r/nosleep
I began looking into unsolved murders. These were the last moments of Smiling Jane Doe. by reddit user DHF_Dissociations a.k.a David Feuling's Author Page
At no point during the night was she more than a half-mile from the police station, but the park was thinly lit, and the road snaked through forest in both directions. I took a personal interest in her story after I learned about how badly her body had been mutilated. The details continue to flood in, and I am still working to tease apart the evidence. What is undeniably clear is that a killer still roams free. He is out there somewhere, and he is stalking new victims in the neighborhoods that I call home. For this reason, I can for now only insinuate many of the things that I know. To reveal certain details would be to paint a target on my own back, and so they cannot be shared here. With that said, here are the facts as I understand them about the night that “Smiling Jane Doe” died.
They named her that way because her lips had been peeled away with a blade. It was her bared teeth, glinting like wet porcelain in the dawn’s light, that first drew the attention of the jogger who discovered her body. The park where she died is a famous one, and Smiling Jane Doe was not the first woman to be murdered there. I fear putting too fine a point on the location of this place, so let me just say that this park is located inside my nation’s capital. You have likely heard this park’s name before. Locals will be glad to tell you about how the unlit roads wind deceptively through the wilderness here, and how those same roads become especially treacherous at night. They might also mention how the bridges arc high over the lower roads beneath them. These are the sort of bridges that make push-and-fall murders appear neatly like suicides.
Smiling Jane Doe was from out of town. She was likely in the city that weekend just to take in the sights. No abandoned car was ever found that could be tied to her. If at some point she had been carrying a purse or a wallet with ID inside, then it seems that the killer took that clue to her identity with him. We can’t yet guess how or why she had traveled to the district, or where it was that Jane called home before she died. It’s possible that she was hitchhiking and found herself here entirely by chance. Or instead, Jane may have been visiting this place deliberately. Maybe she traveled here with a happier purpose in mind for herself, and she simply remained outside a little too late after dark.
Here are the events of that night as plainly and as accurately as I can describe them. Smiling Jane Doe tried to flag down a car that was traveling through the park at approximately 10:40pm. The car’s driver was a female in her late thirties, and this crucial witness unfortunately continued down the road without stopping her vehicle. The driver would state later that she barely saw Smiling Jane Doe there in the darkness, and did not notice her until the victim was close enough to narrowly avoid being hit by the car.
In this particular park, and especially at that time of night, no driver can be judged too harshly for refusing to stop for a stranger. After all, carjackings sometimes begin with the false premise of a woman in need of help. Our witness driving past was a mother of three young children. I hold no ill will against her for making that choice. As the car disappeared around a bend in the road, Smiling Jane Doe fled instead into the thickly-wooded forests of the park. She was trying to lose her attacker, and the dribbling trail of blood across the road indicates that her pursuer had already made some progress in causing her harm.
If she had pressed a little farther into the woods, she might have caught the lights of the consulate buildings on the far side of the park. There were security personnel there, and they were surely keeping watch all night. They could have saved her easily, had she just made it far enough to be seen. Unfortunately, at some point Jane Doe doubled back the way she came. I believe she did so in an attempt to lose her pursuer. The night would turn out to be a litany of heartbreaking moments in this way. Jane Doe came so close to salvation more than a dozen times, but split-second decisions are rarely the wisest ones. This is especially true when someone is in mortal terror. Smiling Jane Doe squandered her chances to survive, and each time she did not realize what she had done. Any one of us might have suffered precisely the same streak of bad luck, and especially on a night like that.
