She was beautiful. Jannette johnson was beautiful.
This was my world.
She was my world. [sniffles]
She lit up any room.
She brought so much love.
This is a 38-year-old case.
But I have faith.
Anything and everything is possible.
♪ I will drink my trail of tears ♪
♪ I will tell my tale of woe ♪
♪ I will grow old ♪
♪ I will walk somehow ♪
♪ then I'm crawling from the cold ♪
♪ no more waiting ♪
I know you've met joretha before,
But how often do y'all stay in touch?
Since I started reinvestigating this,
At least once a week we're in contact.
And it all started because of a facebook post, right?
Yes. Back in 2017, I was pretty new to the bureau.
We had a facebook account, and a post came up by joretha.
She indicates in the post that her mom went missing in 1985
And the kankakee police department
Hadn't done anything about it.
So I took that personally.
They told her I was going to follow up on the case
And see what we can do with it.
Siegler: I'm here with detective logan andersen
With the kankakee police department
Because they've asked for "cold justice's" help
Looking into one of their very challenging cases,
The 1985 murder of a 29-year-old mother named jannette johnson.
The crazy and haunting thing about this case
Is that jannette johnson's then 11-year-old daughter
Just barely missed being able to see the person who killed her.
Andersen: August 2, 1985,
Jannette johnson goes to the birthday party.
She does return home early in the morning--2:30, 3:00.
The kids are still up when they're not supposed to be.
Joretha sees her go up to the front door.
Hears the keys at the door.
She apparently never made it into the house.
The circumstances are kind of unclear
Of whether she drives away or somebody else drives her away.
But then she's gone.
Fast forward.
November 24th of '85, a body was located by hunters.
Siegler: Jannette's skeletal remains were discovered
Within months of her going missing.
But she wasn't positively identified
Until just a few years ago with dna analysis.
That's when her case became a homicide case.
But because of that lag,
It ended up putting the investigation decades behind,
Which made it harder for them to find clues to who did this
And hard to get answers for her daughter.
Andersen: She's been dealing with this
For approximately 38 years.
I just want closure, not only for her,
But for her family and her friends.
You see your mom walking up to the house
And she never gets in the house.
What could have happened? That's got to make her crazy.
There's my favorite.
Hello, detective a.
You feel my nervous heart?
Yeah, I do. Thousand miles an hour.
You're feeling nervous. You're feeling nervous.
We're excited to see you.
And I'm excited to see you guys as well.
While steve waits for us back at the station,
Detective andersen and I
Are going to meet jeanette's daughter joretha
Who spent 35 years not knowing anything
About her mother's disappearance,
Only to learn just three years ago
That she really had been murdered.
As a little girl, I couldn't understand it.
I always asked, "where was my mom?"
No one had the answer.
So I vowed to my grandmother...
That I was gonna find her
And I was gonna bring her back home to us.
I miss the hugs.
I miss her telling us how she love us.
I miss everything about her.
When detective andersen called me November of 2020,
I walked into that conference room.
He broke it down.
"we found jannette johnson."
Then he decided to start showing me
My mom's remains on the pictures.
All I kept saying was, "yes, lord."
Somebody did this to her?
She didn't deserve that. She didn't deserve that.
August 2, 1985.
My mom was going to the party house.
Mercedes's birthday party.
My auntie and my cousin's at the house.
My auntie told us to go upstairs and go to bed.
It had to be after 11, 12:00.
There was a knock at the door. Lionel thomas was at the door.
He asked me was my mom home.
And I told him no, she was at the party.
He said, okay, he'll be back. He left.
Lionel thomas was jannette's on-again, off-again boyfriend
For about three years.
It's kind of unclear exactly
What state their relationship was in
The night she went missing.
But we do know that they had plans
To go to a concert together that following night.
Not even an hour went by and he came back again.
And I let him know again she wasn't at home.
Now, the last time he came and he knocked, I opened the door.
He asked me has she made it home yet, and I told him no.
