(WJW) – The Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation, along with the Attorney General’s Office and local law enforcement, announced Thursday that a suspect has been identified in two brutal attacks in 1987 that left one woman dead.
According to a news release, Thomas Collier Jordan, who died in 2009, is linked to both cases.
Hudson Township killing
On Aug. 10, 1987, Janice Christensen went for a jog at a Summit County Metro Parks bike path in Hudson Township.
She never returned home and was reported missing.
The following day, her partially naked body was found with five stab wounds, according to a news release.
A pair of shoelaces were found next to her body. She had also been sexually assaulted, according to investigators.
Christensen’s car and car keys were missing. The car was later found abandoned in Bedford.
Investigators now believe that Jordan was responsible for the killing.
They have also linked him to the rape of a teenager in Cuyahoga Falls that happened two months before Christensen’s murder.
Cuyahoga Falls sex assault
Michelle Puett-Howard, who was 17 at the time, reported a sexual assault at Top of the World Park on June 16, 1987.
The teen was walking alone on a trail when a man armed with a knife grabbed her, bound her hands and ankles with shoelaces and sexually assaulted her, according to a press release.
The suspect took her underwear and the victim’s car and car keys.
DNA evidence was obtained in both cases, according to a press release, but the case grew cold, due to a lack of DNA technology, investigators say.
That DNA evidence was resubmitted to BCI’s laboratory in 2022.
The DNA matched the offender profile of Jordan, who was born in Cleveland in 1926 and died in 2009 in Yuma, Arizona, at the age of 83.
BCI agents traveled to Yuma in April 2024 to exhume Jordan’s body and obtain his DNA.
DNA testing confirmed the link between Jordan and the crimes against Christensen and Puett-Howard.
Thomas Collier Jordan
BCI says Jordan had an extensive criminal history.
He was sentenced to prison in 1959 in Trumbull County for grand larceny; sentenced in 1961 in Cuyahoga County for burglary; sentenced in 1972 in Geauga County for malicious entry; and sentenced in 1976 in Geauga County for rape, stabbing and burglary and was imprisoned until 1985.
Investigators believe Jordan was responsible for both crimes and likely other sex assaults.
Jordan is known to have had ties to Ohio, Arizona, Nevada, California, Louisiana and Michigan. BCI is sharing information about the case to law enforcement nationwide, in hopes that additional cases might be solved.
Source: Fox 8 News Channel
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