Become an Apple Subscriber or Patron to listen!
This case asks the question, how does a person vanish without a trace on a weekday morning in a large condo complex never to be seen again? This is the question that Drew, Joyce & Logan Kesse have been asking themselves each & every day in the nineteen agonizing years since their daughter & sister disappeared in Orlando, Florida.
24-year-old Jennifer Kesse was born in New Jersey on May 20, 1981 to parents Drew & Joyce Kesse. The family relocated to Tampa, Florida & after Jennifer graduated from Vivian Gaither High School, she moved to Orlando where she attended the University of Central Florida. She went on to graduate in 2003 with a degree in finance.
According to her parents, Jennifer was a beautiful girl whose smile could light up any room & as beautiful as she was on the outside, she was a million times more beautiful on the inside. Her younger brother, Logan was not only her brother, but also her best friend. While they were younger, they had the typical sibling relationship of naturally annoying each other but as they entered their 20s, their relationship grew even closer & their circle of friends merged into one. Jennifer was at as many of Logan’s soccer games as she could attend, rooting for her brother from the stands.
While they were growing up, Drew & Joyce taught their kids the importance of personal safety after the couple were held at gunpoint while living in New Jersey. With Jennifer now 84 miles (135 km) away, she was often in contact with her parents back in Tampa & she routinely checked in with friends & family on a daily basis, sometimes even multiple times a day. Jennifer was always aware of her surroundings & routinely carried pepper spray with her.
Despite Jennifer’s young age, two months before she vanished she was able to purchase her own condo in an up-and-coming area. This came after she secured a job working as a financial analyst for Central Florida Investments Timeshare Company where she was promoted twice within her first year of employment. Her condo was located at the Mosaic at Millenia in an area of the city that was slowly being revitalized. Jennifer loved the fact that there was a brand-new, upscale shopping mall right nearby since she had a love for retail therapy. She chose that particular complex with safety in mind since it was a gated community with a guard.
Because Jennifer’s condo was actively under construction & in the process of converting from apartments to condos, contractors & construction workers were routinely milling about the complex. Some of these workers were even staying in the vacant units. Because there were so many people in & out, Jennifer was made a little uneasy & often talked on the phone with a family member or friend while she made her way from her car to her unit or vice versa.
In January of 2005, Jennifer was out at an Orlando bar with her friends when she met Rob Allen, who was in town from Ft. Lauderdale. Rob was in town for his roommate’s trade show & despite the fact that they lived hours apart, they began dating & despite the distance, they made it work. The two hit it off & spoke on the phone sometimes hours at a time, never wanting to end the call because they enjoyed talking to each other so much. There would be times when they were shocked to realize that four hours had gone by.
Between January 2005 when they met until January 2006 when Jennifer disappeared, they made the three hour drive back & forth to see each other & tried to squeeze getaways into their busy careers & lives.
During the weekend of January 20, 2006, Jennifer & Rob went on a romantic getaway to St Croix, U.S. Virgin Islands. They had the best time & absolutely dreaded the idea of coming back to work & reality. Their trip ended on Sunday, January 22 when they came back to Rob’s place & Jennifer stayed the night. She left first thing the next morning so she could drive straight back to work & on her way, she called to catch up with her mom to let her know all the details of her weekend away. Joyce remembers just how happy her daughter sounded that morning.
While she was at work that day, Jennifer also checked in with her dad & brother since they were a very tight knit family & always in contact with one another. While Jennifer had been gone that weekend, Logan actually stayed at her condo with some friends & one of them accidentally left his cell phone behind so Jennifer mentioned shipping the phone back. He looks back, never imagining that would be the last time he would ever hear his sister’s voice.
