A young woman walking home from work vanishes in the dark of night, putting a community on edge and leaving her family desperate for answers. What happened to Jennifer?
Episode Media
Episode Sources
- Murder of Jennifer Teague – Wikipedia
- “The Case That Haunts Me” The Long Walk Home
- Obituary – Jennifer Ann Teague
- Girl, 18, missing from Barrhaven
- Foul play feared in disappearance of Barrhaven teenager
- Police: Gutsy teen wouldn’t go willingly
- Hundreds join search for missing Ottawa teen
- No suspects, no leads, no clues, but teen’s family clings to hope | Part 2
- Screams heard on night teen vanished | Part 2
- Community rallies to help look for 18-year-old Jennifer Teague
- No reason to believe teen would run away from home
- Classmates hold out hope for missing teen
- The search for Jennifer Teague: An athlete, a leader, a ‘typical teen’
- Jennifer: A role model with ‘the power of optimism’
- Search: More than 100 officers and 100 volunteers blanket area
- Search expands for missing teen
- ‘We just want you home’: Five days of searching yield no trace of Jennifer Teague
- Teague: Stymied police appeal to public
- Search for teen goes on
- Ground search ends as police follow up on tips | Part 2
- Neighbour, 21, questioned in Teague case | Part 2
- Body found on NCC trail | Part 2
- Parents hoping discovery of body not their missing daughter
- Body ID’d as Ottawa teen
- Jennifer knew her killer, police detectives believe | Part 2
- Finding of teen’s body sparks fears of serial killer
- Ottawa teen’s death was murder
- Police question Jennifer’s ex-beau
- Teen’s killer likely not a stranger, police say
- Ottawa police: could be weeks to determine how woman was murdered
- Friends celebrate slain teen’s life
- Dad begs killer to give up
- Teague’s killer left behind ‘trace evidence’ for police | Part 2
- Teague’s father says he was easily cleared in killing | Part 2
- Funeral to be held Saturday for murdered Ottawa teen
- Hundreds come to say goodbye to Jennifer Teague
- Jennifer Teague laid to rest | Part 2
- Police dismiss Teague killing ‘confessions’ | Part 2
- Tips slow to a trickle in Teague killing probe | Part 2
- Breakthrough in Teague killing | Part 2
- Police suspect Jennifer Teague’s killer was ‘sexually motivated’ | Part 2
- Police post photos of potential witnesses in Teague killing
- Police hope posting photos on web will help crack Teague case
- ‘I killed Jennifer’: Accused high on drugs when he admitted guilt in public rant
- Davis Arrest: Accused called gentle, jovial
- Neighbours stunned after Ottawa man charged in teen’s slaying
- Accused killer’s neighbourhood ‘a troubled community’
- Police seek tipster in Jennifer Teague homicide case
- Ottawa police doubted crazed man’s tale
- Ottawa man to plead guilty to murdering Jennifer Teague: lawyer
- Jennifer Teague’s killer heads to prison after pleading guilty
- Jennifer Teague’s family supports bill to increase parole ineligibility
- Finding hope after the murder of their daughter Jennifer Teague
- There will never be closure’ until the truth is known, father says
- After the door closes: How the Teagues learned to live as ‘overcomers’ of tragedy
- ‘This could be your daughter, your wife’: How Jennifer Teague’s disappearance shook Ottawa
Episode Transcript
Welcome back to Bite-Sized Crime. This week I’m bringing you a case out of Canada, a crime that shook a small community and upended their sense of safety. This episode discusses sensitive topics, so listener discretion is advised.
Jennifer Ann Teague was born in Ottawa, Ontario, in June of 1987. The only girl in the family, Jennifer was adored by her two older brothers, and the siblings looked out for each other. Their mother Jean told the Ottawa Citizen, “[They] squabbled among themselves like all kids, but if someone did anything to any of them, the other two were right there for protection, including Jenny.”
After their parents divorced, Jennifer and her brothers moved with their mother to the south Ottawa suburb of Barrhaven. Jennifer was an energetic child, and it was clear early on that she had a natural athletic ability. By the time she reached her teenage years, she was active in several sports, including baseball and soccer.
While she was talented on the field, Jennifer struggled in the classroom. In grade 10, she transferred to Elizabeth Wyn Wood Alternate High School, where she finally started to blossom. The academic structure of the school fit her needs, and her grades began to improve. She made new friends and even joined an environmental club where she and her peers taught younger students about conservation. Jennifer was thriving.
