For now I will post the first part of the vanished podcast, which I think gives a good overview from all that happened.
http://www.thevanishedpodcast.com/episodes/2017/12/21/episode-105-jenna-van-gelderen-
Leon van Gelderen:
Well, our son wholives in ???? couldn’t get in touch with my daughter Saturdaymorning and he came over later Saturday morning, he found the TV on which wasvery odd, my daughter would never leave and leave the TV on and a –let’ssay- tapestry that was on the wall, anEgyptian tapestry, and it was pulled outof the frame, wasn’t even taking out offrom the back, the glass was somehow cut, and it was taken out from the front.Totally bizarre.
Unfortunately the police handling of her case has been lessthan desirable from day one. They didn’t do any forensic investigation on the house or my wife’s car that wasbeen driven by my daughter.
Marissa (interviewer):
In August 2017, 25 years old Jenna van Gelderen washousesitting for her parents in the Druid Hills section of Atlanta GA . Jenna was last seen on August 18[SUP]th[/SUP]and had a phone conversation with her friend in the early morning hours of the19[SUP]th[/SUP]. What happened after that remains a mystery. On the morning ofthe 19[SUP]th[/SUP] Jenna’s older brother stopped by the house to find that thedoors were locked and both the TV and lights were on inside. Jenna and her carwere both missing. Ever since Jenna disappeared her family has been struggling to get LE to look for her. Early on in the investigation they had even reported that they found Jennabut it was just a tragic mistake.
<respectfullysnipped>
Marissa:
I was relieved when Isaw the news that she had been was found. Then baffled when the story wasretracted. How can this kind of mistakes happen? How can a family have beentold that there loved one in found and it was all a mistake?
We know that somepeople are at a higher risk for being victimized, and those reasons can varyfrom things like life style choices to social economic status. Jenna ‘s familybelieves that she was at a higher risk but for a different reason. I spoke toJenna’s dad Leon van Gelderen for this episode. He explained to me thatJenna is on the autism spectrum and is highfunctioning. Her parents have been worried about some of the people that shehad been hanging out with because she was often a bit too trusting of others who may not havethe best of intentions . It was a struggle for her parents to on one handwanting to protect and also respecting her wishes and boundaries. Jenna had lived at home withher parents’ until the spring of 2017 when she began to rent a room from a maleacquaintance. She still maintained a close contact with her parents typicallyspeaking to then on a daily basis. Leon told me more about his daughter Jenna.
Leon van Gelderen:
She was 25 years old.She had been living at home with her parent until about April of 2017, movedout and was renting a room from a roommate in an apartment. She had completedtwo years of college and got a certificate from Gwinnet Tech, and office administration.
She had high level functioningautism which created a lot of social issues for her as far as trusting peopleand making contact with people, through socialsituations, was less then optimal and she was working at a pet supply store forabout 4 years until April she was accused of stealing some money from the storethat got resolved with just an misdemeanor.
She was taken care ofour elderly cat and housesitting when she disappeared. We were in Canada andshe was here in our house for about three days and the car was gone she was gone. She loved pets. As I said her friendswere less then optimal some of the people she was hanging out with did have criminalhistories. She was working part-time asa nanny had gotten jobs through a placement service.
Marissa:
In August the 15th2017, Jenna’s parents left for a vacation to Canada. Before they left they setup a plan for Jenna to house sit and feed their elderly cat.
Jenna’s older brotherwas to stop by in the mornings to give the cat it’s morning medications and then a cat sitter would come later on the day to give the cat it’safternoon medications. Just a few days later, on the 18th, Jenna had been incontact with both her mum and her brother, that day. At one point she left herparents’ house to return to her apartment. She took her mum’s car instead ofher own because the insurance had lapsed on her car. Some of Jenna’s friendswere at the apartment when she stopped by there that evening . They reportedthat she left around 11 pm to go meet with a man that we call herex-boyfriend. He claims that he broke upwith Jenna on the evening of the 18th,but we delve into that later. The last known person to see Jenna is thisex-boyfriend. Jenna’s family has learned that during that evening theex-boyfriend was not using his own phone to contact Jenna. We know that Jennamade it home that night because she spoke to one of her friends in the earlymorning hours of the 19th.
