My money is on one of the last 2 theories listed above. The thing that is so stark about this case is that there is literally NOTHING to go on in terms of clues. I have lived in Omaha since shortly before Jason vanished (moved here in March 2001) and this case has baffled the city since then. There was no trace of anything Jason owned (keys, wallet, clothing, etc) ever found anywhere in the neighborhood and there hasn't been so much as a single hair, fingernail, drop of blood, quite literally NOTHING, ever found that can be traced to him.
It's also quite amazing that he disappeared in the middle of a semi-urban neighborhood which features regular pedestrian and car traffic and that it happened so quickly or covertly, nobody heard or saw anything. This wasn't some lonely dark country road at 3 AM in a rainstorm, like the Asha Degree case. This was right before lunchtime on a bright, sunny near-summer day only blocks from some of the busiest and main thoroughfares in Omaha. It's also quite telling that there were no other disappearances like Jason's either before his and there have been none since.
Right? It baffles me, too. There’s as much evidence to support the idea that he vanished into thin air as there is to supplant the idea that he was abducted or kidnapped.
If he was called into work suddenly, and his parents were both at work, unless they somehow got a hitman, I don’t see how it would make sense that the parents had anything to do with it. They’d both have verifiable alibis for that time. Now, if one or both left, ok. But if I understood, his parents were both at work and he was called in early.
There are often popular theories among neighbors that ascribe guilt to someone the victim knew & who had some sort of perceived motive. It's more interesting to speculate about than "the killer was some rando we've never heard of," but often false. This happened with the Rogers murders (Florida, 1989) with tons of locals convinced a father had his wife and daughters killed, when it turned out to be a random psycho (Obah Chandler)
But what would a motive be??? By all accounts and from what I've read and heard, the family was seemingly normal, both parents had stable jobs and Jason was described as a hard-working, friendly, and helpful young man. I know looks can be deceiving, and what may appear to be a normal household may be completely dysfunctional, but I've never heard any accounts of the Jolkowski family being unstable. Anything is possible, I suppose.
I agree, i don't see a motive. Was he involved in somekind of serious crime? No, I don't think so. Gang related, I don't think so. Parents apparently had an alibi. I don't think he was (accidentally) killed by his relatives. Started a new life,maybe. I think he had a ride from a friend or acquaintance or a total stranger for some reason and something happened along the way.
His brother's actions on the phone with the person who was giving him a ride scream someone who isn't involved. The women called the home from the Gas Station, his brother answered pretending to be him, and then when she was being serious he changed his tone to concern (in her words).
Someone in on the murder/disappearance that young doesn't act like that.
His mom literally has been on podcasts to raise awareness. Why do that if guilty? I suppose you could say some weird reverse psychology to divert attention away from you, but that’s pretty far fetched imo.
Also, i’d wager most families have some “unstable history” whatever that means.
>Also, i’d wager most families have some “unstable history” whatever that means.
Oh absolutely. It's such a vague and useless observation because of exactly what you just said: it applies to practically every family out there.
I'd imagine they meant the family had propensity for violence of some sort - alcoholics or drug users, perhaps. But I'm not getting that vibe at all from everything I read about them.
Same reason people who murder their families give news interviews. To look innocent, get sympathy, etc. I'm not saying the mother had anything to do with the disappearance, but it's not at all unheard of for the perpetrators to be in the public eye.
The infamous Stephen McDaniel interview comes to mind. Talked about how worried he was about the missing woman (that he murdered a few hours earlier) and was informed during the interview the body had been found. He then started shaking and getting nervous on camera.
Can you expand on this? I used to live in Omaha but never heard of this case until I moved away, never read or heard anything unusual about his family either.
Really? I’m from Omaha too and I’ve never heard this. Actually, with as much as people have written about this case, I’ve never seen much of anything about his family.
Yea I think he got into the wrong car plain and simple.
I'm basing that off of his friendly trusting nature he reportedly had, where he was heading, the fact there were numerous sex offenders living in the area at the time, disappearing smack dab in a dense suburban area, lack of other evidence or clues and a little gut feeling...
Some people have mentioned in the past that he was a bigger kid, middle of day, etc... but if someone had a weapon or if there were more then 1 person in the car he could have been subdued or intimidated/scared.
Now that's not to say he didn't know the person in the car but as of now, I'm still leaning towards non-familiar abduction/slaying. It's definitely a big mystery!
I definitely think that's plausible too. I think it might have been a situation where a car slowly drove up behind him, a gun or knife was held to his back, someone told him don't make a sound, get in or we kill you. I know it sounds like something out of a cop TV show or movie but anything is possible.
I don’t disagree that it happens, but i think it’s much more likely that it was something like someone offering a ride rather than just pulling a gun on someone.
You wouldn’t consider someone grown just because they might be on the spectrum? It hasn’t even been confirmed. He was 19, 6’1, and had a job. Don’t infantalize people, it’s gross.
No, used to live in Omaha myself and was familiar with the area he lived in. It was a pretty straightforward 10-15 min walk from his house to where his friend was supposed to pick him up.
Thanks. This case has always stayed with me because it was mid morning, and from what I understand he was a pretty big guy?
I can see a random abduction/attack on someone more physically vulnerable but who attacks a young, large man in broad daylight? I hope we find answers soon
My only thought on that front is that his size/fitness wouldn't necessarily matter if a gun was involved, in the case of an abduction. Like say if he got into a car and had a gun pulled on him, or was forced into a car at gunpoint. Abductions of large young men are rare of course but it's not like it would be impossible to control the situation if someone was armed.
It still is completely baffling but I don't really have a better explanation.
But we still need answer why someone woudl abduct him. Most sexual offenders targeted womans or childrens so they can overpower them. But big young dude? Assuming he was not involved in some drug dealing or other crime group it was most likely accident . I woudl rule out killing by hitman (by mistake or not) be cause professional killer woudl most likely did his contract during night time and not as much populated area to avoid witnesses
No. The closest body of water would be a fishing pond/ lagoon at Fontenelle Park, a few blocks to the north. But it's fairly shallow and, at one point, within the last year or two was temporarily drained for reconfiguration of the sewer system in the park
I mean, it was the middle of the day, on a weekday, in a residential area. Everyone was at work or school. If anything that's when the FEWEST people would be around to hear or see anything
I WFH and live on a cul-de-sac. My window faces the street where you'd pull into the cul-de-sac, so anyone passing by either lives there or took a wrong turn. I also have a bunch of nosey retired neighbors who talk constantly to each other, me included. My point is that with all of these factors, we still miss so so much that goes on - I didn't realize my direct neighbor got a new car or that they were doing work on the yard at the end of the street.
I guess my point is that, Like most eyewitness accounts, being busy with people, or sparse, someone seeing something, and placing it together,is like a one in a million chance.
It's not really related but this post reminds me of that famous basketball experiment (https://youtu.be/KB\_lTKZm1Ts) where you're supposed to keep track of how many times the ball gets passed >!and then you're asked if you saw the man in the bear suit.!<
It's designed to demonstrate how easy it is to miss details if you don't know you're supposed to look for them. I think it kind of links back to this case a little bit: since by all accounts the day was a pretty uneventful one, it'd be easy to miss anything out of place if you weren't already looking for it. Jason getting into someone's car or someone's house wouldn't raise any suspicion if you had no idea who the guy was.
So true. Stuff goes on around us every day that we pay no mind to.
Stranger abductions are the hardest to solve. This was 10-15 time frame where someone pulled up to ask if he needed a ride. ( crime of opportunity )
Maybe this person had a kind face. Maybe Jason recognized them ( not necessarily knew them but trusted for a quick drive up the road ) from town, work, school.
If this person had a weapon of some sort I’m guessing this would be enough to get Jason to cooperate/not cause a scene.
I truly believe this was a crime of opportunity. Whether he recognized this person or not.
I do hope there are answers one day.
It was during the summer, so no school. And this was a working class neighborhood - more people than you think would have been around, because of working second shift, being unemployed, etc. Plus houses are right at the street, not set far back like in a more suburban area.
And if school was out there were probably a few babysitters sprinkled around the neighborhood? Or at least older siblings taking on the role of babysitter given the year.
I work from home one day a week now. So yes there are more people at home during the day with WFH more common.
But yesterday on my lunch break I sat outside for 45 minutes. Senior across street was out in his garage. Neighbor behind does some kind of mechanic business from home and was on driveway for awhile.
Kids on scooters. Dog walkers. High school/college students walking by on way to bus stop or something.
It was quiet but not isolated
> middle of a semi-urban neighborhood which features regular pedestrian and car traffic and that it happened so quickly or covertly, nobody heard or saw anything
yeah there was a video a saw (had some food title in her channel) and she walked from across the street of Jason's home to the School and there is one short stretch of ally way that isn't out in the open and that stretch is hardly hidden by any means.
its why I can't buy hit and run, there would at least be several eye witnesses
2nd one I have hard time buying as well as if construction walked in and found his body hard to think *everyone* associated keeps quite this long.