Of course, Jennifer was also a typical teenager. She hung posters on her bedroom wall of her favorite hockey stars, played video games into the wee hours of the morning, and dyed her hair different colors. She worked a variety of part-time jobs throughout high school, mostly at local fast-food restaurants, to earn spending money. She loved to go shopping, especially for clothes and makeup.
In the fall of 2005, Jennifer was in her final year of high school and was looking forward to graduating. She was working at the local Wendy’s restaurant and saving up money for the future, although she still wasn’t quite sure what she wanted to do after high school. She thought she might do something in fashion design or maybe even look into working in the conservation field. She loved animals – she had just adopted a kitten she named Michael the Cat – so perhaps she would take her career in that direction. But she had just turned 18 and felt she still had time to decide.
On the afternoon of Wednesday, September 7th, Jennifer left school and headed home to the two-story house she shared with her mother and brothers. She wanted to rest a bit before her evening shift at Wendy’s. She didn’t love working late, especially after a long day at school, but she needed the money and the work wasn’t too bad. As darkness fell, Jennifer grabbed her backpack with her work uniform and walked out to catch the city bus.
Jennifer worked her usual shift, closing up the restaurant and leaving just after midnight. The bus service had long since ended, so she planned to walk home as usual. The route was on a main road, well-traveled and well-lit, so she didn’t feel unsafe. Jennifer texted her mom to say she was leaving work, then called some friends who worked nearby. The girls arranged to meet up at the corner of Tartan Drive and Jockvale, the halfway point between Jennifer’s job and home.
Jennifer and her friends hung out in front of the Mac’s Milk convenience store for about an hour, smoking and swapping stories from their day. Around 1:30am, they said their goodbyes and went their separate ways, Jennifer heading down Jockvale Road towards her neighborhood on Kennevale Drive. She had no idea that she wouldn’t make it home.
When morning came, the Teague family went about their usual routine. Jennifer’s room was in the basement of the house, so it wasn’t a surprise that they didn’t see or hear her moving around. She often woke up before they did, catching the early bus to school. There was nothing to indicate that everything wasn’t as it should be.
But by that evening, reality had set in. Jennifer’s family discovered that she hadn’t gone to school that day, and she hadn’t shown up for her shift at Wendy’s. None of her friends had seen her, and calls to her cell phone were going straight to voicemail.
By 8:30 that night, Jennifer’s family was in a panic. They contacted the Ottawa Police Service and reported her missing.
While the family was out searching, hanging missing persons flyers around the community, detectives were interviewing anyone who may have had contact with Jennifer around the time she disappeared. From conversations with Jennifer’s friends, they learned that Jennifer had last been seen at Mac’s Milk around 1:30 on Thursday morning. She had been wearing jeans, a white tank top, a black zip-up sweatshirt, and red shoes. She had been carrying a backpack with her Wendy’s uniform inside. Her friends had seen her walk down Jockvale Road in the direction of her house, and nothing had seemed out of the ordinary. Jennifer wasn’t the sort of teenager to run away from home – even if she had decided to spend the night at a friend’s house, she would have let someone know.
Early on, detectives had their eye on a few people. They interviewed Jennifer’s ex-boyfriend multiple times. Even after their breakup, they had stayed in touch, but he told detectives that he had been home that night and hadn’t talked to Jennifer in a while. He agreed to take a polygraph exam, and he was eventually ruled out.
There was also Jennifer’s coworker Mark, who told detectives that he had walked with Jennifer for a short distance after leaving Wendy’s. He had scratches on his face, which detectives found suspicious, but Mark said he had cut himself shaving and even handed over his razor as evidence of his story. He passed a polygraph and detectives crossed him off the list.
Then there was Boris, a 21-year-old man who lived in the area. According to Jennifer’s friends, Boris had driven past them while they sat outside the convenience store, and he had always given off creepy vibes. He had a history of stalking behavior and was prone to paranoia. But when he talked to detectives, he denied having anything to do with Jennifer’s disappearance. He gave them permission to search his car and agreed to take a polygraph. He too was ruled out as a suspect.
Detectives also had to consider the possibility that Jennifer’s disappearance was connected to another unsolved case in the area – the abduction and murder of Ardeth Wood just two years earlier. The community was still on edge, and this could push them into a panic. They had to find Jennifer soon.
Police set up a command station at Barrhaven United Church, just a few blocks from where Jennifer had disappeared and along the route she would have traveled. For days, hundreds of volunteers worked in a grid pattern, searching every nook and cranny for any sign of Jennifer. K-9 teams searched the ground while helicopters used infrared technology to search from above.
