Welcome to Mysteries of the Missing, a podcast and blog about missing person's cases. Keep in mind that I am only reporting the events of what have happened, per my research through various media outlets. I am not placing blame on any people of interest or those who haven’t been investigated. Also, I’m not trained in any way in true crime. Instead, I’m solely a human being that’s trying to do my part to get the message of Jennifer’s story out there so that one day, hopefully, she may be found, and her case may be solved. Join me as I dive into the last day that people saw Jennifer and what happened after she was last seen.
You can find the podcast on Spotify, Apple Podcast, and more. Check out my Linktree here: https://linktr.ee/MysteriesoftheMissing
Today, we’re going to talk about the case of Jennifer Kesse, missing from Orlando, Florida since January 2006. I chose this case because I live in Orlando, and her case has haunted me even before I moved here.
Jennifer Joyce Kesse was born on May 20, 1981, in Tampa, Florida. She had one younger sibling, Logan, whom she was very close to. Jennifer grew up in Tampa, Florida, and she was a brave, bold person who always wanted to learn something new. Those who knew Jennifer noted that she was able to light up a room when she entered it.
After graduating from Vivian Gaither High School in Tampa, Jennifer went on to attend the University of Central Florida. She was a member of the Alpha Delta Pi sorority and she graduated with honors in 2003 with a degree in Finance. Immediately, Jennifer received multiple job offers and she took a job at Central Florida Investments Timeshare Company in Ocoee, Florida. She was promoted twice in one year at this job, which indicates to me that she was a hardworking, committed, and highly intelligent person.
In 2005 (a year before she went missing), Jennifer met someone who was to become her long-distance boyfriend, Rob Allen, at a bar in Orlando. Rob lived in Fort Lauderdale, but they spent every weekend together. They were in love and fell quickly, having only dated for a year, but they wanted to spend all of their time together.
In January 2006, Jennifer purchased a condo at the Mosaic at Millenia condo complex. Since the condos were transferring from apartments, it was filled with construction workers. Jennifer said she felt uneasy because they would often catcall, whistle, and verbally harass her.
The day before her disappearance on January 23, 2006, Jennifer returned from a vacation in Saint Croix in the US Virgin Islands with Rob. Instead of driving all the way back to Orlando, she stayed the night at Rob’s house, then drove straight to work the next day on January 24, 2006 from his house in Fort Lauderdale. She worked all day, then on the way back to her condo, she called her father and brother and made calls to her mother and best friend that evening. Rob was the last person Jennifer spoke to on the phone at around 10:00 p.m.
Rob states that Jennifer and he had an argument, and that Jennifer was “feeling insecure” about their relationship: She thought he didn’t love her. According to Rob, this was the last time he spoke with Jennifer.
As Jennifer was a loyal worker, her family and Rob assumed that she had gone to work the next day. However, Jennifer’s boss called her parents at 11 am to inform them that she never showed up. Now, if your boss is calling your parents, you know it must be bad – it must be an emergency. Usually, if you’re not married, your parents are your “Emergency Contacts.” Heck, my mother-in-law is still my secondary Emergency Contact. This tells me that the boss was extremely concerned. This also tells me that Jennifer was well-liked at her job and that people cared about her there.
What Jennifer’s boss and her parents didn’t know is that Rob said that he had been unsuccessfully trying to reach Jennifer by phone up to two or three hours before 11 AM. According to Rob, the calls always went straight to voicemail. Jennifer’s parents asked her building manager to go to her condo to check on her while they checked hospitals and jails, to no avail. The manager said he didn’t find Jennifer’s car in its parking spot, and everything appeared in place at her condo.
Upon hearing this, Jennifer’s parents and her brother made the drive from Bradenton to Jennifer’s condo in south Orlando, only to find an empty unit without Jennifer in it. Nothing was out of the ordinary according to Jennifer's family – there were signs that she had been getting ready for work that morning, as there were clothes on the bed, hair & makeup items on the bathroom counter, & the shower & the towels were still wet. Jennifer’s purse, iPod, briefcase, keys, cellphone, and her black four-door 2004 Chevy Malibu were missing. Her parents even said there was no blood on the ground and no sign of a forced entry. It was just like Jennifer had woken up, gotten ready for work, walked out of her apartment, and disappeared, along with her car. Where was Jennifer?
The police officer that answered the call and toured inside the apartment insisted that Jennifer must’ve had a fight with her boyfriend, Rob, and would be back. Police kept reiterating that Jennifer went out in the middle of the night, but they soon realized that the cell phone data was misinterpreted, and she was actually at home on the night of January 23.
