What Happened to Jennifer Kesse? by Robert A. Waters

Once when my daughter was attending college in Orlando, my wife and I drove down for a visit. A wreck on the turnpike caused traffic to be re-directed and we ended up in Crack Alley. As I negotiated our car through knots of prostitutes and pimps and addicts, my wife pulled a pistol from the glove box and held it on her lap. Just in case. We came through okay, but even in broad daylight I was frightened. Did Jennifer Kesse [pictured] go out one night and get caught in a nightmare?

Orlando: strip plazas; porn shops; grimy streets littered with crackheads and whores. Not quite the image Mickey wants you to remember. But there, juxtaposed between the yuppie condos and student apartments and convention centers is a stain that can’t be ignored.

On January 23, 2006, Jennifer Kesse disappeared from these streets without a trace. "Disappeared without a trace." Even the phrase sounds strange. How can someone in a large metropolitan area simply vanish? How can a responsible, confident young business-woman disappear in the land of Mickey Mouse?

It wouldn’t be the first time.

In 1997, another blue-eyed blonde named Carla Larson went missing after picking up a sandwich for lunch at a Publix grocery store near Disney World. Two days later, her body was found in a patch of woods. She’d been abducted, raped, and murdered. John Huggins, convicted of the crime, now sits on death row. If the Supreme Court doesn’t toss out the death penalty or if he doesn’t die of old age, someday he might actually be executed for the savage crime.

The day before she disappeared, Jennifer and her fiancé returned from a cruise. During the week she was gone, her brother and several friends had batched it in her condo. When they left, one of the friends forgot his cell phone. He called Jennifer and asked if she would mail it to him.

Investigators think she was trying to find a mail box when she was snatched. On the news show Dateline, her mother remarked that “[investigators] showed us the scene they found...There was a wet shower, damp towel, underwear on the floor, hair and makeup items on the bathroom sink. On her unmade bed, a selection of work clothes were laid.” Did Jennifer go out after dark to mail the package and cross unknowingly into the abyss of murder?

Jennifer’s fiancé was ruled out. Her friends and family were ruled out. The vacationers who spent the week before in her apartment were ruled out. Workers at her apartment complex were ruled out. It was obvious to investigators that this was a random kidnapping.

It became more obvious when they began viewing videotapes of businesses in the area. Her black Chevy Malibu was found about a mile from her condo. Security cameras caught an individual parking her car and getting out. It wasn’t Jennifer. But the camera was too far away to get a clear picture of the driver.

Another security camera revealed a strange clue. An individual walked by her car within seconds after it had been dropped off. Police were never able to identify the person, but concluded that he or she was about five feet three inches tall. A woman or a short man.

So more than two years later, Jennifer is still gone. The girl with the pretty smile who loved her job just fell off the radar screen. Another shadow in the black hole of the missing.