FL - Jennifer Kesse, 24, Orlando, 24 Jan 2006 - #13

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I took a screenshot of Hataway in the surveillance footage from the Tracy Ocasio case and did a side-by-side of him and the POI in Jennifer's case.

There is a good likeness there, too. IMO

Not saying it won't turn out to be one of the people nicknamed "Chino" but they are not the only ones that deserve to be looked at.

It's been 17 years and not a trace of Jennifer has been found. Not a trace. Maybe it's time we looked somewhere besides a theory that LE ran to the ground and shelved at a dead end in 2009.
There was a lot of interest in Hataway at one point. Here are some clips from an interview Drew did on CNN. Drew said Hataway failed a poly. I wonder what that was about. I’ve never picked up on that piece of info. Wonder if it was about Jennifer or Tracy.

VELEZ-MITCHELL: Now let`s talk about the other case involving the Kesses. Jennifer Kesse is missing; her parents desperate to find her. Take a look at this. You see James Hataway on the left and you see this surveillance footage of a man at Jennifer Kesse`s apartment the day she disappeared.

Now, Drew Kesse, your goal I presume is to find out if this was one and the same person.

DREW KESSE, JENNIFER KESSE`S FATHER: Yes. We would like to know. Actually, we do have pictures of Mr. Hataway three years ago right next to the picture of the person by the fence. He does have the same hair cut three years ago. But, you know, you have to let the investigation go through its paces, and, you know, DNA has been given up by Mr. Hataway is my understanding. And he did fail a polygraph is my understanding.

It will take the time that it does take. Unfortunately we`re not watching an hour-long TV show here.

***Snip****
VELEZ-MITCHELL: I want to get back to what Drew said. I thought it was pretty significant. You said -- and it took me a while to process this -- that you have a photo of James Hataway near the scene of where this mystery guy that is the suspect who dropped off your daughter`s car after she went missing is?

D. KESSE: Yes.

VELEZ-MITCHELL: Let`s go back to that photo, too, as you talk about this.

D. KESSE: Actually I don`t know if I`m allowed to mention it. You can Google image and it will come up under James Hataway. And it`s before he started being catted (ph) all up. He has the cut; seems to be the right size. He looks totally different than what`s on the screen right now where in what you`d been showing -- just totally different.

He had a full head of hair three years ago. And when you put the picture right next to that one of walking across the fence, it is chilling.

 
True. Or the person could have been dismissed as some "helpful" soul who just appeared out of concern for Jennifer and stayed to help pass out the flyers. I believe the person would have been around and has probably stayed in touch with the family.

Jennifer had other males besides Rob that were interested in a serious relationship with her.


I believe Jennifer's father had the image enhanced again in 2021 or 2022. It made it worse in my opinion. They just smoothed out all the details.

There is not enough pixels in it to make it clearer in any way.
I think the perp stays in touch with the family too. My gut feeling is it’s someone close to her and the perp had some help. They need to start with those closest and work their way out. She had multiple men interested in her plus some overlapping social ties with Hataway.
 
This has been walked back quite a bit by Jennifer's father in the last year or so. Since all the blog fuss over someone with the nickname "Chino".

That info was exaggerated.
I've not heard that before but haven't followed the case in awhile. iirc, someone named C as the person in the video. moo
 
There was a lot of interest in Hataway at one point. Here are some clips from an interview Drew did on CNN. Drew said Hataway failed a poly. I wonder what that was about. I’ve never picked up on that piece of info. Wonder if it was about Jennifer or Tracy.

VELEZ-MITCHELL: Now let`s talk about the other case involving the Kesses. Jennifer Kesse is missing; her parents desperate to find her. Take a look at this. You see James Hataway on the left and you see this surveillance footage of a man at Jennifer Kesse`s apartment the day she disappeared.

Now, Drew Kesse, your goal I presume is to find out if this was one and the same person.

