Desert Secrets : Jennifer Lueth and Diana Shawcroft

In the summer of 1996, two bodies were discovered in a remote section of the Arizona desert.  Nearly 30 years later, we are still looking and waiting for answers.

Thank you to the Unsolved Mysteries, ABC15 Arizona, The City of Glendale Police Department, Attorney General Kris Mayes’s Cold Case Page, The Trail Went Cold Podcast, The Trace Evidence Podcast, Websleuths, Hub Pages, AreaVibes, Reddit, and Wikipedia for information contributing to today’s case.  

This episode was written by Kira McQueen, was edited by John Lordan and produced by LordanArts.

You can follow Kira McQueen's Missing Person's Advocacy at https://www.instagram.com/missinginwa/



Do you have any comments, or a case you’d like to suggest? You’ll find a comment form and case submission link at LordanArts.com.

This is not intended to act as a means of proving or disproving anything related to the investigation.  It is a conversation about the current known facts and theories being discussed.  Everyone directly or indirectly referred to is innocent until proven guilty in a court of law.

LordanArts 2025

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:20):
In the remote Arizona Desert, two redwood crosses hold vigil
as they have for nearly thirty years, faded by relentless sun,
but forever etched with two names. These crosses aren't the
same kind you drive past on a roadside. They stand
on a lonely rock ledge in the high desert, miles
from the nearest paved road and about one hundred miles

(00:41):
north of Phoenix. The land here is wildly unforgiving and
reachable only by all wheel drive vehicles and four by fours.
The only ones that typically venture here are hunters, off roaders, ranchers,
forest service crews, and maybe the occasional hardened hikerst oh
one stumbles here by chance. These crosses mark the place where,

(01:04):
in the summer of nineteen ninety six, two nineteen year
old girl's bodies were discovered. I'm John Lordon, and today
we're exploring the seriously mysterious and still unsolved murders of
Diana Shawcroft and Jenniferloof. But of course their stories didn't
start in the depths of the desert. The two girls

(01:25):
had met in grade school in Loveland, Colorado, and over
the years their friendship deepened into something closer to a sisterhood.
They spent their childhood side by side, having sleepovers, sharing
inside jokes, and making plans for the future. Diana Lynn Shawcroft,
called Dede by those closest to her, was born on
February twenty second, nineteen seventy seven, in Denver, Colorado. As

(01:48):
an adult, she was petite, about five foot two, with
a fair complexion, blue eyes, and dark hair. Quieter and
more reserved than her best friend, she carried herself with
a kind of gentle steadiness. She's the one who basically
took care of both of them, her father, Roger Shawcroft,
told unsolved Mysteries. Jennifer siue Luth, known as Jenny, was

(02:10):
born on December thirteenth, nineteen seventy six, in Loveland. She
stood a little taller than Diana when she was an adult,
around five foot six, with a medium build, blue eyes
and dark blonde hair. Outgoing and lively, Jennifer had what
her family described as a flirty, spirited personality. Where Diana
was reserved, Jennifer was exuberant, a natural counterbalance to her

(02:34):
best friend's quiet presence. By the spring of nineteen ninety six,
both Diana and Jennifer were nineteen and eager to leave
behind the quiet familiarity of Colorado. At the time, Loveland
was a city of fewer than forty thousand people, a
small town haven where neighbors waved as they passed and
school sports were community events. Life there was predictable, comfortable,

(02:58):
and close knit, but Diana and Jennifer were restless. Diana's
older sister, Christina, who everyone called Tina, agreed to let
them stay in her one bedroom apartment at the Cedar
Creek Apartments on North fifty seventh Avenue in Glendale, Arizona.
It was a tight fit and a bit chaotic, but
Tina was already house hunting and planned to move when

(03:19):
she found something better. For Diana and Jennifer, it was
their first taste of independence and adulthood. Glendale in the
mid nineties was a world apart from Loveland. By nineteen
ninety six, the city had swelled to over one hundred
and eighty thousand residents, over four times the size of
the hometown Diana and Jennifer had left behind. It sprawled