He was like, "okay, I'll come back and check."
No more lionel. Never came back to the house.
So now we was upstairs playing as we heard her car pull up.
Almost 03:00 or after 3:00 in the morning.
So as we're looking out the window, we see her.
Like, she's coming to the house.
The girls took off running into my brother and I room.
I dived in her bed.
Joretha pretended to be asleep until she really fell asleep,
Not knowing that she had just seen her mom alive
For the very last time.
So when I woke up that morning,
I'm walking around the house and I'm looking for her.
That's when we noticed her car.
When we went to bed, her car was on the side of the house.
- And now? - The car was parked in front.
And she don't park in front of the house.
Her wallet was on the passenger seat.
Her keys were still in the ignition.
My mom smoked cigarettes. And in the ashtray,
The cigarette looked like it just burned all the way out.
It was just a long ash.
Siegler: The fact that jannette's car
Was parked in a different spot the next morning
When everybody woke up
Suggests that somebody brought the car back
After she was probably killed and disposed of.
But who would do that? And why would they do that?
We're hoping that witnesses and testing the dna
Underneath jannette's fingernails
Will provide an answer.
Did lionel ever come to your house that day--
The day of the third-- saying, "where's your mom?"
Nope. I can't tell you why,
But my grandmother always said it from day one,
And she would say he was strange to her.
She wouldn't allow me to have contact with lionel
When I was 18.
I don't know if she's dead or alive.
And I came back into the folds of lionel's life,
And he's been there since.
Like, he played the role of my dad.
I call him my dad.
Right. Did you do all that
'cause you thought maybe you could--you could kind him
Into telling you the truth?
I allowed myself to get so caught up into this man,
I lost focus,
And I just accepted him still in my life.
It's hard to imagine what all joretha has gone through
For the last 38 years,
Wondering what happened to her mother,
And then in that same time period
Ending up getting close to a man, like a father figure,
That turns out to be a suspect in her mom's murder.
But all we can do now is just try and figure out the truth.
I want that same man that kept me in his life--
If he truly is the suspect-- - right.
Why did you take her from us?
Why did you keep me as a souvenir all these years? Why?
- Hey, man. Good to see you. - You, too.
We just met joretha.
And you should see how much she already loves logan.
It's pretty clear
That jannette johnson's daughter joretha
Is conflicted about whether or not lionel thomas
Is involved in her mother's murder or somebody else is.
Steve is joining us now as we all try to sit down
And start working together to figure this out.
Logan, we talked a little bit about jannette's case,
But we didn't go into all of the details of it.
You want to start from the front of the story?
Yeah, absolutely.
Jannette johnson went missing in August of '85.
She was put into the missing person's database.
There was a flyer that was put out.
We've got some decent reports from the time,
But the people that they talked to was pretty minimal.
So this case really isn't like
Any other case that we've worked on.
Jannette was killed in 1985.
Yet her remains were not identified until 2020.
So this case didn't get the same depth of investigation
As it would have
If it had been identified as a homicide immediately.
It doesn't mean we can't solve this case,
But there's a lot we don't know.
So let's start our suspect board with lionel thomas.
He's a local photographer.
Andersen: He lived five, six blocks away.
Lionel was in love with jannette.
However, their relationship had ended,
And he wasn't happy about it.
Anything at all about lionel ever being abusive to jannette?
No. Nothing.
How about overbearing or jealous?
Jealousy is clear in the letters that he was writing to her.
When I started working the case, joretha, her daughter,
Was looking through some old things in the house.
Found several letters from lionel thomas to jannette.
From the letters, it gives the impression
That he's kind of watching her house.
He knows when she's coming and going.
Would you say it's borderline stalking, these letters?
Yes.
"to jette. A line or two to say
How I really feel about you was hard to find."
I underlined this. "I love you.
I love you now and always."
Siegler: Probably the biggest insight
We have into jannette and lionel's relationship
Are those letters that lionel wrote to her
That joretha happened to find several years later
Hidden in a suitcase.
