16 replies to this topic

[Kelly]

Project Jason Profile:

Name:  Jamie Grissim

Alias:  none
Date of Birth:  11/11/1955
Date Missing:  12/07/1971
Age at time of disappearance:  16
City Missing From:  Vancouver
State Missing From:  WA
Gender:  Female
Race:  White
Height:  5' 4" 
Weight:  125 lbs
Hair Color:  Brown
Hair (other):  Bleached blonde in school picture
Eye Color:  Brown
Complexion:  Tan

Identifying Characteristics: She has pierced ears, and is missing her #15 tooth.   

Clothing:  She was last seen wearing a red and white sideways striped blouse, blue jeans, and white tennis shoes with "peace", "love" and flowers decorations drawn on them.

Jewelry: May have been wearing dangling earrings.

Circumstances of Disappearance: Jamie went to school as usual on December 7, 1971, and left at approximately 1 or 1:30 p.m., as she had only two classes that day. She attended Ft. Vancouver High School in Vancouver, WA. The temperature was very low that day, and it snowed the next day. Jamie never made it home, and has not been heard from since then.

Medical Conditions: She has hearing loss in one ear and a skin condition called "Dermographia."

Investigative Agency: Clark County WA Sheriff's Office
Agency Phone:  (360) 397-2024
Investigative Case #:  72-84856

Family Website: http://helpfindjamiegrissim.org/

Print a Poster: http://www.projectja...amieGrissim.pdf

[Kelly]

AAN Poster Notify Sent to AAN Subscribers  Code 44

Help us find the missing: Become an AAN Member and receive notifications about missing persons via email.

Click here to become a part of the solution: http://www.projectja.../awareness.html

[Kelly]

Project Jason is pleased to announce an addition to the main page of our website. Along with the Featured Missing Adult and Featured Missing Child, we are adding a section called "Always Remembered". Just as with the other featured persons, those in "Always Remembered" will remain on the main page for one month. Jamie Grissim is the May 2009 Always Remembered featured missing person.

The new section was created to renew awareness for the long-term missing, and we encourage our readers to take another look at the case, and place posters where appropriate. It also reflects the Project Jason motto: "All missing persons are loved by someone, and their families deserve to find the answers they seek in regards to the disappearance."

Please see http://www.projectjason.org/ to view the Always Remembered case.


 

[Kelly]

From the Family:

"The Clark County Sheriff's office in Vancouver, WA will be conducting a search either next Saturday or Sunday to see if Jamie can be found, even after 38 years in the location where her belongings were found."

[Kelly]

AAN Poster Notify Sent to AAN Subscribers  Code 68

Help us find the missing: Become an AAN Member and receive notifications about missing persons via email.

Click here to become a part of the solution: http://www.projectja...awareness.shtml

[Kelly]

http://www.aolnews.c...s-pain/19496283

DNA Clue May End 38-Year Mystery, and a Sister's Pain

5/29/2010
By David Lohr

(May 29) -- Starr Lara has been in limbo for more than three decades, waiting for closure in the case of her older sister, Jamie Grissim, who vanished at age 16 and is believed to be a suspected serial killer's first victim.

Now, as the suspect nears his release from prison, Lara is praying that DNA she recently submitted will yield a match to an unidentified female found three years after her sister went missing.

"I hold out hope that it could be her, because of the height, weight and age of the victim," Lara told AOL News. "Most people have forgotten Jamie, [but] I'll never forget.

"She deserves for the world to know what happened to her. She deserves justice."

'I Was Scared to Death'

The mystery of Jamie Grissim's disappearance began some 38 years ago in Vancouver, Wash., on December 7, 1971.

"Jamie was outside, waiting for the school bus to come pick her up," Lara said, recalling the day she last saw her sister alive. "She waiting for a few minutes, then came back inside to get warm. We had a brief conversation, and she told me she was going to walk home from school later that afternoon. ... The walk was four miles, but she felt it would be better than waiting around for a school bus."

When Lara returned home later that day, she expected to see her sister, but Jamie was nowhere to be found. Just 14 at the time, Lara started phoning her sister's friends in an attempt to locate her.

