first heard that.
Yeah, absolutely.
Well, and when you said to me, I'm thinking, that's impossible unless he cleans up that up.
Did they show any signs of cleaning the place up or anything?
(30:20):
They said it was like, could have been a robbery gone wrong, so evidence could have been...
Again, we don't really know exactly what the police could have found at the scene because they didn't grant access to those reports.
Right.
A lot of our investigation mostly followed Jennifer's victimology and what her friends and family said.
(30:41):
Right.
And more than that, he wouldn't really need to clean off any DNA evidence because the lawyer could very easily say,
they were exes, of course his DNA would be...
And he's been there a lot.
Yeah, of course.
Good point, good point, yeah.
Do you have a potential question for you guys?
If the police did have any physical evidence or information, why do you think they would maybe not want to release it?
(31:03):
We believe that this case, like when we describe all of it and using all the stuff that we've found that's incredibly incriminating against Daniel,
we think the police also know this.
We think the police is also... like he's the main suspect.
They might even like know that he might have done it, but everything is so incredibly circumstantial from the public point.
(31:27):
And even if they do have hard evidence, we feel like they haven't exactly maybe released it to the public or tried him yet because, you know,
they're worried that with such what we believe to be almost an open and shut case, considering the circumstantial evidence,
we think from the police's perspective, if they try him and they bring up all of this physical evidence,
(31:51):
they're worried that maybe the lawyer could easily explain as like he was participating in the search.
That's why his DNA is like some places, you know, they were X's. That's why this thing happened.
They weren't on great terms. That's why, you know, they had arguments all the time.
So we think it's more of a case of like they're trying to get more on him. So yeah.
(32:12):
And I think that's the biggest thing that I've gotten from police officers and detectives that have worked on it.
I've asked them all, you know, what is the case that has haunted you for such a long time?
They said the biggest ones are the ones they know who did it, but they can't find the evidence to prove it because of things like you just said.
So I think that's probably where it sets with this case.
(32:33):
Also, if they have something that they're just waiting to get through or waiting for another piece of evidence to go with,
they don't want to tell us because if we put it out here on, you know, on a podcast, you know, all of a sudden the evidence disappears.
So they want stuff that only the killer would know and they're going to hold that back, which makes sense to me.
(32:56):
So how do you guys, how do you guys feel through this experience?
What have you learned from investigating Jennifer and getting her story back out here and what are you going to take with you when you leave?
Throughout this entire investigation, this entire process, we learned a lot about just her life.
The entire time, Shira and I would have conversations where this, where we would just kind of reflect on what we'd learned.
(33:19):
This entire case is very sad because Jennifer was just, you know, she was a nice mother, she was a great friend.
A lot of people in the community knew her, so it's really sad to hear about a case like this because it just feels so like she didn't deserve this.
How could this happen to her?
Yeah, I mean, for me, and I think Heather can agree with me here, but like some of the phone calls that we had, like when we first talked to her best friend,
(33:46):
it was only supposed to be around half an hour.
It turned into like 50 minutes of just amazing conversation of what she gave us and we are so incredibly grateful.
But by the end of that call, and I remember in the recording that we have of it, when we hang up, there is just silence and then there is just shock.
For me personally, this case was one of the most infuriating.
(34:10):
Agorating, I can imagine.
It was so incredibly infuriating to see that also this guy was like so smug about it sometimes.
That just made me want to be like, yeah, because before that we knew some information about him, which is why we'd run it up to her.
But the second we said his name, she went, I could talk about him for a week.
(34:31):
So we got a lot of information from that and it was, yeah, right after that we just kind of looked at each other and we were like, wow.
Definitely one of the most impactful moments was one, that entire phone call.
Also the quote that we got from one of the mutual friends saying like, if I get indicted, there will be no, like that was jaw dropping.
(34:55):
Like my heart sunk hearing that.
And then when we were putting together our presentation for this case, we asked for some photos of Jennifer.
When we got sent those photos, I didn't expect it to be so impactful because this was a woman who clearly loved her family.
She loved her friends.
She loved her daughter more than anything and she was so happy in the photos.
(35:19):
And by the way that her mom and her friends described it, her life was improving so much leading up to this murder.
The way that it was cut short like this was awful.