They range anywhere from showing real love
To being confused about the breakup.
"I still can't believe you just up and left me.
You had little reason, if any, to dissolve our relationship."
To show him that he's jealous, that she might be moving on.
"while I was out front of your house,
A burning feeling ran through me."
To real anger.
"you are an evil woman with a cold heart."
It all sounds very desperate.
There is a letter that says something to the effect
Of "I'm sorry if I offended you by coming by your house."
That's right. Which is kind of weird.
You're thinking that's a cya letter.
Yes.
Siegler: There's even a letter in here
That feels like it was written after jannette went missing.
We can't tell. Is that because he really is innocent,
Or did he write that letter trying to throw off suspicion
For whoever might find that later?
Then we get to the Friday night.
Altogether three times he goes up to the house
Saying, "is your mom home yet?"
He's waiting at the house for her.
He says that he sees a vehicle pull up.
He thinks that she's in it.
- What kind of car? - I think it was a blue car.
Light blue. Yeah.
The vehicle drives away,
And he tries to follow it but loses it.
Well, that also might just be his paranoia
Of her being with other men.
Either that or the car never existed.
He's just trying to throw a suspect out there.
- Right. - Yeah.
Siegler: Okay, so now let's put up "unknown suspect."
In '85, some friends went up to chicago one time.
And we're looking around. Didn't really discover anything.
But they said that there was a blue granada
Circling the block watching them.
They thought that was weird.
Spingola: Shortly after jannette was reported missing,
There were rumors that she was observed in chicago.
And when her friends went to investigate that,
They observed a blue granada
Suspiciously circling around the block.
We don't have much more information about this vehicle,
But it does sound similar to the one
Lionel reports the night that jeanette actually went missing.
Let me ask you this.
When you guys find this garbage bag,
It's in the grave, right, with her?
- Yes. - And it's got the sweater.
Is that her sweater?
- We don't know. - Okay.
Because the sweater wasn't retained
And nobody was shown the sweater to identify it.
So now on this one here,
One caucasian head hair, brown in color.
A portion of this hair shows that it has been burned.
So I-- why is the hair burned?
We don't know if it's got anything to do with her.
But if it's in the grave...
Siegler: I don't know what to think about those other items
That were also found in jannette's shallow grave.
Is all that just random, unrelated trash,
Or is it maybe a clue to jannette's real killer?
Okay, so as we start talking to all these people,
Let's try to address all these ideas or thoughts or concerns
To see if we can clear up or eliminate any of them.
Sounds good.
- Hello, dr. Pinneri. - Hello. How are y'all?
Everybody's excited to see you again.
- Remember everybody? - Yes. Yes.
Siegler: We sent off jannette's fingernails
In the hopes of getting a dna match to our killer.
While we wait for the dna results,
Our forensic pathologist is here to share her insight
And hopefully give us a better understanding
Of jannette's cause of death.
Pinneri: In November of 1985, skeletal remains
Were found both scattered and in a shallow grave.
On the surface, they found a partial skull,
No upper or lower jaw.
And then in the shallow grave, they found ribs, long bones,
A right hand that still had some tissues attached.
For the cause and manner of death,
It's described as a probable gunshot wound,
An entrance wound in the posterior left parietal
And an exit in the right temporal.
That's going to be going in here and coming out right here.
Unfortunately, the skull is not intact.
The black are the areas that are not recovered,
And that would be entirely consistent
With some sort of trauma to that area.
So certainly it's possible that this could be a gunshot wound.
We don't have any kind of bullet or casing
Or anything like that in her car out there
By the grave that they found.
What are the chances that you think
It could have been a strangulation or a smothering?
Could there have been a component of that?
Yes, but that's not going to cause your skull
To be fragmented like that.
I don't think she's there dead in that car either.
- You don't? - Probably shot on site.
Yeah. I mean, there's no blood in the car.
I think they go park out there, they get out of the car,
They're having conversation, and at some point he's--
- Shoots her out there? - Yeah.