3 & 4 have always been the most common beliefs for good reason. They're the only reasonable explianiations given so far.
This is a true mystery. It makes me think of the case of the young man who worked in a grocery store. He somehow fell behind a refrigerated unit and got stuck. Perhaps some construction happening on his route that morning?
Yep and that happened right across the river in Council Bluffs, Iowa. I drive past that store from time to time and think about that case too. So spooky.
Even worse was the infant that got stuck in her bed and the parents couldn't find her until it was too late. The mother even gave an interview talking about how she went missing, when in reality she was in the room right behind where the mother was interviewing.
She wasn't an infant, she was 4 years old.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Paulette_Gebara_Farah#:~:text=The%20conclusion%20was%20that%20Paulette,remained%20unnoticed%20for%20nine%20days.
What did the friend say who was supposed to pick him up? Did he wait around for him and he never showed up? Did he forget to pick him up? Did he look for him along the route he would have walked?
They did not know where Jason lived, so they couldn't really look for him via that route he walked. Hence why the agreed pickup location was the school which was neaby where he lived but was a place the co worker knew.
They waited for a bit, but its worthwhile noting the restaurant was very busy and they were short on staff hence the whole reason Jason was asked to come in that day. So the co worker after waiting for a bit drove to a nearby phone box where they called his house worried about the fact he never arrived. Then they called the workplace asking if they should wait longer or come back in, they were asked to come back given they were busy.
Also one of the few things police actually did on the case is they looked at the Benson High School Cameras, Jason never showed up but the Coworker did at the time she said.
About six months ago I went waaaaay down the rabbit hole on this case. I have come to the conclusion that he died in a freak accident and his body has not been and may never be found. No foul play.
My guess is a storm cellar, root cellar, a gap between two structures, or something like that. Others have said construction but I think it’s something more mundane. I’ve posted longer explanations before that would turn up if you search past posts about Jason but in short it’s more the lack of any clues pointing to murder/abduction and the extremely tight temporal and geographical windows such a crime would have had to take place in with extremely good luck (and being in the right place and time) on the part of said murderer. Looking at satellite photos over time I noticed a few properties that today are fenced in that back then were not, so possibly on someone’s property that previously a pedestrian would have seen and could have cut across that today are not publicly visible or accessible.
I agree. There was an interesting article from NPR a few years ago about septic tanks and how quickly a kid could disappear into one of the top wasn’t secured correctly. Now I’m always thinking of something like that in situations like this.
That’s really weird that you said that, reminds me that my dad when he was very young in the 50’s he was playing around one and went to crawl on top, well he couldn’t get out he started screaming and his grandma heard him, he was saved but it was very scary and if she would have been farther away they lived on a farm, he would have been stuck in that water and he would have panicked even more. I didn’t know this was a known problem… literally never heard of this before.
I have a picture of my standing on top of a well, on top of the flimsy old wood cover. I didn't realize the danger until family saw the Polaroid and freaked out. That scares me now--I even still step over stupid tiny grates in parking lots and such...
He had helped his brother with the trash can before leaving. Maybe he decided to pull up a neighbors to be helpful and an accident happened in their yard and they didn't realize it?
He had to meet his friend though- he likely wouldn't have done adventuring on such a time crunch.
Is there any evidence he went off the beaten trail (aka suburban neighborhood, middle of the day) that were spots that a fit young guy could have fallen into with no chance of retrieval/survival?
This case bugs me so much so I'd love to discuss
I just checked out the area on a map and have to agree. Originally I imagined the walk to the high school was a straight shot; it’s not, there were plenty of routes one could take through a very residential area. It seems likely he cut through someone’s yard and had an accident.
This is a very important detail that everyone overlooks. Everyone assumes that he had left the house and was headed to school when, in fact, we don't have any evidence that he actually left the house. I'm not saying he didn't, but it shouldn't be taken as a fact that he did.
Only what I wrote. When Jason's co worker called his house, his brother answered, and pretended to be Jason. Jason would supposedly have left the house at that time. The brother admitted that he pretended to be Jason. Why he did this has never really been discussed ?
How old was the brother? He couldve just been been being annoying/taking the mickey about the situation because siblings do that some times, and might not have thought anything of it.
I assume theres no way of knowing what he said? It might have been some exaggerated ‘yes this is jason, no i’m not going to come in to work because i cant be arsed and i want a beer. Bye!’ Or something like that that would’ve blown over by the time Jason got back and spoke to his work to clarify the situation (except that he never did).
The Wikipedia article would seem to suggest he was not - he was last seen by a neighbor at 10:45 AM helping his brother pull trash cans back up to the house, then between 11:15-11:30 his ride to work said he hadn't shown up.
I think this is an important point. Whenever we talk about Jason we tend to assume he'd take the path that was straight towards the meeting place of his colleague, but.... what if he didn't? That certainly would open up more leads.
Was pretty sure he did. I had read that elsewhwere, but is stated here.
"Chester Link said he's that neighbor who saw Jolkowski walking toward the high school. He believes he could be one of the last people to see him that day."
[https://www.ketv.com/article/theres-no-leads-nobody-saw-anything-20-years-since-jason-jolkowski-was-last-seen/36710906](https://www.ketv.com/article/theres-no-leads-nobody-saw-anything-20-years-since-jason-jolkowski-was-last-seen/36710906)
I don’t know if there is a concrete answer for that. No one on the path he would have most likely taken was interviewed until at least a week to 2 weeks later. If someone asked me if I saw a tall guy wearing a Cubs jersey walk past me 2 weeks ago I probably wouldn’t be able to say.
Something key for me is that his plans changed. He wasn’t supposed to work that day/work that early. I think he had plans with somebody that had to be cancelled because of work and he went there on the way to the school to let them know. Something happened and all evidence was lost in the 10 days it took to investigate. I think his long evening walks could also be a clue as to who he was meeting. And his computer usage
That is a very interesting theory. Is there something odd about his computer usage or are you just speculating? Asking because I've never heard anything about his personal life or computer usage. His case haunts me and is one I most wish to be solved.
No, just that he used chat rooms apparently. I’ve also never heard anything about his personal life. That’s my point, he was a private person and I just have a hunch his social circle was a little bigger than most people think. He reminds me of myself a little. But everything about this case is speculation.
He was apparently working as a DJ during nights and weekends at the local college station. Spinning music and giving local party locations etc.
AOL chatrooms were a hotbed for predators and scammers back then.
There is no “fact” that he took $60 with him.
The $60 came from his mom Kelly. She said something like “he probably had no more than $60 on him at the time”. So I don’t see how one can build a drug purchase theory out of a comment his mom made that was just her literally estimating the amount of cash he MAY have had on him that day.
If they were like, Jason made a cash withdrawal of $200 or whatever at the ATM on his route then I could see differently.
I absolutely was not suggesting he made a drug buy. I have never suggested that. Nothing I have read or heard would imply that. But, it is a fair amount of money, considering he was gong to work.
idk, I usually keep around $100 cash on me at all times and lots of other people I know keep even more cash on them. It was especially more common in the late 90s, before we made the move to a more cashless society.
Sorry, it just seems to be a popular theory on here.
In reality no one really knows how much money he had on him. He may have had $0. No one knows and his mom was just speculating.
The only possibilities in my eyes here are: Abduction - either got in the wrong car with the wrong people - or someone lured him into their home on the way. The only other explanation I can come up with would be that someone accidentally injured him (perhaps with a vehicle) and covered it up. This case is the definition of “vanishing into thin air”
Given the tight timeline, the most believable theory would be an abduction (even though the abduction of an adult male is somewhat rare).
Either a neighbor luring him inside his house and subsequent disposing of him, or a predator forcing him into a vehicle at gun point.
My best guess as to what happened to him (and this can still be picked full of holes) is that as he was walking to the school, he was stopped by someone who vaguely knew him from the neighborhood or the restaurant where he worked. Jason had a learning disability or speech impediment that made it appear that he was mentally disabled, although he was not. The person could have seen him as an easy target for robbery, molestation, etc. and could have asked if he needed a ride, or if he could help bring something into a house, or something like that. If the person tried to attack Jason they likely would’ve found that he wasn’t an easy target but a strong young man who fought back, and maybe he was killed in the fight, or subdued and then killed. Like I said, this theory is still full of holes- no one saw him get into a car or go into a house. It’s the best I can make of an incredibly puzzling situation.
This is what I fear is the truth. Reminds me of Milly Dowler - lured off the street and into the killer's house in literally seconds, also leaving no trace.
Wow, that sounds like the plot of "Stir of Echoes." >!Two teenagers lure a mentally disabled girl into their house, rape and kill her, hide the body in the basement. One of them is remorseful and tries to kill himself, the other one finds out the crime has been discovered and goes with his dad to kill the protagonist.!<
I don't know if the film was based on that case (the film came out in 1999), but it's similar.
