Who Killed Jane Doe #59 : The Case of Reet Jurvetson - the fifth estate

[Music] [Laughter] [Music] there wasn't a man on the street who didn't turn around and gawk at her she was just [Music] [Applause] stunning I never thought that she had but have been murdered or killed [Music] [Laughter] [Music] everyone has heard about him no one has actually seen him he's like a [Music] [Music] ghost there are 11,000 unsolved murders in the city of Los Angeles some decades old many of them cases no one even remembers it's been the challenge for homicide investigators like Cliff Shephard an original member of the LAPD cold Cas Squad assigned to take another look at all those Antiquated crimes going back to when we started in our Cold Case unit we were we didn't know what we had so we had to find out we had to figure out what evidence we had the police Warehouse in Downtown LA is the repository for this City's long history of violence and even for a grizzled cop like detective Shephard cold cases are a daunting assignment scouring box after box of old records praying something might leap out from all those forgotten files which is exactly what was about to happen H I stumbled across her honestly wasn't literally literally I wasn't looking for that particular case the name on that case was Jane do 59 and I started going through it and I saw the flyer Jane do number 59 found in November of 1969 there's a black and white photograph of her there's some rings that she had been wearing uh there's Dental chart there's fingerprints and there's great deal of work that had been done on it but she's still an unknown what was known is that Jane do was found in LA's molland Canyon in November 1969 stabbed 157 times then the city's 59th death of an unidentified female today the canyon is much the same as it was decades ago this a useful place for Killers to dump bodies yeah why the beauty of this place is remote uh steep Canyons uh valleys down below very little pedestrian traffic police believed the body had been deposited here the night before would you would you be able to pull over drag a body and and dump it without fear of being oh yeah apprehended yeah I I I think it wouldn't have a problem but if if all had gone well that night for that guy we're presuming it's a guy what would have happened to her she most likely he's uh expecting that she'll decompose that uh there'll be animal activity to disperse her remains that she'll never be found or whatever is found will be many years down the road yeah uh likely that she may never be identified but she didn't go all the way to the bottom no she didn't somebody was looking out she was her body was entangled in some of the brush I think a couple hundred feet down and um that's when we had the young man going down the road bird watching yeah and happened to look over and saw her trapped in the brush it was fortunate the bird watcher could see her at all hidden in the undergrowth but even with no name there were hints about who she might be this police mockup showed her clothes were stylish for the time and there was a clue the tag in her jacket read made in Canada she just might be Canadian after the autop y they put out this sketch of her but even so Jane do 59 would remain unidentified for a very long time to come eventually her unclaimed body was cremated the ashes buried in a mass grave in Los Angeles and the years began to pass then the decades the 70s how far would you extend that just watch me I Jimmy cter do solemnly swear the 80s the '90s it was almost four decades later that the LAPD started its Cold Case Squad to take on those thousands of unsolved murders assigning veteran homicide detectives like Cliff Shepard to search File after file and that's when he saw it pulled out a banker box lifted the lid and the first thing I noticed was there's a bra inside uh uh that you know it's evidence why is evidence inside this box the Box should have contained written documents and photographs only because all other physical evidence was supposed to be destroyed years before it shouldn't have been there I I don't have an explanation but when I pulled it out I saw it's bloody the blood was crucial because it meant detective Shephard could apply a DNA test the investigative technique that didn't even exist when the murder was committed and I knew that if we could still develop a profile on that that blood on the DNA that we could put that into the database and if any family were looking for her that they could submit their blood or or DNA for a comparison for a run to see if they match Cliff Shepard sent the DNA results from the blood on the bra to databases across the us and for the first time he circulated this postmortem photo in color though the police and media still seemed reluctant to publish such a graphic image of a dead person with no name they weren't terribly unarrested in Jane do um there's just too many of them I had about four other Jane do cases at the time too so even with her DNA available there still was no ENT identification and the years kept passing by 2012 a fifth decade had gone by since the murder and Los Angeles detective Cliff Shepard retired the case of Jane Doe 59 still unsolved but still very much on his mind and you know she's somebody's child um or and brother sister they have names it's just uh who are they where they come from and what happened after the break it was the summer of 69 it was also the summer of Charles Manson I just can't seem to adjust to your Society because uh no matter what I do is wrong for two beautiful young women one from La the other Montreal it would be the last summer of their [Music] lives in 1969 and they came to Los Angeles literally by the millions adventurers from around the world drawn by Sun and Sand not to menion sex drugs and rock and roll one of them was a young woman from Montreal named Reit Jetson well in you know as she started maturing later teens there wasn't a man on the street who didn't turn around and gawk at her she was just stunning like she'd catch your eye Gilda green still remembers her friend Reit in the Summer of ' 69 describe her for me well Tall 5'8 5'9 uh blond hair the the light complexion big blue eyes um beautiful smile but her charm wasn't just in her looks another friend and Confidant who recall Reit is vivacious in every way was IL me Seaman her personality oh she was so full of life um she was just always looking for a good laugh um she loved animals uh she she just loved life she was very artistic reit's artistic talent Shawn through in her sketches and paintings but at home there were problems as a teenager she rebelled against a strict family life that revolved around their