"I was scared to death," said Lara. "She was the only family I knew as I child. We grew up in foster homes together from the time I was three and she was four. Our father had been imprisoned and we were taken away from our mother."

When her sister failed to return home by dark, the police were notified; however, they would not initially accept the report. "Back then, a person had to be missing for a specific period of time," Lara said.

Once it finally accepted the case, the Clark County Sheriff's Office opened an investigation and conducted several searches. Yet each ended in disappointment.

"We worked the case hard but were unable to determine what happened to her," Detective Rick Buckner told AOL News. "We didn't find anything."

A Stab to the Heart

As the investigation into Jamie Grissim's disappearance ground to a halt, detectives moved on to other cases in the area. Among them was the March 29, 1972, discovery of the body of 18-year-old Barbara Ann Derry in a silo in Northern Clark County. Derry, who had last been seen hitchhiking several weeks earlier, had been killed by a single stab wound to the heart.

Investigators interviewed several of Derry's known associates, but were unable to develop a suspect in her murder.

Less than two months after discovering Derry's body, police caught something of a break in Grissim's case when they found several of her belongings scattered along an isolated roadway in Dole Valley. The location was roughly 40 miles from Grissim's home.

The find sparked an extensive search of the area, including the use of cadaver dogs. Once again, detectives came up empty-handed; once again, the case stalled.

A few years later, investigators were still working the Grissim and Derry cases when they were notified of a reported kidnapping and assault in the area. On July 17, 1974, a 15-year-old female hitchhiker was picked up near Ridgefield by a man in a blue van. Pulling a knife on her, the man drove to the Tukes Mountain area, took the girl into a wooded area, and hogtied and beat her before he left, promising to return later.

Once the man drove off, the girl chewed through her bindings and hid in a nearby field. Later found by a Clark County Parks employee, the victim was able to provide police with a detailed description of her abductor. A picture of the suspect slowly began to develop.


'He Had Done This Before'

There was a striking similarity between the kidnapping and the Grissim and Derry cases: In each instance, a girl was either hitchhiking or walking in a remote area. That similarity was also echoed on October 1, 1974, when a 20-year-old female accepted a ride from a man who later attacked her.

The woman was standing on a street corner in Portland when a man in a blue van offered her money to pose for photos. She agreed. He then drove her to a state park, where he threatened her with a knife and bound her hands with tape before driving her another 25 miles, to a sparsely populated area in Clark County.

"During the time that the victim was with the suspect, he related to her that he had done this before, indicating the abduction and assault of females," a police report said.

The man then raped the victim and shot her in the chest with "hand-honed darts" from a pellet pistol, police said. Afterward, he took her down a remote path, choked her unconscious and stabbed her five times in the chest. He covered her body with brush before fleeing the scene.

"The victim however, was not mortally wounded and after approximately two hours was able to make her way to a public road, where she obtained assistance," a police report read.

Police said the victim identified her attacker as Warren Leslie Forrest, a 25-year-old married father of two from Battleground, Wash., who worked for the Clark County Parks and Recreation Department. Investigators determined Forrest also owned a 1973 blue Ford van.

On Feb. 4, 1975, Forrest pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity to rape, robbery and assault in the abduction. As a result, he was acquitted and ordered to complete a four-year commitment at Western State Mental Hospital.

A Pair of Shallow Graves

In the meantime, investigators had made some other startling finds. Less than two weeks after Forrest's assault on the Portland woman, authorities discovered a shallow grave containing the skeletal remains of two women in the Dole Valley area. The location was close to where Grissim's belongings had been found.

The medical examiner identified one of the women as 18-year-old Carol L. Valenzuela, who had been missing since Aug. 2, 1974, while reportedly hitchhiking in the Camas area. Police say they believe she was suffocated.

The second woman has yet to be identified, but is described as white, 17 to 23 years old, with long, dark brown hair.

Then on July 12, 1976, another shallow grave came to light, this time on Tukes Mountain. Inside was the partially clothed body of 19-year-old Krista Kay Blake, who had been hogtied with twine. Further investigation revealed Blake, who had a penchant for hitchhiking, was last seen getting into a blue van driven by a white male on July 11, 1974.

Two witnesses told police they saw Blake talking to Forrest on the day she disappeared. That, combined with other items found inside his van, prompted authorities to arrest him.