Jennifer left work at her usual time of 6 pm & at about 10 pm that night, she checked in with Rob. Jennifer mentioned that she was tired, but that was expected since she’d just come back from their getaway & she had a long drive early that morning, followed by a full day of work, but otherwise, nothing was amiss. While they spoke, Jennifer was in bed & they both said that they missed each other & were looking forward to the next time they would get together. As their conversation wrapped up, Rob said they got into a minor disagreement about the stress of their long-distance relationship & the fact that Jennifer wanted the reassurance that he was in it for the long haul.
The following day, Tuesday, January 24, 2006, it’s assumed that Jennifer left for work at her typical time between 7:30-8 am. However, when she failed to arrive as expected, her co-workers were immediately concerned. Rob also tried to contact her at various times of the day, but each call went straight to voicemail. He remembered calling her after his 9 am meeting & when he still hadn’t heard from her by lunchtime, he was starting to get a little concerned. But, he made the assumption that she was just busy with work & meetings & figured she would just call him back later that day when she was free to talk.
Jennifer normally called Rob on her way to work, but that morning she hadn’t. According to Rob, she routinely got up & out the door before he did so he usually woke up to a sweet text message. When the message didn’t come through as expected, he found it a little strange.
Jennifer missed a morning meeting that Tuesday & since she was such a reliable employee & someone who would call in even if she was running five minutes late, her boss made the decision to contact her parents. They called Drew at 11 am & he was immediately worried. Both he & Joyce tried calling her, but like Rob, the calls went straight to voicemail which was very much out of the ordinary. When they called Logan, he was at the gym & he hadn’t heard from his sister either so they decided to drive from their home in Bradenton to Jennifer’s condo in Orlando.
On their way, they called the building manager at Jennifer’s condo & he let them know that her black Chevy Malibu was not in the lot. They gave two of the managers permission to enter her condo & they told the family that Jennifer’s door had been locked & there was nothing unusual inside. They also contacted local police stations & hospitals, but there was no sign of Jennifer.
Once they arrived at Jennifer’s condo, the building manager let them inside Jennifer’s unit & just as they’d been told, there was nothing concerning inside her condo. They saw her suitcase in the living room from her weekend away, waiting to be unpacked. It was clear that based on the things they saw inside, Jennifer had gotten ready for work that morning. There was a damp towel draped over the bathroom sink, the shower was still wet, clothing was on her bed & her make up was on her bathroom counter.
There was no forced entry into her condo & her iPod, cell phone, car keys & Chevy Malibu were not there which indicated that she’d left that morning to head to work. They couldn’t imagine what happened after she walked out of her condo & locked the front door. They had no way of knowing if she’d gotten into her car by herself or not.
Logan began questioning some of the construction workers onsite & immediately felt unsettled since he got the feeling that they were hiding something.
Rob & his mother drove up from Ft. Lauderdale & he explained that he’d last spoken with Jennifer the night before & mentioned the small argument they’d gotten into. When it was suggested that Jennifer left on her own volition because she was upset about the fight, her parents were firm on the fact that there was no way she would have done that.
Jennifer’s family & friends were distraught by the fact that police seemed unconcerned about her disappearance since they knew that it was absolutely not in her character to leave without telling anyone. She would have never gone off, missing work & ignoring their phone calls so they began handing out flyers with her information. However, by early evening, the police officially declared Jennifer missing after she still hadn’t come home or contacted family.
There was no activity on her ATM card & when they pinged her phone, there was no response.
When cell tower data was analyzed, investigators got the idea that she had been abducted on Monday night despite evidence that she’d gotten ready for work on Tuesday morning. The data indicated that Jennifer was out of her apartment on Monday night in the middle of the night, something that Drew & Joyce insisted was not accurate. Soon, investigators realized that the data had been misinterpreted.
When investigators spoke with her neighbors, they indicated that they saw Jennifer’s 2006 black Malibu swerving out of the complex at about 7:40 am on Tuesday morning, but they weren’t sure what direction the car traveled. Very quickly, Jennifer’s family as well as Rob, were ruled out as suspects.
