HUDSON, Ohio — Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost has announced that investigators have linked the brutal attacks of two Summit County women in 1987 to the same suspect, a man who died in 2009 in Arizona.
In a release, Yost identified Thomas Collier Jordan as the man responsible for the rape and homicide of a 30-year-old woman in Hudson Township and the rape of a 17-year-old girl in Cuyahoga Falls.
“The need for answers does not dwindle with the passage of time,” Yost said in the release. “This case is yet another example of BCI working alongside local law enforcement to breathe new life into cases that were once considered unsolvable. My hope is that our results provide victims and their loved ones with the closure that they deserve.”
BACKGROUND ON THE COLD CASES
Hudson Township homicide
Here's how Yost's office detailed the death of Janice Christensen:
On Aug. 10, 1987, Janice Christensen had driven to the Metro Bike Path in Summit County’s Hudson Township to go for a jog. When she didn’t return home, she was reported as missing, eliciting a prompt response from law enforcement.
Police and several family members searched for Christensen. Tragically, her body – partially naked and with five stab wounds – was found the next morning by her husband, Ken.
A pair of shoelaces lying next to Janice Christensen’s body, investigators would later learn, did not belong to her. The victim’s car and car keys were missing. Six days later, the vehicle was found abandoned in Bedford.
Hudson police exhausted their resources in trying to identify a suspect but came up empty. With DNA technology less advanced 37 years ago, a complete DNA profile of the offender could not be developed from the evidence.
The case eventually turned cold.
Cuyahoga Falls sexual assault
As investigators from the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation (BCI) and Hudson police worked to solve the Christensen case, they looked at similar sexual assaults and homicides throughout Northeast Ohio. They felt that another case with a comparable criminal pattern might suggest a serial offender.
According to Yost's office, investigators did find a case "with eerily similar circumstances and sufficient evidence that allowed them to close both cases." Read their summary below.
On June 16, 1987, Michelle Puett-Howard had been sexually assaulted at Top of the World Park in Cuyahoga Falls. The teenager was walking alone on a trail when a man grabbed her, held a knife to her throat, took her to a secluded area off the trail and sexually assaulted her, binding her hands and ankles with a pair of shoelaces and taking her underwear. The suspect also took the victim’s car keys, telling her that he was taking the vehicle.
Puett-Howard, who now lives outside Ohio, immediately reported the rape to police.
DNA evidence was obtained, but again – given the status of DNA testing at the time and the lack of DNA databases – the case grew cold.
HOW THE SUSPECT WAS IDENTIFIED
Yost's office reports that in 2022, the evidence from the Cuyahoga Falls attack was resubmitted to BCI’s laboratory and retested using advanced DNA technology, with the results entered into the FBI’s Combined DNA Index System database, more commonly known as CODIS.
"Although the statute of limitations for prosecution had passed, investigators felt that the testing could lead to a serial offender," the AG's office added.
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.
After investigators were unable to find any living family members to confirm the DNA match, BCI agents traveled to Yuma this past April to exhume Jordan's body and obtain his DNA. Yost's office says the "subsequent DNA testing confirmed the link between Jordan and the crimes against Christensen and Puett-Howard."
BCI agents also found that Jordan had an extensive criminal history throughout Northeast Ohio;
- 1959 - Sentenced to prison in Trumbull County for grand larceny
- 1961 - Sentenced in Cuyahoga County for burglary
- 1972 - Sentenced in Geauga County for malicious entry
- 1976 - Sentenced to prison in Geauga County for rape, stabbing, burglary. He remained in prison until 1985.
"Based on the DNA evidence and the similarities between the Hudson Township and Cuyahoga Falls cases, law enforcement is confident that Jordan was responsible for both crimes. And given his extensive criminal history in Ohio, he is thought to have committed additional sexual assaults during his life," Yost's office stated.
Those "additional sexual assaults" may have happened in multiple states as Jordan was known to have ties to Ohio, Arizona, Nevada, California, Louisiana, and Michigan. BCI investigators are sharing information about the Summit County case to "law enforcement nationwide, in hopes that additional cases might be solved."
The Ohio Attorney General's office released the below video chronicling the efforts to solve the cold cases