A few days into the search, police got a tip. A woman whose house backed up against Jockvale Road said she had heard screaming around 1:30am on September 8th, right around the same time Jennifer would have been walking home. The woman said the scream sounded like someone was scared, it was loud and high-pitched. She looked outside but didn’t see anything, so she figured it was just a couple having a fight. She didn’t call the police until she saw Jennifer’s face in the news. Detectives were able to corroborate her story with another neighbor who also heard screams that night. Was this proof that someone had grabbed Jennifer as she walked home?
On September 15th, Ottawa Police Chief Vince Bevan told reporters that after a week of searching and knocking on doors, following up on hundreds of tips, they had not found any trace of Jennifer Teague, nothing concrete that could lead them to her. However, he reiterated his department’s commitment to finding Jennifer and encouraged the public to keep calling in with tips.
At the same press conference, Jennifer’s father Ed made his own plea. “Somebody knows where she is. If you are a friend, thinking you are helping her, please get on the phone and call police. If you are someone who has taken her, please reach deep into your heart and let her go.”
Teams continued to search, expanding the grid. Police officers knocked on nearly every door in Barrhaven, asking residents for permission to search their homes. Time was of the essence, and there was no way they could have gotten search warrants for every part of Barrhaven. They were asking the community to step up and help, and help they did. Nearly every home they came to allowed them to search – everyone wanted to find Jennifer.
Unfortunately, nothing came of the neighborhood canvass, and Jennifer’s family was starting to lose hope. How could she have vanished into thin air, leaving no trace behind her?
Then, on September 18th, an off-duty police officer made a horrible discovery. While walking with his family on the Lime Kiln Hiking Trail, the officer was struck by the distinctive odor of decomposition. He ventured off the trail a short way and found the remains of a person lying face down, covered in leaves and brush. The body was too damaged by the elements to even tell whether it was a man or a woman. The officer called it in, and before long, the trailhead was swarming with crime scene investigators.
Right away, there was speculation that the remains could belong to Jennifer Teague. The trail was only 5 kilometers from where she had last been seen. But lead detective Greg Brown didn’t want to reveal too much to the media, especially before they could positively identify the body. He asked investigators at the scene to set up a tent across the road from the trailhead parking lot, to act as a decoy. If the media reported it in the way he suspected they would, only the killer would know the true location.
Using dental records, investigators were able to identify the remains as 18-year-old Jennifer Teague. Her body was sent to a forensic crime lab in Toronto for analysis, but the advanced state of decomposition made testing difficult, and an autopsy was inconclusive. After collecting what evidence was available, Jennifer’s body was released to her family.
On October 1st, hundreds of mourners gathered at Cedarview Alliance Church in Ottawa to say goodbye to Jennifer. Her father Ed spoke during the service, thanking the community for their support and sharing some memories of his daughter. “When she came into this world she made it a wonderful place.”
Although Jennifer had been found and laid to rest, the investigation was far from over. Staff Sgt. Monique Ackland told the Ottawa Citizen, “We are working on getting the evidence we need to lead us to who committed this murder. The focus is on finding any clue as to who is responsible.”
Of course, finding Jennifer’s killer wouldn’t be easy. Detectives had to sift through every clue, every new and old piece of information that came their way. Chief Bevan told a Barrhaven citizen’s panel that two different people had claimed to be the murderer in the days after Jennifer’s body was discovered, but they were simply seeking notoriety and were quickly discredited.
Months passed, and the steady flow of tips became a trickle. Then, in April of 2006, Ottawa Police released a sketch of a possible suspect. Chief Bevan told reporters that a credible witness recalled seeing a man standing near the Lime Kiln Trail parking lot in the early morning hours of September 8th. The passerby had shined their headlights on the man and got a good look at his face, describing him as tall and thin, between the ages of 18 to 30. The sketch generated more tips, but nothing panned out. Even Jennifer’s friends and family members agreed that the sketch looked generic and didn’t remind them of anyone they knew.
In late May, police tried a new tactic, releasing 24 photos taken from the surveillance footage at Mac’s Milk on the night Jennifer disappeared. The blurry photos were of potential witnesses that detectives wanted to speak to, and they were eventually able to track down quite a few of those individuals. But no one recalled seeing anything suspicious that night. It was another dead end for investigators, or so they thought.
On June 9th, police got a call regarding a young man running naked down Fallowfield Road. The man was acting erratically, screaming over and over, “I killed Jennifer Teague!” He was taken to the local hospital and checked into the psychiatric ward, where it was discovered that he had gotten high after ingesting a large amount of magic mushrooms. Under the influence of the psychedelics, the man told officers multiple times that he had killed Jennifer, but when he was released from the hospital a week later, his mind clear, he denied any connection to Jennifer’s case.