(03:40):
across the desert as a booming suburb on the edge
of Phoenix. It was full of shopping centers and subdivisions
and hummed with traffic and constant movement. They were just go,
go go, Tina told ABC fifteen, remembering how the girls
lived with an unstoppable energy, Glendale's restless pace felt like
a perfect match for them and their growing independence. Soon

(04:02):
after arriving, Diana got a job at Burger King and
Jennifer started as a customer service representative for a Discover
card when they weren't working. They were the kind of
young women who were quick to accept an invitation, eager
to be where the music and laughter were, and rarely
content to stay in for the night. On the evening
of May twenty fourth, nineteen ninety six, that restless spirit

(04:24):
turned into a mild argument in the cramped apartment. Diana
and Jennifer wanted to get out for the night, but
without a car of their own, their only option was
to beg Tina to drive them. Tina flat out refused.
The desert heat was still heavy, she was exhausted from
the day, and she wasn't in the mood for their
excitable energy. Later, she told ABC fifteen, the very last

(04:47):
thing Deeedee said to me was Tina, please come with us,
and I said no. With that, the girls gave up
the debate and set out on foot around six fifty pm,
heading toward Danny's Minni Mart and Variety store on West
Camelback Road. It was two blocks from the apartment and
a place they'd been countless times before. They were both

(05:07):
wearing shorts, tank tops, and sandals, and carried only a
few dollars in cash for whatever they planned to buy.
Around seven pm, the young women reached the mini mark.
According to the cashier and witnesses, they had purchased cigarettes
and soda and lingered outside, smoking and drinking the soda
for close to two hours. It wasn't clear if they

(05:28):
were waiting for something or just enjoying some time away
from the small apartment. A faded blue early nineteen eighty
Chevy pickup with dents, a broken right tail light, chrome bumpers,
and tinted windows pulled up outside the Mini mark. The
driver was described as a white man in his thirties
with a shoulder length, blonde mullet hair style and mustache.

(05:50):
Witnesses also said that the man had scratches on his
arm and he was wearing a greasy denim jacket. Although
it's unclear how the scratches would be visible unless they
were showing below the jacket's cuff or the sleeves were
rolled up. The typical late May temperature in Glendale would
still be around ninety degrees fahrenheit at seven pm, so
a jacket might have been an odd choice to begin with.

(06:12):
Witness statements are often unreliable, but with multiple descriptions of
this man and his truck, we can speculate that the
most basic repeated parts are true blue truck, white male.
The girl seemed to engage in friendly conversation with him
for a few minutes before getting into the truck. After
the truck left the Mini mart, Diana and Jennifer were

(06:34):
never seen alive again. Diana's sister Tina had gone to
bed early that night, but was concerned when she woke
up and the two weren't there. She told Unsolved Mysteries.

(06:56):
They said they were going to walk to the store
to get cigarettes and a pop, and that they would
be back in a little while. They didn't take anything
with them, and they never went anywhere without their makeup,
so that's what made me think that they were coming
right back. Their purses were also still in the apartment
and contained their IDs, bank cards, and even an uncashed

(07:16):
paycheck of Diana's. Panicked Tina quickly reached out to her
and Diana's father, Roger Shawcroft, who lived locally, and their mother,
Kathy Shawcroft, who was still in Colorado. She also contacted
Jennifer's parents, Bob and Deborah Luth, who were also both
in Colorado. The families reported Diana and Jennifer missing to

(07:37):
the Glendale Police Department, but were told the girls might
simply be out partying for the long Memorial Day weekend.
While no one could deny that they enjoyed going out,
their families insisted that they would never just vanish with
nothing more than the clothes they had on and a
little cash in their pockets. Even if they had gone
to a party that night, something had to have gone

(07:57):
wrong to keep them from calling or come home. In
the morning. Officers went to Danny's Mini martin variety store
and spoke with the clerk that had been on duty.
He and other later witnesses all gave similar accounts of
Diana and Jennifer hanging out for about two hours before
leaving in the man's blue truck with no signs of distress.
Family members insisted that neither girl would have climbed into

(08:20):
a stranger's vehicle, but at nineteen board and together, they
may have felt safer accepting a ride. They had also
been meeting new people recently, and if the driver was
someone they had crossed paths with before, it could have
created a false sense of friendship and security. Bob and
Deborah Luth immediately traveled to Arizona to begin searching for