He's had enough and he shoots her out there.
And the bullet was just never recovered.
- Yeah. - Right.
Siegler: With jannette's car having moved
From where joretha saw it the night before,
It's safe to assume
That jannette rode in it with her attacker
To that field where her body was found.
The question is, did she get forced at gunpoint
At her front doorstep
And complied to protect her kids inside the house,
Or was she lured away by somebody she knew?
Well, it's about this many names for "go sees" and calls.
The party people, the "night of" people, and all that.
We could split 'em up and divide and conquer.
- Okay. - All right. You ready to go?
Siegler: This case happened back in 1985,
And it wasn't even looked at as a homicide initially.
So if the real killer is a completely unknown suspect,
We're going to need to find a brand-new witness,
Either at the party house or in the time right after that
That gives us some huge new piece of information.
And the person that they were looking at the hardest,
Lionel thomas,
His statement from back then is one paragraph,
So it's not like you have a whole lot to question him about
To try and see if there are any inconsistencies.
Then we're going to need some brand-new information
To compare with what he tells us.
Was she talking to anybody
When you guys were getting ready to pull off?
When you are picturing in your head
Seeing jannette walk to her car, did she talk to any other man?
Okay.
You were one of the children in the house that night, correct?
Does the name lionel thomas ring any bells for you?
In the days where y'all realized jannette was missing,
Did lionel come around wondering where she was?
Was he around pretty regularly before that?
Were they on at that point, or was it kind of an on-and-off?
- Yeah. - Weird how?
- Like, is he-- - he's, uh--
We have not found a lot of people
That have any kind of big, extra information
That we can use to confront lionel with.
That's not great. But on the other hand,
We also have run into nobody who can say
That they saw jannette leave with anybody else
Or anything else that would give us some clue
That there's an unknown suspect involved in all this.
Andersen: So we're going to be meeting with joretha
At the location, the house no longer standing,
So she can lay out the house for us, where the window was,
Where she's stating that she saw her mom from.
Now that we believe that jannette was shot to death
And her assailant was likely waiting for her at home,
We want to reexamine what we know
Of her final minutes firsthand.
So we've asked her daughter joretha,
Who was there, to help us do that.
- Hello, miss joretha. - Good morning, everyone.
You know you got to get the first hug. [laughs]
My heart is racing. If I can put your hand
On top of my heart,
It's beating hard,
Because I have not been in this area
In almost 20 years.
That area right there is the living room. Big picture window.
So it had to have been, I would say, after 3:00.
We here. My mom's car pull up.
Us girls run to the bathroom window.
We see her. She gets out her car.
As she walked away, we could still see her.
Now we can't see her.
Andersen: 'cause of the corner of the house.
Joretha: Because of the corner and all that.
- So now we can hear the keys. - You hear the keys
Going in the lock over here, right? You hear the keys.
I thought he had to catch her right here,
But he could've caught her over there, right?
I think he wants to catch her off guard.
- I do, too. - He, if this is lionel,
Has at some point coming up and making contact with her
But she continues on to the front porch.
Maybe he's trying to talk to her as they're walking up.
That's exactly what she would have done.
How does she go quietly
Without an argument or a loud voice
Or a protest getting in the car?
I guess just more talking to her.
"let's talk it out. Let's go for a drive."
Siegler: You don't think with a gun?
If she's got keys in the door,
Even with a gun in your face,
You might try to make that quick-in to the house.
Or voices will be raised a little bit.
- Did you see his car at all? - Joretha: No.
I just don't think he drove here.
I think he walked down here and then took her car.
- Straight shot. - Yeah, I think he did.
- How far is it? - Five, six blocks up.
Six blocks straight up?
Spingola: So our main suspect, lionel, in theory,
Could have easily walked from his house to jannette's
Because he only lived a few blocks away,
Talked to her, got her into the car,
Drove her to the field, killed her,
And then drove the vehicle back to jannette's house
And simply walked home.