Leon van Gelderen:
She had one femalefriend in NC that she had been texting with, in contact with continuously, whowas the last person to talk to her on 1.30 in the morning. She’s been helpful,reconstructing things.
Marissa:
Around 2 a.m. shetexted the same friend that she had spoken to on the phone, and said that shewas “lying down” The wording of this text message seemed strange to her friend.It wasn’t something that Jenna would typically wright.
Another piece ofinformation that they have been able to gather that supports the believe thatJenna did make it back to her parent’s house that night is that her Facebookaccount was accessed from their home IP-address .
Jenna’s brother, Wil,stopped by around 10.30 a.m. on the morning of the 19th and he noticed that thedoors were locked but when he went inside the TV and lights were on. He alsonoticed that Jenna hadn’t fed the cat. Jenna’s car was also gone. The day beforeshe had been driving her mum’s car but that was still in the garage. When thecat sitter came by in the afternoon Jenna still hadn’t returned, so the sitter,who didn’t have a key, attempted to call Jenna but got no answer. Will stoppedby again at 11.30 that night, to checkon his sister, but she still hadn’t returned. Will spoke to their parents and let them know that he was concerned aboutJenna. On the 20[SUP]th[/SUP] they decided to call Jenna’s ex- boyfriend fromCanada and ask if he knew anything . He informed them that he was home alone onthe evening of the 18th. Will continued to go over to the house to see if Jenna had returned and to care for thecat. This is when he realized that there was a world war ll era Egyptiantapestry missing from the home. This had been on the wall in a frame. Someonehad removed it from the frame by cutting out the glass in the front, not takingthe back of the frame. This is one of the bizarre aspects of Jenna’s case. Why would someone take that but leave manyvaluable items behind. I wondered if this tapestry was worth a lot of money.
Leon van Gelderen:
It turns out we foundsimilar ones on the internet for sale that are only a few hundred dollars. Wasa souvenir that our grandfather brought back from Egypt in World War ll. Whysomebody took it? I don’t’ know.
Marissa:
It was also on thisday that Will filed a missing person’s report for his sister. Officers fromDeKalb County Police Department came out the house to take the report. Theylooked around and then left. When Jenna’s parents learned that she was missingthey decided to cut their vacation short an arrived back in Atlanta on the21th. While they were still in Canada they decided to contact the policedepartment again and requested that theycome back to the house to check for fingerprints. But unfortunately the Police Department waited quite a while tocome back and do this.
Leon van Gelderen:
We called them fromCanada after my son reported her missing. He waited 24 hours and reported hermissing on Sunday morning. I begged them to have a forensic team go through thehouse and the car before we returned home because I was concerned that contaminatingthe evidence, and they refused to so. AsI told you in the beginning they just don’t think she was missing. And about untilalmost a month later that they finally fingerprinted the car for fingerprintsand as far as I know was inconclusive. The house, I collected items in thehouse that clearly didn’t come from mydaughter and finally turned them over to the police when they asked for it about 6 weeks later.
Marissa: We know that Jenna had been driving her mom’scar shortly before she disappeared. Her family also wanted the car to befingerprinted because there were signs that someone else had been in the carwith her.
Leon van Gelderen
She told three differentfriends and one of them was in a tape recorded conversation that she wasdriving my wife’s car because the insurance had lapsed on her car. We don’tknow who was in the car with her but they the passenger seat was pushed back atappeared that somebody fairly tall had been in the car when she brought the carback here. But we don’t know on what point.
Marissa: Jenna’s ex-boyfriend was interviewed by LE andhe told them that Jenna had showed up on the evening of the 18[SUP]th[/SUP] andhe broke up with her. What he told the police send them looking in a differentdirection.