Do you think there's anything else that you guys want to mention that we haven't already discussed in this podcast?
Definitely if anyone listening has information or anything, please contact Grand View Heights Police Department.
(35:44):
The investigators on the case, even though we weren't able to talk to them very much, they seemed incredibly passionate about the case.
You can reach them at the number 614-488-7901.
They're very open to information.
At some point they did have a reward.
I'm not sure if that's still in effect.
(36:05):
This, this was an awful case and it deserves its justice.
No matter who the suspect was or who might have murdered her.
And also if for some reason you feel uncomfortable, contact the police.
You can contact us at coldcaseatmasonallhivesschools.com and we will definitely move that information to the police department as quickly as we can.
(36:28):
I want to say thank you for the work that you put into this.
One thing sitting here listening to you and watching some of the stuff that you guys have done over the time.
You guys were pretty quiet most of the time when you do this and then all of a sudden when I finally got you to talk to me, I could see the compassion and the emotions and exactly what I wanted to get out of this from you guys.
(36:53):
Because the whole point is those emotions helped bring the story back out and that's what our goal is, is to try to bring those stories back out.
I want to say congratulations, whatever thing.
Thank you for doing the hard work in this class and I really appreciate that.
And stay tuned for our next episode. Thank you.
(37:14):
Thank you for listening to this episode of Cold Case MHS.
This podcast was edited by the students of Cold Case MHS and produced by Mr. Hubbard and myself.
The music was performed and written by Alexa Dahl and the artwork was created by the students of MHS Design Studio Internship.
Please consider sharing this podcast to bring more light to these victims.
And we'll see you next time to Cold Case MHS, Monsters and Demons.
(38:04):
Thank you for watching.
(38:34):
Cold Case MHS is behind every Cold Case.
People fighting day to day.
Welcome to Cold Case MHS, Monsters and Demons. We're Real Education, Metro Life. I'm your
(00:07):
host, Randy Hubbard. And I'm your co-host, Lydia Lisco. And we thank you for listening.
(00:37):
We're the Dark. Make downs in memory. Let's find the enemy. We won't leave it behind.
Behind every shadow, a story to be told. Whom lies I was special? But some hearts have grown cold.
(01:02):
And the depths of the darkness of the guru remains. Behind every cold case, there's people fighting day to day.
Welcome to Cold Case MHS. We appreciate you being here for this episode. Earlier we keep talking about the different types of backgrounds people have and whether their life is high risk or low risk.
(01:30):
And many of our victims have put themselves in a really high risk situation. But we've had a couple, especially this one, in which the risk seemed very, very low. And it was almost impossible that this was a random act of somebody or it was because of their connection with bad people.
I think it was just the fact that maybe it was a bad choice. And I'm going to let students introduce themselves and talk a little bit about the case.
(01:58):
I'm Heather. I'm Shria. So tell us a little bit about your case.
Yeah, so our victim was a 35 year old woman named Jennifer Cook. She lived in the Grandview Heights area just off of like OSU campus. And she unfortunately was murdered on August of 2013.
(02:19):
So we talked about low risk. So why was she low risk? Tell me about Jennifer.
She was a great mom. She was very known for being involved in her daughter's life. She wasn't really involved with any drugs. She wasn't known to be in prostitution, anything like that. She was very well educated. She even worked at OSU Wexner. She had a nice job. She didn't live in a particularly dangerous neighborhood.
(02:47):
The place that she lived in was more of a cheaper neighborhood where a lot of people went to kind of restart. But there wasn't anything in that neighborhood that was really like, you know, there was a lot of prostitution or murder cases or general crime. So like it was a relatively safe area.
What about the city overall? We know that some cities like Springfield have very high crime rates.
(03:09):
Well, I mean, she was right next to downtown Columbus, like right near OSU campus. But you know, the part that she lived in wasn't exactly classified as like a very high risk or dangerous area.
The part she lived in was Grandview Heights. Before her murder, the first murder that happened was 10 years ago. So it wasn't like there was a lot of murder happening in that specific area. But of course, yeah, downtown Columbus being close by.
(03:36):
Well, and we have found that all towns, whether they're big or small, have secrets and things like this unfortunately happened. So what did it do to the town when this happened?
