Member-only story
Taken From the Intersection: The Murder of Janie Sanders
She was taken, murdered and dumped in under an hour, but her cold case spans more than 45 years.
When a friend of 16-year-old Janie Sanders from Mississippi walked home from school with her one chilly autumn day in 1975, she never could have guessed that it would be the last time the happy-go-lucky young woman was seen alive.
And even worse, her killer not only got away with the brutal murder and is still doing so, but he may have targeted other victims at around the same time.
With much of the evidence lost and a prime suspect police can’t prove did it, will Janie’s family ever get justice?
A shocking crime
Janie was a student at Pascagoula’s Colmer Junior High School in 1975 and her sister Paula Hill told WLOX she was pretty much a typical teenager from that era.
She recalled: “Janie was strong-willed, hard-headed. She was sweet, she loved God, very religious, she trusted everybody — kind of on the naïve side.”
At the end of the school day on September 24th, Janie set out to walk home as usual with her friend Robin Rivera. The two chatted as they covered the distance of their usual route before bidding each other goodbye close to the intersection of Louise and Lanier Streets at around 3:30 PM.
As Robin turned to look back behind her from the other side of the street, she saw an El Camino vehicle pull up beside Janie with a dark-haired young man behind the wheel. Janie got into the car and it drove south on Louise Street, leading Robin to assume someone Janie knew had given her a ride the rest of the way home.
But at around 4:15 PM, the Pascagoula Police Department received a call that would reveal Janie had not returned home at all — and never would.
A game warden just over the state line in Alabama’s Mobile County had been out on patrol when he saw a blue El Camino suddenly come out of a wooded area and almost collide with another vehicle before tearing off down the road.
The warden knew the area had a problem with illegal waste tipping, so thought he would take a look at what junk the person had…