DREW KESSE, JENNIFER KESSE`S FATHER: Yes. We would like to know. Actually, we do have pictures of Mr. Hataway three years ago right next to the picture of the person by the fence. He does have the same hair cut three years ago. But, you know, you have to let the investigation go through its paces, and, you know, DNA has been given up by Mr. Hataway is my understanding. And he did fail a polygraph is my understanding.

It will take the time that it does take. Unfortunately we`re not watching an hour-long TV show here.

***Snip****
VELEZ-MITCHELL: I want to get back to what Drew said. I thought it was pretty significant. You said -- and it took me a while to process this -- that you have a photo of James Hataway near the scene of where this mystery guy that is the suspect who dropped off your daughter`s car after she went missing is?

D. KESSE: Yes.

VELEZ-MITCHELL: Let`s go back to that photo, too, as you talk about this.

D. KESSE: Actually I don`t know if I`m allowed to mention it. You can Google image and it will come up under James Hataway. And it`s before he started being catted (ph) all up. He has the cut; seems to be the right size. He looks totally different than what`s on the screen right now where in what you`d been showing -- just totally different.

He had a full head of hair three years ago. And when you put the picture right next to that one of walking across the fence, it is chilling.

That's really interesting. Thank you as I don't think I've seen it before. Hataway was involved in at least 2 if not 3 other cases that I'm sure he would have been "offered" a poly on, so it's hard to say if they are indicating he failed one on Jennifer's case. I have a feeling Mr. Kesse is referring to another case. Just a suspicion, though.

I noticed that interview was in 2009.

Wright was busy running down all the info on one of the "Chino" suspects around that time--the housekeeper's statement; the couple who saw the swerving vehicle; finding the person who the housekeeper named and going to the prison to interview/polygraph him.

It makes me wonder how much time was spent by LE on Hataway as a suspect.

Because a lot of "data" seems to place him in Jennifer's life from the time they were kids. He never admits to anything he has ever done. They have a video of Tracy leaving the Tap Room with him on the night she disappeared and they can't come up with enough evidence to make an arrest. Her body has never been found. So he works clean as we see in Jennifer's case.

Mr. Kesse has backed way off him as a suspect now. I don't think he would even consider him.

The following link contains a little bit of info on the "past" between Hataway and Jennifer.
Snipped: "That was her old hang. That was her old neighborhood," Drew Kesse said.

The link below is from the Orlando Sentinel. It's behind a paywall now so I can't quote from it but I'll link it as others may have access to it. It does contain quite a bit more info on their pasts than the link above. I've seen it many times and have quotes from it before they place it behind the paywall.
 
I've not heard that before but haven't followed the case in awhile. iirc, someone named C as the person in the video. moo
I'm not sure I really understand your point here but I'll link the following videos.

The first one is from Fox 35. They are interviewing Mr. Kesse.

Here is an unofficial transcript I did of a portion of the interview:
@ 2:46:
Interviewer:
... I want to talk about Chino. This is a person that has come up a couple of times over the last several weeks. We know that Cristina Corbin spoke on the phone to him.

What do you know about this person and do you feel like police have already spoken to the person who took Jennifer?


Drew Kesse: Well, I don't know about the last question. I don't know if police did or not. Chino? You know there is nothing to really say about Chino.

Chino is just someone that happened to work and live at Mosaic at Millenia. And he is just someone in a line of people that, you know, we needed to talk to. Not as a person of interest, to be quite honest with you. But for his knowledge. I mean he was there every day. He lived there. He worked there. He is not alone. There are two or three others that lived there and worked there; that worked for Mosaic, and we are speaking to those people.

And it's not because that we think that they are the person of interest. Again, it's because I don't think that they know what they possibly know. Because over the years people come forward with little minor things, but it makes sense to us in the whole.

So, we need to speak to these people and that's why we are after these people drastically to say sit down with us. We have questions, not about you and pinning it on you; what you know and what you may think you know or not know that makes sense to us.



And there is this one done by WKMG News 6 Click Orlando:

An unofficial transcript done by me of a portion of the interview:
Interviewer: ... Is that watching the 48 Hours--they did a decent job, but there were some things in there that were not exactly correct. Okay? Or that at least lead you to believe things that were not true.