Yeah, it really like shocked pretty much everyone living there. Grandview Heights is mainly classified as like a smaller area. You know, everyone kind of knows everyone there. A lot of people knew Jennifer as like, you know, the mom who was really involved with Girl Scouts.
(04:05):
Or like the woman who used to ride her bike around town. So when she, when news of her murder and just how brutal it was, got around, it really like shocked the community. They set up so many like memorial funds.
They had a lot of services and everything. Everyone in the community was just very supportive of her family and everything after this horrifying event that occurred.
(04:29):
So tell me a little bit, maybe more around the event. Tell me what happened before it, what happened more of day of, and then what about some stuff that happened afterwards?
So before the event occurred, we know that her life was kind of looking up. She was looking at promotions. She was looking at a new relationship that she was very happy in.
(04:50):
Yeah, I mean, with her job and everything, she worked as a clinical research data coordinator. She loved her job. She was getting into a new type of cancer research that they were looking into in her division.
And by the way that her mom and her closest friend like described what they found going through some of her stuff after her passing was that she was like very involved just in her own personal life.
(05:17):
Like she was taking notes. She was looking really forward to it. And then yeah, along with what Heather said about her relationships and everything, she was in a new one with a boyfriend too.
Like we heard worked at OSU probably as like a grad student or a teacher's assistant. But yeah, he was described as like pretty nice.
So you mentioned that she was a mother obviously was her daughter's father in the picture. You know, you mentioned she was also in a new relationship. So there's some sort of male figure in her daughter's life.
(05:48):
Yeah, her daughter's father was still in her life a little bit because her daughter would often see her father. But we know that the relationship wasn't bad.
They had a pretty neutral relationship if anything it might have been good. We just know for a fact that her friends seemed okay with him that there was no particular bad blood between them despite having a divorce and having a kid like custody between the two of them.
(06:13):
Did he live close?
We don't know exactly where he lived. We think it was close to Grandview because they did have a custody agreement that said that he would see their daughter like most weekends even after their divorce. But like we know it wasn't like hours away outside of Grandview.
So talking about Jennifer's murder where her daughter's father and her boyfriend could they have been potential suspects because he mentioned was like a crime of passion like definitely not a random act of violence.
(06:42):
So the timeline with Jennifer's relationships are kind of where everyone gets drawn into when they look into this case because obviously when you first look at it like this was just a nice mother who unfortunately got stabbed to death in such a brutal way.
So the main couple of suspects were you know like you guys mentioned her first ex-husband the father of her daughter the new boyfriend that she had recently got involved with. But there was another person in between those two who was a second ex-husband.
(07:16):
We'll talk about a little more later. But yeah in terms of the person that she co-parented with her first ex and the new boyfriend they were kind of cleared fairly quickly because I mean when we talk about more into the day of the murder her first ex was actually like trying to drop off their daughter as agreed on with the custody agreement.
(07:39):
And her boyfriend at the time wasn't in town I believe and you know he didn't live close by either so you know in terms of like the timeline of how she was found or like when she could have died none of them kind of fit and they had pretty solid alibis.
So tell us the timeline and what happened to her and how she was found all those kind of things.
(08:03):
So unfortunately we do not know the exact time that this happened but we know she was found on August 11, 2013.
She was basically found because her neighbor noticed her back door was slightly opened and then her car was missing so she called the police. She was like she wasn't sure where her neighbor was.
At the same time one of her best friends was called by her mom who also hadn't heard anything from Jennifer for a few days so she went looking for Jennifer, couldn't find her, even reached out to some other people to see if she could get any information on her.
(08:37):
So there were two different things happening at the same time where people were looking for Jennifer and had no idea where she was. Obviously the neighbor called the police who connected a welfare check and that's when they found Jennifer.
So do you have an approximation for how long she had been dead when her body was found or is that something you guys don't know?
When we got access to the autopsy reports and everything that we were able to find from the coroner, they didn't exactly give like she was dead for this long before she was found but we know it wasn't like a couple days.
(09:07):
So before we continue on you mentioned that from the coroner's reports we're able to access that kind of stuff. Were the police willing to give you that information Jennifer's case?
Unfortunately the police didn't give us that much information. We were able to contact a different coroner's office who got us a coroner's report. We were able to see toxicology and autopsy report from the coroner. That kind of stuff.