And that would account for why jannette's car had been moved
From the alley where the kids initially saw it
To where it was found the next morning
Parked in front of the house.
Her car was parked here.
Along right here.
And her keys was still in the ignition.
If it's a random person, why are they even bringing the car back?
- They don't care. - Not at all.
So then the drive from here to the location is...
- It's like 18 miles. - Okay. Can we go do that now?
Get an appreciation of that.
With joretha's help today in seeing the house,
I think the way it had to have happen
So quickly, so voluntarily,
There's no way that it's gonna be a random person
Stalking her then abducts her.
It doesn't make any sense.
Because why would they bring her car back?
This is a long drive
To wait and get her to have a chitchat, right?
It looks like the chitchat should have already happened.
Almost makes me feel like it happened before now
When you're driving out here just to dump her.
Okay, we get here and her remains are where?
Down this path and out to an open field.
- We still got a ways to walk? - Little bit.
Siegler: Let's go look.
So it's deer hunters out here that found her two months later.
Andersen: Yeah. Based on the reports,
When they located the body, it's right here.
Spingola: It was just in a shallow grave, right?
Andersen: Yeah.
Siegler: And if the killing is with a gun,
The passenger could be holding the gun
To force her to drive this far deep back here.
And then they get out of the car and then it happened?
Yeah. If you shoot somebody in the head inside of the car,
You're gonna get splatter.
Probably right where she was laying down
Is where at least the gunshots happened close to there.
Siegler: I don't see that woman who was pretty feisty and tough
Just driving out here in the middle of nowhere
Or in the middle of the night to have a chitchat
With a man she's already broken up with,
Several times probably, and she's tired of his [bleep].
We don't know 100% know for sure
That the gunshots are what killed her.
The gunshots could be just to be sure.
- Yeah. - Dr. Pinneri said
That you could still have a strangulation.
So if you were pleading this case, you would plead it
Gunshot wounds, strangulation, unknown manner and means.
You put 'em all three in there.
It makes sense that lionel could have coaxed jannette
Into going for a ride with him in her car.
That would explain that cigarette that's burned up
That joretha found in the ashtray the next day.
But all the way out here?
And sure, lionel could have returned jannette's car
And then walked home,
But we don't have any evidence putting him with a gun.
If lionel killed jannette,
We're not feeling strong enough yet in what we have.
- She's here. - Okay.
Spingola: Two years ago, detective andersen
Actually asked for the public's help
In searching the field where jannette was found.
But the actual reason for that search was to see
If any of the people at the police department
Identified as suspects would show up
And what the reactions would be to that search.
You just want to have a seat in the far chair?
Woman: Sure.
The woman who helped plan the search
Actually saw lionel thomas at the scene and talked to him.
So it's important for us to interview her
To see what she observed.
Were you talking before the searching?
- Or was it like a ruse search? - Oh, yes.
You actually had conversation with one of our suspects.
Yeah. So, we went to the site,
And I remember pulling up and there was a lot of family.
Joretha was there.
And there was some non-family people in the community
That had come to join.
And then there was a guy who was walking really slow.
He was an older guy. He ended up walking with me.
And I said, "have you been here before?"
He said, "yeah. I've been here many times."
He said he was a photographer back then
And that there was weddings back there
And they would do pictures.
All of a sudden, I'm getting alerted.
Like, we knew that one of the suspects
Might actually be there,
That might have actually done something to jannette johnson.
It's all kind of hitting me.
And he turned around and pointed, you know,
Back towards the area that I knew that you had told me
That she had been somewhere back there.
He placed himself there,
And it was almost like he was remembering.
- Remembering? - Yeah, yeah.
One of the things that law enforcement looks it
Any time they find a victim's body
Is is this the comfort zone for the suspect.
So we wanna do in this case is talk to lionel
To see if he's ever been there before.
And if he contradicts that,
That's clearly something we want to confront him about.
Andersen: Thank you so much for coming in.
And right now we got our dna results?
