- Publication: Athens Daily News
- Author: Joan Stroer, Staff Writer
- Original Publication Date: Friday, April 23, 1993
When three friends peered into Jennifer Stone’s off-campus house and found her lying dead a year ago today, the discovery set off the most massive law enforcement effort in recent years here.
“There’s been a couple of 3 or 4 weeks with no information, but we still have work,” said Sgt. W.J. Smith, a [age illegible]-year-old detective who leads the investigation with police Sgt. Alan Brown. “We always have something we can follow up on.”
It began with an intense, three-day look at Stone’s tiny rental cottage and surrounding gravel lot, conducted under the gaze of television cameras and crowds of bypassers.
Working with GBI agents, a rotating shift of Athens-Clarke detectives looking for clues inched across the yard to her house, the side door of which was found six inches ajar. Inside, most of her belongings were intact. An advertising class project still lay in a circle on the floor.
During the ensuing 12-month investigation detectives looked at 75 to 100 possible suspects and moved in dozens of directions, often toward Athens’ seamier side.
The first suspect tested by State Crime Lab forensic experts was a 19-year-old youth accused of raping a woman at a Parkview Homes playground last year. The last suspect was 27-year-old Athenian Jesse James Scott, who Wilkes County officials say murdered a man as a teenager and who once lived with a cross-dressing poultry worker. Scott is currently awaiting trial, charged with fatally striking two Athens men in the head last year.
Both suspects were cleared by detectives. In between those two men, a strange mix of people were questioned by the GBI and police department’s criminal investigative division: a University of Georgia employee, two former boyfriends, fellow students, vagrants, a city official’s son, accused murderers, rapists. All were eliminated.
Several psychics also called the department, insisting they had envisioned Stone walking around Loganville; Stone getting into a pickup truck; Stone having a fight with a long-haired man. One wanted to read tea leaves and hold one of her belongings.
“If someone would describe to me something that only investigators would know, I would talk to them longer than I do,” Smith said.
On July 1, the case appeared to break when Drug and Vice Unit Officer Kirk Graham searched the Amethyst Drive duplex of a suspected cocaine user, according to a search warrant. Graham found Stone’s Nikon camera, film still intact, in a blue bag in a bedroom.
Another of her cameras was later found in Oglethorpe County, having arrived there via Parkview Homes. Detectives traced the costly equipment to three local men with criminal convictions. Two admitted getting the cameras between 3 a.m. and 4 a.m. the day of her slaying, and selling them blocks from her house for $20 to $50.
But the trio, promised freedom from charges if they aided the investigation, never put a name to the face of a camera-toting man they remembered as a 5-foot-10-inch black man with a light skin tone.
Criminal charges of theft by receiving and disposing were dropped by the District Attorney’s Office, where officials cited insufficient evidence: “Since the promise to dismiss this charge was not made contingent on any specific result, the apparent effort by the accused to assist the police requires that the instant charge now be dismissed,” stated one dismissal.
Currently, investigators are running DNA tests on a man imprisoned in Gainesville for burglary, and are looking at two former U.Ga. students and an accused Tybee Island rapist.
“This is probably the longest running case that’s still being aggressively pursued,” said Smith, an 18-year police veteran who has personally generated about 40 pounds of files on the case.
“He could work the rest of his career on this,” said police Maj. Danny Pace.
Stone time line
• April 23: 1 a.m. — Stone talks to friend on phone, her last contact with person known to police.
• April 23: 7:15 p.m. — Friends find her partially clad body at her house.
• April 24: State Crime Lab determines she was raped, strangled. Police begin canvassing downtown with photos of slain student.
• April 27: Funeral held at Catholic church in Duluth, preceding a university memorial service where Stone is eulogized by friends.
• May: DNA evidence eliminates two boyfriends, 18-year-old rape suspect, four others.
• July 1: One of her two cameras stolen from murder site found by agent at house of suspected cocaine user.
• July 8: Police reveal three men have been arrested for receiving cameras sometime after slaying.
• July 17: Police say physical evidence from three doesn’t match that left by assailant.
• October: Teen who left town for Louisiana after murder cleared by DNA.
• March 1993: District attorney officially drops charges against men with cameras.
• April: Jesse James Scott, facing charges for two 1992 Athens murders, among new group of suspects cleared.
Jennifer Stone / Memorial Scholarship
• The first Jennifer L. Stone Memorial Scholarship will be announced June 7, being awarded to a senior majoring in advertising at U.Ga.
• A $25,000 ‘seed’ donation, given by the company where her father worked before retiring, was the start of the scholarship fund.
• The University of Georgia Foundation will supplement the fund until the endowment becomes large enough to sustain the annual scholarship.
• The scholarship will be merit-based and go to a ‘student who has demonstrated creative skills in advertising.’
• Tax-deductible contributions may be made to the University of Georgia Foundation. The address is University of Georgia Foundation, Gifts Receiving Office, 824 S. Milledge Ave., Athens, 30606.