I know after I watched it, a lot of people were wondering: "Hey, it sounded like 10 maintenance workers were living in the apartment across, or the condo across, from Jennifer. How did they never talk to these people? Where are these people?"

But in fact, Drew, there were not 10 people living right across from her. Correct?


Drew Kesse: No. That was an unfortunate piece of film, I guess. I don't know.

No one ever lived in the condo across from Jennifer. Ever. And we lived in Jennifer's condo for eight months. In fact, the condo across from Jennifer was the only condo in the complex that the door was actually unlocked.

But the workers that we knew of--no one lived in her building. They lived in other buildings across the campus, and I guess that was taken as across the hall. And it's [unclear].

But no one did that. It's not--no one was in there and we had dogs go into there also. There was nothing; the dogs did not hit on anything like cadaver or anything.

 
Okay. I've got to go back and read because you all peaked my interest... I've forgotten who JH is.
James Hataway is a convicted felon and is currently in prison. Unless the rules have changed recently, we are allowed to say his name. His victim is one lucky lady to be alive today. His other victims were not so lucky, IMO.

 
So what’s the tldr here? Girl goes missing without any context, a bad piece of footage where someone is seen ditching her car, fingerprints on the hood?

There has to be a social connection that is being hidden or was unknown to those closest to her.
 
Also the whole employer calling her parents thing is sus af. What employer of a degreed professional adult calls someone’s parents when they are a few hours late for work? What employer would even have her parents number?
 
MT mentioned being stared at in the workout room. She stayed with Jennifer on NYE. The workout room is located in the clubhouse.
Bold by me with apologies.

I have a link for that but it doesn't work anymore. Just briefly she said: "the man appeared to be working on the fitness center's front door until he became interested in her as she worked out alone". She also said: "it made my skin crawl". And: "There's not enough detail in the person-of-interest photos released Saturday to know if he might be the man who approached Kesse".

So, while it's interesting, I think she only made those statements after Jennifer went missing not before. The article is dated February 9, 2006.

It's possible more than one of Jenn's friends stayed with her on NYE. Here is a partial unofficial transcript from KE on the "House of Broken Dreams" podcast:

KE: @ approximately 7:36 minutes: "She had just bought that condo, moving out of the apartment and was super excited. I had just stayed with her the night of New Year’s Eve. The New Year’s before she went missing, I had just stayed at her new condo and we went out that night with another, with a group set of friends that had also stayed from college on I Drive. We went to a piano bar cause Rob couldn’t come up for the night. So, I went and stayed with her just to kind of celebrate the night.

According to my records, neither of those girls was the one that had gotten married in November of 2005 and was the girl Jennifer lived with near the Florida Tap Room.

Here is something very short on her. Again, the link doesn't work anymore so I'll just be brief with my quote and hope it's okay:

Snipped: "Just two months ago, Kesse attended KW's wedding ... "

I'm curious to know if any of the initials line up with your info. We have to be very careful here because we will get in trouble if we type out their full names.
 
I think the perp stays in touch with the family too. My gut feeling is it’s someone close to her and the perp had some help. They need to start with those closest and work their way out. She had multiple men interested in her plus some overlapping social ties with Hataway.
Well, I've constantly changed my mind about this over the years, but currently, my gut feeling is it's someone who hasn't even been considered.

I believe that person may stay in touch with the family only to make sure he hasn't made the list yet. He probably likes to stay "updated" on the case.

Basically, I think it will be something like the Delphi case and we'll all sit here gobsmacked wondering how we missed it.
 
So what’s the tldr here? Girl goes missing without any context, a bad piece of footage where someone is seen ditching her car, fingerprints on the hood?

There has to be a social connection that is being hidden or was unknown to those closest to her.
I don't know about "fingerprints on the hood". Maybe, but not confirmed. But, yes, your summation is pretty good, IMO.

Also the whole employer calling her parents thing is sus af. What employer of a degreed professional adult calls someone’s parents when they are a few hours late for work? What employer would even have her parents number?
This has really been controversial over the years and I suspect it still is. I, personally, agree.

