Refresh of case info
MSM from August 22nd 2020
1 year after her untimely death of horrific loss and continued pain for family and loved ones for Justice for Jessica. (Answers are important) May truth come to light and may Jessica rest easy knowing she will get Justice soon.
Death of woman whose body was found blocks from New Orleans home last August still a mystery
It was about 9 p.m. on August 14, Maria said, when she got a message from Jessica’s Facebook account. It was Jessica’s husband, Justin Durning.
He asked, “Is Jess with you, G. and I are worried????” G. is Justin’s daughter and Jessica’s stepdaughter.
“When I read that message, my whole body went cold,” Maria told Dateline. “I knew right then something terrible had happened.”
Maria told Dateline she called the New Orleans Police Department to perform a welfare check at Jessica’s house on General Haig Street. That evening, Jessica’s husband filed a missing persons report. (Just MOO he had no choice).
But Jessica’s 43rd birthday on August 17 came and still there was no trace of Jessica.
On August 22, a week after Jessica was last seen, Audrey, their other sister, Amanda, and their cousin, traveled to New Orleans to speak with detectives at the New Orleans Police Department. But first they decided to conduct their own search in Jessica’s neighborhood.
Along the tree line of a wooded area of City Park near the intersection of Orleans Avenue and Kenilworth Street, about two blocks from Jessica’s home, was a body clad in a black tank top, black shorts and black shoes.
“I was devastated,” Audrey told Dateline. “I knew right away it was her. I couldn’t believe this was happening.”
Audrey called the police and an investigation was launched.
But it would be three months before the body was identified. On November 8, 2019, the body was positively identified as Jessica Easterly Durning, according to the Orleans Parish Coroner’s Office.
Jessica’s family told Dateline they believe foul play was involved in her death and that her body was placed where she was found.
Gary S. Scheets, a spokesperson for the New Orleans Police Department told Dateline this week that the case remains open and active and is being investigated by the 3rd District detectives.
This thing would not have taken this long as it has had she not laid in the New Orleans sun for a week and a half before her body was found,” Jessica’s stepfather Rick Schmitt, of Summerdale, Alabama, told
WDSU after receiving the results.
“That’s what made the autopsy to difficult… The fact that she was there, everything points to she was dumped there; she did not die there.”
Two more months passed before Jessica’s family received her autopsy report on
January 15, 2020.
According to Orleans Parish Coroner’s Office Spokesman Jason Melancon, the autopsy found evidence that
Jessica sustained a nose injury as well as a “a small linear fracture” to her jaw around the time she died. However, in the report signed January 8, the pathologist did not address how these injuries might have been sustained.
The Coroner’s Office classified both the cause and manner of Jessica’s death as undetermined.
In an email to Dateline, NOPD Spokesperson Gary S. Scheets said Jessica’s case “remains an unclassified death” and “ is not currently classified as a homicide.”
He added that the investigation remains open and active.
Anyone with information is asked to contact the Third District at 504-658-6030 or call Crime Stoppers anonymously at 504-822-1111 and toll-free at 1-877-903-7867.
More @ link TOS/WS
#JUSTICE4JESSICA