(09:31):
So what did the autopsy show you? What did it prove to you?
When we got the autopsy report just the number of injuries that she had on her body was just awful to see. We tried to map out each of the injuries that she had sustained and these were like anything ranging from like bruises on her skin to slight lacerations to simple cuts
(09:54):
and to later like very deep stab wounds that ultimately probably killed her and these totaled up to 30 different injuries which if this wasn't a crime of... like this kind of led us to believe that it was a crime of fashion because
no random act would constitute like that much amount of effort into just absolutely like desecrating her body. It was awful.
(10:19):
And her house was anything taken from it?
When the police first conducted their welfare check from the neighbor that called them, they did look inside the house and initially they thought, oh this might have been a robbery because they saw some like upturned furniture.
They saw just a kind of slight disarray in the house so they were just like, this is probably a robbery. I don't think we ever were able to find out from the police if anything was actually taken from her home.
(10:48):
It just kind of looked like a struggle had occurred.
And you mentioned the reason why her neighbors called is because her back door was open. Was there any signs of forced entry or was that the only point that was timbered with?
From what we know there was no forced entry so it seemed like she let in whoever did this or maybe they had a key or some other way of getting in.
(11:11):
I feel like we've been avoiding the elephant in the room that is her second ex-husband so why don't we take some time and let's dive into that.
Yeah, so instead of referring to him as the second ex all the time we're going to give him an alias that being Daniel.
So Daniel is kind of where the case takes a very dark turn. They met around 2010. They met very quickly. They got together very quickly. They married very quickly.
(11:42):
So it was a very fast relationship. He was significantly older than her and when we talked to friends about how did they even get together?
Because he had two other sons. He also had previous ex-wives. You know, she had her own daughter, her own past relationships.
And they kind of talked more about how like Jennifer was still a pretty young mother. So when she moved to Grandview all alone she was kind of searching for a sort of stability in her life.
(12:14):
Daniel, he was pretty successful. I mean he had his own business in the community. He was older. He had a fair amount of money. So when they got together we think it was a lot of just like a young mother seeking stability.
Founded in a man and then they got together pretty quickly. Just as fast as they got together they got divorced like just a year later. Their separation took around like six months.
(12:39):
2012 is where like they just separated. So did they, does anybody know why they got a divorce or why they were separated?
One of the main reasons that we know of was because of his treatment towards her daughter. So Jennifer's daughter was the most important thing in her life.
When we were told that he had kind of a militant parenting style towards her, Jennifer didn't like that at all. She was very kind to her daughter.
(13:04):
Really loved her so much that anyone who didn't treat her daughter the right way, she immediately did not like. That was a main issue.
Some more on that, there was a little bit of controlling in the relationship that we know even followed after they divorced.
Between the two of those, those seemed to be the main reasons for their divorce.
(13:25):
We think the main breaking point is how Daniel kind of mistreated her daughter a lot. Like there was nothing super serious, but you know, Jennifer's first priority was always her daughter.
That was the number one thing that she looked for in all of her partners. We'll talk a little more about this, but like he was very controlling over Jennifer's personal finances, where she went, her social life and everything.
(13:50):
We know that was definitely a factor, but the breaking point was definitely just how he treated Jennifer's daughter.
So before we go into after their separation, what about Daniel's past? Did he have any previous records, domestic violence, anything like that?
So we did look into his previous marriages. We found that an ex filed a restraining order against him, and we know from one of his friends that he had an ex who fled the state to get away from him.
(14:25):
So we think there's some history there, but unfortunately we weren't able to track her down, so we didn't get a direct perspective on this.
Yeah, the first ex who fled. Well, like we looked into it, but we couldn't find much, but the way that one of Daniel's friends described it was just, yeah, like she gave him pretty much everything just to get away as fast as possible.
(14:49):
So we don't know exactly what could have contributed to this, but like further into Daniel, we found a extensive history of stalking.
Multiple women have either filed like restraining orders or have just complained in the community.
So you said he was a little bit older. Was he still in the midst of his, you said he had his own business, is that what you said?
(15:13):
Yeah. Was he still in the midst of that, or was he like losing money from that?
I mean, it seemed that his business was still doing fairly well. I mean, up to Jennifer's death, he still seemed pretty successful. He wasn't having many money issues.
