A Damned Edgar Allan Poe Story: Man's Wife Missing For 28 Years, Was Hidden Behind a False Wall

I have learned over time that a good blogger always tries to add a little something to the stories they aggregate. I've been avoiding this story because I can't think of what to add to it, other than "HOLY GOD, WTF?":

The hidden skeleton of a woman who had been missing for 28 years came to light when a contractor cleaned out a vacant home in the Town of Poughkeepsie, New York. 

The gruesome find was uncovered behind a 'false wall' in the basement of the home the woman had shared with her late husband, police said. 

Joann Nichols' remains were found inside a large plastic bin, inside a plastic bag and wrapped in a sheet, said Dr. Kari Reiber, the Dutchess County Medical Examiner. 

"The body was skeletonized and the hands were tied with rope. ... A large area of the right side of the skull was also missing," Reiber said.

Can't think of a thing to add to that, really. Yet it's so strange it's impossible to ignore. If you read the story linked below or any others about this deeply gothic tale of the missing and insane, you will learn the husband was a hoarder and most of the neighborhood believed he made his wife disappear.

And he'll never answer for the crime (it appears James Nichols bludgeoned his wife Joann Nichols to death) because he ended up dying of natural causes at age 82.

That's part of what bothers me. The neighborhood kind of knew. They just knew.

Too strange.

[CNN.com]

Was Jane Doe 'Lori Erica Kennedy' Really Missing Person Jennifer Marie Wictor?

Jane Doe

I was researching a Jane Doe who went by Lori Erica Kennedy (on the left). She committed suicide in 2010 in Texas. This article about the mystery woman has gone viral in the past week or so, and no wonder--she left behind a tantalizing and fascinating trail of clues. It appeared that she began her new life around age 18 or 20, first stealing the identity of a deceased child named Becky Sue Turner. Shortly after adopting the Turner identity she changed her name to Lori Kennedy, and from that point on lived a somewhat normal if cloistered, outwardly strange life.

And she had problems--by the time she killed herself, she was estranged from an apparently clueless, passive husband and her home had fallen into hoarder-like levels of disrepair.

The article I linked above tells the story well, so I'll just get to this--it's probably a coincidence, but when I did a Google reverse image search on the above photograph of Jane Doe/Lori Ruff,  the ONLY result was a photo of Jennifer Marie Wictor.

Jennifer Marie Wictor

Both women appeared to be the same approximate height, weight, age, hair color and possibly even eye color. Their noses are notably different, but according to the original report about Jane Doe, she "might have had a nose job at some point" as well as breast implants.

At the moment--and I admit, I'm resisting digging deeper, because I prefer to sleep now--it seems there is a frustrating lack of information about Jennifer Wictor's disappearance.

That leaves this (in my mind at least) in the realm of remarkable coincidence. For now.

I have no illusions that I'm the only person to happen onto this result--I'm certain sleuths on discussion boards all over the web are all over it. Regardless, I emailed a Tempe, Arizona detective listed as handling Jennifer Wictor's case about it, because why not?

Sometimes the Internet can solve things, because we're all human behind our screens, and sometimes, we just want to know.

Note 1:

I was able to turn up additional photos of a younger Jennifer Wictor, culled from her high school yearbooks. They don't necessarily help in the resemblance to Jane Doe department, but it's interesting to see how much she changed over a relatively short span of time.

Note 2:

In Maureen O'Hagan's article about Lori Kennedy/Jane Doe, she reported that the mystery woman had a post office box in Boulder City, Nevada in the late 1980s. It's a pretty tenuous link, but I did want to point out that on a map, at least, it's a straight 4-plus hour drive northwest from Tempe, where Jennifer Wictor was living when she disappeared, to Boulder City. So that connects both women to the same region around the time one vanished and the other began her new life.