Investigators solve 1987 rape and murder of Cuyahoga Falls woman with DNA evidence
Investigators have determined who raped and murdered Janice Christensen. Thomas Collier Jordan, who died in 2009, also is tied to a teen's rape.
www.beaconjournal.com
Detectives thought there was a link between the rape of a teenage girl and the murder of a young woman within months of each other in 1987.
Both victims were attacked on a walking trail in Summit County, bound by shoelaces and sexually assaulted by a man with a knife.
The detectives were right – and that connection proved to be the key to solving these two cases 36 years later.
Through a process that included DNA testing and an exhumation, investigators determined that Thomas Collier Jordan was responsible for the rape and slaying of Janice Christensen, 31, in August 1987 and the rape of a 17-year-old girl in May of that year.
Jordan died in 2009 in Yuma, Arizona, at the age of 83.