We didn't find anything that supported that. The only thing that we found was that like after Jennifer's death and, you know, once the news got involved and like the police started suspecting him of some things,
(15:43):
he did kind of complain a lot to, this was very weird, but he complained to Jennifer's mother actually about this, this whole publicity and everything is bringing really bad press to my business and I'm struggling with this,
which we thought was off because, you know, to the mother of a victim, you don't exactly complain about your personal inconveniences.
(16:06):
So why do you think he did that? Why did he spend so much time talking to her mother?
So her mom lived in Arizona and obviously when Jennifer passed away, like her mom had to come collect her things and everything.
The strange part about this was that Daniel had possession over a lot of Jennifer's things. Like, for example, Jennifer's mom while she was in Grandview was just like, hey, I need to get around to places.
(16:35):
Jennifer has a car. Do you think I could, you know, use that as I'm trying to like navigate everything? And he's just like, no, you can't. I paid for the car.
That was off. He also made her go to his house to collect a lot of her personal belongings that Jennifer had left behind, which is where he did a lot of complaining and stuff.
(16:58):
He behaved very apathetic after Jennifer's death.
So you mentioned how earlier, how he had control over Jennifer's finances and now you just brought up this car. How involved was he after the two separated before Jennifer's death? How involved was he in Jennifer's life?
He was fairly involved still. Like, when they separated, he only moved about a street away from her. He would often show up at her house unannounced and sometimes he would invite himself, quote, unquote, invite himself to go to the grocery store with her.
(17:29):
And he wouldn't like it when she would go grocery shopping without him because he wanted to know what she was getting and how much she was spending and everything like that.
He definitely kept track of her finances in some way. We think that he followed her to a lot of places because she would go on dates with people out the way and he would just happen to show up at the same time.
(17:50):
So he was still involved in her life, but we don't know if she wanted that. We don't think she did.
Jennifer didn't really want Daniel around after they separated. However, no matter what she wanted, Daniel was always there.
Do you think he had a key to her house?
We know he did when they lived together, obviously. When he left, she changed all the locks and a lot of people, her closest friends, think that he made a new key for those locks.
(18:22):
Great.
Yeah. Also, when they were still together, we're not exactly sure whether this continued after they separated, but he was so controlling over finances that Jennifer had like a debit card or a credit card that she would use to, you know, purchase things and everything.
But she wouldn't get it unless she asked Daniel for permission. It was almost like he was always holding the card for her and he always had to tag along if, you know, she wanted to do something simple like grocery shop.
(18:52):
And this was after they were shut down or after they were divorced.
We're not exactly sure if this continued after they separated, but we knew it was definitely a thing before they did.
Gotcha. So tell us a little bit about after the crime scene, after they found her determinants homicide. Tell us a little bit about what happened that was kind of weird afterwards.
(19:14):
Afterwards, the police collected him to do some questioning. He was one of the main suspects, along with her first ex-husband and then the current boyfriend.
We don't have much about the other two, but we do know the police highly suspected him. There were accounts of questionable statements or things that wouldn't really match up.
(19:36):
He would say things that just didn't really make sense or his timeline was off so much so they did want him to do a lie detector test at one point and then he refused.
He made a bunch of excuses that didn't really make sense.
When Jennifer was first reported missing the night that she was found, her best friend who lived right across the street from her got the call from her mom who was basically saying,
(20:02):
like, Jennifer is supposed to be at the house to pick up her daughter from her ex who's trying to drop her off, but she wasn't there.
So what her best friend did was that Daniel always seems to know where Jennifer is. Maybe this time, no matter how much she didn't want to contact him, she did.
She was like, do you have any idea where she could be? This was one of the very first times that he was just like, no, I have zero idea where she could be.
(20:32):
No clue.
Let me help you search for her.
Isn't that convenient?
So Jennifer's best friend and Daniel kind of met up at her house being like, all right, let's see what we can do.
Let's try calling her. Obviously no answers. At that point, they hadn't looked around the back to see that the door was open and they never figured that out.
(20:55):
It was just her neighbor who did around the same time.
After a bit, Daniel decides, I'm going to go home for a bit, see what I can do, but not even three minutes after he leaves the best friend's house.
He calls her back and says, I just found Jennifer's car.