When the Orlando police wouldn’t do anything, Jennifer’s parents took matters into their own hands. They printed flyers for her family and friends to pass out along her route to work. This caught the local media’s attention and they broadcast a story about Jennifer being missing.
Jennifer officially became a missing person in the Orlando Police Department system as of 1/24/2006 at 9:00 PM. A “BOLO” (Be on the Lookout) was issued for her and her car.
Sergeant Brennan stated that the police drove around the area surrounding Jennifer’s complex, looking for her, after she disappeared. A couple stated that they saw Jennifer’s car leaving the complex the morning of her disappearance, swerving radically as it exited the parking lot. Detective Joel Wright said that it appeared to the couple that someone was trying to fight for control of the car. Unfortunately, the couple wasn’t able to identify which direction the car went once it got onto the service road.
Finally, Orlando investigators Sergeant Roger Brennan and his team of investigators discovered her car two days after her disappearance, on January 26, 2006. It was located a little over one mile away from Jennifer’s apartment, in an area that Jennifer would not usually frequent that is known for stolen cars to turn up in.
After Jennifer’s car appeared, Rob was called to look in the car, including in the trunk because he became a person of interest in the case. Jennifer’s dad believes that the detectives wanted Rob to open the trunk to see his reaction, in case Jennifer was in it…but when the trunk was opened, there was no Jennifer there. The car showed no signs of a struggle. Sargent Brennan shared that Jennifer’s cell phone, charger, sandals, and shoes were all found in her Chevy Malibu, and that it didn’t look like it a robbery or carjacking took place.
Despite using horses and helicopters, police found nothing. The security cameras at the complex where Jennifer's car was dropped off would prove to be helpful, though. On film, police were able to see that around noon, a security camera captured someone driving Jennifer’s car…but it wasn’t Jennifer. He pulled into a spot near a pool area, backed out to straighten the car, sat there for 32 seconds, then got out and walked away without looking back.
That same camera picked up the same person walking away from the car in the direction of Jennifer’s complex. The scene was too fuzzy in order to identify the unknown suspect. In addition, the gate that the person walked in front of blocked a full view of Jennifer’s possible kidnapper. All that can be seen is the person (who appeared to be a man) was wearing white clothes and black shoes. Sargent Brennan stated that the person looked like they had big feet. The Sargent said through working with various angles with that same camera and by having different people walk in front of the fence, he and his team were able to determine the unknown suspect is between 5’3” and 5’5” tall, which has been validated by the FBI, who also worked on the case alongside detectives at the time.
Due to the renovations going on at the time in the complex, police speculate that this person could’ve been a worker, most likely a painter of some type.
NASA enhanced the video and it was still hard to figure out who the person was in it.
Logan, Jennifer’s brother, said that he had a strange feeling from the construction workers when he talked to them, that it felt like they knew something.
Jennifer stated that the workers at the complex would stop and just stare at her when she went to her car. In addition, most of the construction workers left before police could talk to them. Then, investigators discovered that Jennifer’s complex didn’t have a camera, just a security guard, who was supposed to log the name of visitors and their license plates when they drove into the complex. What was wrong with the logs? Well, they didn’t appear complete to the detectives.
Orlando Police never secured Jennifer’s complex or her car when she went missing either so there were not many forensic clues to be found in either of those places. Police assert that the potential suspect that was caught on camera had plenty of time to wipe down the car in the 32 seconds he or she was sitting in the parking lot where they dropped it off. Investigators sent off vacuumed samples from the car to a DNA crime lab, which turned up nothing as well. It was an endless trail of forensic hopelessness.
Ten months after Jennifer went missing, eyewitnesses spotted someone toss a rolled-up piece of carpet into a lake close to Jennifer’s condo. The day Jennifer went missing, the men working in the apartment across from her unit were laying down carpet. Could this carpet thrown in the lake contain Jennifer’s body?
This was 2006.
In 2008, a law was passed called "The Jennifer Kesse and Tiffany Sessions Law." This law stipulates many various requirements of law enforcement in case a person goes missing, such as DNA timeframes and more. (You can find a link on my Wix website.) A link can be found below if you'd like to read this in more depth.)
In 2009, a new detective on the case decided to take a new look at Jennifer’s case. He started by interviewing a housekeeper from Jennifer’s complex, who for some reason had not been interviewed at the time of Jennifer’s appearance. This would prove to be beneficial to Jennifer’s case, because the housekeeper was able to give a lead based on the camera video of the unidentified suspect who drove her car on the day she went missing.
Chino. That was the name that the housekeeper would give the detectives based on the way he walked, his hairstyle, and his clothing. He was from the complex: a former maintenance worker there, who used to live in an apartment in Jennifer’s complex. Chino had even done work in Jennifer’s condo one week before she disappeared.
