Murder of Sherri Jarvis

 

Sherri Ann Jarvis (March 9, 1966 – November 1, 1980) was an American murder victim from Forest Lake, Minnesota whose body was discovered in Huntsville, Texas on November 1, 1980. Her body was discovered within hours of her sexual assault and murder and remained unidentified for 41 years before investigators announced her identification via forensic genealogy in November 2021.

Despite initial efforts to discover both her identity and that of her murderer(s), the investigation into Jarvis's murder gradually became a cold case. Numerous efforts were made to determine her identity, including several forensic facial reconstructions of how she may have appeared in life. The investigation into her murder is ongoing.

Before her identification, Jarvis was known as the Walker County Jane Doe of the county in which her body was discovered and where she was later buried in a donated casket.

Discovery

On November 1, 1980, the nude body of a girl estimated to be between the ages of 14 and 18 was discovered by a truck driver who had been driving past the Sam Houston National Forest. She was lying face-down in an area of grass approximately 20 feet (6.1 m) from the shoulder of Interstate Highway 45, and two miles north of Huntsville. This motorist called the police at 9:20 a.m. to report his discovery.

The victim had been deceased for approximately six hours, thus placing her time of death around 3:20 a.m. A rectangular brown pendant containing a smoky blue or brown glass-colored stone on a thin gold chain necklace was found around her neck. Her ears were pierced, but no earrings were found in her ears or at the crime scene. High-heeled red leather sandals with light brown straps, which investigators would discover the girl had been seen carrying while alive, were also recovered from the scene. The remainder of her clothing was missing.

Autopsy

The decedent was approximately five feet six inches (1.68 m) in height, weighed between 105 and 120 pounds (48 and 54 kg), and was described by the Harris County Medical Examiner as being a "well-nourished" individual. Her eyes were hazel, and her hair was approximately 10 inches in length and light brown in color, with what has been described as a possible reddish tint, although her hair bore no evidence of having received color treatment. The decedent's fingernails were bare, and her toenails had been painted pink. Distinctive features upon her body were a vertical scar measuring one-and-a-half inches at the edge of her right eyebrow and the fact that her right nipple was inverted. Due to the general condition of the decedent's body, including her overall health, nutrition, and the excellent dental care she had received in life, she was believed to have come from a middle-class household.

The cause of death was certified by the coroner to be asphyxia due to ligature strangulation, possibly inflicted via pantyhose, fragments of which—along with the decedent's underwear—were found inside the victim's vaginal cavity. The pantyhose and underwear had likely been placed inside the girl's vaginal cavity in an attempt to prevent her body from bleeding as she was transported to the site of her discovery. She had been sexually assaulted before her death with a large blunt instrument both vaginally and anally. It is unknown if the girl had been conventionally raped, as no biological evidence attesting to this form of sexual assault was discovered either at the crime scene or in the coroner's subsequent examination of her body. The girl had also been severely beaten before her death as many bruises were evident across her body, with her lips and right eyelid, in particular, being extensively swollen. In addition, her right shoulder bore a deep and visible bite mark.

Investigation

The likely movements of Jarvis before her murder and the location of her body. The black dotted line indicates a likely route taken based on eyewitness accounts; the red dotted line indicates the direction to Ellis Prison farm.

Sightings

Following exhaustive witness appeals and extensive media accounts regarding this murder, numerous individuals (all of whom are now deceased) informed investigators they had seen a teenage girl matching the decedent's description within the 24 hours before her murder. These individuals include the manager of a South End Gulf station and two employees at the Hitch 'n' Post truck stop, all of whom described this girl as wearing blue jeans, a dirty yellow pullover, and a white knit sweater with noticeably large pockets that extended past her waist. This girl had been carrying red leather-strapped high-heeled sandals.

According to the first witness, the girl—appearing somewhat disheveled—had arrived at the South End Gulf station at approximately 6:30 p.m. on October 31. At this location, she had exited a blue 1973 or 1974 model Chevrolet Caprice with a light-colored top, which had been driven by a white male. This witness stated the girl had asked for directions to the Texas Department of Corrections Ellis Prison Farm. After receiving directions, the girl had left the Gulf station on foot and was later seen walking north on Sam Houston Avenue.

