Golden, Colorado- In a hearing that was open to the public only after media outlets got the Colorado Supreme Court to overturn a Judge’s decision to seal it, new facts surrounding the brutal murder of Jessica Ridgeway surfaced at the preliminary hearing of accused murderer Austin Sigg.  Cameras are not permitted in the courtroom.

Among the now confirmed revelations, a neighbor suspected Sigg in the early days following her disappearance and called the FBI directly.   The October 19th tip was allegedly due to Sigg’s very public obsession with death.  It has not been revealed how Sigg and his Mother were approached about providing a DNA sample that has been matched to clothing belonging to Jessica Ridgeway.

Four days after the FBI visited Sigg in the presence of his Mother and took a DNA sample for processing; Austin Sigg sat his Mother Mindy Sigg down, and proceeded to confess to the kidnapping and murder of Jessica Ridgeway in lurid detail.

…” I am a monster.”  -Austin Sigg

Sigg began the confession by telling his Mother he was a monster, and that after kidnapping Jessica and driving around with her for a while he brought her to the family residence while his Mother was at work and his brother was at school.    The teen who hoped to study mortuary science had dismembered Jessica Ridgeway and threw a garbage bag filled with her torso at Pattridge Park while keeping several other portions of the child’s remains under a crawlspace at the residence.   Sources inside the investigation speaking to BOC on the condition of anonymity have confirmed that not all of Jessica Ridgeway has been recovered to date.  A receipt for the garbage bags was located among the debris found at the park.  Sigg told Police he choked Ridgeway to death.  Her cause of death was asphyxiation.

Mindy Sigg called 911 on October 24th to alert Police that her son confessed.  During that call, Austin Sigg admitted to Jessica’s death at his hands, and also the attack on a female jogger at Kentner Lake.

The operator heard Austin in the background and asked to speak to him directly.

“I don’t exactly get why you’re asking me these questions. I murdered Jessica Ridgeway. I have proof that I did it,” Austin Sigg said. “You have to send a squad car down here, and I’ll answer any questions you want to ask me.”

Sigg attempted to use a homemade concoction of chloroform on a towel to overpower the woman over Memorial Day weekend and then attended a family vacation outside of the US a week later. (more…)

S. Christina Stoy “Blink”,  Editor In Chief www.blinkoncrime.com discusses the Sandy Hook Elementary Massacre and this year’s top true crime cases as special guest of Dana Pretzer, host of  THE DANA PRETZER SHOW on scaredmonkeys radio tonight at 9 PM.

Dana’s  featured guests will also include Retired FBI Criminal Analyst Clint van Zandt , Richard Muti and Charles Buckley – former New Jersey Prosecutors and National Authors of “The Charmer” and Editor In Chief “Red” of www.scaredmonkeys.com

Unfortunately, 2012 was a year filled with blinkoncrime’s coverage of  Jerry Sandusky,  Isabel Celis,  Joshua Powell,  Kyron Horman,  Etan Patz, Christine Sheddy,  Megan Sharpton , Jessica Ridgeway , Kelli Bordeaux and many other topics to be discussed.

Click To Listen To Podcast

Jessica Christine Ridgeway , the grape-hued bespectacled 10 year old who lit up the court as a Stadley Lake pee wee cheerleader, left her Westminster home at 8:30am on October 5, 2012.

She was due to meet her walk-buddy Jeremy after speaking to him briefly from her Mom’s cell at 8:25am.  When she did not show by 8:40am, he hitched a ride from his Dad to avoid missing the 8:50am bell.  The drive route would not pass an “enroute” Jessica if she were to take the normal path to school.

Jessica never made it to Witt Elementary School (WES) and the school called her Mother’s cell by 9am to alert her to her absence.

Sarah Ridgeway, Jessica’s Mother,  worked the night shift and never heard the cell phone she left downstairs.  Later in the afternoon Sara retrieved the voice mail from WES,  got in her car and began looking for her daughter.

Ridgeway reports her only child she shared with Jeremiah Bryant missing via 911 when she was unable to locate her.   Jeremiah Bryant, Jessica’s Father, was alerted first by his employer when police were trying to determine his whereabouts, and then directly by investigators.

Despite the 6   hour delay  Westminster Police reacted swiftly.  They had interviewed children that normally walked to school with Jessica by the end of the school day and issued an amber alert by 9:15 PM Friday evening.

Victorious.   This is the word splashed across Jessica’s pink backpack found by a neighbor in nearby Superior in the early hours of Sunday October 7^th.  It was believed to have been placed there between 6:45PM Saturday and midnight Sunday morning.

