CA CA - Kristen Modafferi, 18, San Francisco, 23 June 1997

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From the fundraiser page ( page - there's a link on FindKristen.com if you want to find it)

"October 6th, 2015 Update

Hi all - the short answer is that it will be another two weeks before Dr. Vass will have his reports on the soil samples. It has something to do with his spectrometer machine needing to be repaired.

I obviously wish that was not the case but that is what I was able to learn today.

The minute I hear some update I am going straight to this page and updating the site because I know you want to know as much as I (and the Modafferi's).

With that said - I am of the opinion that Jill Lampo and Jon Onuma have some role in Kristen's disappearance. In all the years of looking for Kristen - I have seen nothing that ties these two to Kristen's residence in Oakland.

Anything is possible so the basement needs to be examined and Buster is the right dog for the job.

We have in our possession a letter written by Jill Lampo's uncle where he wrote down what Jill was telling him. She told her uncle that she helped a controlling man kidnap and murder a woman in San Francisco and she was suffering a lot of guilt over it.

This occurred in 2012 - 15 years after Kristen vanished. (Jill and Jon Onuma have been on Oakland PD's radar since the first month of Kristen's abduction. So you see - I still think the answer lies with Lampo and Onuma - but they had nothing to do with 274 Jayne Avenue.

I share this with you because I want you to know what we are dealing with. I appreciate your financial support.

100% - that basement needs to be searched. It is taking to long but at least it is being done.

Thank you all again,

Sincerely, Dennis "
 
From the fundraiser page ( page)

"Update - October 25th

Hi all,

Two days ago, Joan Scanlon Petruski, founder of The Kristen Foundation, heard back from Dr. Arpad Vass, the scientist who worked on the soil samples.

He sent her his reports which have been forwarded to the Modafferi's as well as Oakland PD.

To the point: He says to run one more set of tests (at no cost to the family or us) to help clarify some of the chemical results he is getting.

Dr. Vass says that the soil sample we sent him was unusually 'dry' and that led to some uncertainties in the results he was seeing.

He did say that all the basics were there for human decomp but until the next round of tests are complete he did not feel comfortable saying 100% for sure that there is in fact proof of human decomp.

The next round will not happen until sometime in November and this is only because of scheduling issues with investigators and not really related to Dr. Vass.

Most important is what I am about to write next: 1) I know you know this is very serious: 2)Foremost in my mind is that I knew a very few select people offered to step up and donate actually 'dollars' to make this happen - so it is CRUCIAL to me that I respect you by telling you everything I know ASAP.

The investigators 100% know what is at stake and the Mod's and I are following their direction.

When this is all over - I will send everyone a very detailed account of this process as you have a right to know."
 
JusticeWillBeServed said:
I keep checking the page for Kristen but it hasn't been updated since October.
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I can understand there being red-tape preventing investigators from excavating the basement of a private residence, but you'd think they'd at least be able to roll GPR to see if there is anything buried down there. If Kristen's remains are in that basement, then it changes the focus of the entire investigation, effectively ruling out long-time POIs like Jon Onuma and Robert Durst while narrowing the suspect pool to Kristen's roommates and anyone else she'd have been comfortable enough with to invite into her home. It'd be a game-changer.
 
Pettibon Junction said:
I can understand there being red-tape preventing investigators from excavating the basement of a private residence, but you'd think they'd at least be able to roll GPR to see if there is anything buried down there. If Kristen's remains are in that basement, then it changes the focus of the entire investigation, effectively ruling out long-time POIs like Jon Onuma and Robert Durst while narrowing the suspect pool to Kristen's roommates and anyone else she'd have been comfortable enough with to invite into her home. It'd be a game-changer.
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Your statements do not make sense to me. First see my previous posts, like #250. There have not been many WS'rs following this case. But for years I will tell you, the idea that Kristen got sucked into the ocean was perpetuated, and I found it to be nonsense. If the PI (Dennis) indeed has a letter from JL's uncle saying she confessed to conspiracy to commit a murder and cover it up, that's rather powerful evidence. If that letter is in fact real and true, since JL is cooperating... why hasn't the perp been arrested? And who would that perp be? JL was involved with JO at the time of Kristen's disappearance, and JL was connected to ML who worked with Kristen. JO was an abusive control freak, directly connected to DD, an even more dangerous abusive control freak and con-man criminal. So who else could the letter be referring to if not JO himself? Could it be DD? If it was DD, then JO would have known and could easily blame this on him. After all DD is dead! Instead JO still plays dumb. To me, that means he is the perp.
Why after all of these years were they looking at Kristen's residence? Would that not be linked to JL's cooperation? Who else would suddenly put forth the idea (enough to get LE acting) that Kristen was buried in the ground of the basement? Seems to me this is all driven by JL's apparent cooperation and that JO is still very much on the hook. Seems to me that if JL is indeed cooperating, and this letter is real, then we are talking about JO as the perp, and JL has probably bargained for immunity. Have no idea why you would think that JO would be off the hook if Kristen's remains are in the ground under that house. We all await confirmation that there was a human body there, and if so, could it be identified. The fact that JL is cooperating, and Dennis claims to have that letter, points the finger very much at JO. Could JL really have been involved with another Controlling man capable of abduction and murder at the same time she was involved with JO, while JO was simultaneously in deals with DD? Not very likely eh?
 