In 1978, Forrest -- then nearing the end of his sentence at the mental hospital -- went to trial for the murder of Krista Kay Blake. He was found guilty and sentenced to life in prison.

But since there were no mandatory sentencing laws at the time, Forrest will be eligible for parole on April 15, 2014.


Last Piece of the Puzzle?

Since Forrest's conviction in the Blake case, investigators have tried to find evidence linking him to the other unsolved murders, all of which occurred within a "general 5-to-10 mile area," according to Bucker.

"It is suspected that Jamie was the first victim of Warren Forrest," Buckner said. "It is [also] suspected that he was involved in the other cases but [we] could never prove anything."

Buckner's department is now focused on identifying the Jane Doe found alongside Valenzuela, keying in on the fact that their grave was located near the spot Grissim's belongings were scattered. Could Jane Doe, in fact, be Jamie Grissim?

Though Lara has provided a DNA sample to see if there's a match with Jane Doe, investigators have not yet announced their findings. "They said they are trying to extract the DNA from her hair, which I guess is harder to do," Lara said.

And with every day that passes, Lara's long wait for answers continues.

"Even all these years later, I think of Jamie every single day," Lara said. "She always protected me, and she was more than a big sister, she was like a mother to me. She would have gone to the ends of the earth and stopped at nothing to bring justice if this had happened to me, so I can do no less for her."

[Kelly]

http://www.kgw.com/h...A-96973329.html

Kyron among 591 missing Oregon children

by Kyle Iboshi, KGW Staff
Posted on June 23, 2010 at 6:53 AM Updated yesterday at 3:15 PM

PORTLAND -- The disappearance of seven year-old Kyron Horman is attracting widespread publicity. But, there are many other missing children who don't draw the same headlines.

According to Oregon State Police, there are 591 missing children in the state. Washington reports 1,114 children are reported missing.

Investigators said that, in roughly 95-97% of the cases, the missing children were runaways. Two- to three-percent involved custody issues. But occasionally, there were a few cases like Kyron Horman where a child disappears due to unknown circumstances. The second grader was last seen inside Skyline School on June 4th.

Starr Lara said she understands the pain of not knowing. Her sister Jaime Grissim was last seen headed to Fort Vancouver High School in December of 1971. "You know it is just grief every day. It is very painful. And I think families can accept a lot of things but not knowing, that is really hard," she said.

Community response will always be an important factor, according to police. If neighbors pull together by printing posters and getting the word out, a case will likely receive a lot more attention and potentially more clues.

[Lori Davis]

Families pray for justice, answers as killer faces parole

By KATU Staff Published: Apr 12, 2011 at 10:57 PM PDT
Last Updated: Apr 12, 2011 at 11:18 PM PDT

VANCOUVER, Wash. -- Nearly 40 years ago, Jamie Grissim disappeared without a trace. Detectives suspected she was murdered, but they never found her body.
The evidence points to one man: Warren Forrest.

Investigators believe Forrest killed Grissim and other teenage girls; however, prosecutors could only make one case stick. In the 1970s, Forrest was convicted of murdering 19-year-old Krista Blake in the woods of Tukes Mountain just east of Battle Ground.

Read more: http://www.komonews..../119748474.html

[Lori Davis]

Parole officials interview convicted killer Warren Forrest suspected of several Clark County slayings in 1970s

By Laura McVicker
Columbian Staff Reporter
Wednesday, April 13, 2011

A state sentencing board on Tuesday continued its probe into whether a convicted killer from Vancouver suspected of slaying several women in the 1970s should be paroled.

A panel of two from the Washington Indeterminate Sentence Review Board interviewed Warren L. Forrest at Stafford Creek Corrections Center in Aberdeen.

...

“After talking to (board members), I’m pretty sure he’s not going anywhere,” said Starr Lara, the sister of one of Forrest’s suspected victims. “They told me yesterday that they take very seriously what he’s done.”

Lara testified on Monday in Lacey before the parole board, decrying Forrest’s possible release. Her 16-year-old sister, Jamie Grissim, was believed to be one of Forrest’s first victims, according to 1970s police reports.