Yes. Sounds like it.
We always try to find evidence
That where remains are found connects back to the suspect.
Familiarity with the area of the remains,
Which gia does beautifully here.
But we can't put in there the "night of."
Maybe dna can help us do that.
We're hoping that at some point,
She reached up and scratched who killed her.
- Mm-hmm. - And if they strangled her,
The likelihood of that goes up. But, dang, her fingernails
Were sitting out there in the woods for two months.
All those years ago.
- Yeah. - [phone beeps]
[line ringing]
Hi, katelin. This is logan andersen,
Kankakee city police department.
We're just calling for a update on the dna analysis.
Okay.
Thank you for trying.
Yeah. They were out in the elements for a couple months.
It's not surprising they're negative on dna.
Thank you, katelin.
Okay. Everybody probably thought
That was going to happen that way, right?
- Yeah. - So, keeping it real,
What we know right now and can prove
Is that on the night jannette was last seen alive,
She leaves the party house,
And our witnesses to those events right there,
Which is the meat of the case,
Are charleen sessions...
...Patricia prude...
...And joretha. That's it.
The last time he came,
And I told him, "no, she hadn't made it home yet.
Nobody made it from the party yet."
And he was like, "okay, I'll come back and check."
No more lionel. Never came back to the house.
And then whatever lionel thomas says,
Please let him talk.
It's not just huge but critically necessary.
Yeah. Absolutely.
I don't want to put any pressure on you,
But we need some help on this case.
- We're fine. Just... - You can't possibly think
That sitting here right now we're fine on this case.
The homicide gods. I can feel it.
They're on our side.
You can pray to your homicide gods a lot,
'cause you need some help this morning
When y'all go knock on lionel's door.
Spingola: This case basically rests
On what lionel's going to tell us.
We don't have enough to indict him right now
Or charge him with a crime, let's face it.
A lot of evidence here points to him,
But it doesn't exactly eliminate other suspects.
Good morning.
I don't think he's ever been gone after hard,
And we're going to try that now
And see what his reaction is.
If lionel killed jannette,
We need him to make a slip-up, an admission,
Hopefully a confession, which is very difficult to get.
The gameplan and the scope of the questions.
"what do you think happened?" "what do you remember?"
And then get into the details of the case.
Do you care if we park a block or so away and listen?
No. That's perfect.
- All right. We'll follow you. - All right.
- Hey, mr. Thomas. - Hey, how you doing?
We can talk out here if you want. That's fine.
You don't think he'll look out and see us sitting here, do you?
Appreciate ya.
So, the reason I wanted to talk to you
Is because, I mean, you were--
You know this is about jannette, right?
Oh, okay. You were kind of central in her life
During the time that she went missing.
So, you guys were dating during that time period?
Off and on?
So, you still had a lot of feelings for her, right?
She apparently didn't just want to move on
Or didn't want to get married or hook up, right?
What can you remember from when she went missing?
Which bar are you talking about? The party house?
What do you think?
He was at the party house with all them.
Anyway, that family would've said they'd seen him there.
Nobody has.
Andersen: What time do you think you went back down to her house?
How many times did you go over to that house looking for her?
Just once? You were at that house not one time that night
But at least three times that night.
People saw you there. Is that true?
Not at all? And you're going over there
To talk to her about what?
Okay. You couldn't have called her?
You did? And?
You mean that she walked over there.
She walked over there. That's good.
And then when you were walking off?
Did you pull up into the front? Did it stop?
Pulled up in the alley. Where were you standing, sir?
Did you try to follow that car that night? No?
Did he just say he walked over?
And she wasn't there?
Did you ever go out and look for her?
At some point, they got to bring up the search
And what he said and all that.
And you took pictures, right?
How many of the weddings ever happens park area?
When you went out for the search,
Was it close to where the search was at?
It was on the other side?
Had you ever been out to that area where we did the search
Prior to us going out there?
They meant after being with gia?
Well, yeah.