A couple of things, though, it's said Jennifer's employer had her parent's number because 1) Jennifer named her mother as "emergency contact"; and 2) Jennifer's father was a good friend of someone who worked there.

They were actually both called. Two phone calls, not one.

I'm gonna duck, though. There will be lots of "feedback".
 
Last edited:
I don't know about "fingerprints on the hood". Maybe, but not confirmed. But, yes, your summation is pretty good, IMO.


This has really been controversial over the years and I suspect it still is. I, personally, agree.

A couple of things, though, it's said Jennifer's employer had her parent's number because 1) Jennifer named her mother as "emergency contact"; and 2) Jennifer's father was a good friend of someone who worked there.

They were actually both called. Two phone calls, not one.

I'm gonna duck, though. There will be lots of "feedback".
Lol. This was a hot button? Makes zero sense.
 
That's really interesting. Thank you as I don't think I've seen it before. Hataway was involved in at least 2 if not 3 other cases that I'm sure he would have been "offered" a poly on, so it's hard to say if they are indicating he failed one on Jennifer's case. I have a feeling Mr. Kesse is referring to another case. Just a suspicion, though.

I noticed that interview was in 2009.

Wright was busy running down all the info on one of the "Chino" suspects around that time--the housekeeper's statement; the couple who saw the swerving vehicle; finding the person who the housekeeper named and going to the prison to interview/polygraph him.

It makes me wonder how much time was spent by LE on Hataway as a suspect.

Because a lot of "data" seems to place him in Jennifer's life from the time they were kids. He never admits to anything he has ever done. They have a video of Tracy leaving the Tap Room with him on the night she disappeared and they can't come up with enough evidence to make an arrest. Her body has never been found. So he works clean as we see in Jennifer's case.

Mr. Kesse has backed way off him as a suspect now. I don't think he would even consider him.

The following link contains a little bit of info on the "past" between Hataway and Jennifer.
Snipped: "That was her old hang. That was her old neighborhood," Drew Kesse said.

The link below is from the Orlando Sentinel. It's behind a paywall now so I can't quote from it but I'll link it as others may have access to it. It does contain quite a bit more info on their pasts than the link above. I've seen it many times and have quotes from it before they place it behind the paywall.
The fact that he said he can make the disappear leads me to believe he’s behind more missing women. I think he was a serial killer or at least a budding serial killer. The potential links to Jennifer are interesting. If I recall correctly Tap Room is less than a mile from where she lived two months prior to her disappearance. If I recall correctly, the gym is in the same strip mall. It really makes you wonder.
 
I'm not sure I really understand your point here but I'll link the following videos.

The first one is from Fox 35. They are interviewing Mr. Kesse.

Here is an unofficial transcript I did of a portion of the interview:
@ 2:46:
Interviewer:
... I want to talk about Chino. This is a person that has come up a couple of times over the last several weeks. We know that Cristina Corbin spoke on the phone to him.

What do you know about this person and do you feel like police have already spoken to the person who took Jennifer?


Drew Kesse: Well, I don't know about the last question. I don't know if police did or not. Chino? You know there is nothing to really say about Chino.

Chino is just someone that happened to work and live at Mosaic at Millenia. And he is just someone in a line of people that, you know, we needed to talk to. Not as a person of interest, to be quite honest with you. But for his knowledge. I mean he was there every day. He lived there. He worked there. He is not alone. There are two or three others that lived there and worked there; that worked for Mosaic, and we are speaking to those people.

And it's not because that we think that they are the person of interest. Again, it's because I don't think that they know what they possibly know. Because over the years people come forward with little minor things, but it makes sense to us in the whole.

So, we need to speak to these people and that's why we are after these people drastically to say sit down with us. We have questions, not about you and pinning it on you; what you know and what you may think you know or not know that makes sense to us.



And there is this one done by WKMG News 6 Click Orlando:

An unofficial transcript done by me of a portion of the interview:
Interviewer: ... Is that watching the 48 Hours--they did a decent job, but there were some things in there that were not exactly correct. Okay? Or that at least lead you to believe things that were not true.