Read more: http://www.columbian...-killer-warren/

[Lori Davis]

Vigil planned for 2 long-lost women
Families find unity in sorrow that’s endured for years

By Tom Vogt
Columbian Staff Reporter
Saturday, November 26, 2011

Friends and family members of two missing Vancouver women are planning a vigil on Saturday, Dec. 3, at Fort Vancouver High School.

Jamie Grissim was a 16-year-old Fort Vancouver student who disappeared Dec. 7, 1971 while walking home from school.

Carolyn Killaby vanished on Nov. 11, 1995.

The vigil is scheduled from 4:30 to 6 p.m. in the high school’s parking lot, 5700 E. 18th St.

Read more: http://www.columbian...ong-lost-women/

[Lori Davis]

40 years later mystery of missing girl still unsolved

By Dan Tilkin KATU News and KATU.com
Staff Published: Dec 2, 2011 at 11:48 PM PST

CLARK COUNTY, Wash. – Starr Lara's sister, Jamie Grissim, left Fort Vancouver High School and vanished with hardly a trace 40 years ago.

Starr will mark the tragic milestone Saturday with a candlelight vigil and says she's trying to come to terms with more bad news she recently received in the murder investigation.

Jamie was Starr's big sister. She left their foster mother’s house, went to Fort Vancouver High School and never came home.

Read more: http://www.katu.com/...-134954333.html

[Shannon]

http://www.katu.com/...-169270376.html

Family of longtime missing teen: 'Now I don't know what to do'

By Dan Tilkin, KATU News

Published: Sep 10, 2012 at 11:37 PM PDT
Last Updated: Sep 11, 2012 at 12:03 AM PDT

Family members were hoping her remains could be identified through Jamie's DNA against a set of unidentified human remains they've had since the 1970s. But much to the dismay of Starr Lara, Grissim's sister, the medical examiner realized the skeleton was lost.

But recently, remains were found and now there seems to be more questions than answers.

"I was really hoping it would be her because now I don't know where to search," Lara said.

Grissim and Starr shared a tight bond. They were both in a foster home and made a vow to each other.

"We had this pact where neither one of us would be adopted without the other," Lara said.

Grissim, a Fort Vancouver High School student at the time, was just 16 when she disappeared. She left to go to school one bitterly cold December day of 1971 and never returned. Lara would sit at the window, waiting and praying for her sister's return.

"I would look off into that direction just hoping, but I knew it was bad," she said.

Six months after Grissim disappeared, her Fort Vancouver High School ID card was found along Doell Valley Road in a remote area of Northeast Clark County. Then two years later, a neighbor walking up a logging road discovered the remains of two women. One was Carol Valenzuela. The other has never been identified.

Lara wondered if it was her long-lost, but not forgotten sister.

Clark County detectives have long believed suspected serial killer Warren Forrest was responsible for those two deaths and as many as six others. However, he was convicted for just one murder -- the killing of Krista Blake. At a parole hearing last year, Forrest described how he killed Blake.

"During the struggle, I choked her to death," he said. "I dug a shallow grave and tied the body up and put it in the hole and buried her."

A Clark County Sheriff's Office document says investigators think Grissim is Forrest's initial victim. Forrest's parole board even asked him about other murders. One of those parole board members said, "And I'm frankly very suspicious that you were involved in those, as I think are law enforcement."

Forrest's reply was succinct: "Yes."

"You haven't really been ... you weren't forth coming when you were at Western State, you didn't you know, tell anybody, 'Oh yeah, I did somebody else, too,'" the parole board member told Forrest. "So it's hard for me to know how truthful you are."

Forrest never answered that question, which leaves Lara hoping the DNA from the unidentified body dumped on the logging road to Grissim.

"I thought, 'Why couldn't they check the remains themselves?'" Lara said. "I kept asking about that. That's when Detective Buckner told me, 'Well, they lost the remains.' That hit me really hard."

Records show the mystery remains found were sent to a forensic specialist in Oklahoma in 1978. According to the records of renowned anthropologist Dr. Clyde Snow, he sent the remains back to the Clark County coroner years ago. Clark county authorities looked again and discovered the remains weren't missing -- they were mislabeled.

A letter from the Clark County Medical Examiners Office explained what led to the remains being mislabeled.

