Jessica Lyn Keen was killed in the Foster Church Cemetery in West Jefferson, Ohio. She was a murder victim. Her story has been featured on the TV shows “Unsolved Mysteries,” “On the Case with Paula Zahn,” and “Dead Silent on Investigation Discovery.”
Jessica Lyn Keen is a star student, an honor student, and a dancer. She is 15 years old and lives in Columbus, Ohio. But when she met and fell in love with Sean Thompson, an 18-year-old boy from her school, she quit cheering and her grades went down. Her folks didn’t like the young man, but they didn’t know what to do about it.
They called Columbus’s toll-free number on March 4, 1991, to ask for help. Huckleberry House is a place for troubled teens to stay for two weeks and get therapy for themselves and their families.
Two days after Keene went missing, his body was found early on March 17 behind Foster Church Cemetery, 20 miles from the youth detention center. She was both beaten and raped. She still wears her ring and watch, but the necklace her boyfriend gave her that says “Take it” is gone.
Her boyfriend is the most likely person to have done it, but DNA research shows that he did not. Police think she ran away from her captors and to the graveyard. At the graveyard, they found a pair of her socks and knee prints in the dirt behind the headstone. This suggests that she tried to hide behind the headstone. She was killed by her captors, who were probably following her, near the graveyard fence.
Since then, her family has put a cross with her name on it next to the fence of the graveyard where her body was found.
Marvin Lee Smith Jr. was caught by cops in Burlington, North Carolina, on April 9, 2008. Based on DNA proof, Smith was charged with committing a felony by having an illegal sexual act with Keane. He was sent to Ohio to face the charges.
Smith pleaded guilty to first-degree murder in Madison County court in 2009. He said that he had raped and killed Keene. There is evidence that Keane got out of his car and ran into Foster Chapel Cemetery, where she hit a fence post and fell. Then, Keane was killed by being hit with a tombstone and having it thrown over a nearby fence. The police say that they found bloody pieces on the tombstone. In exchange for his guilty plea, Smith was not put on trial for the death sentence in March 2009, as was originally planned. He admitted to one count of murder with rape and murder and was sentenced to 30 years to life in jail.