Since Jennifer’s condo was under construction & not only were workers milling about, but also staying in the empty units in the complex, they became persons of interest in her disappearance. When she talked with her family, Jennifer mentioned that some of the workers would just stop & gawk at her while she came in & out of her condo. Her friends advised her to go to the management if the workers ever verbally harassed her, but it never came to that.
Since many of the construction workers within the complex were undocumented immigrants from Mexico, they fled from the area when they learned that police were starting an investigation. This made it impossible for authorities to question the entirety of the workers. While the family were gathered at Jennifer’s condo on the afternoon of her disappearance, they noticed that workers were installing carpet in the unit across the hall.
Despite the security guard & gate at the front of the complex, there were sadly no security cameras in place at the Mosaic at Millenia.
On Thursday, two days after Jennifer went missing, investigators were contacted by a resident of the Huntington on the Green condo complex one mile away from where she lived, who reported seeing Jennifer’s car. When authorities arrived, they confirmed that the car was indeed Jennifer’s. According to police reports, after the car was examined, there was no sign of a struggle. It was clear that robbery had not been a motive as a DVD player & other valuables remained inside although her purse, cell phone & iPod were nowhere to be found.
There was no forensic evidence found in the car that could help authorities as it’s likely the car had been wiped clean since there were no fingerprints on the steering wheel.
Investigators went door-to-door to speak with residents within the complex to see if someone witnessed her car being abandoned or may have seen Jennifer, but no one had. They also utilized bloodhounds that tracked Jennifer’s scent from her car back to her condo.
Investigators soon learned that Huntington on the Green had security cameras in place that depicted footage related to Jennifer’s case. One camera depicted someone driving Jennifer’s Chevy Malibu into the complex at approximately at 12 pm on the Tuesday she vanished. After the driver parked the car near the pool within the complex, they straightened the car out & remained inside for about thirty seconds before exiting. It may have been during this time that they wiped their prints from the steering wheel.
After a person climbed out of the driver’s seat, they casually walked away in the direction of Jennifer’s complex & never looked back. Unfortunately, the footage was grainy & the person’s face was perfectly obstructed by a gate so the driver of the car could not be identified. Because the camera was programmed to take pictures every three seconds, in each frame, the person’s face was obstructed by the larger posts of the gate.
Drew & Joyce were chilled by the images, sure they were looking at the person responsible for whatever happened to their daughter. A person, no less, who was bold enough to discard their daughter’s car in the middle of the day, in a residential complex where they risked being seen by not only a witness, but surveillance video.
The Orlando police reached out to the FBI for assistance in analyzing the surveillance footage. They were able to determine that the person was between 5’3”-5’5” & was wearing white clothing that would be typical for a painter or construction worker. The gender of the person has never been identified, but based on their size & their gait, investigators believed that it was a man.
It’s theorized that as Jennifer left her condo for work, she was abducted by a worker within the complex somewhere in between the time she locked her front door & when she approached her car.
During the weekend after Jennifer’s car was found, more than 1,400 people came together to search the surrounding area for any sign of her.
Drew & Joyce stayed at Jennifer’s condo for months, wanting to be close to the investigation while Rob slept on her couch for weeks. Jennifer’s disappearance wasn’t the only heartbreak Rob dealt with that year as five months later his father died. He was sick from grief from having lost two of the most important people in his life, other than his mom, in such a short span of time. However, Rob could only imagine, as distraught as he was about Jennifer’s disappearance, what Drew & Joyce must be feeling.
Drew & Joyce came up with the idea of printing Jennifer’s image & description on decks of playing cards that would ultimately be distributed to local jails. This resulted in an inmate at the Seminole County Jail, David Byron Russ, to contact Drew Kesse regarding information about his daughter’s disappearance.
David was in prison after he murdered 55-year-old Madeline Leinen. Because Orlando police refused to speak with David, Drew went to the prison to meet with him, but came back without any helpful information. It’s likely that David had no information about what happened to Jennifer & only reached out in a ploy for attention.