What else? When Detective Wright put Chino’s name into a police leads tracking system, he found out that a Crime Line anonymous tip had been received in the first week of the investigation. Could he have been involved?
The detective couldn’t figure out if Chino had even talked to police at all, but Wright quickly found Chino in a Florida state jail for a crime he had committed two years after Jennifer’s disappearance: A rape of a teenage girl.
Why hadn’t Chino been investigated further? What made cops skip over him in terms of a possible suspect at the time? Were the Sargent and the detectives on the case at the time made aware of the fact that someone called the Crime Line about Chino? I found no evidence of this in my research.
When Detective Wright interviewed Chino, he found out that Chino had worked in Jennifer’s apartment. Chino said that she had let him in willingly and that their conversation was conflict-free. Detective Wright also interviewed the other maintenance worker who was there with Chino in Jennifer’s apartment the day they were supposedly allowed in by her, as well as the building manager. Chino’s fellow worker informed the detective that everything was normal and there were no problems as he and Chino worked in the apartment that day. Jennifer’s building manager said he wasn’t aware of any problems between Jennifer and any complex workers either.
The fact that Chino is 5'9" may be a clue that he was not involved, as the person in the video appeared to authorities be 5’3” to 5’5”. When prompted to take a lie detector test, Chino took it – and passed. Still, Detective Wright states that he would never rule someone out based solely on a lie detector test. This tells me that the detective may have suspected Chino, regardless of the outcome of the lie detector test.
That brings us to 2010. Detective Wright was moved off the case. Jennifer’s parents said they felt abandoned by the Orlando Police Department. For example, they asked the department to make Jennifer’s case cold, because there’s more resources for cold cases, and they were denied, as the department stated that Jennifer’s case was extremely active. This surprised the Kesse’s, as they believe her case has not realistically been worked on in years.
It took ten years for the state of Florida to declare Jennifer as dead, which happened in 2016. Jennifer’s dad said that hearing his daughter declared deceased was the hardest thing for him.
Can you imagine having to hear someone telling you and anyone who wants to access to information that your daughter is no longer living? The anguish must have been so palpable.
In 2018, the Kesse's then made a bold move: They sued the Orlando PD for the files in Jennifer’s case. Before releasing the files, the new chief, Chief Rolon had his officers complete an investigation for six months. When no new leads came up, the Chief finally released the files into Jennifer’s parent’s care. Also, the Kesses had to pay $18,000 for their daughter’s files AND the lead detective hadn’t worked on a single file since 2010. 12 years. More than 16,000 pages of documents and 67 hours of video and audio were handed over to the Kesse’s, but the local PD would no longer lead the investigation. That left the duties of finding out what happened to their daughter to the people who cared the most: her parents.
The Kesse’s private investigator, Michael Toretta, looked through the files. His goal was to find something that might’ve been missed by any eyes and hands that had been laid on these documents. The investigator says he’s gone through the case file in its entirety at least three times. He also went back to the complex and spoke to people who lived there at the same time as Jennifer did.
A former neighbor of Jennifer’s, Colleen, lived at the complex two years prior to Jennifer’s arrival there. She said it was relatively safe…until the workers started living in empty apartments. When they did, Colleen said the men would be outside drinking and when she would walk by them outside, there would be comments and uncomfortable stares. Colleen complained to the leasing office manager, who said he was “apologetic but there was nothing he could do.”
Nothing the manager could do? Couldn’t he observe the men and see what they were doing, then speak with their supervisors? Couldn’t he ask the security guard to keep a look out? What good is a security guard if they aren’t working to make sure all of the tenants feel safe?
Another woman, Tammy, stated that she believed workers would enter her apartment when she wasn’t home. Her evidence? Her underwear drawer was tossed, her shower was wet, and there were footsteps in her closet that weren’t put there by her. Also, Tammy caught a man looking into her window and pleasuring himself in the corner of her patio. When she opened the door, he fled in a white van. Tammy filed a police report and as of 2020, the Orlando Police did not find the man peeping into Tammy’s windows nor his white van.
The Kesse’s private detective spoke to a woman (who would like to be called “Ashley”) who moved into the apartment a few weeks after Jennifer disappeared. Her perspective of Chino was that he was friendly, talkative, and fun. In fact, he came to her apartment quite a bit. She never asked him if he did anything to Jennifer…until nine months after Jennifer vanished. Chino moved out of the complex in the middle of the night. Guess what? Ashley was the Crime Line caller. Did anyone from the Crime Line or the Orlando PD follow up with her? No.