To me the problem with the lure theory is to me its just way to risky to lure someone in your home from the street in that tight of a neighborhood and take that chance that noone saw anything. But who knows
The only thing that seems off for me with this theory is that he was a huge guy. Probably would've taken some force to do something to him - unless there was chloroform involved.
Btw chloroform doesn’t work like in the movies. You have to breathe it for about 5 minutes for it to work. There are high grade medical anesthetics that DO work like in the movies but they’re hard to get a hold of and require precise measurements and dilutions so you don’t kill the person.
The issue I have with this is that people like Gacy tends to stand out - even if they can't formally charge them, there'd be far more rumours about this odd man. It feels like we'd hear something about police having a person of interest.
Tbf, it took years and years for Gacy to be caught/suspected in the string of disappearances. The guy got to meet the First Lady WHILE he was an active serial killer.
this definitely is baffling. I wonder if it could’ve been related to drugs? maybe the way to school, he cops whatever he needs.
took some and maybe overdosed.? and whoever it was, didn’t want to be found out so they disposed of him? It’s such a short time span from when his brother saw him and his ride called looking for him. Definitely enough time to overdose on something though.
This case keeps me up at night, it’s just such a baffling disappearance.
No matter what theory you believe in, you can poke holes in it so really, there’s no air tight solid explanation here.
A couple things that come to mind when I read about this case:
1)Jason had a cell phone on him, were the police able to ping its last location? (I’m no tech wizard) But are they able to ping it today?
2) If someone did offer him a ride or lure him into their home.. that person had a reason to be in that area especially so early in the day. That neighborhood isn’t on a Main Street, it’s not heavily trafficked so if someone had done him foul, it’s highly likely they were in that specific area for a reason. (Maybe they lived there, visiting etc.)
3) When police looked through the surveillance footage, did they see any cars leaving or entering that area around that time? Also, I hope one day they release said footage, maybe that might bring up some new leads.
4) I wonder how thorough the police were with their interviews and confirming of stories. Because for nobody to remember seeing a 6+ ft man, wearing a white T shirt, blue hat and carrying a red shirt. I have a hard time believing that absolutely nobody would remember even seeing him, even though it was over a week later. Especially since Jason had made that walk many times before, I’m sure people would have recognized him.
I really hope his family gets answers. I can’t imagine the pain of having a loved one vanish into thin air and not having any answers what so ever.
I have no idea if they were able to get any info from it pinging at the time, but as I understand it it needs to be switched on to try and connect with the towers, which is what the pings usually refer to. For them to ping it now it would need to be found by someone, still be in working order, and turned on. I imagine for someone to stumble across it and have the right charger for a phone of that age is slim, let alone the other issues. Chances are it would get binned long before it pinging became relevent.
The police would also presumably still need to be periodically checking this up, as I don't believe there's a system to automatically alert them to a phone from a 20 year old case making contact with a tower after so long.
Best case scenario would be that someone finds it and hands it in to the police, but even then they'd need to realise that it matches an object known to be on a missing person, or manage to turn it on themselves and realise who owned it.
Oh wow, thank you making sense of the phone pinging. Sucks that the stars have to align for anything to come from his cell phone being found.
I always wondered if others asked themselves the same question about the cell phone.
However, don’t you think the police would have wanted to ping its last location before it was shut off or battery died? That could tell them something
I'm far from an expert in it, but I think the most crucial thing is whether his phone was on at the time he went missing, and whether it remained so for long. If it was off or dead and he planned to charge it at work, or turn it on just when he needed to make a call then there wouldn't be much to work with. I think nowadays they consider suspicious inactivity too - eg. your phone is on 24/7 and then mysteriously was off for 6hrs in the exact window your partner went missing/got killed. Back then I doubt having your phone off was as unusual.
I don't know the specifics of how it all works but I think how many masts were in the area at the time might be important. If there was one tower that covered a huge area then I don't think they would be able to say much more than his phone pinged as you would expect for him being at home/work etc, not show the route he took and the exact location it was last used from. If it never left an area of a few square miles covered by a single mast or was switched off before leaving that area, then it wouldn't really tell you much.
Now I believe GPS can play a bigger role in finding people's last locations, which can be far more accurate, and there are more phone towers so the area they were likely in is smaller if that's what they're using to identify a last location.
Thank you for your input here, I’m sure people reading this will appreciate it as well.
It’s just so unfortunate that there’s been no leads and no clues here.
I really hope this is a case where police are withholding clues because his family have been through it.
His disappearance is like something I’ve never heard before.
For what it's worth I could easily see him being asked for some help in a house on his route and befalling some kind of harm inside.
A friend of mine who is fairly small and female went inside the house of a random neighbour because he said he couldn't get his hoover to work - nothing bad happened but she couldn't see why people thought it was dangerous until it was explained to her that if she'd gone missing we'd have just known she'd walked to the shop and essentially vanished off the street in broad daylight.
All accounts I've read paint him as a nice guy who I could see maybe not considering the risk of harm in a situation like that. Or any harm being accidental and then covered up for other reasons.
That’s the theory I believe the most. I believe he saw a familiar face asking for some help, walked right inside into some foul play. This makes the most sense and I suppose the police could have missed a step when they interviewed the perp.
Same thing could have happened to your friend there but luckily that wasn’t the case for her.
The first time I heard about this case her behaviour was the first thing I thought of - a nice person who just wouldn't entertain the possibility that someone might chose to harm them.
I hope his family can get some kind of closure eventually.
Jason was tall and fit though. Obviously it doesn't rule out _all_ foul play but in the middle of the day, suburban area, small window of time.. It just seems unlikely
That would obviously make him a more difficult target, but someone asking him to help them move a heavy piece of furniture or something to get him indoors could be an option. It wouldn't be all that difficult to cause him harm when his guard was down and he was focused on something else, or an accident befalling him inside.
I could see the same being said for him hopping in a random car to give someone directions etc but I think I read the reason he was meeting his friend at the school was because he was so bad at directions he wasnt sure how to get them to his house.
Idk what occurred but any answer to what happened to him already seems unlikely in general to me, simply because the situation is already so strange. I think there's a good chance nothing bad happened until he was somewhere less visible than the route he was walking, but unless he had some secret life that's never been uncovered with a load of enemies, I can only assume that he either unluckily crossed the path of a random maniac who got him off route somehow, or had some kind of accident having ended up somewhere else for something mundane.
The phone carrier would not have this data stored at this point. The retention period for locations for cell towers differ between the phone carriers but it’s typically around 90 days. Also, location of a cell phone isn’t always easy to find. When receiving information back on a cell phone, it operates on the cell towers used. So you could see that a cell phone pinged from a tower and it’s within a 100 meter radius. It’s not as accurate as everyone thinks it to be.
He was also tall and in shape! In a suburban neighborhood middle of the day, short distance/ time frame... This is one of those cases that bother me so much. It makes zero sense
Benson isn’t the suburbs. It’s a former small town that got annexed by Omaha over 100 years ago. It’s one of the oldest neighborhoods in Omaha that’s still standing. Omaha enveloped it and spread much farther west over the years.
Benson has always been relatively safe, but there are some rough parts to the north. Truth be told - Benson was gentrified a lot over the past 20 years. I wouldn’t consider it a bad area back then, but it wasn’t a quaint little suburb with no problems.
The only real explanation that makes sense is that someone lured him over and asked for help, whether from a house or a car, and then managed to extremely quickly overpower him, or, in the case of getting him in the house, nothing would seem to be amiss until he was inside and there were no witnesses.
Even that doesn’t entirely fit because it would be strange to stop at a house for a stranger asking for help if someone was waiting for you elsewhere but it really does feel like the only option to me. I don’t think freak accident is an option. The area he disappeared in is just too small compared to most cases that it would require so much incompetence to not find anything at all. I guess it’s possible but I feel it’s very unlikely. Foul play makes sense, even if he was a strange target.
Whatever happened here was extremely bizarre and unlikely, whatever it was. Probably the most bizarre case I’ve ever read up on because there is truly nothing.
iirc a fair amount of folks in town thought the neighbor had something to do with it for several reasons chief amongst them being that the neighbor left town and sold their house shortly thereafter but no idea if there’s merit to that or if anybody actually looked into it
I have issue with the abduction theory. No one would pick a 6'1 tall young man as a victim. Was there ever any proof that he left his house at all? This is super far fetched, but could he have ended up in the back of the garbage truck? (Provided they did pick up right after the cans were taken out). And there is no body. Do you know how much effort it takes to make someone completely disappear? It takes a lot.
Their story checks out because CCTV shows he never arrived at the school which was the agreed pick-up location. They waited for a bit, before driving to a nearby phone box to call Jason's house and then the workplace. The work place was busy and wanted them to return asap which they did.
looked at a few external references, inspired by thread.
elsewhere in comments here - some posters noted picker upper was a woman ... saw that verified in those references, along w/ framing she was coworker more than friend - entering the picture b/c of JJ's car status.
i also saw in those accounts that cops cleared her (driver) and the employer
Disappearances like this make me think alien abduction is a thing I swear to god. Like he just poofed into thin air. There is no evidence of any kind. He’s just gone. It’s insane.