Now this car was only two streets away.
(21:17):
And the thing about it that her friend found weird was that Daniel did live close by.
However, the time that it took for him to leave the house and the time that he called back to say, I found her car, it wouldn't have made sense if he found it on the drive home because it looked like he took a completely different way to quote unquote get home.
(21:42):
He found the car and then when he did call, she was just like, hey, please don't touch anything.
Like this is weird. She's missing her cars there on a random street like called the police right now to which he said, I'm already in the car.
He had noticed the keys on the seat.
(22:03):
He had touched the steering wheel.
There was a bag in the car.
He had gone through everything.
So you know, forensically, he kind of got his prints on everything.
So do you think this was completely lexical?
You may not have known what it was doing or do you think it was intentional?
We asked a friend about this.
This was someone who was close to both Jennifer and Daniel.
(22:25):
He says Daniel's lack of a better term.
He's not stupid.
So he likely knew what he was doing.
It's highly unlikely that he just panicked and acted.
We don't really know if like maybe he was just reacting to the situation.
But based on what this friend says, it just it does not seem likely that he had no idea what he was doing.
(22:51):
We think he knows exactly what he did.
So in the car, you said he saw our keys.
Was there anything else there?
Was there a purse there?
Was there anything else in there?
Yeah.
So Jennifer's purse was in the car.
Obviously the police, when we tried to reach out to Granby Heights police,
they told us that like, hey, this is an open investigation.
Unfortunately, we can't talk to you.
But it doesn't seem like anything notable was found in her bag that could have pointed to anything to help the investigation forward.
(23:19):
But like he did just go through the bag.
Getting in the car is one thing.
Touching everything in the bag that is linked to a missing person is a bit off.
Well, the unusual part about that is if it was a random robbery that turned into murder and they steal her car,
they're not going to drop it off two streets away.
(23:41):
Yeah.
They're going to take it as far away as possible they can and get away from the scene.
They wouldn't leave her bag or person, anything they would have taken it.
So we have talked a lot about the facts of the case, who Jennifer was, all of this.
So you guys mentioned you did end up getting the coroner's report.
We said he talked to Jennifer's best friend, a mutual friend of both Jennifer and Danielle.
(24:02):
Tell me a little bit more about your guys' process.
How did you guys find information?
What were some roadblocks that you hit?
So we first obviously found this case through the Ohio Attorney General's page.
And it really struck out to us because this looked like a fairly normal woman.
You know, 35, mom of one.
Why is she on a cold case site?
(24:23):
So when we looked into it, we found a lot of articles and when we started this investigation,
it was right around the 10-year anniversary of her death.
So, you know, we had a lot of information to go off of from articles.
And it really struck out to us because in every single article without fail,
and I know there's obviously some bias when you're talking about someone who's passed away.
(24:46):
But all of her friends were just like, this is one of the nicest people I've ever met.
She's fun. She's hilarious. She supports her friends. She supports her daughter like no other mother could.
So we were just like, what led to her ending up as a cold case in such a brutal fashion?
And when we looked more into it, the main thing that struck out to us was just finding information on
(25:12):
how the police were reacting to its suspects.
And one of the articles that we found finally named her second ex as
one of the police's highest suspects.
From there, it was just a lot of like reaching out to friends and families who many of them unfortunately didn't respond.
Reaching out to the police department who again responded but told us they couldn't give us much
(25:35):
because it was still an open investigation and then the source that provided us the autopsy and toxicology reports
as well as the incident report as well.
So you mentioned the toxicology report earlier. Was there anything in her system?
Nope. Her toxicology was clean so that tells us she wasn't drunk, she wasn't drunk, nothing like that.
(25:56):
Were there signs of maybe like a fight, an altercation? Like was she fighting back against her attacker?
When we got the autopsy report, it was very long and when we mapped out all of her injuries,
we tried to see like how she could have sustained a lot of these because a lot of the cuts and stabs were,
the notable ones were, was a really deep laceration across her neck that cut into her voice box,
(26:24):
which we believe could have been one of the first injuries that she sustained because it looked like a lot of the small cuts
that she had were from the result of a struggle and obviously she lives in this like almost a condo
where her neighbor is like right next to her.
We were wondering how did she not hear anything, you know, if you're getting so brutally injured like this.