VeryVeritas said:
Your statements do not make sense to me. First see my previous posts, like #250. There have not been many WS'rs following this case. But for years I will tell you, the idea that Kristen got sucked into the ocean was perpetuated, and I found it to be nonsense. If the PI (Dennis) indeed has a letter from JL's uncle saying she confessed to conspiracy to commit a murder and cover it up, that's rather powerful evidence. If that letter is in fact real and true, since JL is cooperating... why hasn't the perp been arrested? And who would that perp be? JL was involved with JO at the time of Kristen's disappearance, and JL was connected to ML who worked with Kristen. JO was an abusive control freak, directly connected to DD, an even more dangerous abusive control freak and con-man criminal. So who else could the letter be referring to if not JO himself? Could it be DD? If it was DD, then JO would have known and could easily blame this on him. After all DD is dead! Instead JO still plays dumb. To me, that means he is the perp.
Why after all of these years were they looking at Kristen's residence? Would that not be linked to JL's cooperation? Who else would suddenly put forth the idea (enough to get LE acting) that Kristen was buried in the ground of the basement? Seems to me this is all driven by JL's apparent cooperation and that JO is still very much on the hook. Seems to me that if JL is indeed cooperating, and this letter is real, then we are talking about JO as the perp, and JL has probably bargained for immunity. Have no idea why you would think that JO would be off the hook if Kristen's remains are in the ground under that house. We all await confirmation that there was a human body there, and if so, could it be identified. The fact that JL is cooperating, and Dennis claims to have that letter, points the finger very much at JO. Could JL really have been involved with another Controlling man capable of abduction and murder at the same time she was involved with JO, while JO was simultaneously in deals with DD? Not very likely eh?
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I guess I'm having trouble with the idea that a pair of killers would have picked Kristen up from work and gone to her own home to kill and bury her in a house she shared with four roommates. If her remains are in the basement or were kept there for a time, it would point toward someone who lived there.
 
And not only would they have had to commit the crime in an unfamiliar place where they had no guarantee of privacy, Onuma later deliberately injected himself into the investigation with his bogus lesbian love-triangle tip. That behavior just doesn't make sense to me.
 
I have the greatest respect for the canine sense of smell but cadaver dogs are hardly infallible. They tend to err on the side of positive rather than negative response. That is why they are effective at finding human remains but they often signal a positive response when no remains are present. Therefore, a positive response can not be used in court that a dead body had once been present.

I really doubt Kristen made it home that day but we will probably never know. There is no certainty where she went or what she did after she left work. No sightings are confirmed.
 
kemo said:
I have the greatest respect for the canine sense of smell but cadaver dogs are hardly infallible. They tend to err on the side of positive rather than negative response. That is why they are effective at finding human remains but they often signal a positive response when no remains are present. Therefore, a positive response can not be used in court that a dead body had once been present.
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I feel the same way. I have a lot of respect for cadaver dogs and I have faith in their abilities but at the same time if they are wrong they can take a case in the wrong direction. In Kristen's case the dogs first tracked her scent near Sutro Park Beach, before losing the scent near the shoreline. Because of this, many people think Kristen drowned in the water or that she fell off a cliff near the beach. A lot of time was spent investigating that theory when, maybe, the theory was totally false. This is a perfect example of why people needs to keep faith in these dogs but at the same time without putting all their hope in them. It's far from being a perfect science, so to speak.