church at 16 she ran away from home at 18 she moved to Toronto and eventually in with a boyfriend Gilda green says Reit was Fearless about the future she was at an age where she was not dependent on family and finished high school and hey the world's out there and if I want to do something or go somewhere I can do it now no one's going to stop me Reit had a brother in Arizona and she began planning a visit which would include a stopover in La she arrived towards the end of the summer of' 69 a celebration of the decade of peace and [Music] love that is until this the gruesome murder scene at the Los Angeles home of actress Sharon Tate five victims brutally slashed and shot to death and the next night not far away a millionaire businessman and his wife suffered the same fate It cast a dark PA over the Golden State and introduced the new faces of American evil the Manson family I just can't seem to adjust to your Society because uh no matter what I do is wrong [Music] and it wasn't long afterwards that the bird watcher discovered Jane do 59 in mullholland canion eventually the question was asked was she murdered by the Manson family too there were similarities the multiple stab wounds the time frame the location of the killings all eily [Music] familiar but back in Montreal reick Jetson's friends and family had no idea what had happened to her that fall Gilda green got just one card from her childhood BFF in La I remember it was a postcard with the sign Hollywood in the back um just that she was happy and having a great time that's all and the jiton family received a postcard to their final communication from Reit according to her older sister Anne saying that uh she was happy it was very brief she was happy she had a nice apart she was living in a nice apartment and not to worry and that was the last last that we heard from her remember Reit was on her way to visit her brother in Arizona when she didn't arrive they sent someone to look for her in Los Angeles without luck but the family never reported her missing in those now distant days before cell phones email and Facebook in a way Reit silence seemed almost natural you know we lived in a in a period of the 60s when when young people went and traveled and and it wasn't a thing that well you know everybody was calling everybody and everybody knew what everybody was doing like today with their cell phones and so on and so forth so it was a different time and um but as the years went by I I really felt in my heart that maybe something has happened to her but the times were changing and soon the internet would begin to crack the case increasingly reit's friends went online combing sites about missing persons and unsolved crimes one day Gilda green got a link to that postmortem image of janeo 59 and I looked at it and I knew things about Reed that a lot of PE other people didn't know and I thought oh my God that is her in 2015 Gilda emailed reit's other close friend ilme and then she said uh here I'm going to give you this site I want you to go and look um she says not to be alarmed but I think it's Reit and then you saw the photo postmortem photograph of her and I recognize both pictures right away as that's [Music] her that's when they reached out to re's family her sister an and told me that they had some sad news for me and that they uh and they said they they found your sister and and at that moment I thought but oh they found her you know like it it was like happening right then and there that they found my sister but she that she was she had been killed or she had been murdered I couldn't believe it I couldn't believe it she said yes she was stabbed to death 157 times she was St who would have done such a thing to her cold Cas Squad detective Lou Rea had been with the lipd for over a quarter of a century working on dozens of Unsolved Mur he was about to get another first time I ran across Jan do 59 was June of last year and that was uh via an email from the coroner's office uh coroner's office had received information from a family member in Canada uh that they had seen a a possible photograph of her in on the internet on one of the sites and uh the friend related this information to the to the sister who looked at the uh photograph and uh believed it was her sister but for all of that there was only one way to truly know that it was it was the DNA so half a century after the murder a decade after the discovery of the bloody bra a DNA test finally was about to reveal who Jane Doe 59 really [Music] was and then in December the end of December I found positive identification that it was her I don't so difficult it's like when we looked at it it was like man that is so close when we return at last they knew her name now LAPD detectives had to find someone who'd known her 47 years before now we have a name John Oran from 1969 so who is this guy we nobody knows he's like a ghost for half a century her identity was an impenetrable secret now thanks to modern technology and old friends finally Jane do 59 had a name friends and family had spent almost 50 years waiting and worrying now for better or worse than you what happened to 19-year-old reck jiton from Montreal the gruesome scenario revealed by the police report [Music] m [Music] [Music] [Music] o [Music] [Music] o o she must have she must have been so lonely and painful and at that moment I mean I had pain in my heart my parents carried pain in their hearts in silence but nothing compares to the pain that my sister must have endured when she was stabbed to death who could have done such a horrible horrendous crime against her but finally Los Angeles homicide investigator Lou Rivera had a name to work with first thing I want to find out is what was she doing in Los Angeles uh how did she end up on mall and drive um you know dumped on the side of the road who was she with uh where was she coming from all of the questions that the detectives back then were asking themselves um we're asking ourselves my partner n and remember there was still the nagging question about Charles Manson had Reit somehow become involved with his homicidal family for childhood pal IL missan one link between Reit and the Manson killings was a resemblance to their most famous victim actress Sharon Tate the thing that gets me is because it was only a couple of months before that Sharon Tate uh was killed and she looks so much like Sharon Tate it's it's uncanny I mean I looked at the two pictures together and it was amazing how much they look alike at the time even the Manson prosecutor believed there might well be a link between the murders not too far from there within 6 miles there had been homicides committed by the minson