On the two year anniversary of Jennifer’s disappearance in 2008, her family & friends gathered on a street corner in Orlando, holding signs with Jennifer’s photo & information with a $10,000 reward in hopes of keeping her case alive & prompting a potential witness or suspect to come forward.
In 2009, detectives took a fresh look at Jennifer’s case & spoke with a housekeeper that worked within Jennifer’s condo. When she was shown the security video of the suspect walking away from Jennifer’s car, she thought it looked like a man she knew as Chino but she wasn’t sure it was him. This was the first time investigators had heard this name & learned that he previously lived in another building within Jennifer’s complex. He was also a former maintenance working there & had only been working on site one week before she vanished.
When investigators entered the name Chino into a leads tracking system, an anonymous tip popped up that had come through in the first week of Jennifer’s disappearance that suggested Chino may have been involved in her abduction. It’s unclear if he’d ever been interviewed as a suspect at that time.
Investigators soon tracked the man down; he was behind bars for statutory rape of a teenage girl that he committed two years after Jennifer disappeared. When he was interviewed, he indicated that he had done work inside Jennifer’s unit & she had been the person who let him inside. While he was there working, she got ready for work & left. When he was shown images of the person who abandoned her car, he denied being the person pictured. He was also 5’9”, four inches taller than the higher estimated height of the suspect. The man was familiar with the case & investigators indicated that he was very cooperative. He passed a polygraph test, but remained a potential suspect.
A second maintenance worker was interviewed who had been working alongside Chino in Jennifer’s condo. He indicated that he’d spoken with Jennifer about what work needed to be done inside her unit & that was the end of it. When detectives spoke with the building manager of the complex, he was unaware of anyone that may have had an issue with Jennifer.
Once again, the case seemed to stall & the detective who was taking a second look at the case was removed from the case in 2010 & Drew & Joyce felt abandoned. They have since voiced their disappointment & frustration at the lack of assistance from the Orlando police department. For years they’ve requested that Jennifer’s case be declared a cold case in order to have additional resources available, but they continued to be denied. The department insisted that Jennifer’s case was very much active despite the fact that they fully believed that nothing was being done with Jennifer’s case whatsoever.
In 2016, ten years after she vanished without a trace, Jennifer was declared legally dead. Drew acknowledged that making this decision was the hardest thing he’s ever had to do.
In 2018 Drew & Joyce went on to sue the Orlando police department for their daughter’s case records. They were successful & received over 16,000 pages of documents & hours of audio & video recordings. With this, the Orlando PD indicated they would no longer be heading up the investigation. The Kesse family went on to hire a private investigator who combed over the files & immediately felt that police had dropped the ball in many regards.
During the critical first hours of the investigation, they failed to speak with potential witnesses so the PI started by interviewing Jennifer’s neighbors at Mosaic at Millenia. Other female residents voiced their discomfort at living amongst the construction workers who were staying in the empty units of the complex. One resident recalls routinely coming home at night to find a group of men gathered outside, drinking. As she walked past them to get to her home, she felt uncomfortable with the stares & comments they would mutter. When she complained to the leasing office manager, they apologized but indicated there was nothing they could do about it.
Another resident indicated that while she lived within the complex, she started to suspect that maintenance workers were entering her unit without her knowledge or approval when she wasn’t home. She would come back to find signs that someone had been there. Her underwear drawer looked as if someone had rifled through it, the shower was wet, she noticed footprints in her closet. Another time, she caught a peeping tom peering through her patio window, pleasuring himself as he looked in. She believed he was a worker within the complex, but he immediately fled in a white van. She filed a police report but the man or his van have never been located.
When the private investigator for the Kesse family spoke with another woman, she mentioned the name Chino. She claimed that when she would come back home late at night from work he would approach her which made her extremely uneasy.