My favorite theory is that Kristen was probably killed by Joseph Naso, a man currently on death row for a series of murders in the 70's, 80's and 90's. I believe he might have commited the crimes for a few reasons:

1. He was living in San Francisco at the time of Kristen's disappearance.
2. At one point he worked as a freelance photographer and often used this as a way to meet women. We know Kristen was in San Francisco to attend a photography class, among other things (she also signed up to a dance class). He could have met her at one of these classes.
3. When he was arrested, investigators found at his house a diary where Naso had listed at least 10 unnamed women along with their geographical locations. As far as I know none of these locations is a match to the area where Kristen was last seen or allegedly disappeared, but I think it's solid proof that Naso murdered a lot more women than investigators think he did.

Wiki page on Naso: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Naso

Sorry if his name was mentioned previously in the thread, I tried to read all 18 pages in their entirety and might have missed it in the process. :)
 
I've not seen his name mentioned here before.
It's a valid theory until ruled out.
The photography angle makes sense.
However, does anything else fit?
Some of the key pieces of Kristen's disappearance might fit his MO, like:
1) She left work without clocking out for the first time ever - coworkers oddly don't notice that she abruptly left work.
2) Someone claimed to have seen her with an odd blonde "woman" in the Galleria
3) What about her looks compared to other victims? With most serial killers there is a "type" or some common qualities in the victims.

And then there is a lot of strange stuff like JL's page missing from her diary the day Kristen vanished, the connection between Onuma (who made a call to LE blaming someone else) to JL and Kristen's co-worker. Onuma's own sordid history with women and connections to human traffickers. What about Naso might eclipse all of that?

Do you know how Naso met his victims or the ones in his diary?
It appears that 4 of his known victims were included in his diary and despite objections of at least one victims family all 4 were listed by LE as prostitutes. It's not clear if that comes from the diary or if the victims had a known history for prostitution. Were it true, that would separate them from Kristen.
Has anyone put the locations of his murders and those in the diary on a map? It largely seems to follow a pattern not far from where Naso was living. He apparently did his work close to home. It's not clear where he was living when Kristen disappeared. In the 80's it says he was living in the Mission District, which is 2.5 miles south of the Crocker Galleria. That's really close considering he spent decades in the bay area. By 1999 he was living in Sacramento. So where was he in 1997?
How did Naso dispose of victims bodies? The ones he was convicted for all seemed to have been logged in his diary and layed out in the open. It does not seem like he went to any length to conceal his victims leaving them along roadsides. It seems police didn't recover the others listed in the diary, which is curious, perhaps the locations are not specific enough. So it seems plausible that he crossed paths with Kristen. Wouldn't he put her in the diary? It seems that LE would be able to figure out if Kristen were in that diary. One would hope that they would reveal that and the geographic location. Apparently Naso is still alive at 83 in prison, and on death row. Perhaps someone could ask him if he was involved with Kristen's disappearance? It's not like it's going to change the outcome of his situation one way or the other, so he should have nothing to lose by giving an answer. Kristen remains one of only a few unsolved disappearances / murders during 1997 in the bay area.
 
Bumping thread for Kristen. It will be 20 years next month. Also, if anyone on here is still following this case, please consider suggesting it for season 2 of the podcast Up and Vanished: http://www.upandvanished.com/season2. Maybe if we can show enough support and interest, they will look into Kristen's case. It's frustrating that so much time has gone by since the basement search and no news. My heart goes out to her family. I feel that if something like a podcast would put a fresh set of eyes on this case and some pressure on the right people that we could find out the truth about what happened to Kristen.
 
Litlstar04 said:
Bumping thread for Kristen. It will be 20 years next month. Also, if anyone on here is still following this case, please consider suggesting it for season 2 of the podcast Up and Vanished: http://www.upandvanished.com/season2. Maybe if we can show enough support and interest, they will look into Kristen's case. It's frustrating that so much time has gone by since the basement search and no news. My heart goes out to her family. I feel that if something like a podcast would put a fresh set of eyes on this case and some pressure on the right people that we could find out the truth about what happened to Kristen.
Click to expand...

Good idea, Litlstar, I agree Kristen's case would make an excellent UAV episode, IF Payne could get enough folks to talk. I remember her case from 'Unsolved Mysteries'.
 
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