(26:48):
So we think the laceration across her neck was one of them.
The final blow we think was really deep stab wound into the right side of her heart that we think ultimately killed her.
But yeah, mapping out all the injuries, we think that she was taken by surprise at first,
but she tried to defend herself and a lot of the cuts on her arms and everything were from that struggle.
(27:14):
Makes you wonder if the person was already in the house when she came home or something of that nature,
to surprise her like that because you said there was no sign of forced entry, right?
And if it was forced entry, she would have time to hide, defend herself, something like that.
And even if she let somebody in, she would see them and be able to defend herself pretty quickly,
(27:39):
which kind of shows that maybe that person got in and was waiting for her to come home.
That was definitely a possibility that we considered, but just looking into her ex and everything,
we found that she probably would have opened the door for him because he was nothing if not persistent.
Always knocking on the door, demanding to be let in, she probably would have.
(28:01):
So we're not exactly sure if he was already there or if it just was an argument gone wrong.
Well, that's my next question. Do you know if there was any confrontation that happened prior to that?
Was there any fights or argument that happened right before?
Jennifer and Daniel, even though they were separated, a lot of the times Daniel would demand to speak to her about some things.
(28:26):
We remember that when we were speaking to her best friend, probably she was murdered, I think, on a Sunday,
probably the Thursday before that she saw Jennifer in Daniel's car having a conversation with them,
and she's like, why are you in his car?
And Jennifer was kind of a little dodgy around it and explained it as like, we just went out to lunch,
(28:50):
we just talked about some things, everything's fine.
But like the way that she was a little dodgy about it kind of struck her friend as odd,
especially in hindsight now, considering it was so close to when she was murdered.
Apart from that, like the usual confrontations that Daniel would participate in would be like,
if Jennifer went out on a date, which by the way, Daniel was very controlling about who she was seeing at the time,
(29:16):
if she went out on a date, he would conveniently show up along with another date.
But yeah, I do want to ask, you mentioned how after Jennifer was found, he was complaining of someone
convening for him, he was providing contradictory statements to the police.
Was there anything else that he said that could even put more suspicion on him besides everything else that we're going to discuss?
(29:37):
We know he bragged to some people saying that he managed to delete some things off of the internet before the police could get to it,
and then he also called one of his and Jennifer's friends and he was asking about whether or not they were interrogated as much as he was,
it was like what the investigation was on his end and said, and I quote,
(29:59):
if I get indicted, they will never find any physical evidence.
I hope listeners felt that heart drop that we felt when we first heard that.
Yeah, absolutely.
Well, and when you said to me, I'm thinking, that's impossible unless he cleans up that up.
Did they show any signs of cleaning the place up or anything?
(30:20):
They said it was like, could have been a robbery gone wrong, so evidence could have been...
Again, we don't really know exactly what the police could have found at the scene because they didn't grant access to those reports.
Right.
A lot of our investigation mostly followed Jennifer's victimology and what her friends and family said.
(30:41):
Right.
And more than that, he wouldn't really need to clean off any DNA evidence because the lawyer could very easily say,
they were exes, of course his DNA would be...
And he's been there a lot.
Yeah, of course.
Good point, good point, yeah.
Do you have a potential question for you guys?
If the police did have any physical evidence or information, why do you think they would maybe not want to release it?
(31:03):
We believe that this case, like when we describe all of it and using all the stuff that we've found that's incredibly incriminating against Daniel,
we think the police also know this.
We think the police is also... like he's the main suspect.
They might even like know that he might have done it, but everything is so incredibly circumstantial from the public point.
(31:27):
And even if they do have hard evidence, we feel like they haven't exactly maybe released it to the public or tried him yet because, you know,
they're worried that with such what we believe to be almost an open and shut case, considering the circumstantial evidence,
we think from the police's perspective, if they try him and they bring up all of this physical evidence,
(31:51):
they're worried that maybe the lawyer could easily explain as like he was participating in the search.
That's why his DNA is like some places, you know, they were X's. That's why this thing happened.
They weren't on great terms. That's why, you know, they had arguments all the time.
So we think it's more of a case of like they're trying to get more on him. So yeah.
(32:12):
And I think that's the biggest thing that I've gotten from police officers and detectives that have worked on it.
