The Crime Book

252

FOUL PLAY

WHILE IN THE SPY

CRAFT STORE

CRAIG JACOBSEN, AUGUST 1997

I

n August 1997, the body of

backup singer and dancer

Ginger Rios was unearthed

from a shallow grave in Arizona’s

portion of the Mojave Desert. The

20-year-old had last been seen four

months earlier, on 4 April, at a spy

craft store near the University

of Nevada, Las Vegas.

Rios had gone there to purchase

a book on cleaning up her credit

report. While her husband, Mark

Hollinger, waited in the car, Rios

ran into the shop. According to

Hollinger, she planned to be gone

just a few minutes. Rios, however,

never emerged from the store. The

owner, Craig Jacobsen, who used

the alias John Flowers, took her

into the back room and delivered

a swift uppercut to her nose that

proved fatal. He then put her body

in a bin bag, moved her to the back

of his van, cleaned up the back

room with strong bleach, and drove

Rios’s body to Arizona.

Jacobsen’s wife, Cheryl Ciccone,

was with her husband when Rios

walked into the store. She saw

Rios’s body, and accompanied

Jacobsen to Arizona. Fearing for

her life, however, she later went to

the authorities, and four months

later guided police to Rios’s body.

A second victim

A month after Rios’s death, another

Las Vegas woman went missing:

chiropractor’s daughter Mary

Stoddard. On 10 May, hunters

chanced upon the body of a young

woman in a desert grave in Pinal

County, Arizona. A forensic facial

reconstruction was ordered, but

nobody claimed the victim, who

became Jane Doe 2278DFAZ.

Craig Jacobsen looks unkempt in his

1997 mugshot. Jacobsen confessed to

murdering Ginger Rios, claiming to

have killed her because he had

snapped when she “got in his face.”

IN CONTEXT

LOCATION

Las Vegas, Nevada

THEME

Multiple murder

BEFORE

1978 The bodies of siblings

Jacqueline and Malcolm

Bradshaw are discovered by

a sheep herder near the desert

town of Barstow, California.

1984 William Richard Bradford

strangles 15-year-old Tracey

Campbell to death at a remote

campsite in the Mojave Desert,

and leaves her body there.

AFTER

2009 The remains of 11

women are found buried in the

sands of Albuquerque’s West

Mesa. Some may have been

there since 2001.

2013 Joseph and Summer

McStay, who along with their

young sons have been missing

since February 2010, are found

murdered in the desert near

Victorville, California.

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253

Pinal County, Arizona is a land of

remote desert valleys – one of which

became a burial ground for Jacobsen’s

victims. The graves were found near

Florence, a town southeast of Phoenix.

See also: Dr Crippen 216 ■ The Death of Azaria Chamberlain 238–39 ■ Ian Brady and Myra Hindley 284–85

MURDER CASES

The graves of Doe and Rios were in

close proximity to each other, and

both graves were covered with

concrete caps, which suggested

the two shared a killer.

Arrest and detention

In August 1997, Jacobsen was

arrested in Los Angeles, California,

by a fugitive law-enforcement task

force – he was wanted in Florida for

battery and counterfeiting. Under

interrogation, as well as admitting

that he killed Rios, Jacobsen

confessed to killing a second

woman in Las Vegas and burying

her in Arizona.

Jacobsen identified the woman

as Mary Stoddard, which seemingly

solved the mystery of Jane Doe’s

identity. However, the Arizona

authorities had reburied Jane Doe

in a county cemetery, but the

location of the plot was not on

the paperwork. Without the body,

prosecutors had to focus their case

on Ginger Rios. Jacobsen was

convicted in 2000 and sentenced

to at least 25 years behind bars.

Third victim

In a strange twist of events, in

2010, the remains of Jane Doe were

relocated and identified by the

Doe Network. She was not Mary

Stoddard. Jane Doe was actually

15-year-old Christina Martinez,

who disappeared in May 1997 on

her way to a local laundrette in

Phoenix, Arizona – two blocks from

another store owned by Jacobsen.

In 2014, a grand jury charged

Jacobsen with the murder of

Martinez. The body of Stoddard

has not been recovered, despite

searches near the other graves. ■

Forensic facial reconstruction

Advancements in computerized

3D technology have vastly

improved the field of forensic

facial reconstruction. It is now

possible to scan a skull from

multiple angles to create a precise

digital reconstruction, instead of

having to build a model by hand

from clay. The technique is

particularly useful for crimes that

involve unidentified remains.

Reconstructed images may be

shown to potential victims’ family

members, run through police

databases, or sent to the Doe

Network, a US not-for-profit

organization dedicated to

connecting missing and

unidentified persons with John

and Jane Doe cases. The US

has a 50 per cent success rate

in making identifications from

forensic facial reconstruction.

The technique of forensic

facial reconstruction has also

been used to create realistic

images of historical figure, such

as King Richard III, Copernicus,

and Tutankhamun, based on

their remains.

Facial reconstruction software

creates a photo-realistic image based

on the skull and other known data,

such as age, ethnicity, or weight.

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