Very lengthy article.
KDKA Mysteries: Unsolved Murder Of Jamie Stickle Still Haunts Family, Friends, Investigators
Who killed Jamie Stickle? It's a mystery that has haunted her family, friends and veteran homicide detectives for 17 years.
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''PITTSBURGH (KDKA) -- Who killed Jamie Stickle?
It's a mystery that has haunted her family, friends and veteran homicide detectives for 17 years.
Jamie's body was found in her jeep, which had been set on fire outside her apartment on the North Side, on Feb. 8, 2002.
"They said she wasn't shot, she wasn't stabbed, but there was a lot of blood. And then they said that she was burned so bad they couldn't tell if it was a fractured skull or exactly what it was," says Jamie's mother, Marge Walls.
Joe Meyers was one of the detectives who investigated Jamie's murder.
He has since retired from Pittsburgh Police and now works with Carnegie Mellon University Police, but he says Jamie's death has never left him.''
"I've thought about it many, many times. My only hope is that she was unconscious and died before she could wake up and feel the pain," says Meyers.
Jamie was a popular bartender in Pittsburgh's gay community.
Those who knew her say the manner of her death was so inconsistent with how she lived her life. Friends and co-workers say she was jovial, charitable and highly regarded in the community. In fact, they say nobody would have wished any kind of violence on Jamie.
But that clearly was not the case on the night she died.''
Jamie lived in an apartment upstairs.
Detective Meyers says, "There was evidence that she had initially been assaulted at the front door of her apartment. We had her blood on the door itself, we had several strands of her hair, and some objects that she had in her hand, we're assuming she had in her hand, were found on the doorstop. It appears she got out of her truck, was able to make it to the door, was trying to get into her apartment and was assaulted at the door."
''In addition to the door, detectives also found blood on the pavement and on the jeep's door handle.
"There was evidence that she had been dragged, probably unconscious, from the initial point of the assault at the front door, back to the jeep and placed in the jeep and was still alive when the jeep was set on fire," says Meyers''
The medical examiner didn't have much to work with.
"They declared, because of the condition of her body after the fire, they were unable to say it was a homicide. It was ruled as undetermined," says Meyers.
Jamie and her longtime girlfriend were coming out of a turbulent breakup.
Jamie's ex was one of the first people police questioned.
"She was with her parents ... She was able to account for her whereabouts and she was pretty quickly eliminated as a suspect," says Meyers.''