Murder of Jessica Keen

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Jessica Lyn Keen (September 24, 1975 – March 16, 1991) was a murder victim killed in Foster Chapel Cemetery in West Jefferson, Ohio. Her case was profiled on the television program Unsolved Mysteries and On the Case with Paula Zahn as well as Dead Silent on Investigation Discovery.

Jessica Lyn Keen, a 15-year-old girl from Columbus, Ohio, was an honor student and cheerleader. However, she quit cheerleading and her grades dropped after meeting and falling in love with 18-year-old Shawn Thompson, a boy at her school. Her parents objected to her seeing the young man, but did not know what to do.

On March 4, 1991 they sought help at a free counseling center in Columbus and subsequently checked Jessica into Huckleberry House, a facility for troubled teens which offered temporary residence for two weeks along with individual and family counseling sessions.

After being missing for two days, Keen was found dead in the early morning hours of March 17 at the back of Foster Chapel Cemetery, 20 miles from the teen facility. She had been raped and badly beaten. She was still wearing her ring and watch, but a gold pendant with the word "Taken" that her boyfriend gifted her was nowhere to be found.

Her boyfriend Shawn was the prime suspect, but DNA tests proved he was not responsible. Police theorized that she had escaped her abductors and ran to the cemetery. Evidence in the cemetery shows she tried to hide behind grave stones, a pair of her socks was found, and a knee imprint in the mud behind a grave stone was found near the socks. She was killed near a fence in the cemetery, presumably by her abductors, who had followed her.

Her family has since placed a cross with her name on it where her body was discovered near the fence in the cemetery.

On April 9, 2008, police in Burlington, North Carolina arrested 51 year old Marvin Lee Smith Jr. Based on DNA evidence, Smith was charged with unlawful sexual conduct on Keen, a felony, and was extradited to Ohio to face charges.^[1]

In 2009, Smith pleaded guilty to first degree murder in a Madison County courtroom, confirming he had raped and murdered Keen. Evidence showed Keen had escaped his car and run into Foster Chapel Cemetery, where she collided with a fence post and fell. Smith beat Keen to death with a tombstone, which he then discarded over a nearby fence. In exchange for his admission of guilt, Smith avoided a death penalty trial that was set for March 2009. He pleaded guilty to one charge of aggravated murder, with specifications of rape and kidnapping, and was sentenced to 30 years to life in prison.^[2]

• List of kidnappings
• List of solved missing person cases

• Jessica Keen Memorial