Vanished

by Jenna Jackson

A 37-year-old woman was kidnapped at gunpoint Monday night as she was leaving a well-traveled shopping center in Pearland. Texas EquuSearch is leading the search for her right now.

Even the search leaders say they aren’t optimistic about finding Susana De Jesus (pictured above) alive at this point, considering how she was taken. I know this kind of thing happens all the time–but this one stuck with me because of how brazen it was. And because of what this woman and her family have already gone through in the past year.

De Jesus was snatched as she was walking to her car in the parking lot outside of Catherine’s Plus Sizes, a boutique in a shopping center on Smith Ranch Road, where she has been assistant manager since November 2007.

She wasn’t alone–she was walking with a co-worker. The co-worker described a masked man who grabbed De Jesus at gunpoint and forced her into her own Cadillac. Then he drove the Cadillac out of the shopping center parking lot with another vehicle following.

The brazenness of abducting someone who is not alone–in a visible spot, even though it was late evening, is terrifying. To add to that, this poor woman lost her husband in a freak accident in May. His Corvette crashed into a concrete bridge support and burst into flames on the Gulf Freeway.

I feel very sad for De Jesus’ family–and am hoping the searchers have luck finding her today. The odds aren’t great that she’s still alive, considering the motive in this abduction was likely money. But I hope for the family’s sake that she is the exception–they’ve certainly had enough tragedy in the last year already.

A security camera snapped a photo later the night of her abduction of a masked man in the driver's seat of her black 2008 Cadillac at an automated teller machine outside a bank at 3636 Old Spanish Trail in Houston. He used De Jesus' card to withdraw cash.

It was not clear whether De Jesus was still in the car when the photo was taken, according to a story in the Houston Chronicle. Houston police found the Cadillac early Tuesday at an apartment complex in the 6000 block of West Airport.

Tim Miller, the director of EquuSearch, has organized volunteers to search for the missing woman today.

"We have one fairly small girl and really and truly, a big area," said Miller to the Houston Chronicle. "Where do you start with something like that?"

Based on phone calls he has received, Miller said he expects a huge turnout of volunteers today as a widespread search for Susana De Jesus begins.

The ATM where the man was photographed is about 11 miles from the store and another 11 miles from where the car was found.

Miller, who founded Texas EquuSearch after the 1984 abduction and murder of his daughter, Laura, said he and others in the group were trying to decide which of those three locations should be the focus of today's search.

Police said they don’t know why De Jesus was targeted.

Brazoria County sheriff’s Capt. Chris Kincheloe told the Chronicle investigators are not sure whether the abduction has any connection to a recent series of home-invasion robberies in Pearland and other communities in the area. Each of the crimes has been different, he said.
Miller said single women driving impressive new cars—such as De Jesus’ Cadillac—sometimes become targets.

“I don’t believe this was just random,” he said of the kidnapping. “I would anticipate he’d seen her over a few days or few weeks.”

Anyone with information about the incident is asked to call the Brazoria County Sheriff’s Office at 281-756-2392, or investigator Wade Nichols at 281-756-2220. Brazoria County Crime Stoppers also is taking anonymous tips at 800-460-2222.

I’m hoping this will give just a little more publicity to the search for this woman. Maybe she is still alive–and maybe a random sighting will help discover her location.

Tweet

C.S. … I Don’t Think So!

by Diane Dimond

Emmy Award winning TV producer Jerry Bruckheimer has let me down. He’s let all of us down.

For years we’ve been riveted by his prime time programs: The CSI franchise based in Miami, Las Vegas and New York, Cold Case, Without a Trace and others. I am one of Bruckheimer’s biggest fans.

But on a recent episode of CSI Miami Bruckheimer’s quality control broke down. He allowed his writers to get away with poetic license that could seriously damage law enforcement efforts.

In an episode called “The Tipping Point” a thug declares of his ‘hood, “God gave up on this neighborhood a long time ago.” And, indeed, we learn the population has been scared into silence by the violent actions of the local gang. But then a do-gooder named Reverend Mike is murdered. Investigators are stymied until one brave young person calls Crime Stoppers with vital information.

This is a wonderful message for those urban numbskulls who still think cooperating with police is “snitching.”

But what do Bruckheimer’s writers have the authorities say when they learn there is a Crime Stoppers tip? Are they thankful? No.

“Those people are just trying to make a buck off the county. Can we trust them?” one ignorant character asks another.

Within minutes we see the tipster, a worried young woman named Yolanda, exiting an elevator at police headquarters asking, “So, you can guarantee no one will know I’m the one who called?” And she is reassured by the lead detective that all tips are confidential. Later, as the officer scrolls through a computer list of other Crime Stopper calls (and we clearly see a roster of names and address) another CSI dumbbell dismissively questions the detective’s action saying, “The tip line? I thought it was mostly crackpots!”

Now, if any of the program’s writers bothered to check facts they would have found that Crime Stoppers is nothing like they described. First, the reward fund is 100% donated from civilian sources and takes no county, state or federal money. Doing so would require a paper trail no one wants. Why? Because all tips are strictly confidential! No one would ever ask for a caller’s name or address and that information is never stored on some computerized master list. When someone with a tip phones Crime Stoppers they are given a unique tipster ID number and told to keep calling back to see if they are due a reward check.

For CSI Miami to show tipster Yolanda being outed and brought into a public cop shop is impossible. It would never happen.