I've asked them all, you know, what is the case that has haunted you for such a long time?
They said the biggest ones are the ones they know who did it, but they can't find the evidence to prove it because of things like you just said.
So I think that's probably where it sets with this case.
(32:33):
Also, if they have something that they're just waiting to get through or waiting for another piece of evidence to go with,
they don't want to tell us because if we put it out here on, you know, on a podcast, you know, all of a sudden the evidence disappears.
So they want stuff that only the killer would know and they're going to hold that back, which makes sense to me.
(32:56):
So how do you guys, how do you guys feel through this experience?
What have you learned from investigating Jennifer and getting her story back out here and what are you going to take with you when you leave?
Throughout this entire investigation, this entire process, we learned a lot about just her life.
The entire time, Shira and I would have conversations where this, where we would just kind of reflect on what we'd learned.
(33:19):
This entire case is very sad because Jennifer was just, you know, she was a nice mother, she was a great friend.
A lot of people in the community knew her, so it's really sad to hear about a case like this because it just feels so like she didn't deserve this.
How could this happen to her?
Yeah, I mean, for me, and I think Heather can agree with me here, but like some of the phone calls that we had, like when we first talked to her best friend,
(33:46):
it was only supposed to be around half an hour.
It turned into like 50 minutes of just amazing conversation of what she gave us and we are so incredibly grateful.
But by the end of that call, and I remember in the recording that we have of it, when we hang up, there is just silence and then there is just shock.
For me personally, this case was one of the most infuriating.
(34:10):
Agorating, I can imagine.
It was so incredibly infuriating to see that also this guy was like so smug about it sometimes.
That just made me want to be like, yeah, because before that we knew some information about him, which is why we'd run it up to her.
But the second we said his name, she went, I could talk about him for a week.
(34:31):
So we got a lot of information from that and it was, yeah, right after that we just kind of looked at each other and we were like, wow.
Definitely one of the most impactful moments was one, that entire phone call.
Also the quote that we got from one of the mutual friends saying like, if I get indicted, there will be no, like that was jaw dropping.
(34:55):
Like my heart sunk hearing that.
And then when we were putting together our presentation for this case, we asked for some photos of Jennifer.
When we got sent those photos, I didn't expect it to be so impactful because this was a woman who clearly loved her family.
She loved her friends.
She loved her daughter more than anything and she was so happy in the photos.
(35:19):
And by the way that her mom and her friends described it, her life was improving so much leading up to this murder.
The way that it was cut short like this was awful.
Do you think there's anything else that you guys want to mention that we haven't already discussed in this podcast?
Definitely if anyone listening has information or anything, please contact Grand View Heights Police Department.
(35:44):
The investigators on the case, even though we weren't able to talk to them very much, they seemed incredibly passionate about the case.
You can reach them at the number 614-488-7901.
They're very open to information.
At some point they did have a reward.
I'm not sure if that's still in effect.
(36:05):
This, this was an awful case and it deserves its justice.
No matter who the suspect was or who might have murdered her.
And also if for some reason you feel uncomfortable, contact the police.
You can contact us at coldcaseatmasonallhivesschools.com and we will definitely move that information to the police department as quickly as we can.
(36:28):
I want to say thank you for the work that you put into this.
One thing sitting here listening to you and watching some of the stuff that you guys have done over the time.
You guys were pretty quiet most of the time when you do this and then all of a sudden when I finally got you to talk to me, I could see the compassion and the emotions and exactly what I wanted to get out of this from you guys.
(36:53):
Because the whole point is those emotions helped bring the story back out and that's what our goal is, is to try to bring those stories back out.
I want to say congratulations, whatever thing.
Thank you for doing the hard work in this class and I really appreciate that.
And stay tuned for our next episode. Thank you.
(37:14):
Thank you for listening to this episode of Cold Case MHS.
This podcast was edited by the students of Cold Case MHS and produced by Mr. Hubbard and myself.
The music was performed and written by Alexa Dahl and the artwork was created by the students of MHS Design Studio Internship.
Please consider sharing this podcast to bring more light to these victims.
And we'll see you next time to Cold Case MHS, Monsters and Demons.
(38:04):
Thank you for watching.
(38:34):
Cold Case MHS is behind every Cold Case.
People fighting day to day.
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