This same girl was later seen at the Hitch 'n' Post truck stop alongside Interstate 45, where she again requested directions to the Texas Department of Corrections Ellis Prison Farm, claiming "a friend" was waiting for her at this location. In response, a waitress drew a map providing directions to the prison farm which she then handed to the girl. This waitress informed investigators that she had suspected the girl was a runaway and that in their brief conversation, the girl had informed her she was from either Rockport or Aransas Pass, Texas. The girl had also claimed to this waitress that she was 19 years old; when the waitress had expressed doubts as to her claimed age and further asked if her parents knew her whereabouts; this girl had reportedly replied, "Who cares?"

Ellis Prison Farm

Both inmates and employees of the Ellis Prison Farm were canvassed and shown mortuary photographs of the victim, although none was able to identify her. According to a detective working the cold case in the 21st century, only one inmate was of a similar age to the victim. Investigators were never able to establish a connection between the two. Investigators traveled to both the Rockport and Aransas Pass districts to consult with law enforcement personnel regarding any missing females whose physical descriptions matched that of the victim. Staff at schools in both districts were also contacted by investigators for the same purpose. Numerous Texas high school yearbooks were searched for any female known to be missing whose physical features matched her description. None yielded results, and no missing person reports relating to young Caucasian females were matched to the victim at the time.

Even though police and media appeals in the towns of Rockport or Aransas Pass to discover the identity of the victim failed to produce any fruitful leads as to her identity, it was thought that she may have indeed hailed from the general region she had stated to the waitress at the Hitch 'n' Post truck stop the evening before her murder.

Funeral

On January 16, 1981, the unidentified girl was buried in the Adickes Addition at Oakwood Cemetery. Her burial followed an open-casket funeral, and the cemetery in which she was interred is located within the city where her body was found. She is buried beneath a tombstone donated by Morris Memorials; the inscription upon her tombstone reads, "Unknown white female. Died Nov. 1, 1980." A new tombstone bearing her name, nickname, photograph, and the inscription "Never alone and loved by many" has since been erected.

"That person made a statement when they did that. Honestly, no one should ever be treated like that ... If we could positively identify the victim there is a perfect chance we could identify the suspect. At this point, I'm willing to look anywhere. If there is a missing person from New York that looks like her, I'm willing to look at it."

Walker County Sheriff's Office Detective Thomas Bean refers to the murder of Walker County Jane Doe and the mindset of her murderer. March 4, 2018

Ongoing investigation

Further forensic analysis

The remains of Walker County Jane Doe were exhumed in 1999 to conduct a further forensic examination of her remains, including the obtaining of a DNA sample from her body. This second forensic examination of her body revised the likely age of Walker County Jane Doe to be between 14 and 18 years old, with investigators stating they believed the most likely age of Walker County Jane Doe to be between 14-and-a-half and 16-and-a-half years old.

In November 2015, the case was officially reopened by the Walker County Sheriff's Office.

DNA testing was also conducted on the high-heeled red leather sandals found at the crime scene; the results of this testing remain undisclosed. Local police departments also actively monitored other missing person reports for any potential matches to the victim. Investigators have also reached out to the public via various online websites, news media, and television networks in hopes of generating further leads of inquiry—all of which, to date, have been unsuccessful in identifying her murderer(s).

Facial reconstructions

Several forensic facial reconstructions have been created to illustrate estimations of how Walker County Jane Doe may have looked in life. In 1990, forensic and portrait artist Karen T. Taylor created a postmortem drawing of Walker County Jane Doe in which she incorporated an estimation as to the appearance of the necklace she had been wearing. An investigator at the Walker County Sheriff's Office has also created a facial rendering of the victim.

Taylor has included this case in her book Forensic Art and Illustration, in which she confessed to having experienced difficulties in creating her sketch of the decedent as the only frontal photograph made available to her at the time was of one taken after the victim had received extensive reconstructive cosmetic treatment at the Huntsville Funeral Home for her facial features to be sufficient to be viewed in an open-casket funeral. Taylor further explained that a scaled photograph of the girl's necklace was not made available to her, and she was forced to guess the size of this item of jewelry for the facial reconstruction she produced.

Within the decade before Walker County Jane Doe's identification, the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children constructed and released two facial reconstructions of how the victim may have appeared in life. The first facial reconstruction was released in 2012 and the second shortly after the 35th anniversary of her murder. All facial reconstructions were created by studying mortuary photographs taken of the victim.