By Sunday afternoon Jessica’s family had confirmed the backpack ,complete with water bottle bearing her name , was hers.  By Sunday afternoon investigators knew the chances of this ending well were lost when a clear and deliberate placement of a missing ten year old child’s backpack was a definite calling card intended for them.

The complete contents of the bag or any other evidentiary clues it yielded have not been released. (more…)

Evansdale, Iowa-  Lyric Morrissey and Elizabeth Collins have been missing from what their Grandmother Wylma Cook described as “within her view from the home” for over one week.  Myers Lake, approximately a 27 acre body of water surrounded by a Nature bike trail which yielded the tweens bikes and purse, has been cleared after consultation with the Elite FBI CSI dive team.

Courtesy WH8T

On July 12th, the day before the girls disappeared,  Daniel Morrissey was due to enter a guilty plea in a pending Federal drug arrest.  Instead, he requested the matter be scheduled/reset for trial.  In response,  prosecutors swiftly requested the court place Morrissey under appropriate pre-trial supervision for his alleged crimes.

On Thursday, prosecutors with the Black Hawk County Attorney’s Office asked a judge to review Morrissey’s release, pointing out that Iowa Code state people charged with conspiracy to manufacture meth being a second offender — one of the charges Morrissey is facing — shall be under supervision as a condition of their release.

Occurring almost simultaneously to Morrissey’s plea filing which he did not attend personally, a Black Hawk county prisoner broke out of jail, robbed a pharmacy and was on the lam for over 18 hours.

Jeremy Alan Mask, fond of controlled substances which led to his arrests is now in custody and additional charges related to the escape were filed against Mask the following day.  Mask was sentenced to a residential treatment center following a burglary of a Walgreens last April.

Are the incidents connected?  Investigators are not talking.  Except to say they now have video footage of the girls at about the time they were both seen.  No mention as to whether or not the girls were on their bikes.

Investigators may be tight lipped- But they ARE acting.

Yesterday  Black Hawk County detectives revised a no contact order barring Dan Morrissey from being near his wife Misty- although they have appeared together and have been living together for weeks- following a domestic violence assault which landed both Dan and Misty back in prison last August.

As reported exclusively last week on www.blinkoncrime.com, Dan Morrissey for the assault and Misty Cook-Morrissey for extensive probation/parole violations.

The pair are now permitted to be in each other’s company, provided LE agents are as well.

Misty Cook Morrissey’s sister Tammy Brossueau has confirmed that detectives have directly confronted Dan Morrissey with information they developed pointing to him as a suspect and as a result the estranged couple have refused to cooperate further in the investigation to locate their daughter and her cousin Elizabeth.

Black Hawk County Sheriff’s Office Captain Rick Abben officially declared the case an abduction at a 4 PM press conference yesterday afternoon.

Abben also announced a $50,000 reward is being offered leading to the person or persons responsible for the disappearance of the girls.  He confirmed  said evidence has been seized in the investigation and sent to the Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation crime lab in Des Moines.    While he would not comment on the evidence specifically, sources inside the investigation speaking on the condition of anonymity to www.blinkoncrime.com have confirmed that items from the home including a computer and other electronic devices are among the listed property inventory.

Missing since Friday July 13th from right outside the Lederal Safety Shoe shop since about 12:15 PM,  Lyric Morrissey, 11, and her cousin Elizabeth Collins, 8 are the subject of an exhaustive air and foot search for the third day.

Both girls bikes were found 2 miles away from where they were last seen at Meyers Lake next to route 27.  About 20 yards away,  the bag and cell phone of one of the girls was also located.

Misty Morrissey,  mother of Lyric, believes the girls have been abducted.

Investigators are stumped and frustrated they have not found any sign of Lyric and Elizabeth whatsoever and compared the disappearance to” vanishing into thin air”.

Heather Collins,  Elizabeth’s mother, is Misty Morrissey’s sister.   Lyric Morrissey also has a brother,  Dillin.

As with any alleged abduction, family becomes the initial focus of investigators in an effort to rule them out.

Daniel Eugene Morrissey,  Lyric’s father and Elizabeth’s former Uncle by marriage,  has had a very long and varied criminal past.

While it is of course not known if Mr. Morrissey has had any recent contact with his daughter, court records show that he was investigated for a dismissed domestic abuse battery with a weapon /mental illness charge less than one year ago.

He has been in and out of the corrections system since as early as 1997.

Mr. Morrisey has a myspace  set to private entitled urmomsamessedupbitchhh.

At the time of this publication,  calls to Black Hawk PD for comment on this story had not been returned.

No clothing description or bike specs have been released.

map by Klaasend

Orlando, FL- Jennifer Kesse, the newly promoted mortgage process engineering manager for Central Florida Investments, parent company of Westgate Resorts was an upstart.