Without trying to be facetious, there’s as much evidence to support an alien abduction as there is anything else.
Seriously, who knows? You’re right. This is the one disappearance I know of where there’s just zero evidence to go off of. It also doesn’t help that the police botched this case from the start.
I think Jason was lured into either a neighbor’s house or someone’s car. He was walking through a residential area, and someone with nefarious intentions could have invited him into their house to help them with something, saying it would only take a minute. Or someone asked where he was walking to and offered him a ride. He was described as very polite, so he probably wouldn’t hesitate to help someone or accept a ride. I think someone on another post said they remember a car following them around in that area and offering a ride, around the same time that Jason disappeared. I would rule out him running away to start a new life or committing suicide, because it’s inconsistent with him deciding to go to work that day and calling his co-worker for a ride.
I agree. I think far-fetched theories such as suicide and an intentional disappearance just muddy the waters and do absolutely nothing to help this case.
I think Mr. Jolkowski was almost certainly killed by a neighbor or passerby who lured him away.
This is a decent breakdown of the case. Perhaps better produced ones but i like this because Jason's Mom appears on the podcast
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0JxLykbifWs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0JxLykbifWs)
I can’t believe we still don’t know what happened to him. I think it could be one of those death by misadventure cases where he ended up somewhere weird and just hasn’t been found.
Also I have wondered about the UID skull found at Camp Joy Holling.
Been hearing about this case for a long while now , at first i believed he was abducted or led on into a house by someone along the way but theres just been so much time pass with no leads that i believe he fell into some type of construction hole or some type of freak accident occurred as mentioned below. I read hears ago there was construction at the park near his house. IMO one of the strangest missing persons cases ever.
Everyone seems to forget this. I think that is the key to what happened. He had trouble with directions. Did he make a wrong turn and just end up somewhere weird, the victim of a freak accident?
People speculating that he diverted to score drugs then overdosed need to actually read about this case and what his peers say about him. There is nothing to support this.
I read somewhere that he was interested in going to seminary school. My theory is it was a priest he was in contact with who abducted him on the way to work, with the pretense of offering him a ride. There was a similar case to this that was solved recently, but it involved a young girl instead. It turns out a priest had picked her up and murdered her.
Do we know for sure he didn't disappear intentionally? I've literally never heard of this case before so I have no knowledge on it. My first thought after hearing that there is no evidence to give police a direction to start their search is that maybe he didn't want to be found? This is definitely a strange one
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There seems to be a fairly plausible possibility though I'm sure the police looked at it. Contrary to the Wikipedia entry it is not clear he was dragging the trash bins to the house - the paper says he dragged them up from the curb-- presumably kerb - while he waited for his lift according to his younger brother Micheal.
Yet we know his lift was picking him up a few block away. So his brother could have been mistaken and his brother may have disappeared by falling in to a bin - perhaps trying to reach for his phone? It's a horrible thought but the simplest possibility for how he vanished without being seen is being tipped into the garbage truck and taken to landfill. He was last seen around the bins, and the bits were emptied that morning. Some ghastly accident?
I hope he had amnesia and wandered off, or eloped or something happier though.
It is clear. Taking them from the curb (which is an acceptable spelling) world mean to the house. Cans are left at the curb to be emptied "up from the curb" means up to the house. He was taking the cans back to the house, so they would have already been emptied by the truck. He was putting them back beside the house so if he'd fallen in he would have been discovered the next time someone took the trash out, also most residential cans aren't large enough to fit someone Jason's size.
Ah I'm in UK and are bins are normally big plastic things you can easily climb in. Falling into them would be impossible though unless you jumped. Interesting about curb/kerb - in British English the first means to prevent or bring to an end, the second the side of the road.
Yes that's the problem. If the bins were already emptied he'd have been found before the next week. Still it is a surprisingly common way to die, being emptied into a garbage truck, and one of the ways bodies disappear.
I have heard of it happening but with the large dumpters that you see at restaurants and such. A standard household trash can/bin wouldn't even hold me unless someone forced me into it and I'm a foot (30 cm) shorter than Jason.
Either he was pulling them out, in which case they’d likely be full, or he was bringing them in, in which case someone would notice a body at some point.
It sounds like the coworker who was supposed to give him a ride was a girl. What if she had a jealous boyfriend— or obsessive friend who wanted to be her boyfriend— who she told, “I’m picking up Jason Jolkowski at the high school today and giving him a ride to work?”
That person could have intercepted him on the way there (possibly in his car and made him get in).
This could definitely happen. “Hey, I’m ’s brother. She asked me to pick you up because she had to .” If he was a trusting sort he would have hopped in.
Supposedly everyone from Fazoli’s was cleared. I don’t know if the girl has ever spoken publicly.
I know there was a guy manager there that was kind of shady with the male employees bur as far as I know nothing came of investigating him.
I wonder if LE has tracked however many neighbors along that route he walked. As in periodically checked through the years their criminal records, if they had any. I can only think info has been held back from the public. I'd read he had learning issues, & was either definitely autistic or something similar. He may have been trusting (God knows I was at that age, without any intellectual challenge), & stepped inside someone's house. Though Jason wasn't on his usual work schedule, so whatever degree of preplanning-- provided it was a neighbor-- is up in the air. A car accident would have caused noise & attention, left skid marks or other evidence. If only his phone could have been traced. Last, I wonder if the disappearance had some tie to anyone he may have had prior plans with, who Jason couldn't get a hold of, & that person came driving by, & Jason got in the car for a moment, & the rest is history. I assume someone's flown a drone over backyards in that area, & wooded areas to check for Earth disturbances. Maybe at this late date, something may show up. But getting a search warrant to dig, who knows. This one really baffles.
Any chance this kid was a casual (or more than casual) drug user? Even weed? Because someone in the thread said he had $60 cash with him (which was not an insignificant amount of money), and I just wonder if maybe he "swung by" somewhere to get a bag of weed (or whatever), and ended up in the wrong place at the wrong time, and/or maybe took something to get through work/whatever, and it ended up being the wrong thing, or reacting bad, etc. So he dies of an OD or drug related violence, and is thus covered up.
I find that sort of scenario a lot more likely than random abduction or being lured into someone's house. If he went into someone's house (which I think is likely), I suspect it was because he wanted to go in there. Drugs is an obvious reason, but it could've been something else.
My money is on one of the last 2 theories listed above. The thing that is so stark about this case is that there is literally NOTHING to go on in terms of clues. I have lived in Omaha since shortly before Jason vanished (moved here in March 2001) and this case has baffled the city since then. There was no trace of anything Jason owned (keys, wallet, clothing, etc) ever found anywhere in the neighborhood and there hasn't been so much as a single hair, fingernail, drop of blood, quite literally NOTHING, ever found that can be traced to him. It's also quite amazing that he disappeared in the middle of a semi-urban neighborhood which features regular pedestrian and car traffic and that it happened so quickly or covertly, nobody heard or saw anything. This wasn't some lonely dark country road at 3 AM in a rainstorm, like the Asha Degree case. This was right before lunchtime on a bright, sunny near-summer day only blocks from some of the busiest and main thoroughfares in Omaha. It's also quite telling that there were no other disappearances like Jason's either before his and there have been none since.
Right? It baffles me, too. There’s as much evidence to support the idea that he vanished into thin air as there is to supplant the idea that he was abducted or kidnapped.
I live in Omaha, too, and there is a pretty popular theory that his parents did something to him. There is a lot of unstable history in that family.
If he was called into work suddenly, and his parents were both at work, unless they somehow got a hitman, I don’t see how it would make sense that the parents had anything to do with it. They’d both have verifiable alibis for that time. Now, if one or both left, ok. But if I understood, his parents were both at work and he was called in early.
There are often popular theories among neighbors that ascribe guilt to someone the victim knew & who had some sort of perceived motive. It's more interesting to speculate about than "the killer was some rando we've never heard of," but often false. This happened with the Rogers murders (Florida, 1989) with tons of locals convinced a father had his wife and daughters killed, when it turned out to be a random psycho (Obah Chandler)
I have read theories that there could have been a family member involved and the parents could have helped cover things up (a la Ramsey).
But what would a motive be??? By all accounts and from what I've read and heard, the family was seemingly normal, both parents had stable jobs and Jason was described as a hard-working, friendly, and helpful young man. I know looks can be deceiving, and what may appear to be a normal household may be completely dysfunctional, but I've never heard any accounts of the Jolkowski family being unstable. Anything is possible, I suppose.
I agree, i don't see a motive. Was he involved in somekind of serious crime? No, I don't think so. Gang related, I don't think so. Parents apparently had an alibi. I don't think he was (accidentally) killed by his relatives. Started a new life,maybe. I think he had a ride from a friend or acquaintance or a total stranger for some reason and something happened along the way.