Identification

In 2020, the Walker County Sheriff's Office partnered with Othram Incorporated to attempt to identify Walker County Jane Doe via genetic genealogy. Initial attempts to extract usable genetic materials from her remains were unsuccessful, but testing on her preserved tissue samples yielded usable DNA, which was used to generate a genetic profile of the victim and construct a family tree. Through this family tree, the living relatives of the victim were identified and located. DNA swabs from these individuals were used to confirm the identity of Walker County Jane Doe in 2021.

On November 9, 2021, the Walker County Sheriff's Office publicly announced the identity of Walker County Jane Doe as 14-year-old Sherri Ann Jarvis, who had run away from Stillwater, Minnesota in 1980. Her identification had previously been announced in late September 2021 by forensic artist Carl Koppelman, who had produced several forensic reconstructions of the victim, and who announced that her identity was temporarily being withheld to give her family sufficient time to grieve privately.

Jarvis was known as "Tati" to her friends; she had been removed from her home and placed under the state's custody at age 13 due to her habitual truancy and had run away shortly after her 14th birthday. Her final contact with her family had been a letter penned to her mother from Denver in August 1980. In this letter, Jarvis indicated frustrations at being placed in state custody but of her intentions to eventually return home. At this formal announcement, a statement from her family was read, thanking "the dedication" of all who had worked to identify Jarvis and to "provide [the] long-awaited, albeit painful answers" to their questions as to her whereabouts, adding that they take comfort from the fact she has been identified. This statement also thanked those who had visited her grave while she had remained unidentified and emphasized the family's wish for her murderer(s) to be brought to justice.

The investigation into Jarvis's murder is ongoing, and investigators have stated discovering Jarvis's identity has given them "some positive leads" of inquiry they are actively pursuing.

Other hypotheses

Gender of perpetrator

Some individuals have speculated Jarvis may have been assaulted and murdered by a female assailant as opposed to a male. This hypothesis was initially suggested by a journalist named Michael Hargraves, who based this assumption upon the fact that no semen was found upon or within Jarvis's body, or at the actual crime scene, and that the only sexual assaults conclusively proven to have been committed upon the girl were performed by aggressively forcing an object or objects into her bodily orifices. Hargraves elaborated his hypothesis by stating that men who commit crimes of a sexual nature are typically known to bite their victims upon sensitive areas of the body as opposed to the shoulder, as had occurred in this case.

The act of male perpetrators of murders committed with a sexual motivation occasionally collecting souvenirs from their victims was also noted to be inconsistent with this case, as the necklace Jarvis had worn was still present upon her body. However, the fact that it is unknown if Jarvis had worn other items of jewelry at the time of her murder, and that her ears were pierced yet her earlobes held no earrings may negate this portion of Hargraves' hypothesis. Furthermore, most of the girl's clothing was missing from the crime scene.

Links to other murders

A possibility exists that Jarvis may have been murdered by the same perpetrator as another formerly unidentified murder victim, known as "Orange Socks", who was murdered almost exactly a year before Jarvis and whose body was found in Georgetown, Texas. Serial killer Henry Lee Lucas has also been named as a possible suspect in this case, although the bite mark found on Jarvis's shoulder was inconsistent with Lucas's dentistry. No prime suspects have been named in this murder, although police have considered the possibility that the victim was murdered by a serial killer.

In 2017, a theory arose that Jarvis may have been killed by the same perpetrator known to have murdered three other females in 1980 whose bodies were dumped alongside Interstate 45. All were strangled; some were sexually assaulted similarly. All four victims were described by investigators as being "high risk".

One of the women, aged between 20 and 30, was found on October 15, 1980, in Houston. She was a black female with a possible Asian heritage and had died months before the discovery of her body. A second female was also black; her body was discovered beneath a bridge in Houston in December 1980. Her age at the time of murder was estimated at between 16 and 26 years old at the time of her murder.

Exclusions

The information compiled by the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System states the following individuals were each positively excluded as being Walker County Jane Doe before her 2021 identification.

Joyce Brewer: January 24, 1955-September 6, 1970 -- Grand Prairie, Texas, 25, Brewer is believed to have run away from home with a boyfriend following an argument with her parents.