Leon van Gelderen
Unfortunately the police handling of her case has been less then desirablefrom day one. They didn’t do any forensic investigation of the house or my wife’scar that was been driven by my daughter the night before that was in thegarage. The main issue was that they interviewed a boyfriend who claimed he hadbroken up with her the night before and for whatever reason he told the policethat Jenna was a prostitute and a drug addict. Neither of which had been confirmedby anybody. They ran with that and told us the first couple day’s that they hadidentified her on Backpage. What happened was: a woman, who not even was adetective, just went on Backpage and looked for any woman that had the firstname Jenna and said that must be her. And then they called us four days later andsaid she was been arrested for solicitation and which been processed. When Ididn’t hear anything from them I calledthe next day and they said oh we made a mistake it wasn’t your daughter it wasjust some woman that was using the name Jenna on Backpage. That was just one ofmany mistakes that were made.
Marissa: WhenJenna had moved out from her parents’ house back in the spring she wouldn’ttell her parents where she was living. So after she disappeared they had to trackdown that information to.
Leon van Gelderen
Our daughter wouldn’t give us the address, she wanted total privacy whenshe moved out. We did get that information from a friend of hers. Early on Icontacted the roommate and he said “she’s paid up, there is no reason for youto come over here and I’m going to throw her stuff outside at the end of themonth, goodbye.” Now if that isn’tsuspicious I don’t know what is?
Marissa: There aresome jurisdictional issues in this case since Jenna went missing in onejurisdiction but her apartment and other important areas related to this caseare in another jurisdiction.
Leon van Gelderen
The other thing in this particular case that’s really frustrating is ourdaughter went missing from our house, which is in DeKalb county, but all theevents that occurred, places that are significant are all in the city ofAtlanta. She had an apartment in the city of Atlanta. They never searched herapartment.
The detective went over there, came back; roommate said she hadn’t paidrent and he is throwing all her stuff outside. So she detective gathered up herstuff, brought it over here. There was no bedding in there, no pillows, nosheets, no noting. I asked them I said how could you not searched the apartmentif there is no bedding. So they went back and asked the roommate “oh, she wassleeping on the floor, with nothing. There was no bed there. To you and I this wouldsound suspicious, apparently to them iswasn’t . They said no judge is going to give us a search warrant just based onthat. Go figure that out.
Marissa: Eventhough Jenna’s roommate hasn’t been very forthcoming there isn’t any evidencesuggesting that she disappeared from theapartment.
Leon van Gelderen
Right now it doesn’tappear that she went missing from the apartment, which is what I had feared. Wedon’t know for sure actually. We knowshe was here at some point on Friday night and early Saturday morning. We don’tknow If she went back to the apartment at all.
<modsnip> that read was a headache, with all the ’'s and words jumbled together.
but a few things stand out to me:
1. she didn't want her family to know where she lived, which sorta confirms my initial thoughts that she wanted some space and privacy from her family, wanted to do her own thing without them being so over-bearing. understandable. honestly, at one point, i thought
maybe (hard
maybe) she was fine and just got sick of her over-bearing family always checking up on her, i could see how that would annoy and stress her out. knowing what i know now about that night, however, i don't think that's what happened anymore.
2. her boyfriend broke up with her and the very next day, she went missing. i'm now leaning towards it maybe being a suicide, bc in the span of a few months, she officially lost her job of 4 years, faced and plead guilty to criminal charges (and wound up with a criminal record), her roommate kicked her out of the apartment and her boyfriend dumped her. that's a lot of things to deal with practically all at once.
3. her boyfriend said she was a prostitute - i think it's very possible she coulda dabbled in that world, especially after she lost her job. is it possible that that has something to do with why she went missing? did she go to meet a client and things went horribly wrong?
4. her boyfriend also said she was drug addict. by "drug addict" he could have very well meant prescription pills or he coulda meant something worse, hopefully not heroin, bc if that's the case, an OD is also a possibility.
5. her parents mentioned that there was something missing from the house that someone may have thought woulda been valuable. is it possible that jenna took it, thinking it was worth money, in order to sell it to pay for drugs or to pay her rent?
i'm not sure how likely it is that jenna will be found alive, at this point, but i'm not 100% convinced foul play was involved, either. i may change my mind if i get new information i didn't know before, though.