The day of the search you had a conversation
With an individual, and during that conversation,
You said that you were very familiar with the area
And that you'd been out there before,
Out in that field behind the bible witness camp.
Well, why would some random person
Who doesn't know anything about the case...
...Tell me that you said that?
Were you angry with her, sir?
You wrote her some letters.
Do you remember writing her those lessons?
- Yeah. - You remember these?
This one's in '82,
Talking about her being with other guys.
He's turning it down.
"you're an evil woman with a cold heart
If you meant half of what you said."
- You remember writing that? - No.
We believe that something happened that night.
Argument. She doesn't wanna see you anymore at all.
You go down there at least three times to check in on her.
Now you don't know if you were there three times.
You said before that you were there once.
I'm not saying it. The family's saying it.
So, the last time you go over there,
What happens then?
Do you finally meet up with her?
You guys have a conversation, maybe go for a drive?
Who else in the world would have taken her out to kill her
And then parked her car back in front of their house?
What you thinking?
He's fuzzy on some details.
But 30 years later, we're going on the words of kids.
- He's not stupid either. - No. He's smart.
But right now sitting here and listening to him
Trying to be a victim, he sounds pretty dang good.
He hasn't made any huge mistakes at all.
You understand why we're looking at you, though.
We are.
Spingola: Lionel's whole story
Has basically got small contradictions in 'em,
But there's no major shifts in his story,
Which is problematic from a prosecution's standpoint.
Andersen: Never got angry. Not one time.
Oh. Never even raised his voice.
When we accused lionel of the homicide itself,
He's just a flatline.
Think about this. We've all been accused
Of doing something we didn't do in life
And you get angry about it at some point.
Killing somebody and staying at that flatline?
Come on, we're not asking if you backed into your neighbor's car.
We're talking to you about killing somebody you love.
Y'all threw everything at him. What do you think?
His story just doesn't add up
With everything that everybody else is saying.
My problem is you have "I went there one time,"
And we got a 10-year-old kid, her daughter,
Saying three times and that's it.
Something happens that night that sets him off.
Whether she doesn't want to go to the concert, something.
He even writes her a letter. That's his goodbye to her.
And you think he writes it after it's done, that letter.
Let's go look at that letter again. Is that okay?
- Yeah, absolutely. - Let's go to that now
- If that's okay. - All right.
We know that whatever happened to jannette happened in minutes.
And in the whole wide world,
The only human being on this planet
That was looking for her that very night
Was lionel thomas.
But when he talked today and he didn't lawyer up
And he didn't get upset,
He represented himself very well.
So what do we do with all that right now? I don't know.
There's one of those letters in particular
That y'all are thinking he wrote
Right close to when she went missing, huh?
Read that one again, logan.
"dear jannette, sorry if I offended you last night
By showing up at your house.
I came by to take you to the concert,
But you weren't at home.
I went by several other places, but no one's seen you.
I guess this is a message to me to get lost.
Once again, sorry for invading your privacy. Lionel."
He wrote that then on Sunday,
'cause if he came back to the concert,
That would have been Saturday, right?
So you're thinking he wrote that Sunday
As a "cover-up" letter.
Almost every single person in the family
Said he never came back the next day.
He never came back to see if she could go to the concert.
He could've gone back over there on Saturday
And the mother answers the door and she's dead.
He didn't say that.
Well, he doesn't have to say that.
I mean, we all know that he's creeping around
'cause he's jealous and he wants to make sure
She's still going to go out with him Saturday night.
That's what works with our timing
Of her being snatched up so quickly and quietly and easily
Right there on the front steps of her house.
All that works and points at lionel.
But why would he go knocking on her door?
If her car's not there, he knows she's not home.
- It makes no sense. - Yeah, I don't know.
- Good morning. - Good morning, guys.
- How y'all feeling? - Good.
Let's see what everybody thinks
About where jannette's case stands and what we have.
As a cold-case investigator and prosecutor,
The most important thing y'all gotta remember
Is it's not what you think.