Were there any indications that there were multiple problems happening to the women at the Mosaic Complex, especially in the 16,000 case files? PI Toretta says no, and the interviews with the building manager, Chino, and his worker friend indicate no issues either.
So why were women coming forward to state that there were problems? Were the workers and the manager from the complex trying to hide something?
Chino was officially questioned by police in 2009. Today, he still insists that he is innocent, and he knows no one who could be involved in Jennifer Kesse’s disappearance.
In 2019, the Orlando Police Department dragged the lake across from Jennifer’s condo…but the carpet that was thrown in there was not found.
Strange…did someone move it?
In 2020, The Orlando Police Department says they worked hard on Jennifer’s case and remain committed to it but that some cases are difficult to solve. They stated that they’ll continue working on Jennifer’s case, though.
As of January 2023, new police evidence photos show that a violent struggle could have taken place on the hood of Jennifer's car. Drew Kesse (Jennifer's dad) states that it looked like fingers were dragged down the hood of the car. Were these Jennifer's fingers as she attempted to fight off her assailant?
The Kesses also discovered some shoe prints that looked like large boot prints on the driver's side carpet in Jennifer's car.
In 2023, the Florida Dept of law enforcement or FLDE (a cold case division) is working on Jennifer’s case, so it might be a good thing.
The Kesses have spent over $700,000 in their search for Jennifer. Drew Kesse doubts that Jennifer is alive, but they’re not willing to let it go.
Whew! That’s a lot, isn’t it? Very heavy stuff. It seems like a puzzle with pieces that don’t go together…the story goes ‘round and ‘round without a solution. There are multiple shady people involved in this case, yet Jennifer's disappearance remains unsolved today, in September 2023.
And...You know I have a take on it, though. Here it is:
One, the Orlando Police Department failed the Kesse family. How? For one, they didn’t secure the apartment after Jennifer disappeared and they failed to get proper DNA evidence from her car and home. In addition, they didn’t actively work on her case, while they told her family they did, and for whatever reason that God only knows, they didn’t follow up on leads, like the Crime Line tip. If the police had simply interviewed neighbors (especially the women who came forward later), they might have been able to work out what happened to Jennifer right away. Police also didn’t interview the construction workers, which was a major downfall on their part. If they suspected it was a construction or maintenance worker based on the video, why didn’t they interview the ones that stuck around?
Secondly, was the security guard reprimanded for not taking down every license plate number and vehicle description of the vehicles that went into the complex and for not observing the workers misbehaving with women? If not, why not? Why didn’t the complex have security cameras? Why did the manager lie and say the condos were safe when so many women came forward to say they weren't? There were no names of people who lived in any of the apartments, either. That is utter nonsense. The security guard and building manager should be held responsible also, in my opinion. As a woman, I would not feel safe at this place at all.
Third, I believe Rob Allen should’ve been asked to take a lie detector test. Having him inspect the car wasn’t enough, in my opinion. The detectives asked Chino to do it – so why not Rob? There was an argument between Jennifer and Rob the night before she disappeared…could Rob have driven up to Jennifer’s place, gotten into another argument with her, and taken her life? This is just speculation on my part, but Rob should’ve been looked into even more so, I believe.
I don’t know who took Jennifer, but I do know that people should be held responsible: The managers of the complex, the security guard, the Orlando Police Department, maybe Rob Allen, and the workers at Jennifer’s complex may all be responsible in some way, whether they were the ones to take Jennifer that day or not.
What the Kesse’s want is closure…and I want it for them. To go day by day without an answer must be utterly heart wrenching, not knowing what your daughter’s last days were like. Someone out there has answers…and it is my hope that if you read this blog, you’ll come forward with them.
If you listened to this podcast about Jennifer and you feel moved, please share it with others so that we can bring Jennifer home, hopefully soon.
This (blog) podcast is not the only way you can hear about this case from me: Check out my Apple Podcast Playlist for another audio version of this case and check me out on Facebook and Instagram. Just search for Mysteries of the Missing or click this link: https://linktr.ee/MysteriesoftheMissing.
Follow Drew and Joyce Kesse's journey to find Jennifer on their Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/FindJenniferKesse/
Follow Drew and Joyce Kesse's journey to find Jennifer on their webpage:
Jennifer Kesse and Tiffany Sessions Missing Person's Act: http://jenniferkesse.com/pdfs/jennifer-kesse%20tiffany-session-missing-persons-act.pdf
Jennifer Kesse Missing Car Video:
You can call Jennifer’s hotline at 941-201-4009 or the crime line at 1-800-423-TIPS (8477) if you have any information.
This has been an episode of Mysteries of the Missing. Tune in next week for a new case. Until next time, stay safe.
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