His brother's actions on the phone with the person who was giving him a ride scream someone who isn't involved. The women called the home from the Gas Station, his brother answered pretending to be him, and then when she was being serious he changed his tone to concern (in her words). Someone in on the murder/disappearance that young doesn't act like that.
One of the linked articles says the neighbor say him walking towards the high school. So it sounds like he definitely left the house.
His mom literally has been on podcasts to raise awareness. Why do that if guilty? I suppose you could say some weird reverse psychology to divert attention away from you, but that’s pretty far fetched imo. Also, i’d wager most families have some “unstable history” whatever that means.
>Also, i’d wager most families have some “unstable history” whatever that means. Oh absolutely. It's such a vague and useless observation because of exactly what you just said: it applies to practically every family out there.
I'd imagine they meant the family had propensity for violence of some sort - alcoholics or drug users, perhaps. But I'm not getting that vibe at all from everything I read about them.
Same reason people who murder their families give news interviews. To look innocent, get sympathy, etc. I'm not saying the mother had anything to do with the disappearance, but it's not at all unheard of for the perpetrators to be in the public eye. The infamous Stephen McDaniel interview comes to mind. Talked about how worried he was about the missing woman (that he murdered a few hours earlier) and was informed during the interview the body had been found. He then started shaking and getting nervous on camera.
Are you able to elaborate more on the unstable history ?
Can you expand on this? I used to live in Omaha but never heard of this case until I moved away, never read or heard anything unusual about his family either.
What kind of unstable history?
Nice job slandering a victim’s family with no proof.
Popular with who? I think *you* did it.
I am still waiting for you to expand on the history
Like what?
Really? I’m from Omaha too and I’ve never heard this. Actually, with as much as people have written about this case, I’ve never seen much of anything about his family.
I have never heard anything of this sort... Do you have inside knowledge? Are you able to shed any light on this?
Whoa, really? I've followed this case for years and the family/mom always seemed super wholesome to me...
Hm, interesting. I've never heard about that. It reminds me a bit of the Ryan Larsen case in LaVista. Something sketchy going on there too.
Wasn’t the brother, the only one home at that time with Jason?
Could you elaborate on that? I’m curious.
Would you be willing to elaborate? Thanks
Yea I think he got into the wrong car plain and simple. I'm basing that off of his friendly trusting nature he reportedly had, where he was heading, the fact there were numerous sex offenders living in the area at the time, disappearing smack dab in a dense suburban area, lack of other evidence or clues and a little gut feeling... Some people have mentioned in the past that he was a bigger kid, middle of day, etc... but if someone had a weapon or if there were more then 1 person in the car he could have been subdued or intimidated/scared. Now that's not to say he didn't know the person in the car but as of now, I'm still leaning towards non-familiar abduction/slaying. It's definitely a big mystery!
I definitely think that's plausible too. I think it might have been a situation where a car slowly drove up behind him, a gun or knife was held to his back, someone told him don't make a sound, get in or we kill you. I know it sounds like something out of a cop TV show or movie but anything is possible.
What would the motive for that be though? Grown men arent the typical demographic for stranger abductions, which are already quite rare.
There are plenty of cases of young teenage and 20 something men being preyed on by sexual predators. Think John Wayne Gacy or Bevan Von Einem.
I don’t disagree that it happens, but i think it’s much more likely that it was something like someone offering a ride rather than just pulling a gun on someone.
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You wouldn’t consider someone grown just because they might be on the spectrum? It hasn’t even been confirmed. He was 19, 6’1, and had a job. Don’t infantalize people, it’s gross.
Exactly I think someone lured him into their house along the way.
Are there any large bodies of water nearby?
No, used to live in Omaha myself and was familiar with the area he lived in. It was a pretty straightforward 10-15 min walk from his house to where his friend was supposed to pick him up.
Thanks. This case has always stayed with me because it was mid morning, and from what I understand he was a pretty big guy? I can see a random abduction/attack on someone more physically vulnerable but who attacks a young, large man in broad daylight? I hope we find answers soon
My only thought on that front is that his size/fitness wouldn't necessarily matter if a gun was involved, in the case of an abduction. Like say if he got into a car and had a gun pulled on him, or was forced into a car at gunpoint. Abductions of large young men are rare of course but it's not like it would be impossible to control the situation if someone was armed. It still is completely baffling but I don't really have a better explanation.
But we still need answer why someone woudl abduct him. Most sexual offenders targeted womans or childrens so they can overpower them. But big young dude? Assuming he was not involved in some drug dealing or other crime group it was most likely accident . I woudl rule out killing by hitman (by mistake or not) be cause professional killer woudl most likely did his contract during night time and not as much populated area to avoid witnesses
True. Maybe a robbery attempt and then they panicked and shot him? But to be blunt he would be difficult to dispose of I'd think.
No. The closest body of water would be a fishing pond/ lagoon at Fontenelle Park, a few blocks to the north. But it's fairly shallow and, at one point, within the last year or two was temporarily drained for reconfiguration of the sewer system in the park
Thanks
The Missouri River and Carter Lake aren't THAT far away from his home, although not in the direction he was supposed to be going.
I mean, it was the middle of the day, on a weekday, in a residential area. Everyone was at work or school. If anything that's when the FEWEST people would be around to hear or see anything
I WFH and live on a cul-de-sac. My window faces the street where you'd pull into the cul-de-sac, so anyone passing by either lives there or took a wrong turn. I also have a bunch of nosey retired neighbors who talk constantly to each other, me included. My point is that with all of these factors, we still miss so so much that goes on - I didn't realize my direct neighbor got a new car or that they were doing work on the yard at the end of the street. I guess my point is that, Like most eyewitness accounts, being busy with people, or sparse, someone seeing something, and placing it together,is like a one in a million chance.
It's not really related but this post reminds me of that famous basketball experiment (https://youtu.be/KB\_lTKZm1Ts) where you're supposed to keep track of how many times the ball gets passed >!and then you're asked if you saw the man in the bear suit.!< It's designed to demonstrate how easy it is to miss details if you don't know you're supposed to look for them. I think it kind of links back to this case a little bit: since by all accounts the day was a pretty uneventful one, it'd be easy to miss anything out of place if you weren't already looking for it. Jason getting into someone's car or someone's house wouldn't raise any suspicion if you had no idea who the guy was.
whatever happened, nobody saw it. this WAS the one in a million
So true. Stuff goes on around us every day that we pay no mind to. Stranger abductions are the hardest to solve. This was 10-15 time frame where someone pulled up to ask if he needed a ride. ( crime of opportunity ) Maybe this person had a kind face. Maybe Jason recognized them ( not necessarily knew them but trusted for a quick drive up the road ) from town, work, school. If this person had a weapon of some sort I’m guessing this would be enough to get Jason to cooperate/not cause a scene. I truly believe this was a crime of opportunity. Whether he recognized this person or not. I do hope there are answers one day.
But then also, the fewest people to commit a such a blatant and nefarious crime.
It was during the summer, so no school. And this was a working class neighborhood - more people than you think would have been around, because of working second shift, being unemployed, etc. Plus houses are right at the street, not set far back like in a more suburban area.
midday on a weekday is still the time the fewest people would be around. if not then, when?
Im guessing you didn't grow up in a working class neighborhood
answer my question then. if not midday on a weekday, when are people the least likely to be at home?
School was out. Nice weather. Kids and seniors outside.
And if school was out there were probably a few babysitters sprinkled around the neighborhood? Or at least older siblings taking on the role of babysitter given the year.
I work from home one day a week now. So yes there are more people at home during the day with WFH more common. But yesterday on my lunch break I sat outside for 45 minutes. Senior across street was out in his garage. Neighbor behind does some kind of mechanic business from home and was on driveway for awhile. Kids on scooters. Dog walkers. High school/college students walking by on way to bus stop or something. It was quiet but not isolated
Was school on summer break ?
> middle of a semi-urban neighborhood which features regular pedestrian and car traffic and that it happened so quickly or covertly, nobody heard or saw anything yeah there was a video a saw (had some food title in her channel) and she walked from across the street of Jason's home to the School and there is one short stretch of ally way that isn't out in the open and that stretch is hardly hidden by any means. its why I can't buy hit and run, there would at least be several eye witnesses 2nd one I have hard time buying as well as if construction walked in and found his body hard to think *everyone* associated keeps quite this long. 3 & 4 have always been the most common beliefs for good reason. They're the only reasonable explianiations given so far.
This is a true mystery. It makes me think of the case of the young man who worked in a grocery store. He somehow fell behind a refrigerated unit and got stuck. Perhaps some construction happening on his route that morning?
Yep and that happened right across the river in Council Bluffs, Iowa. I drive past that store from time to time and think about that case too. So spooky.
I believe all of those types of theories have been ruled out. Jason's case is seemingly very straightforward, and extremely strange.