"Prior to January 1999, the system of death investigation was a coroner system.  In a coroner system the person responsible for death investigation is an elected official and the only requirement is that they be a registered voter. The coroner during the 1970's was a pathologist, but not a forensic pathologist, and there was not a permanent facility for performing examinations or to maintain records and evidence. The physical location of the office changed on a number of occasions over time.  Examinations were performed at funeral home and in the autopsy facilities at area hospitals. For several years, the coroner's office was located at the Memorial Campus of Southwest Washington Medical Center. The Clark County Coroner Office was even located in a 12 by 57 foot trailer before finally moving into the present facility in April of 1997. The absence of a permanent location, multiple moves, and various other factors, as well as utilizing other agency facilities, did not provide the best of environments for maintaining records or evidence. 

"The result was that there was the appearance the specimen had been lost. In part this related to inadequate record keeping, the specimen being in the possession of other agencies, and having been sent out for expert consultation. The specimen was never really lost. At some point in time in the distant past, it was mislabeled.

"When this latest inquiry concerning the unidentified 1974 case arose, staff of the Clark County Medical Examiner Office reviewed the limited number of unidentified cases that were on file. We focused specifically looking at a case from that time frame. Records from that era that had been maintained by the Clark County Coroner's Office were sparse.

"Records maintained by the Clark County Sheriff's office relating to unidentified cases from this time frame were obtained and then reviewed by the Clark Medical Examiner, Dr. Dennis Wickham along with the remains in evidence at the Clark County Medical Examiner Office.  The results of the review and examination was that the remains had been mislabeled with the case number of another case.  Also, the remains were not that of Jamie Rachael Grissim.  This was confirmed through consultation with a dentist, Ben Sutter, DMD, who volunteers his time to assist this office when dental examinations are required.  In addition, samples of the remains were sent to Bode Labs for DNA and the result of this testing was that there was not a match with family reference sample DNA for Jamie Rachael Grissim.

"The Washington Legislature in 1996 changed the statute to allow counties with a population of greater than 250,000 to change the form of death investigation from an elected coroner to an appointed medical examiner. The appointed medical examiner is required to be a forensic pathologist certified by the American Board of Pathology in forensic pathology. This change took effect in Clark County on January 1, 1999."

Even though a dental comparison ruled out Grissim as a match to the remains found decades ago, Det. Lindsay Schultz, the new investigator on the case, was eagerly awaiting the DNA test results. Then, late last month, the official DNA results came in -- the DNA from Grissim and the DNA from the woman found on the logging road were not the same.

"It was very heart-wrenching because I knew I had to tell Starr because you reasonably would think this could be Jamie ... that everything leads," Schultz said. "It's reasonable to think that's Jamie and then I remember reading it thinking, 'I don't want to make that phone call.'"

The search for Grissim will continue.

"I can accept her being gone, but it's really hard not knowing," Lara said.

Now Schultz will take another crack at investigating Forrest while trying to solve two mysteries -- the identity of the remains found on the logging round and the whereabouts of Grissim.

"Now I don't know what to do," Lara said.

The unidentified remains are one of five sets held in evidence at the Clark County Medical Examiner. Three of them are women and none of them are thought to be Grissim.

[Lori Davis]

http://koin.com/2015...ssim-continues/

 

The 44-year search for Jamie Grissim continues

Jamie Grissim was 16 when she was last seen in December 1971

 

Dan Tilkin

Published: July 23, 2015, 8:00 pm  Updated: July 24, 2015, 12:24 pm

 

PORTLAND, Ore. (KOIN) — Reba Morrison may never have known what happened to her sister Martha if not for a woman she’s never met.

 

Martha Morrison was 17 when she was last seen in September 1974. Jamie Grissim was 16 when she went missing after school on December 7, 1971.

 

Grissim’s purse, ID and other possessions were found along Dole Valley Road, east of Battle Ground, on May 1, 1972. But her body was never found.

 

On October 12, 1974, the skeletons of 2 women were found in the same Dole Valley area of Clark County on a logging road. One was identified right away as Carol Platt Valenzuela. The other body was not able to be identified.

 

Jamie’s story

 

Grissim’s sister, Starr Lara, was determined to find out if those remains were Jamie.