Mary Trlica: November 15, 1957-December 23, 1974 -- Fort Worth, Texas, 22, Apparently abducted with two friends while Christmas shopping. Within days of Trlica's disappearance, a letter was mailed to her husband claiming she and her companions were traveling to Houston. This letter was written by a right-handed person, whereas Trlica was left-handed.

Wendy Eaton: May 26, 1959-May 17, 1975 -- Media, Pennsylvania, 21, Eaton disappeared in Media, Pennsylvania while walking to purchase a gift for her brother. Her case remains unsolved.

Maria Anjiras: August 10, 1961-February 12, 1976 -- Norwalk, Connecticut, 19, A girl who ran away from her home in 1976. Anjiras had taken money and personal possessions with her. Anjiras is known to have threatened to run away from home a few weeks before her disappearance, although, on this occasion, her father had dissuaded her from doing so.

Cindy King: July 27, 1961-July 19, 1977 -- Grants Pass, Oregon, 19, King disappeared in July 1977. She had worn a retainer when she disappeared and had a notable scar near one of her temples, like the Walker County Jane Doe.

Tina Kemp: October 20, 1964-February 3, 1979 -- Felton, Delaware, 16, Last seen leaving her home after helping to hang the family laundry. Kemp has never been heard from since and is believed to have been murdered.

Kimberly Rae Doss: September 11, 1962-May 29, 1979 -- Jacksonville, Florida, 18, Vanished while visiting a relative. Speculation remains she may have been abducted by a motorcycle gang, although no direct evidence exists to support this hypothesis. Doss had markedly similar physical characteristics to Walker County Jane Doe.

Marcia Estelle Remick: May 7, 1962-June 9, 1979 -- Virginia Beach, Virginia, 18, Remick disappeared on her way to visit a friend on the oceanfront. Rumors later circulated she was alive in Florida, although this has never been substantiated. Foul play is suspected.

Angela Meeker: July 9, 1965-July 7, 1979 -- Tacoma, Washington, 15, Meeker vanished two days before her 14th birthday. She was last seen at a party. Her physical appearance is markedly similar to the Walker County Jane Doe.

Karen Zendrosky: September 2, 1963-October 23, 1979 -- Bordentown Township, New Jersey, 17, Zendrosky disappeared from a now-defunct bowling alley. Her disappearance remains unsolved, although investigators strongly suspect foul play in her case, believing the most likely location of Zendrosky's body to be a sludge pit located in Hamilton.

Deborah McCall: March 30, 1963-November 5, 1979 -- Downers Grove, Illinois, 17. Last seen departing from her school in Downers Grove, Illinois. McCall had markedly similar physical characteristics as the victim.

Marie Blee: April 16, 1964-November 21, 1979 -- Craig, Colorado, 16, Blee was last seen at a party in the company of a male friend. Foul play is suspected to be the reason behind her disappearance.

Kristy Lynn Booth: December 26, 1960-February 2, 1980 Midland, Texas, 19. A 19-year-old waitress last seen at a nightclub. Investigators do not believe Booth left this nightclub willingly. Her vehicle was later found abandoned on South Highway 349.

Rachael Garden: December 30, 1964-March 22, 1980 -- Newton, New Hampshire, 15, Likely abducted while walking from a store toward the home of a friend with whom she intended to spend the night. She was last seen talking to three male acquaintances of hers (one of whom later served a sentence for assault and rape) who had been seated in a dark-colored vehicle.

Laureen Rahn: April 3, 1966-April 26, 1980 -- Manchester, New Hampshire, 14, Rahn is believed to have been abducted either from or within the close proximities of her home on the evening of her disappearance. She did not take her purse, shoes, or any additional clothing; likely indicating she had been abducted from her home via force or guile.

Roxane Easland: c. 1956-June 28, 1980 -- Anchorage, Alaska, 24, A prostitute and erotic dancer who disappeared after leaving her apartment to meet with an unidentified male client on Northern Lights Boulevard. She is believed to have been murdered by serial killer Robert Hansen.

Carla Corley: December 31, 1965-August 12, 1980 -- Birmingham, Alabama, 14, Corley is believed to have been abducted from her home. Her mother discovered the family's front door ajar and evident signs of a struggle within their kitchen. She was declared legally dead several years after her disappearance.

Murder of Sherri Jarvis. (2024, March 2). In Wikipedia.