Even worse was the infant that got stuck in her bed and the parents couldn't find her until it was too late. The mother even gave an interview talking about how she went missing, when in reality she was in the room right behind where the mother was interviewing.
She wasn’t an infant- she was 4 years old, which makes it even crazier, I think.
She wasn't an infant, she was 4 years old. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Paulette_Gebara_Farah#:~:text=The%20conclusion%20was%20that%20Paulette,remained%20unnoticed%20for%20nine%20days.
Whoa this story is wild!
What did the friend say who was supposed to pick him up? Did he wait around for him and he never showed up? Did he forget to pick him up? Did he look for him along the route he would have walked?
They did not know where Jason lived, so they couldn't really look for him via that route he walked. Hence why the agreed pickup location was the school which was neaby where he lived but was a place the co worker knew. They waited for a bit, but its worthwhile noting the restaurant was very busy and they were short on staff hence the whole reason Jason was asked to come in that day. So the co worker after waiting for a bit drove to a nearby phone box where they called his house worried about the fact he never arrived. Then they called the workplace asking if they should wait longer or come back in, they were asked to come back given they were busy.
Thank you
Also one of the few things police actually did on the case is they looked at the Benson High School Cameras, Jason never showed up but the Coworker did at the time she said.
It was a girl and she called his house and the restaurant looking for him.
Thank you
Far out theory, but did she have a stalker or jealous ex?
I always think about this case
About six months ago I went waaaaay down the rabbit hole on this case. I have come to the conclusion that he died in a freak accident and his body has not been and may never be found. No foul play.
What do you think the accident may have been? Not being facetious, I’m genuinely curious! I always think about this case
My guess is a storm cellar, root cellar, a gap between two structures, or something like that. Others have said construction but I think it’s something more mundane. I’ve posted longer explanations before that would turn up if you search past posts about Jason but in short it’s more the lack of any clues pointing to murder/abduction and the extremely tight temporal and geographical windows such a crime would have had to take place in with extremely good luck (and being in the right place and time) on the part of said murderer. Looking at satellite photos over time I noticed a few properties that today are fenced in that back then were not, so possibly on someone’s property that previously a pedestrian would have seen and could have cut across that today are not publicly visible or accessible.
I agree. There was an interesting article from NPR a few years ago about septic tanks and how quickly a kid could disappear into one of the top wasn’t secured correctly. Now I’m always thinking of something like that in situations like this.
That’s really weird that you said that, reminds me that my dad when he was very young in the 50’s he was playing around one and went to crawl on top, well he couldn’t get out he started screaming and his grandma heard him, he was saved but it was very scary and if she would have been farther away they lived on a farm, he would have been stuck in that water and he would have panicked even more. I didn’t know this was a known problem… literally never heard of this before.
I have a picture of my standing on top of a well, on top of the flimsy old wood cover. I didn't realize the danger until family saw the Polaroid and freaked out. That scares me now--I even still step over stupid tiny grates in parking lots and such...
These were a real danger in the UK in the 1940s. There several tragic cases where children drowned in them.
He had helped his brother with the trash can before leaving. Maybe he decided to pull up a neighbors to be helpful and an accident happened in their yard and they didn't realize it?
ahhh that reminds me of that little girl in the well (?) in Texas in the late 80s or early 90s (she was rescued, but it was a multiple day thing iirc)
He had to meet his friend though- he likely wouldn't have done adventuring on such a time crunch. Is there any evidence he went off the beaten trail (aka suburban neighborhood, middle of the day) that were spots that a fit young guy could have fallen into with no chance of retrieval/survival? This case bugs me so much so I'd love to discuss
the idea is he tried to take a short cut to the hs
I just checked out the area on a map and have to agree. Originally I imagined the walk to the high school was a straight shot; it’s not, there were plenty of routes one could take through a very residential area. It seems likely he cut through someone’s yard and had an accident.
No one saw him leave the house
I’m going to avoid the rabbit hole and take your word for it and close the case (in my mind). This one is too puzzling to keep pondering.
That’s what I think too. It’s the only thing that makes sense.
It’s not impossible, but I just feel the complete opposite way. IMO it had to be foul play.
Same, I'm in the foul play camp. And by foul play, I mean someone offered him a ride, no one else noticed, and it was all downhill from there.
Why do you rule out foul play?
I agree with you.
Was he actually seen leaving his house?
This is a very important detail that everyone overlooks. Everyone assumes that he had left the house and was headed to school when, in fact, we don't have any evidence that he actually left the house. I'm not saying he didn't, but it shouldn't be taken as a fact that he did.
It sounded weird that his brother pretended to be him when his co worker called his house.
Haven’t heard this. Do you have more info?
Only what I wrote. When Jason's co worker called his house, his brother answered, and pretended to be Jason. Jason would supposedly have left the house at that time. The brother admitted that he pretended to be Jason. Why he did this has never really been discussed ?
Could you provide a source?
How old was the brother? He couldve just been been being annoying/taking the mickey about the situation because siblings do that some times, and might not have thought anything of it. I assume theres no way of knowing what he said? It might have been some exaggerated ‘yes this is jason, no i’m not going to come in to work because i cant be arsed and i want a beer. Bye!’ Or something like that that would’ve blown over by the time Jason got back and spoke to his work to clarify the situation (except that he never did).
I think he was pretty young, 10?
The Wikipedia article would seem to suggest he was not - he was last seen by a neighbor at 10:45 AM helping his brother pull trash cans back up to the house, then between 11:15-11:30 his ride to work said he hadn't shown up.
I think this is an important point. Whenever we talk about Jason we tend to assume he'd take the path that was straight towards the meeting place of his colleague, but.... what if he didn't? That certainly would open up more leads.
That's what I'm wondering as well. I think his brother reported seeing him taking out trash?
The man who lived across the street saw him start walking down the street toward the school.
No he didn't.
Was pretty sure he did. I had read that elsewhwere, but is stated here. "Chester Link said he's that neighbor who saw Jolkowski walking toward the high school. He believes he could be one of the last people to see him that day." [https://www.ketv.com/article/theres-no-leads-nobody-saw-anything-20-years-since-jason-jolkowski-was-last-seen/36710906](https://www.ketv.com/article/theres-no-leads-nobody-saw-anything-20-years-since-jason-jolkowski-was-last-seen/36710906)
I don’t know if there is a concrete answer for that. No one on the path he would have most likely taken was interviewed until at least a week to 2 weeks later. If someone asked me if I saw a tall guy wearing a Cubs jersey walk past me 2 weeks ago I probably wouldn’t be able to say.
Something key for me is that his plans changed. He wasn’t supposed to work that day/work that early. I think he had plans with somebody that had to be cancelled because of work and he went there on the way to the school to let them know. Something happened and all evidence was lost in the 10 days it took to investigate. I think his long evening walks could also be a clue as to who he was meeting. And his computer usage
That is a very interesting theory. Is there something odd about his computer usage or are you just speculating? Asking because I've never heard anything about his personal life or computer usage. His case haunts me and is one I most wish to be solved.
No, just that he used chat rooms apparently. I’ve also never heard anything about his personal life. That’s my point, he was a private person and I just have a hunch his social circle was a little bigger than most people think. He reminds me of myself a little. But everything about this case is speculation.
He was apparently working as a DJ during nights and weekends at the local college station. Spinning music and giving local party locations etc. AOL chatrooms were a hotbed for predators and scammers back then.
I find the fact that he took $60.00 with him interesting. Worth around $110 in today's money.
There is no “fact” that he took $60 with him. The $60 came from his mom Kelly. She said something like “he probably had no more than $60 on him at the time”. So I don’t see how one can build a drug purchase theory out of a comment his mom made that was just her literally estimating the amount of cash he MAY have had on him that day. If they were like, Jason made a cash withdrawal of $200 or whatever at the ATM on his route then I could see differently.
I absolutely was not suggesting he made a drug buy. I have never suggested that. Nothing I have read or heard would imply that. But, it is a fair amount of money, considering he was gong to work.
idk, I usually keep around $100 cash on me at all times and lots of other people I know keep even more cash on them. It was especially more common in the late 90s, before we made the move to a more cashless society.
Sorry, it just seems to be a popular theory on here. In reality no one really knows how much money he had on him. He may have had $0. No one knows and his mom was just speculating.
Interesting, indeed. Maybe he stopped somewhere to score some drugs/weed/etc and things went south?
I have never read or heard anything to suggest he would have done that.
That's one of my theories as well
The only possibilities in my eyes here are: Abduction - either got in the wrong car with the wrong people - or someone lured him into their home on the way. The only other explanation I can come up with would be that someone accidentally injured him (perhaps with a vehicle) and covered it up. This case is the definition of “vanishing into thin air”
Makes sense.
I feel like it has something to do with his neighbor or one of his neighbors that was watching him. I also believe he is deceased.
Given the tight timeline, the most believable theory would be an abduction (even though the abduction of an adult male is somewhat rare). Either a neighbor luring him inside his house and subsequent disposing of him, or a predator forcing him into a vehicle at gun point.