It's what you can prove in the courtroom.
We've spoken to every living witness we can find,
And we've spoken to our suspect, lionel thomas.
But do we have enough evidence to establish probable cause
To move forward with an arrest?
The whole state of their relationship?
How was it really going between jannette and lionel?
I think it was on-and-off. On that night I think it was off.
Did we find anybody that disagrees with that?
Not even lionel.
What did we find out as far as his jealousy?
He shows up when she's out places.
And on this night, she's at her party with her people
And he's not invited.
What does joretha say he does that night?
He comes by the place three times.
He's so desperate. At 2:00 in the morning,
He's still knocking on the door, wanting to know where she is.
Yeah. He's losing her. It's ending.
And I don't know what happens at night.
If she finally decides
This is the line in the sand and it goes bad.
He's the one that can get her into a car without a struggle.
If it's a random stranger that abducts her,
Why are they bringing her car back home?
Her car was parked here, along right here,
And her keys were still in the ignition.
It's a straight shot from his house to hers down one road,
Five to six blocks, and it would be nothing for him
To walk right back home after he's done bringing the car back.
But he forgot the fact that everybody knows
She always parks in the alley.
And then you have the little odd things that happen
When you do your "mock search" in 2021.
Lionel tells gia marie wright
That he's familiar with that area.
He said he was a photographer
And that there was weddings back there
And they would do pictures.
[sighs]
It's a 38-year-old case,
So we always knew it was going to be a hard one.
Do you believe that you have enough
To try and convince your prosecutor
To move forward with prosecuting this case?
I...
I think as far as probable cause,
I think it falls short of the threshold.
I don't think we can prove it yet.
I agree with you. It is awfully thin.
I mean, there's circumstantial evidence there.
I don't think you're going to get over
The guilt beyond a reasonable doubt right now.
It's really hard in a case like this
Where you don't have enough for probable cause
Or to try and get a da to want to move forward.
We can still keep working it.
There's always that slim chance of somebody calling in
After hearing about us knocking on doors.
You never know. You never know.
One day something could come along
To make this case a whole lot better.
That's what we all hope for.
We're just very frustrated that today we did not get there.
And now we have to break that to her daughter.
- Hey, joretha. - Hello, detective andersen.
You're the whole reason that this thing kicked off.
You made that post on facebook. I didn't like it.
I knew. Well, it wasn't for you to like.
I get it. And I think there's a whole lot more dedicated people
At the kankakee police department today
Than there ever has been.
We made a lot of headway this week.
We were able to talk to lionel,
And some of the things that he said
Just don't coincide with everyone else's story.
Unfortunately, I don't think we've met the threshold
To file charges against him at this time.
- Okay. - But that does not mean
Anything is over.
And circumstantially, a lot points to lionel.
[exhales]
Joretha: We will not be having any arrests at this moment.
I'm--that's okay. No, that's okay.
My mother wouldn't have gave up on us,
So I couldn't give up on her.
But my journey here has stopped.
We will always have memories of my mom.
Her candlelight will never be blown out,
But it will be not a heavy weight.
It won't be a heavy burden.
Wherever we went and all the doors that we knocked on
For your mom's case,
Everybody was so excited that that was happening.
Now they're all going to know that it was all because of you.
♪ hanging on tight by a string ♪
You've lived with this your whole life.
It's time for you to live your life.
- Yes, ma'am. - Quit carrying this burden
And this responsibility and this worry.
Let it go to him.
- My storm is over. - Good.
My grandmother prayed. We pray.
And our last prayers was
If they will bring someone in on this case
And that had fresh eyes and all that.
And they brought detective--
God blessed us with detective andersen.
I can't thank you enough, detective andersen.
You have a friend in me for life, and I thank you.
I love this end. I love this end.
I'm not walking away crying.
Thank you, detective andersen.
It's because of joretha
That we came to kankakee and got all this stirred up again
And got her mom's murder case closer
To being solved than ever.
Joretha: Thank you.