- Publication: The Red and Black (University of Georgia student newspaper)
- Author: Rachel Votta
- Original Publication Date: Tuesday, April 23, 2002
A few manila folders filled with papers are the only link current University students have to Jennifer Stone.
In 1992, her name was well-known on campus. Jenny was a 22-year-old senior studying advertising in the Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication and was an active member of Kappa Delta sorority. She was also an aspiring photographer.
On April 23, 1992, she was raped and strangled in her one-bedroom Hull Street apartment.
Three friends found Jenny at 7 that night when they went to her apartment after she had missed an important class meeting.
Athens-Clarke County police first said that no sexual assault had occurred, but then changed the claim based on its forensic findings, according to staff reports.
A-C police also said there was no forced entry into her residence and no items were taken.
However, later that year, a camera from Jenny’s residence was found at a house on Jefferson River Road, according to staff reports.
Numerous suspects have been cleared of responsibility for the slaying since it occurred 10 years ago. In the first year following her death, police eliminated almost 100 suspects, according to staff reports. No suspects remain today.
Though the case remains unsolved, her memory hasn’t been forgotten.
Raymond and Jo Stone, Jenny’s parents, said they will spend today at church and with family in their Greenwood, Ind., home, quietly remembering their youngest daughter.
“We often receive phone calls from ex-classmates,” Raymond Stone said.
Jenny’s father described her as an avid traveler who spent a lot of time in Europe.
She spent the summer between her sophomore and junior years at the University in Italy and London, and the following summer at Oxford University.
“She was the kind of a girl that related to people,” Stone said. “That’s true of race, creed and color. She had a personality that just was able to handle that.”
While at the University, Jenny took photography classes, he said.
“She wanted to make her living (as a photographer), but she told me that she had to do something that paid a salary,” he said.
This led to Jenny’s decision to major in advertising instead, though her father said the family was hopeful she would someday return to photography as a career.
In 1993, the University awarded Jenny a posthumous degree in advertising.
The manila folders, kept in the Dean’s Office at the Grady College, are collections of letters and pictures memorializing Jenny.
Her sister, Susan Stone Deal, wrote about Jenny a year after the rape and slaying.
“In (your friends), as in your photography, you saw beyond the ‘black and white’ of the surface to the shadows and lights, hues and textures, richly illuminating individual strengths and characteristics, your loyalty never failing,” she wrote.
Kelli Reinstein, a friend, wrote that when she wants to describe Jenny to someone, she thinks “contagious laughter.”
Most current students were in primary school when the slaying occurred and are unaware that it ever happened, according to an official of Safe Campuses Now, an organization that has tried to raise awareness about the killing.
Nancy Zechella, the organization’s director, said she believed the area where Jenny lived is “vulnerable” to crime because it is located behind a bus station that is frequented by transients.
Jenny’s case remains open and there is still hope that it will be solved, said Hilda Sorrow, Athens-Clarke County police spokeswoman.
Sorrow said advancements in DNA identification could help solve the case, which also is investigated by the Georgia Bureau of Investigation (GBI).
Stone said he hasn’t been in contact with the GBI in the past months.
“I’ve been debating whether I would make a call and decided I won’t do that this year,” he said. “I know that if there is something that is concrete they will be in touch with me.”
“There’s no use going through the cycle of getting your hopes up,” he said.
[Photo caption, page 1] Jennifer Stone, seen here in a self-portrait, was an aspiring photographer and advertising major at the University. (Special)
[Photo caption, page 3] Jennifer Stone was raped and strangled 10 years ago at her residence at 187 Hull St. Her slaying remains unsolved. (Monira Al-Haroun / The Red & Black)