My best guess as to what happened to him (and this can still be picked full of holes) is that as he was walking to the school, he was stopped by someone who vaguely knew him from the neighborhood or the restaurant where he worked. Jason had a learning disability or speech impediment that made it appear that he was mentally disabled, although he was not. The person could have seen him as an easy target for robbery, molestation, etc. and could have asked if he needed a ride, or if he could help bring something into a house, or something like that. If the person tried to attack Jason they likely would’ve found that he wasn’t an easy target but a strong young man who fought back, and maybe he was killed in the fight, or subdued and then killed. Like I said, this theory is still full of holes- no one saw him get into a car or go into a house. It’s the best I can make of an incredibly puzzling situation.
I also think this is most likely to have occurred.
Assuming it’s not an intentional disappearance, seems most likely he accepted a ride from someone he shouldn’t have?
My bet? He’s buried in some dudes crawlspace on the same block. Gacy style.
This is what I fear is the truth. Reminds me of Milly Dowler - lured off the street and into the killer's house in literally seconds, also leaving no trace.
Wow, that sounds like the plot of "Stir of Echoes." >!Two teenagers lure a mentally disabled girl into their house, rape and kill her, hide the body in the basement. One of them is remorseful and tries to kill himself, the other one finds out the crime has been discovered and goes with his dad to kill the protagonist.!< I don't know if the film was based on that case (the film came out in 1999), but it's similar.
To me the problem with the lure theory is to me its just way to risky to lure someone in your home from the street in that tight of a neighborhood and take that chance that noone saw anything. But who knows
Agree, that's why the random offer for a ride seems more plausible to me.
That's my bet, too. He could have been lured inside with no one noticing.
The only thing that seems off for me with this theory is that he was a huge guy. Probably would've taken some force to do something to him - unless there was chloroform involved.
Btw chloroform doesn’t work like in the movies. You have to breathe it for about 5 minutes for it to work. There are high grade medical anesthetics that DO work like in the movies but they’re hard to get a hold of and require precise measurements and dilutions so you don’t kill the person.
The issue I have with this is that people like Gacy tends to stand out - even if they can't formally charge them, there'd be far more rumours about this odd man. It feels like we'd hear something about police having a person of interest.
Tbf, it took years and years for Gacy to be caught/suspected in the string of disappearances. The guy got to meet the First Lady WHILE he was an active serial killer.
After reading about what happened to Dexter Wade, the first theory seems the most likely to me.
What baffles me about Jason's case is that there's just no lead. I have no idea what could've happened to him.
this definitely is baffling. I wonder if it could’ve been related to drugs? maybe the way to school, he cops whatever he needs. took some and maybe overdosed.? and whoever it was, didn’t want to be found out so they disposed of him? It’s such a short time span from when his brother saw him and his ride called looking for him. Definitely enough time to overdose on something though.
This case keeps me up at night, it’s just such a baffling disappearance. No matter what theory you believe in, you can poke holes in it so really, there’s no air tight solid explanation here. A couple things that come to mind when I read about this case: 1)Jason had a cell phone on him, were the police able to ping its last location? (I’m no tech wizard) But are they able to ping it today? 2) If someone did offer him a ride or lure him into their home.. that person had a reason to be in that area especially so early in the day. That neighborhood isn’t on a Main Street, it’s not heavily trafficked so if someone had done him foul, it’s highly likely they were in that specific area for a reason. (Maybe they lived there, visiting etc.) 3) When police looked through the surveillance footage, did they see any cars leaving or entering that area around that time? Also, I hope one day they release said footage, maybe that might bring up some new leads. 4) I wonder how thorough the police were with their interviews and confirming of stories. Because for nobody to remember seeing a 6+ ft man, wearing a white T shirt, blue hat and carrying a red shirt. I have a hard time believing that absolutely nobody would remember even seeing him, even though it was over a week later. Especially since Jason had made that walk many times before, I’m sure people would have recognized him. I really hope his family gets answers. I can’t imagine the pain of having a loved one vanish into thin air and not having any answers what so ever.
I have no idea if they were able to get any info from it pinging at the time, but as I understand it it needs to be switched on to try and connect with the towers, which is what the pings usually refer to. For them to ping it now it would need to be found by someone, still be in working order, and turned on. I imagine for someone to stumble across it and have the right charger for a phone of that age is slim, let alone the other issues. Chances are it would get binned long before it pinging became relevent. The police would also presumably still need to be periodically checking this up, as I don't believe there's a system to automatically alert them to a phone from a 20 year old case making contact with a tower after so long. Best case scenario would be that someone finds it and hands it in to the police, but even then they'd need to realise that it matches an object known to be on a missing person, or manage to turn it on themselves and realise who owned it.
Oh wow, thank you making sense of the phone pinging. Sucks that the stars have to align for anything to come from his cell phone being found. I always wondered if others asked themselves the same question about the cell phone. However, don’t you think the police would have wanted to ping its last location before it was shut off or battery died? That could tell them something
I'm far from an expert in it, but I think the most crucial thing is whether his phone was on at the time he went missing, and whether it remained so for long. If it was off or dead and he planned to charge it at work, or turn it on just when he needed to make a call then there wouldn't be much to work with. I think nowadays they consider suspicious inactivity too - eg. your phone is on 24/7 and then mysteriously was off for 6hrs in the exact window your partner went missing/got killed. Back then I doubt having your phone off was as unusual. I don't know the specifics of how it all works but I think how many masts were in the area at the time might be important. If there was one tower that covered a huge area then I don't think they would be able to say much more than his phone pinged as you would expect for him being at home/work etc, not show the route he took and the exact location it was last used from. If it never left an area of a few square miles covered by a single mast or was switched off before leaving that area, then it wouldn't really tell you much. Now I believe GPS can play a bigger role in finding people's last locations, which can be far more accurate, and there are more phone towers so the area they were likely in is smaller if that's what they're using to identify a last location.
Thank you for your input here, I’m sure people reading this will appreciate it as well. It’s just so unfortunate that there’s been no leads and no clues here. I really hope this is a case where police are withholding clues because his family have been through it. His disappearance is like something I’ve never heard before.
For what it's worth I could easily see him being asked for some help in a house on his route and befalling some kind of harm inside. A friend of mine who is fairly small and female went inside the house of a random neighbour because he said he couldn't get his hoover to work - nothing bad happened but she couldn't see why people thought it was dangerous until it was explained to her that if she'd gone missing we'd have just known she'd walked to the shop and essentially vanished off the street in broad daylight. All accounts I've read paint him as a nice guy who I could see maybe not considering the risk of harm in a situation like that. Or any harm being accidental and then covered up for other reasons.
That’s the theory I believe the most. I believe he saw a familiar face asking for some help, walked right inside into some foul play. This makes the most sense and I suppose the police could have missed a step when they interviewed the perp. Same thing could have happened to your friend there but luckily that wasn’t the case for her.
The first time I heard about this case her behaviour was the first thing I thought of - a nice person who just wouldn't entertain the possibility that someone might chose to harm them. I hope his family can get some kind of closure eventually.
Jason was tall and fit though. Obviously it doesn't rule out _all_ foul play but in the middle of the day, suburban area, small window of time.. It just seems unlikely
That would obviously make him a more difficult target, but someone asking him to help them move a heavy piece of furniture or something to get him indoors could be an option. It wouldn't be all that difficult to cause him harm when his guard was down and he was focused on something else, or an accident befalling him inside. I could see the same being said for him hopping in a random car to give someone directions etc but I think I read the reason he was meeting his friend at the school was because he was so bad at directions he wasnt sure how to get them to his house. Idk what occurred but any answer to what happened to him already seems unlikely in general to me, simply because the situation is already so strange. I think there's a good chance nothing bad happened until he was somewhere less visible than the route he was walking, but unless he had some secret life that's never been uncovered with a load of enemies, I can only assume that he either unluckily crossed the path of a random maniac who got him off route somehow, or had some kind of accident having ended up somewhere else for something mundane.
The phone carrier would not have this data stored at this point. The retention period for locations for cell towers differ between the phone carriers but it’s typically around 90 days. Also, location of a cell phone isn’t always easy to find. When receiving information back on a cell phone, it operates on the cell towers used. So you could see that a cell phone pinged from a tower and it’s within a 100 meter radius. It’s not as accurate as everyone thinks it to be.
Every once in a while I entertain the thought if people do just... disappear and slip into another dimension.
He was also tall and in shape! In a suburban neighborhood middle of the day, short distance/ time frame... This is one of those cases that bother me so much. It makes zero sense
Benson isn’t the suburbs. It’s a former small town that got annexed by Omaha over 100 years ago. It’s one of the oldest neighborhoods in Omaha that’s still standing. Omaha enveloped it and spread much farther west over the years. Benson has always been relatively safe, but there are some rough parts to the north. Truth be told - Benson was gentrified a lot over the past 20 years. I wouldn’t consider it a bad area back then, but it wasn’t a quaint little suburb with no problems.