(08:42):
their daughter. Diana's father, Roger Shawcroft, organized ground searches in
the desert, coordinating four by four and off road vehicles
to comb popular party spots and remote stretches where the
girls might have gone. The Maricopa County Sheriff's offices volunteer
air Posse even joined the effort, flying over why swaths
of desert in hopes of spotting the blue truck or

(09:03):
the girls. In nineteen ninety six, most teenagers didn't carry
cell phones, and security cameras weren't common, so investigators had
no digital trail to follow. Aside from the eyewitness accounts
from the mini mart, police were left with very little
to go on. Only three months after the girls disappeared
in December of nineteen ninety six, bow hunters stumbled upon

(09:25):
two sets of remains, later confirmed to be Diana and Jennifer.
Police ruled the death's homicides, but never released either cause
of death, citing the ongoing investigation. One detail they did
confirm was chilling. Diana's body had been placed on top
of Jennifer's. Was this a deliberate act with meaning or

(09:45):
simply a matter of positioning. It also remains unclear to
the public whether this was the site of the murders
or merely a place where the killer chose to leave them.
The rocky soil made burial almost impossible, but the ledge
was secluded enough that the perpetrator may have believed discovery
was unlikely. Investigators suggested the killer was someone familiar with

(10:06):
this terrain, and it's worth noting that the ledge itself
offered an elevated vantage point ideal for spotting game. Was
the killer a hunter? Hair and fibers were collected at
the scene, but forensic tools in nineteen ninety six weren't
advanced enough to extract answers. Another question still hangs heavy.

(10:26):
Was this the work of a single killer, or would
it have taken two or more people to subdue the
girls and leave them there. Jennifer LUTH's father, Bob, believed
the killer couldn't have acted alone. Quote, Jennifer was a
strong girl, and she was a scrapper if she needed
to be. It wouldn't be easy for one person to
overpower Jennifer alone, But with two of them, it's just

(10:48):
sort of inconceivable to me that one person was able
to do that to two girls. He may be right.
The girls likely would have fought with everything they had
if they thought resistance gave them a chance. Yet, the
presence of a weapon, particularly a gun, could have ended
that fight before it began. Since no information about the
condition of the remains has been shared with the public,

(11:10):
we don't know if there were any indications of a
murder weapon. From the very beginning, investigators fixated on the
man in the blue Chevy. His truck could have handled
the rough road to the ledge, and the scratches on
his arm could hint at violence, maybe recent, maybe a
history of it, or maybe he just had a cat.

(11:30):
Most of all, this man was the only lead they had,
but before police could track him down, both he and
the truck seemed to vanish into thin air. No plate number,
no name, no one stepping forward to say they knew him.
For some, that disappearance is as good as a confession.
For others, it raises different questions. Maybe he wasn't the

(11:53):
killer at all, Maybe he just gave the girls a
ride to a party or introduce them to someone else.
If that was true, why didn't he come forward to
clear his name. Was he afraid the police would see
him as guilty no matter what? Did he commit another
crime that night, like supplying them with alcohol or drugs,
and worry that admitting anything would get him into trouble?

(12:14):
Or is it possible he carried guilt from leaving the
girls with someone or somewhere that they never came back from.
In the end, his silence leaves only more questions. It's
worth noting that the man in the blue chevy never
got out of his truck. If he wasn't there specifically
to meet Diana and Jennifer, why not park, go inside

(12:36):
the mini mart and maybe strike up a casual conversation
on his way in or out. Staying behind the wheel
might indicate that the girls were the reason he came.
Maybe he was someone they had called from a payphone earlier,
asking for a ride or something to do. But the
truth is, we don't know. We don't even know that
they had seen this man before. Investigators spoke with people

(12:57):
Diana and Jennifer had met during their short time in Glendale,
searching for anyone who might match his description or raise
suspicion themselves. When asked about the man in the truck
in an interview with ABC fifteen, Tina said, I have
no idea who that could even be. I know that
the detectives over the years have had a few ideas,
and from coming through people I knew and things like that,