A woman who moved into the complex a couple of months after Jennifer vanished told the private investigator that she knew Chino to be a very friendly, funny man. She never suspected that he had anything to do with Jennifer’s disappearance until 9 months after Jennifer vanished when Chino suddenly moved out of the complex in the middle of the night. She felt unsettled by this & went on to contact the crime line with a statement but no one ever followed up with her.
As years have gone by, the man by the name of Chino, continues to deny having anything to do with Jennifer’s disappearance.
According to the private investigator who has been working with the Kesse family for years, based on interviews with Jennifer’s neighbors, there were up to ten construction workers living in an empty unit directly across from where Jennifer lived. It’s his belief that on the morning of Tuesday, January 24, 2006, as Jennifer left for work, one or more of the men abducted her while she had her back to that unit as she locked her door. She was likely dragged inside & murdered. He has been unable to locate any of the men in question & there is no evidence that investigators ever tracked these men down as there was no documentation of who was living in that unit at the time Jennifer vanished.
The private investigator also learned that ten months after Jennifer vanished, a person was seen dumping a rolled up piece of carpet into a nearby lake. The men that were staying in the unit across from Jennifer’s just so happened to be installing carpet at the time she vanished. The Orange County Sheriff’s Department were called to the scene & conducted a three-day search. When dive crews searched the lake they found no carpet or evidence that Jennifer had been placed there.
When the Kesse’s private investigator’s team searched the area with their own private cadaver dog, the dog alerted to something.
Joyce & Drew went on to create a GoFundMe page to help continue the investigation into their daughter’s disappearance as their resources were completely drained in the efforts to find their daughter. Thus far, they have raised about $127,000 of their $200,000 goal. They also advocate for other families of missing persons & have worked tirelessly to keep their daughter’s spirit & memory alive. According to the page, they are currently working with a woman within the Florida Department of Law Enforcement who has started the investigation from the beginning & they remain optimistic that their daughter might still be found.
Those that know & love Jennifer are forced to live their lives not knowing what happened to her on the routine morning she left her condo to head to work. They don’t know if she was murdered, if she is dead or alive or if she was abducted for human trafficking. Horrific scenarios of what may have happened to her haunt their daily thoughts as they continue to hold out hope that someone will one day come forward with information leading to Jennifer’s whereabouts.
Jennifer’s family describe living in a state of limbo that has gone on for nearly 2 decades. One of their daughter’s friends discovered she was pregnant right after Jennifer vanished & they’ve watched the baby grow into a teen, a gut wrenching reminder as to how much time has passed with no answers. Joyce indicated that as a parent, there will never be a right time to give up searching for your child. She can only hope & pray that they’ll have answers while they’re still alive. If she’s no longer alive, they hope a bone or another piece of evidence is found so they can know where she is & what happened to her.
Logan was set to move to California one week after his sister disappeared to be with his girlfriend, but he decided to stay in Florida in hopes of finding Jennifer. He began traveling between the two states & eventually got his real estate license. As time went on, his parents encouraged him to travel & enjoy his 20s. He eventually started his career, got married & had kids. Despite the fact that he no longer lives in the area, he will never stop looking for his sister until the day he dies. Logan won’t stop until someone is held accountable, someone that he is positive was a worker in Jennifer’s complex.
At the time of her disappearance, Jennifer had medium length blond hair, green eyes that could sometimes look blue in certain light & she was 5’8” & weighed 135#.
There is a $15,000 reward for anyone with information. If you have any information about Jennifer’s disappearance, please contact the Find Jennifer Kesse Facebook page or the Florida Department of Law Enforcement at 1-888-356-4774.
References:
- CNN Transcripts: What happened to Jennifer Kesse?
- Medium: Missing in Orlando
- Gofundme: Help us find Jennifer Kesse
- CBS News: Parents of Jennifer Kesse take over investigation in hopes of solving missing daughter’s case
- Facebook: Find Jennifer Kesse
- NBC News: Family refuses to give up search for Jennifer Kesse who vanished 14 years ago from Orlando, Florida home
