Murder of Reet Jurvetson

officers at the crime scene. On November 16, 1969, the fully clothed body of a white female was located in a dense bushland off Mulholland Drive in Los Angeles, California by a 15-year-old boy who had been birdwatching. The victim had died of multiple stab wounds—predominantly inflicted to her neck—approximately two days before her body was discovered dumped in the ravine at the side of the drive. A tree branch had prevented her body from rolling fully down the ravine and into a canyon, and her body lay against this branch just 15 ft (5 m) down the ravine. An autopsy conducted the following morning determined that the victim's body had been discovered within 24 to 48 hours of her murder. In total, the victim had been stabbed 157 times in the neck, chest and torso with a common pen knife; some of these wounds had severed her carotid artery. Defensive wounds were also discovered upon her hands. It is also believed she had been transported to the location where her body was discarded in an upright position, and that her murderer was a right-handed individual. Furthermore, the victim had been killed approximately two hours after having eaten a meal. She had also received several silver amalgam fillings in both her upper and lower jaw. Besides these traits, the victim had no other distinctive features, and she had no identification in her possession at the time of her discovery. File:Reet Jurvetson reconstruction.jpg|Early postmortem drawing of Jane Doe 59 File:Jurvetson clothing.jpg|The clothing worn by the decedent File:Jurvetson rings.jpg|Jewelry found upon the body ==Investigation==

Evidence discovered at the crime scene suggested the victim's body had been placed in the back seat of a car, then driven to the disposal location, where her body was dragged out of the car and around the trunk of the vehicle, then rolled down the ravine. Furthermore, on November 21, a pair of Liberty brand glasses belonging to a nearsighted individual were found approximately 50 feet (18 m) from the location where the victim's body had been placed in the ravine, although it remains inconclusive whether these glasses are related to the case. Because several articles of the clothing the victim had worn at the time of her murder had been manufactured outside of America, she was theorized to have been a native of a country such as Spain or Canada, as her boots and jacket were made in these countries, respectively. Other articles of clothing worn by the victim included cut-off shorts from Massachusetts, a leather belt, and a sweater. A buckle on the belt was made of brass and the victim wore two metal rings; one white, and one yellow. The yellow ring contained a red stone, and the white ring bore Native American designs and was manufactured in Mexico. The location of the victim's body and the possibility that she was seen alive in the company of the Manson Family prior to her murder prompted police to suspect their involvement in her murder. Charles Manson was interviewed both before and after the victim's identification but denied any involvement. The Manson Family was also suspected to be involved in the case due to the circumstantial fact the location her body was found was approximately six miles from the site where actress Sharon Tate and four other victims had been murdered just three months previous. ==Identification==

In June 2015, Jurvetson's older sister, Anne, was contacted by friends who had been searching through the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System, and who had noticed a similarity between a contemporary morgue photograph of the then-unidentified woman and Anne Jurvetson's estranged sister. ==Disappearance==

Reet Silvia Jurvetson had departed from her home country of Canada to visit a man named "John" or "Jean" in California in the late summer of 1969. Several weeks after she had arrived (and just two weeks prior to her murder), she wrote a postcard in the Estonian language to her family which described her general satisfaction with her life in Los Angeles, and encouraging her parents to maintain contact with her via correspondence. Another postcard was also sent to her closest friend. These two postcards were the final contact her family and friends ever received from Reet. Despite these setbacks, Reet's sister emphasized the fact that, prior to her being shown the online photographs of her deceased sister, she and her family had never given serious thought to Reet being the victim of a homicide. Persons of interest Following Jurvetson's identification, both her family and cold case detectives named two individuals of significant interest in the case. The first individual is the man with the name "John" or "Jean" with whom Jurvetson had become acquainted when she had worked at a Toronto post office several months prior to her murder. The postcards she had sent to her parents and closest friend on October 31 had informed them she was contented, had decided to stay in California, and that she had found an apartment within a four-storey building named the Paramount Hotel. These postcards would prove to be the final correspondence her family and friends ever received from her. Furthermore, Jurvetson is not known to have established any other close acquaintances throughout the relatively short period of time she had lived in Los Angeles prior to her murder beyond this individual and a likely roommate of his, and neither the man she had traveled to meet, nor his roommate had ever filed a missing person report on Jurvetson. Composite sketches of these individuals were created by the Los Angeles Police Department from descriptions created with the cooperation of a witness from Montreal who had known Jurvetson prior to her departure to California. This individual reiterated to investigators the fact that Reet had met "Jean" while she had worked in Toronto, and also stated she had specifically traveled to California to meet with this individual after his own previous departure from Montreal. Furthermore, witnesses recall this man had a slight French accent. The second individual considered "of interest" to the Los Angeles Police Department in their investigation into Reet Jurvetson's murder is the first suspect's likely roommate: a man with a Beatles-style haircut, possibly also named "Jean", who is known to have informed a close friend of Reet in the spring of 1970 that he and the first suspect had lived with Reet in Los Angeles the previous year. This individual had claimed Reet had left the two men of her own volition; he had also made brief attempts to assure Reet's close friend she (Reet) had not been in any form of danger when she had left the two men, making a statement to the effect of: "Oh yeah, she was with us for a couple of weeks and then she left on her own and everything's fine. She was happy." ==See also==