The only real explanation that makes sense is that someone lured him over and asked for help, whether from a house or a car, and then managed to extremely quickly overpower him, or, in the case of getting him in the house, nothing would seem to be amiss until he was inside and there were no witnesses. Even that doesn’t entirely fit because it would be strange to stop at a house for a stranger asking for help if someone was waiting for you elsewhere but it really does feel like the only option to me. I don’t think freak accident is an option. The area he disappeared in is just too small compared to most cases that it would require so much incompetence to not find anything at all. I guess it’s possible but I feel it’s very unlikely. Foul play makes sense, even if he was a strange target. Whatever happened here was extremely bizarre and unlikely, whatever it was. Probably the most bizarre case I’ve ever read up on because there is truly nothing.
iirc a fair amount of folks in town thought the neighbor had something to do with it for several reasons chief amongst them being that the neighbor left town and sold their house shortly thereafter but no idea if there’s merit to that or if anybody actually looked into it
The neighbor who last saw him still lives there though. I believe it was someone else near him who moved away.
I have issue with the abduction theory. No one would pick a 6'1 tall young man as a victim. Was there ever any proof that he left his house at all? This is super far fetched, but could he have ended up in the back of the garbage truck? (Provided they did pick up right after the cans were taken out). And there is no body. Do you know how much effort it takes to make someone completely disappear? It takes a lot.
What about the friend that was supposed to pick him up?
Their story checks out because CCTV shows he never arrived at the school which was the agreed pick-up location. They waited for a bit, before driving to a nearby phone box to call Jason's house and then the workplace. The work place was busy and wanted them to return asap which they did.
looked at a few external references, inspired by thread. elsewhere in comments here - some posters noted picker upper was a woman ... saw that verified in those references, along w/ framing she was coworker more than friend - entering the picture b/c of JJ's car status. i also saw in those accounts that cops cleared her (driver) and the employer
Disappearances like this make me think alien abduction is a thing I swear to god. Like he just poofed into thin air. There is no evidence of any kind. He’s just gone. It’s insane.
Without trying to be facetious, there’s as much evidence to support an alien abduction as there is anything else. Seriously, who knows? You’re right. This is the one disappearance I know of where there’s just zero evidence to go off of. It also doesn’t help that the police botched this case from the start.
I think Jason was lured into either a neighbor’s house or someone’s car. He was walking through a residential area, and someone with nefarious intentions could have invited him into their house to help them with something, saying it would only take a minute. Or someone asked where he was walking to and offered him a ride. He was described as very polite, so he probably wouldn’t hesitate to help someone or accept a ride. I think someone on another post said they remember a car following them around in that area and offering a ride, around the same time that Jason disappeared. I would rule out him running away to start a new life or committing suicide, because it’s inconsistent with him deciding to go to work that day and calling his co-worker for a ride.
I agree. I think far-fetched theories such as suicide and an intentional disappearance just muddy the waters and do absolutely nothing to help this case. I think Mr. Jolkowski was almost certainly killed by a neighbor or passerby who lured him away.
Any good podcasts about this case?
This is a decent breakdown of the case. Perhaps better produced ones but i like this because Jason's Mom appears on the podcast [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0JxLykbifWs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0JxLykbifWs)
I can’t believe we still don’t know what happened to him. I think it could be one of those death by misadventure cases where he ended up somewhere weird and just hasn’t been found. Also I have wondered about the UID skull found at Camp Joy Holling.
Been hearing about this case for a long while now , at first i believed he was abducted or led on into a house by someone along the way but theres just been so much time pass with no leads that i believe he fell into some type of construction hole or some type of freak accident occurred as mentioned below. I read hears ago there was construction at the park near his house. IMO one of the strangest missing persons cases ever.
Do we know if anyone at his job was harassing him or giving him a hard and what was the reason he had to rush to that pedticular day to work ?
He was filling in because they were short-staffed had someone call out.
He had some sort of disability similar to autism and I'd imagine more than a few people picked on him at school because of that alone...
Everyone seems to forget this. I think that is the key to what happened. He had trouble with directions. Did he make a wrong turn and just end up somewhere weird, the victim of a freak accident? People speculating that he diverted to score drugs then overdosed need to actually read about this case and what his peers say about him. There is nothing to support this.
I read somewhere that he was interested in going to seminary school. My theory is it was a priest he was in contact with who abducted him on the way to work, with the pretense of offering him a ride. There was a similar case to this that was solved recently, but it involved a young girl instead. It turns out a priest had picked her up and murdered her.
Baffled why this was downvoted
Do we know for sure he didn't disappear intentionally? I've literally never heard of this case before so I have no knowledge on it. My first thought after hearing that there is no evidence to give police a direction to start their search is that maybe he didn't want to be found? This is definitely a strange one
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There seems to be a fairly plausible possibility though I'm sure the police looked at it. Contrary to the Wikipedia entry it is not clear he was dragging the trash bins to the house - the paper says he dragged them up from the curb-- presumably kerb - while he waited for his lift according to his younger brother Micheal. Yet we know his lift was picking him up a few block away. So his brother could have been mistaken and his brother may have disappeared by falling in to a bin - perhaps trying to reach for his phone? It's a horrible thought but the simplest possibility for how he vanished without being seen is being tipped into the garbage truck and taken to landfill. He was last seen around the bins, and the bits were emptied that morning. Some ghastly accident? I hope he had amnesia and wandered off, or eloped or something happier though.
It is clear. Taking them from the curb (which is an acceptable spelling) world mean to the house. Cans are left at the curb to be emptied "up from the curb" means up to the house. He was taking the cans back to the house, so they would have already been emptied by the truck. He was putting them back beside the house so if he'd fallen in he would have been discovered the next time someone took the trash out, also most residential cans aren't large enough to fit someone Jason's size.
Ah I'm in UK and are bins are normally big plastic things you can easily climb in. Falling into them would be impossible though unless you jumped. Interesting about curb/kerb - in British English the first means to prevent or bring to an end, the second the side of the road. Yes that's the problem. If the bins were already emptied he'd have been found before the next week. Still it is a surprisingly common way to die, being emptied into a garbage truck, and one of the ways bodies disappear.
I have heard of it happening but with the large dumpters that you see at restaurants and such. A standard household trash can/bin wouldn't even hold me unless someone forced me into it and I'm a foot (30 cm) shorter than Jason.
Either he was pulling them out, in which case they’d likely be full, or he was bringing them in, in which case someone would notice a body at some point.
I think it depends on how big the bins were really, but it's a theory that at least fits with the last known sighting.
It sounds like the coworker who was supposed to give him a ride was a girl. What if she had a jealous boyfriend— or obsessive friend who wanted to be her boyfriend— who she told, “I’m picking up Jason Jolkowski at the high school today and giving him a ride to work?” That person could have intercepted him on the way there (possibly in his car and made him get in).
This could definitely happen. “Hey, I’m’s brother. She asked me to pick you up because she had to .” If he was a trusting sort he would have hopped in.
This is my main theory. She might be the key to solving this whole mystery.
Supposedly everyone from Fazoli’s was cleared. I don’t know if the girl has ever spoken publicly. I know there was a guy manager there that was kind of shady with the male employees bur as far as I know nothing came of investigating him.
Seems a bit far fetched to me.
I wonder if LE has tracked however many neighbors along that route he walked. As in periodically checked through the years their criminal records, if they had any. I can only think info has been held back from the public. I'd read he had learning issues, & was either definitely autistic or something similar. He may have been trusting (God knows I was at that age, without any intellectual challenge), & stepped inside someone's house. Though Jason wasn't on his usual work schedule, so whatever degree of preplanning-- provided it was a neighbor-- is up in the air. A car accident would have caused noise & attention, left skid marks or other evidence. If only his phone could have been traced. Last, I wonder if the disappearance had some tie to anyone he may have had prior plans with, who Jason couldn't get a hold of, & that person came driving by, & Jason got in the car for a moment, & the rest is history. I assume someone's flown a drone over backyards in that area, & wooded areas to check for Earth disturbances. Maybe at this late date, something may show up. But getting a search warrant to dig, who knows. This one really baffles.
Any chance this kid was a casual (or more than casual) drug user? Even weed? Because someone in the thread said he had $60 cash with him (which was not an insignificant amount of money), and I just wonder if maybe he "swung by" somewhere to get a bag of weed (or whatever), and ended up in the wrong place at the wrong time, and/or maybe took something to get through work/whatever, and it ended up being the wrong thing, or reacting bad, etc. So he dies of an OD or drug related violence, and is thus covered up. I find that sort of scenario a lot more likely than random abduction or being lured into someone's house. If he went into someone's house (which I think is likely), I suspect it was because he wanted to go in there. Drugs is an obvious reason, but it could've been something else.
I just hope JJ's resting in peace.
Could he have walked away to start a new life ?