 

“It was a very cold day, and Jamie had gone out to wait for the bus,” Starr Lara said recently. When she didn’t come back from Fort Vancouver High School later that day, Lara said, “I knew that day something really bad had happened.”

 

Her body has never been found. But Lara’s push to find out helped close the circle for the Morrison family.

 

Lara pushed for Clark County detectives to try matching DNA from the body on the logging road in the Dole Valley area — even though a dental comparison said they didn’t match.

 

Between 1974 and 1977 the remains were sent to several experts in an attempt to establish her identity. In 1977, with no ID and all testing options at the time exhausted, the remains were archived and subsequently thought to be lost.

 

The detectives told Lara they didn’t have the remains anymore, that they were lost. “I just felt like he kicked me,” she said. “I just couldn’t believe it.”

 

Four years ago, it was discovered the unidentified remains had been sent in 1977 to Dr. Clyde Snow, a renowned forensic pathologist in Oklahoma. Contacted then by reporter Dan Tilkin, Snow said he sent the remains back to the Clark County coroner in 1978.

 

The Clark County medical examiner looked again and discovered in 2011 they had the remains all along, that they were archived under Valenzuela’s case number.

 

“The specimen was never really lost.  At some point in time in the distant past, it was mislabeled,” the medical examiner’s office wrote. “The absence of a permanent location, multiple moves, and various other factors did not provide the best of environments for maintaining records or evidence.”

 

In 2012, tests — which were not available in the 1970s — were given and samples were submitted.

 

The suspect

 

Clark County detectives have long believed suspected serial killer Warren Forrest is responsible for Jamie Grissim’s death. In all, he’s suspected of killing 8 women in Clark County, but he’s only been convicted of one murder.

 

In 1979 he was convicted of killing Krista Kay Blake, a 19-year-old from Vancouver. Her body was found on Clark County Parks property in a shallow grave, partially disrobed with her hands and feet hogtied.

 

In an audio recording of his parole hearing in February, Forrest recalled details of crimes he’s been convicted of and reiterated he’s a different person than the person he was 40 years ago.

 

 

“I abducted a 19-year-old female stranger under the ruse of giving her a ride…forcing the victim to undress and during a struggle I choked the victim to death.”

 

Forrest had already spent 4 years at the Western State Hospital after being acquitted in 1975 “on grounds of insanity” in the abduction of a 20-yer-old on October 1, 1974 from Washington Park in Portland. He took her to Lacamas Lake in Clark County and brutally assaulted her.

 

Two-and-a-half months earlier, he abducted 15-year-old Norma Countryman.

 

Forrest gave her a ride in his blue van while she was hitchhiking in Ridgefield. He also took her to Tukes Mountain, where he brutally assaulted her.

 

Forrest was never prosecuted in this case because the statute of limitations expired.

 

In 2013 Countryman spoke publicly for the first time, urging the parole board to keep Forrest locked up. According to testimony from the trial reported by The Columbian newspaper, “He tied her head to one tree and her legs to another. Later, she chewed through the twine and struggled out of a loop holding her legs. With hands and ankles still tied, she hopped away.”

 

Jamie Grissim is thought to be Forrest’s first victim.

 

In recent therapy sessions, Warren Forrest has admitted sexually assaulting 8 other women – but he’s never provided names.

 

The DNA results

 

For 3 years, investigators have worked to determine exactly whose remains were found along that logging road next to Carol Valuenzuela.

 

One thing was certain: the remains were not Jamie Grissim.

 

In October 2014, Reba Morrison told KOIN 6 News it would be nice to know if those remains were her sister Martha. To complete the identification, their father’s body had to be exhumed in Arizona.

 

The DNA match fit. The remains found in 1974 were Martha Morrison.

 

“When they announced it was Martha, they knew who she was, that was a really good feeling,” Starr Lara said. “Sad for Jamie, but a really good feeling to know that girl has been identified.”

 

Now, all she can do is wait and hope Warren Forrest will give up his secrets – and ease her pain.

 

“I do forgive him for killing Jamie. I do. But I won’t forgive him for withholding the truth,” she said.

 

“You can’t kill my sister and expect I’m just going to forget about it. And that’s what keeps me going.”