Recent BOC article coverage can be found here, here and here.

After interviewing with upper management for other advancement roles within the company- her new position was actually created For Her.

Was this a forward and prophetic corporate strategy based on mortgage industry trending data?

Was her promotion a result of Jennifer’s own market analysis and efficiencies recommendations to the suits on the top floor?

Yes and Yes.

At 24 Jennifer Kesse was the youngest new manager among her peers in their respective management roles at CFI.

While she did not have the subordinates they did reporting to her directly, the initiative she was leading and launching was going to save the firm almost $900,000 annually.  The installation and rollout of a new debit system interface allowing timeshare owners to pay fees, mortgages and incidentals by ACH automatically was a corporate priority for Westgate Resorts.

Which is why on the morning of Tuesday January 24, 2006, the day after she returned from a brief trip with her boyfriend Robert Allen when Jenn did not show up to her office in Ocoee there appeared to be immediate concern.

According to Jennifer’s outlook scheduling calendar she did not have an interoffice meeting until the afternoon.

By 11:15 her parents living two hours away in Bradenton were called to see if she had some sort of family emergency.

The exact escalation of events within CFI leading up to the phone call and who made it are being withheld for investigative reasons.

By noon, a trifecta of calamitous and simultaneous events takes place.

Drew, Joyce and Logan Kesse, speeding from Bradenton to Orlando in a respite from paralytic panic reach the property manager of Jenn’s new condo at Mosaic On Millenia and learn her car is not parked in her spot.  She is not inside.

A self-confessed admirer and now CFI lateral management peer, Johnny Campos arrives 4 hours late to the Ocoee office.

The only suspect ever declared to date in Jennifer Kesse’s disappearance is parking her vehicle while captured on 3 separate closed circuit cameras at the Huntingdon Tavern On The Green Condominiums and apartments.  It is less than a few blocks from two large CFI warehouses and within a mile of  several CFI owned properties.

By late afternoon The Kesse’s, Rob Allen and Jennifer’s closest friends were using her condo as a command center to develop immediate and organized searches for her.

Detectives Julius Glenn Gause II and Joel Wright of the Orlando Police Department respond to the scene.

Detective Gause assures the Kesse’s that Jennifer had a fight with her boyfriend Rob Allen, who is now standing in her living room vehemently disagreeing with his investigative assessment.  Who can blame the guy?

Gause’s opinion was reached without ever interviewing a single person who was  not on-scene, and was sure she would be back by tomorrow.

In a mandatory meeting called at the request of Central Florida Investments CEO David Siegel and conducted by Chief Financial Officer Tom Dugan, it was announced that Jennifer Kesse, a respected and valued member of the management team had been reported missing.

Dugan adamantly assured all that the company would encourage  employees to join any organized search efforts to find her.

Jennifer did not return as Gause predicted.

Her car did however, and on January 26^th   her case  was declared a criminal investigation.

The First 48… Months

Upon the classification of Jennifer’s case as a criminal investigation,  J. Glenn Gause told the Kesse’s that his partner  Detective Joel Wright asked what he considered a dumb question during a briefing.

As a result Gause informed- he kicked him off the case and requested new partner Det. Emmett Browning.

While such a move would  obviously be outside of Det. Gause’s authority, it is more likely the pair were reeling from the Internal Affairs investigation that ensued after they knowingly interviewed John Evander Couey after his arrest for the murder of Jessica Lunsford.

Shortly after Couey’s confession to Citrus county detectives was thrown out of court because it violated Couey’s Miranda rights,  Gause and Wright decided to inform their Orlando PD sergeant that they interviewed Couey following his arrest in Citrus County on the chance he might be a suspect in the Regina Armstrong murder because he grew up in Orange County.   They claimed he actually confessed to the Lunsford murder.

The confession was not taped and at no time did either detective inform the Citrus investigators or their OPD supervisor of the visit itself- let alone  Couey’s statements.

That is until they learned his original confession in the Lunsford case was inadmissible.

Interviewing an incarcerated man who is represented by an attorney with charges pending in a potentially related case without permission, notes, or a recording by veteran detectives is outrageous.

John Cuoey was 5’4”, 125 lbs with a flag tattoo.  The suspect composite from direct witnesses in the Armstrong case was a man around 40, 6 ft tall with medium build and a mermaid tattoo on the opposite arm.

They were lucky their actions did not derail the prosecution of both cases.  The second alleged confession was also thrown out and reprimands to both detectives remain private in their respective employee records.  Regina Armstrong’s murder in 1985 remains unsolved.

John Evander Couey died of natural causes on death row awaiting execution for the rape and murder of Jessica Lunsford. (more…)