family one of the district attorneys at the time Mr buosi uh believed that maybe U re Jane do 59 at the time might have been a witness to a murder of a char Charles Manson family member and therefore she might have been killed Manson and his followers got death sentences for the seven murders in 1969 later commuted to life in prison detective Rivera decided to visit the California state prison to interview Charles Manson about the death of Reed Jetson could he offer information uh you know he was cooperative uh he was polite uh he answered our questions however he did not provide any information that uh could further our case at all is it still plausible do you think it's still a possibility Charles Manson we don't considered him a suspect but he he or none of his family members have been eliminated so what do you do when you're investigating a murder in which the killer has a half century head start according to Lou Rivera you do exactly what you would have had you known the victim's name back in 1969 as always in a homicide question number one is who was closest to the victim Rivera says with over 150 stab wounds it was clearly a crime of passion this kind of savage attack uh I've handled several cases where someone's been stabbed multiple times and we're talking more than a 100 times and it's usually a rage type of incident the cases that I've handled it's always been a domestic partner reit's friends and family in Canada were unanimous about where he should look first the then New Found Love of reit's life she was infatuated by somebody by the name of John or Jean I guess this is where they had met in a cafe in Montreal and she was she was Smitten by this John and her love interest apparently was a doppelganger for 60s rock icon Jim Morrison Well I I mean I knew before that she really liked Jean and um he did look very much like Jimmy Morrison and she was crazy about Jimmy Morrison and apparently crazy about Jean too so much so that when he went to Los Angeles re made plans to follow him there she said she was going to hsh and I says no I says you can't do that I says you need money you need it's very dangerous she was going to go by herself eventually reason Prevail Reit barded a bus headed for La away from her strict upbringing and family and towards Jean another question for detectives where in Los Angeles did Reit live she told friends it was in Hollywood in a four-story building next to a movie studio about the same time we went looking in La for a building matching that description reit's sister in Quebec stumbled upon the postcard they had received when Reit first arrived and there it was her return address 5311 Melrose Avenue once the Paramount Hotel right next to Paramount Studios by 1969 the build building had been converted to apartments one of them apparently rented to a man from Montreal named Jean before long re jitz and joined him in apartment 306 Gilda green recalls an accidental meeting with a mutual friend from La who said eventually they had lost track of Reit and he said yeah she she was with us for a couple of weeks and then she left on her own and everything was fine she was happy where did she go I don't know and and that's all like he was able to tell me so for L Rivera finding the mysterious man named Jean still is job one so who is this guy we nobody knows he's like a ghost everyone has heard about him no one has actually seen him he's not officially considered a suspect at least not yet we call Person of Interest uh until we find out who he is he is definitely someone who's at the heart of the investigation because she came to visit him but there's only one other person that might have seen or know who this person is to try to locate you know this guy named John uh Paul Robert what do you know about him uh what I know of him is that he is an artist in the Montreal area however no one has actually seen or heard from him in the past 10 years that is not seen or heard from him until 2016 meet Paul rer still an artist in Montreal and once friend to the mysterious Jean I remember almost an Angelic Face Paul Rober couldn't offer information about where Jean may be now but he did sit down with the forensic artist we hired to describe the man he remembered from decades ago my impression of him is his Shadows are his features are coming out of the Shadows he would never sit he would be always ready to take off and I think the eyes might be a little bit too close together and Gilda green shared her Recollections of jeanu let me see it again yes the top one looks more like what I would remember this is the result the closest likeness of J we have yet does that help you this is uh new information that we didn't have uh that I didn't have until you know 30 seconds ago it'll help us because uh this is the kind of information that we could put out there to the public once again mhm um and in hopes that someone from that era remembers uh not just remembers the face but remembers a name yeah which is what we need and that Montreal artist Paul Rober did sketches of his own which resemble the portrait of Jean our artist produced the Los Angeles police have now released Jean's picture hoping someone somewhere will recognize him what took place in November 1969 may all seem so long ago but knowing now how REI jiton died then for those who loved her it might as well have happened [Music] yesterday retired detective Cliff Shepard never gave up trying to solve the victim's identity and always wondered about her family oh my gosh it's okay I wanted to meet you I want to meet you too thank you oh you're welcome you're welcome so and know here we are yeah thank you for coming oh thank you thank you for coming in the summer of 2016 Shephard finally met reit's Sister Anne in Montreal if not for him re jiton would still be Jane Doe 59 just bothered me uh you know I felt that she had family somewhere that um she's not a throwaway child and you did what you did and now she has a name now she has a name and uh we'll see what happens we will but for both The Haunting question remains yeah who killed her um with the internet and with the new technology and everything else certainly something will it's that's why I saying it's not impossible yet it's we're still hopeful someone somewhere someone knows somebody must know something [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] for [Music]

Channel: The Fifth Estate

Views: 1,242,351

Keywords: cold case, Los Angeles, LAPD, Jane Doe, Jane Doe #59, Reet Jurvetson, Montreal, Canada, the fifth estate, CBC, CBC News, Bob McKeown, Dateline NBC, 60 Minutes, Frontline

Id: CTyQhn1MjX8

Length: 30min 14sec (1814 seconds)

Published: Sat Nov 19 2016