I know after I watched it, a lot of people were wondering: "Hey, it sounded like 10 maintenance workers were living in the apartment across, or the condo across, from Jennifer. How did they never talk to these people? Where are these people?"

But in fact, Drew, there were not 10 people living right across from her. Correct?


Drew Kesse: No. That was an unfortunate piece of film, I guess. I don't know.

No one ever lived in the condo across from Jennifer. Ever. And we lived in Jennifer's condo for eight months. In fact, the condo across from Jennifer was the only condo in the complex that the door was actually unlocked.

But the workers that we knew of--no one lived in her building. They lived in other buildings across the campus, and I guess that was taken as across the hall. And it's [unclear].

But no one did that. It's not--no one was in there and we had dogs go into there also. There was nothing; the dogs did not hit on anything like cadaver or anything.

As far as I can tell, they have been very cooperative with the law enforcement. It seems they have been more cooperative than others. Chino even sat down with the Kesse’s after they got the files. I don’t know any evidence on either. Just a person or two saying the poi resembles Chino. I watched what happened to different suspects that were investigated as bridge guy in the Delphi case and that was much better footage.
 
Bold by me with apologies.

I have a link for that but it doesn't work anymore. Just briefly she said: "the man appeared to be working on the fitness center's front door until he became interested in her as she worked out alone". She also said: "it made my skin crawl". And: "There's not enough detail in the person-of-interest photos released Saturday to know if he might be the man who approached Kesse".

So, while it's interesting, I think she only made those statements after Jennifer went missing not before. The article is dated February 9, 2006.

It's possible more than one of Jenn's friends stayed with her on NYE. Here is a partial unofficial transcript from KE on the "House of Broken Dreams" podcast:

KE: @ approximately 7:36 minutes: "She had just bought that condo, moving out of the apartment and was super excited. I had just stayed with her the night of New Year’s Eve. The New Year’s before she went missing, I had just stayed at her new condo and we went out that night with another, with a group set of friends that had also stayed from college on I Drive. We went to a piano bar cause Rob couldn’t come up for the night. So, I went and stayed with her just to kind of celebrate the night.

According to my records, neither of those girls was the one that had gotten married in November of 2005 and was the girl Jennifer lived with near the Florida Tap Room.

Here is something very short on her. Again, the link doesn't work anymore so I'll just be brief with my quote and hope it's okay:

Snipped: "Just two months ago, Kesse attended KW's wedding ... "

I'm curious to know if any of the initials line up with your info. We have to be very careful here because we will get in trouble if we type out their full names.
Yes, I have KW as the roommate. She spoke on Unconcluded #19. From my understanding it was just the two of them there. She stated that Jennifer would sometimes leave the briefcase in her car and that Jennifer didn’t do much work once she got home. She stated that since she was coming from Ft Lauderdale she would not have Tupperware to bring in. Which is another interesting point. Did Jennifer usually take her lunch? There was no signs of the kitchen being used Monday night to prepare lunch for Tuesday.

That article is in thread 12 post 1188. What I find interesting about the encounter she had, is that it happened in the fitness center. Whoever that guy was, probably didn’t know which building/condo they were staying in. There was a few girlfriends that stayed with her on NYE because her and Rob didn’t see each other. KE and MT are the two from my notes. There could be more. KE spoke on the Oxygen show and HOBD episode 8. KE is also the one that stated that Jennifer would prefer the workers work on the condo when she wasn’t home.

I know on the House of Broken Dreams podcast that Drew stated the workers just made Jennifer feel uneasy. They never said anything to her. This was in episode 1.
 
The fact that he said he can make the disappear leads me to believe he’s behind more missing women. I think he was a serial killer or at least a budding serial killer. The potential links to Jennifer are interesting. If I recall correctly Tap Room is less than a mile from where she lived two months prior to her disappearance. If I recall correctly, the gym is in the same strip mall. It really makes you wonder.
What makes this connection impossible for me to ignore is that Jennifer and Hataway knew each other as children. They were in the same classroom in Grade 4, or possibly Grade 6, IIRC. He moved to the Orlando area around that time. Jennifer, who moved to Orlando at age 17, met up with him years later at the Florida Tap Room. I can see Jennifer trusting him quicker than she would a stranger due to their childhood connection. That would make a difference.

