Investigators solve 1987 rape and murder of Cuyahoga Falls woman with DNA evidence

Detectives thought there was a link between the rape of a teenage girl and the murder of a young woman within months of each other in 1987.

Both victims were attacked on a walking trail in Summit County, bound by shoelaces and sexually assaulted by a man with a knife.

The detectives were right – and that connection proved to be the key to solving these two cases 36 years later.

Through a process that included DNA testing and an exhumation, investigators determined that Thomas Collier Jordan was responsible for the rape and slaying of Janice Christensen, 31, in August 1987 and the rape of a 17-year-old girl in May of that year.

Jordan died in 2009 in Yuma, Arizona, at the age of 83.

“The need for answers does not dwindle with the passage of time,” Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost said Thursday in a news release.

Christensen’s slaying was the first case featured in Unresolved , a collaboration of the Beacon Journal and the Ohio Mysteries podcast that has explored unsolved homicides and missing person cases in the Akron area over the past four years.

Yost’s Cold Case Unit worked on the Christensen investigation with Cuyahoga Falls and Hudson police.

“Through our teamwork and modern technology, we have resolved these long-standing cases,” said Hudson Police Chief Perry Tabak. “I hope this brings closure to the victims and their families, helping them heal after years of seeking answers.”

The revelation of the person responsible for these attacks so long after they happened came as a shock to Michelle Puett-Howard, the teen who was raped in 1987.

“I’m happy and thrilled and grateful the police did not give up on my case,” Puett-Howard said.

Puett-Howard, who is now 55 and living in Oklahoma, agreed to her name being used.

Yost’s office has provided information about this investigation to law enforcement across the country in case they might be able to tie Jordan to other cold cases.

Christensen is slain while on a morning run

Janice Christensen went for a jog on the morning of Aug. 10, 1987, on a Bike & Hike Trail in Hudson.

Ken Christensen, her husband, reported her missing when she didn’t return to their Cuyahoga Falls home that night and took their dog to the trail to look for her the next morning. Rather than finding his wife alive, he found her body.

“You could see she was bloody,” the husband said in a video shared Thursday by the Attorney General’s Office. “I touched her hand − and she was cold.”

The Summit County coroner ruled that Christensen had been raped and stabbed to death. Police found footprints around her body and a pair of shoelaces that weren’t Christensen’s.

Christensen’s murder was the first in a string of slayings of four young women in Summit County, leading to concern that a serial killer might be on the loose. An arrest was made in one of those cases, but the other two remain unsolved .

Cuyahoga Falls detectives arrested James Zastawnik of Cleveland in May 2020 in the slaying of Barbara Blatnik, 17, of Garfield Heights. She visited friends on the night of Dec. 19, 1987, and called home to say she’d be there shortly.

The next morning, her body was found in a wooded area of O’Neil Road near Blossom Music Center in Cuyahoga Falls. She had been raped and strangled.

Detectives were able to zero-in on Zastawnik using DNA and forensic genealogy. Zastawnik died in August 2021 before he could stand trial.

Christensen's case gets another look

The break in Blatnik’s case prompted Hudson detectives to dust off the Christensen file.

They hoped some of the same techniques might be used to identify a suspect in her case.

The detectives reached out in June 2020 to the state’s Cold Case Unit, which was started with the goal of helping local law enforcement use modern tools to crack cold cases.

More: Now You Know Akron podcast: 'Unresolved' crimes featuring Ohio Attorney General David Yost

The unit helped the Hudson detectives digitize and organize the Christensen file and review their evidence. The unit also tested evidence in the case.

Hudson detective Brian Kozel told Beacon Journal reporters in early 2021 that no one had been ruled out as a suspect, including the man who assaulted 17-year-old Puett-Howard but was never identified.

Puett-Howard was raped at knifepoint on May 25, 1987, on a secluded path in Hampton Hills Park in Cuyahoga Falls. She helped police create a composite of her assailant, and police collected DNA evidence from her.

Detectives were struck by the many similarities in the two cases, including how the attacker bound both victims’ hands with shoelaces and took their car keys.

Kozel said he thought it was more likely that this or another sexual assault case could be linked to Christensen’s murder than to the other women’s slayings in 1987.

“If someone’s committed a sexual assault, he’s done it before or after,” Kozel said.

How the cases were tied together and solved

The Cold Case Unit in the state crime lab did two rounds of DNA testing in the Christensen case but got no results.

Investigators developed a full DNA profile with DNA from Puett-Howard's case and submitted it to the FBI’s Combined DNA Index System database or CODIS. The DNA matched the profile of Jordan.

In April, investigators exhumed Jordan’s body from an Arizona grave to obtain DNA. Testing confirmed a link between Jordan and Christensen's and Puett-Howard's cases, according to the Attorney General’s Office.

Investigators found that Jordan, who was born in Cleveland in 1926, had an extensive criminal record. This included being:

• Sentenced to prison in 1959 in Trumbull County for grand larceny.
• Convicted of burglary in 1961 in Cuyahoga County.
• Convicted of malicious entry in 1972 in Geauga County.
• Convicted of rape, stabbing and burglary in 1976 in Geauga County, which kept him in prison until 1985.

Jordan is known to have ties to several states besides Ohio, including Arizona, Nevada, California, Louisiana and Michigan, investigators said.

Ken Christensen said in the attorney general’s video that he hopes other departments look at this investigation and see if Jordan was involved in other unsolved cases.

“It would be nice to give other people that feeling of, ‘It’s closed. It’s done,’” he said.

Puett-Howard said she thinks there may be other victims, which is why she agreed to talk to investigators and reporters and not shield her identity.

“I am so hopeful there are families with cases not solved who will see it is possible and to not give up hope,” she said.

Stephanie Warsmith can be reached at swarsmith@thebeaconjournal.com , 330-996-3705 and on X (formerly Twitter): @swarsmithabj.

This article originally appeared on Akron Beacon Journal: Investigators solve 1987 rape and murder of Cuyahoga Falls woman with DNA evidence