Kevin Davis, a 24-year-old pizza maker from Barrhaven, told detectives that he had been at a friend’s house playing video games the night Jennifer disappeared. Unfortunately, his friend had recently been in a car accident and suffered from a traumatic brain injury; he didn’t remember anything about that night and couldn’t corroborate Kevin’s story.
But here’s the twist – this wasn’t the first time detectives had spoken to Kevin Davis. Back in September, just two days after Jennifer disappeared, they had knocked on his door as a part of the neighborhood canvassing effort. At that time, Kevin told detectives that he’d been at home that night. His mother had been sleeping in the next room, and she confirmed that he hadn’t left the house. But after Jennifer’s body was found, police received an anonymous tip that mentioned Kevin Davis by name. Now here he was, a week after his drug-induced confession, telling them he had no connection to Jennifer.
Detectives didn’t have enough to make an arrest, but Kevin Davis didn’t know that. Over the next two weeks, he grew increasingly paranoid, worried that police were hiding around every corner. On one occasion, Kevin angrily confronted a co-worker at the pizza shop, demanding that they lift up their shirt and prove they weren’t wearing a wire.
Finally, Kevin couldn’t take it anymore. On June 26th, he walked out of his house and approached one of his neighbors. He told them that he needed help and that they should call the police. He had killed Jennifer Teague. Then, Kevin walked to a nearby store, found an off-duty police officer, and turned himself in.
At the police station, detectives made sure to do everything by the book. After confirming that Kevin was not under the influence, they read him his rights multiple times and videotaped the entire interview. Detective Brown told the Ottawa Citizen that his strategy was just to keep Kevin talking.
And talk he did. Kevin told Detective Brown about his anger and hatred towards women, how he had always felt rejected by them. In the days prior to Jennifer’s murder, he had been going out at night, driving his mom’s car around Barrhaven, looking for a woman to rape and kill. He didn’t care who it was, as long as she was young and vulnerable, someone who would be easy to control. He was prepared for a struggle, having put together a kit with a knife, ropes, and a gag, but he didn’t want to draw attention to himself.
In the early morning hours of September 8, 2005, Kevin Davis staked out the Mac’s Milk convenience store, parking his car in the darkness where it couldn’t be seen by surveillance cameras. He watched as three young women talked and laughed, carefree and unbothered. When they hugged goodbye and went their separate ways, he watched to see which one would take the most unguarded route. His victim would be Jennifer Teague.
Although Jockvale Road was well-lit with nice sidewalks, there were a few spots of darkness that provided Kevin the cover he needed. When Jennifer walked by, he grabbed her and threw her into his car. He then drove her to his house, which was just a few hundred feet from the convenience store. In his bedroom, with his mother asleep on the other side of the wall, Kevin attempted to sexually assault Jennifer while she begged him to stop, saying that she had to go home or her mom would be worried. For whatever reason, Kevin was unable to carry out the rape, instead strangling Jennifer until she was dead. He then drove her body to the woods and left her there.
After his confession, Detective Brown took Kevin to the Lime Kiln trail and asked him to point out where he had dumped Jennifer’s body. Kevin walked directly to the spot, somewhere only the killer would know.
Kevin Davis was arrested and charged with first-degree murder. In jail, he tried to recant his confession again, but it didn’t work this time. When his case finally went to trial in January of 2008, Kevin pleaded guilty and was sentenced to life in prison with no chance of parole for at least 25 years.
In court, Jennifer’s family and friends gave victim impact statements while Kevin Davis stared blankly ahead, not a hint of remorse on his face. Ed Teague later told reporters, “Never once did he really look me in the eye, nor did I at any time really see any flicker of emotion on his face… There were police officers in the court who were crying. The Crown prosecutor was in tears. The judge was visibly touched. But where was his emotion? That’s a cold person.”
In spite of this, the Teague family was grateful that they had been spared the trauma of a lengthy trial. They would never get Jennifer back, but they could finally start to heal.
In the years since Jennifer’s death, her family has worked hard to honor her memory and help other families who are dealing with losing a loved one to violence. In 2015, Ed and his wife Sylvie published a book about their experience, wanting to share their story and help others heal. They have also advocated for victims’ rights in the public sphere, everything from speaking at conferences to proposing legislation. As Sylvie told CTV, “We survived. We are actually survivors and not just victims of crime… Our greatest desire [is] to help people find hope beyond their circumstance.”