Snipped: And Hataway lived in Hillsborough County, where the Kesses reared their family, all of which leads Drew Kesse to wonder whether there's a connection.

I believed Jennifer lived very close to the Florida Tap Room, less than a mile. See my quote below; also Mr. Kesse has said all she had to do was walk through a parking lot.

I'm sure of the address for the Tap Room because all you have to do is Google it, but I'm not sure of exactly where Jennifer lived at that time. I know it was the MetroWest area. I've heard it said that she lived in Amara at MetroWest but that's a little further away from the Florida Tap Room than, say the Azur at MetroWest. But both are across the street.

Snipped: Jennifer Kesse lived next door to the bar for three years.

So, although I can't get a walking or driving distance of Jennifer's former residence to the Florida Tap Room, running some distances on my Google map gives me the following:

From the Florida Tap Room to Jennifer's work is about 5 miles/11 minutes to drive.

From Jenn's condo to the Florida Tap Room is about 6 miles/17 minutes to drive.

From Hataway's residence to the Florida Tap Room is about 7 miles/17 minutes to drive.

The area of his residence was not searched for Jennifer. However, I assume it was searched for Tracy Ocasio as it's the area where her vehicle was found (clean) and her last phone ping.
 
As far as I can tell, they have been very cooperative with the law enforcement. It seems they have been more cooperative than others. Chino even sat down with the Kesse’s after they got the files. I don’t know any evidence on either. Just a person or two saying the poi resembles Chino. I watched what happened to different suspects that were investigated as bridge guy in the Delphi case and that was much better footage.
It was just one witness as far as I know. A "housekeeper" that Wright caught wind of somehow and when he interviewed her she said the picture looked like Chino. Chino is a nickname and a common one.

I hope Wright narrowed it down to the correct Chino because there were two of them associated with the Mosiac at that time.
 
Yes, I have KW as the roommate. She spoke on Unconcluded #19. From my understanding it was just the two of them there. She stated that Jennifer would sometimes leave the briefcase in her car and that Jennifer didn’t do much work once she got home. She stated that since she was coming from Ft Lauderdale she would not have Tupperware to bring in. Which is another interesting point. Did Jennifer usually take her lunch? There was no signs of the kitchen being used Monday night to prepare lunch for Tuesday.
I'm going to go look up that podcast. I can really believe that Jennifer would bring her lunch to work. In Tupperware. I call it bazaar if we're asked to believe that Jennifer never had anything to eat from the time she got to her condo to the time she left for work the next morning. She doesn't look to me to be the type of young woman to starve herself. She ate somewhere or she was abducted before she had a chance to get something. I wonder if anyone knows what time she liked to have dinner? (Her evening meal). Or what were her habits regarding it? Something light and quick like a salad for instance. Or something more substantial. There should have been some evidence that she had eaten that evening or the following morning, either in her condo garbage or wrappers or containers of some sort in her vehicle.

It humanizes her to realize she was so conscious about her finances that she would do the "brown bag" thing. Or in Jennifer's case, the "Tupperware" thing. It makes me wonder about this 24-year-old woman who had a huge financial debt. And it was all so recent.

That article is in thread 12 post 1188. What I find interesting about the encounter she had, is that it happened in the fitness center. Whoever that guy was, probably didn’t know which building/condo they were staying in. There was a few girlfriends that stayed with her on NYE because her and Rob didn’t see each other. KE and MT are the two from my notes. There could be more. KE spoke on the Oxygen show and HOBD episode 8. KE is also the one that stated that Jennifer would prefer the workers work on the condo when she wasn’t home.

I know on the House of Broken Dreams podcast that Drew stated the workers just made Jennifer feel uneasy. They never said anything to her. This was in episode 1.
Thanks for this. It really helps me to understand who she spent her time with.
 
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