(13:19):
nothing ever made sense. So was this mystery driver the
killer or just someone who's silence made him look guilty?
Did he befriend the girls beforehand or were they simply
too trusting and eager for adventure? And if he wasn't
the killer at all, then who was he. Some people
have even speculated that Diana and Jennifer's murders could be

(13:42):
connected to a serial killer, but that seems unlikely. Double
abductions are rare in serial cases, and the fact that
the girls were taken together from a semi busy public
spot doesn't fit the calculated low visibility scenarios most serial
killers favor. Over the years, investigators have looked for patterns,
but found no confirmed links between this case and any

(14:05):
other homicide in Arizona or to the high profile West
Mason murders in Albuquerque, New Mexico. In the end, the
evidence points less toward a roaming predator and more toward
an isolated act of opportunity or personal motive, leaving investigators
with even fewer avenues to pursue. Shortly after their discovery,

(14:25):
a memorial of two wooden crosses and photographs was placed
at the spot where the girls had been found. Police
patrolled the site on dates that they thought might matter
to the murderer, but nothing suspicious ever surfaced. Then, in
September of two thousand, four years after the murders, someone
stole the photographs of Jennifer and Diana from the shrine.

(14:46):
The location was known only to family, close friends, and
law enforcement, raising fears that the person responsible was tied
to the crime. Had the killer come back to claim
a cruel trophy. The idea that s someone would travel
so far into the desert not to mourn, but to desecrate,
left the families shaken. Everyone was left in a painful

(15:08):
state of waiting as the years went on, with no
new tips to guide them. In twenty ten, the hair
and fibers collected from the scene in nineteen ninety six
were re examined with newer technology, but police never announced
any matches or discoveries. Another fifteen years passed with seemingly
no movement in the case, but in early twenty twenty five,

(15:29):
Arizona's newly formed cold case unit listed the case as
one of its top priorities and one of only five
under active review. Supervising Special Agent Roger Geisler, who once
worked with the Glendale Police Department, now oversees the renewed investigation. Quote,
given that movement from such a long location, somebody either

(15:49):
saw or heard or the people involved talked about that,
whether they were hunters or somebody up in that area.
It's just all those things we believe somebody has in
out there, he told ABC fifteen. He also emphasized that
even decades old evidence can be re examined with today's technology,
a process that has solved countless cold cases in recent years.

(16:13):
It's true that testing holds promise, but so does time.
Secrets rarely remain buried forever. Sometimes the weight of silence
grows too heavy, pressing on the conscience of someone who
knows more than they ever admitted. One day, perhaps that
person will speak and the truth will finally emerge. Some

(16:33):
of their family and friends have since passed away without
the bitter relief of knowing what happened, But Diana's sister
Tina speaks for those who remain. We know somebody knows,
We know somebody did this, and we wait for the
day we find you. And so their crosses remain on
the rocky ledge at the mercy of the Arizona's sun,

(16:56):
the lasting reminder of lives cut short and questions unanswered.
The desert remembers those who left Diana and Jennifer there remember,
and I'm hoping that somebody else remembers too. If you
have information about the murders of Diana Shawcroft and Jennifer Loof,
please contact the Glendale Police Department tip line at six

(17:18):
two three nine three zero three three one nine. Do
you have any insights or a case you'd like to suggest,
feel free to send it to me. You'll find a
comment form and case submission link at lordenarts dot com.
Thank you to Unsolved Mysteries, ABC fifteen, Arizona, the City
of Glendale Police Department, Attorney General Chris Mays's Cold case page,

(17:40):
the Trail Went Cold podcast, the Trace Evidence Podcast, Webslooth's
hub pages, Area Vibes, Reddit, and Wikipedia for information contributing
to today's case. This episode was written by Kira McQueen,
edited by John Lordon, and produced by Lorden Arts. Thank
you to our audience here for the live recording session
hosted on the YouTube channel lord Arts Studio two, and

(18:01):
a special thanks to our seriously mysterious financial supporters, including
a special shout out for Robert Martin. Most of all,
thank you for listening. I'm John Lorden. Please join us
again next week for another case I know you'll find
seriously mysterious