And, so what occurs next in the episode is completely inconceivable. Somehow the street gang finds out Yolanda has been talking to police. She’s hog-tied and left inside a building that’s about to be obliterated by a massive bomb. She’s saved at the last minute because the lead character, Horatio Caine, pulls a Dudley Do Right.

The lesson left from this CSI Miami episode was that if you snitch you’re in danger. If you talk to the police about a crime the bad guy will find out and get you. If you’re lame enough to call Crime Stoppers you must be a “crackpot”. How many young people saw that episode and lodged that lesson in their brain? And I’ll bet it’s not just Crime Stopper personnel who cringed at the program. Good detectives everywhere welcome anonymous tips, especially in murder cases. They’ve already got to fight the rap-music message that “snitchin’ ain’t cool.” They don’t need a popular prime time TV show (dedicated to crime fighting, no less!) helping spread that self-destructive line.

Look, I’m a writer. I value the First Amendment, character development and all that. What I don’t value is lazy writing that leaves the wrong impression when the real facts are so compelling.

As I, coincidentally, wrote in this space recently Crime Stoppers has been in existence for more than 30 years. Its success is directly attributed to good citizens who do the right thing. In the U.S. more than 800 thousand cases, like murder, rape, armed robbery and child molestation have been cleared thanks to Crime Stopper tipsters. More than a billion dollars in property has been recovered, 4 billion dollars worth of illegal drugs.

At the end of the CSI episode the bad guys are busted because Yolanda picked up a phone. She got a thousand dollar reward after her information led to arrests. That’s a scenario CSI got right. It happens every day in all 50 states and 24 countries where Crime Stoppers operates.

Come on, Hollywood. You don’t have to make it up. Just follow the facts – especially when you’re dealing with something as crucial as Crime Stoppers. And please, Jerry Bruckheimer, don’t re-run that episode!

Tweet

"Lover's Lane" Unsolved Murders

by Jenna Jackson

A young couple, newly in love and looking forward to their lives – brutally murdered and left where their killer likely thought no one would discover them. Nearly 18 years ago, Cheryl Henry and Andy Atkinson met up with the wrong person/s, and two young lives, full of promise, ended.

In the summer of 1990, the bodies of Henry, 22, and her boyfriend, Atkinson, 21, were found in an undeveloped, wooded area of Houston where young people often went to park and kiss. Both had been tied up with rope and their throats slashed. Henry had been raped.

For almost two decades, detective Billy Belk worked the case for the Houston Police Department's Homicide Division. Other cases would come and go – but this one stayed with him through the years. Unfortunately, there was only so much he could do with the little amount of evidence they had. There were no eyewitnesses. Semen was collected from Henry's body at the scene -- but DNA testing was in its infancy and wasn't much help at that point.

But Belk made sure the evidence they did have was properly collected – and it finally paid off. A week after Belk retired, he got a phone call. The DNA from semen found on Henry’s body had just been matched to an unsolved rape that happened that same year. A 30-year-old exotic dancer who worked at GiGi’s, a topless club in Houston, had been raped in her apartment.

Now a 48-year-old Realtor, the woman still clearly remembered that terrifying night, just two months before Henry and Atkinson were killed – and the face of the man who raped her. Police have now released a composite sketch of the suspect. She said he was a white man in his mid-30s, about 6 feet tall and 180 pounds with brown hair, brown eyes, a possible mustache and olive skin.

Like the rape victim, Cheryl Henry had worked at a similar club in Houston -- Rick's Cabaret. Henry's boyfriend Atkinson occasionally worked the door at Dreams Street, another southwest Houston club, which his father managed. With the DNA link, police can refocus their investigation based on the likelihood that the man who raped both women frequented or worked at local strip clubs.

The “Lover’s Lane” slayings may be Houston’s most notorious set of unsolved murders.

"It's a bad Hollywood movie," Michael Miller, an HPD homicide investigator who inherited the case from Belk, his former partner, told the Houston Chronicle last week when the news broke. "Somebody came up on them, tied them up and marched them out to the woods. These two knew they were going to die."

Miller says he knows there are other victims out there – and he hopes someone will recognize the sketch and call him. Even the smallest lead could help him track down this rapist and killer, who could still be at work today.

Over the years, the victims’ families and the police department have kept these murders in the limelight. As a producer for 48 Hours, I've seen what these families go through -- it is an unspeakable nightmare to lose a loved one in this manner. But to never know who did this -- and never have them pay in any way for what they've done -- is beyond comprehension. 48 Hours has looked into this case a handful of times – as have many other media outlets. But there has never been a break with as much potential as this one.

It will definitely still be an uphill battle to find this man. It will take a lot of pounding the pavement (something the cops on this have been doing since day one) – and a huge stroke of luck. But at least it’s something – and hopefully it will get people talking.

Because the composite is of the killer 18 years ago, he obviously will have aged and will look different. But the hope is that someone will recognize him as he looked back then – and give the police a lead.

These families lost two loved ones; their lives ended before they really even began. Hopefully the progression of new DNA science – and the steadiness of old police work – will finally create a break in this case.

If you know anything, no matter how small, call Detective Michael Miller at 713-308-3946 or 713-308-3600. Crime Stoppers is offering a $5,000 reward for information leading to the arrest and charging of a suspect. Call 713-222-8477.

Tweet