Hell and Gone Murder Line: Jill Lyn Euto

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New York Giants. Jo Anne, her husband, Jill's stepfather, and Joanne's sister Jenna lived a few miles away from where Jill lived in her studio apartment at six hundred Saint James Street. The cross street there was North McBride. Though they lived separately, Jill was constantly in touch with her family. Jenna told Dateline that for her big sister, who she described as fiercely independent, getting her own place was a big achievement for her. Jill loved living on her own.

Jill had dropped out of school in the ninth grade, she got her ged and since then had worked hard to support herself, sometimes working two jobs at a time. Jenna told Dateline that surprisingly that day, they were not rooting for a New York team. They wanted Baltimore to win over the Giants, not because they were Baltimore super fans, but more because, Jenna explained, they didn't really like any of the New York teams. They used to live in Colorado,

so their team was the Denver Broncos. Jill didn't drive, she rode the bus, so on that day she was supposed to coordinate with her mother and sister to pick her up while they were running errands that afternoon. The plan they had decided on was that Jenna and jo Anne were going to head to the store, then after they got home. At some point, they were going to pick Jill up from her Syracuse apartment. But when Jenna and jo Anne got home from the grocery store and

called Jill, she never answered the phone. They kept trying, the phone kept ringing, and still there was no response from Jill. Eventually, they started cooking and got ready for the game. The game started at six forty pm. The halftime show came and went, and Jill never showed up and she never called back. At first, Joanne thought something had come up. Maybe Jill had gone to watch the game with a friend, maybe she hadn't had time to call.

They kept watching the game. That year, the Backstreet Boys sang the national anthem. The halftime show acts were Aerosmith and n Sync. By Monday, joe Anne was getting more and more concerned. She and Jenna kept calling. Jill still didn't pick up. Back then, Joanne had a cell phone, but there's no mention of Jill having a cell phone. Her family was calling Jill on her landline in her apartment.

At around nine thirty am, Joanne called Jill's workplace, and that's when Jill's boss told her Jill had not come in that day. At that point, Joanne knew something was very wrong. She called Jenna and went home to pick her up. Together, they went over to Jill's apartment. When they got to James Street, they walked up to Jill's door on the sixth floor. Jill had a dog named Tooch, a French bulldog, and at first her mom told The New Times when they got to the door and knocked,

she didn't hear anything. So for a split second, she felt a moment of relief because she explained, she didn't hear the dog and she didn't think Jill would go anywhere without that dog. But then they heard the dog whining, and that's when Joanne said she and Jenna panicked. They opened the door and went inside. Joanne went in first and immediately picked up the dog. Then she saw Jill's

body on the floor of the living room area. Jenna later said that her mom physically blocked her from trying to get into the apartment after her Jenna said she will never forget the horror she and her mom experienced that day. At some point after she saw her daughter's body, Joanne started screaming and couldn't stop. I'm Catherine Townsend. Over the past eight years of making my true crime podcast, Helen Gone, I've learned there's no such thing as a

small town where murder never happens. I have received hundreds of messages from people all around the country asking for help with an unsolved murder that's affected them, their families, and their communities. If you have a case she'd like me and my team to look into, you can reach out to us at our Helen Gone Murder Line at six seven eight seven four four six one four or five. That's six seven eight seven four four six one four five, or you can send us a message on Instagram at

Helen Gonepod. This is Helen Gone Murder Line. After Joanne found her daughter's body, Jenna ran around the apartment complex and started banging on doors to get help, and then Joanne, who had a cell phone, called nine one one. Syracuse police showed up and began to examine the crime saint. They found Jill in the living room with multiple stab wounds. Her neck had also been slashed. Mary Jumblick, who was the chief medical examiner of Onendeka County, later described the

stab wounds to Dateline. She said, quote, as I recall them in the neck in the chest in the back of her body end quote. Police were able to find a murder weapon, one of Jill's own kitchen knives. In the news footage from WSYR Syracuse that was filmed the day Jill was murdered, you can see Joe Anne being led out onto the street. Jill's French bulldog, Hooch, is

with her, wearing a little pink collar. There was no sign of forced entry, and no locks were broken, and nothing appeared to be missing from the apartment, suggesting that robbery was not the killer's motive. That, plus the fact that the knife came from Jill's kitchen, would seem to suggest that her killer was someone she knew and let

him voluntarily, and that the murder was unplanned. Or maybe she surprised someone by being in the apartment, maybe someone who was planning to break in and rob her, but that seemed much more unlikely given her plans that day. Jill was home. She was planning to have her mom and or her sister pick her up to watch the game.

Neither law enforcement nor her family have ever stated whether or not Jill was sexually assaulted, so we have to pick through the clues in statements from law enforcement and from old news reports to try to see if there was something or someone who police missed. Jill Lynn Utah was born on March twentieth, nineteen eighty two, in Houston, Texas. She had two sisters, Jenna and an older sister named Carrie. Her mom described Jenna and Jill in interviews as best friends.

They were very close, according to her obituary. Jill's father lived in a town in upstate New York, but Joanne has stated he was not involved in Jill's life. Anne did not attend her funeral. For a few years. When the girls were young, Joanne, Jill, and Jenna lived in Colorado's Springs, Colorado, but jo Anne told The New Times back in two thousand and one that she started to get concerned about safety at their schools, where she said

they had metal detectors. She was also bothered by what she called the pro gun culture, so they came back to the area where they were originally from Syracuse, New York. By the time they moved back, Carrie was out of school and living nearby with her husband. Joanne had homeschooled the girls in Colorado, so after they moved back to

New York. Joanne told the newspaper her daughters discovered that if they re enrolled in the school system back in New York when they were in high school, they would actually be held back for two years, so they decided not to stay in school. Instead, they got their GEDs. This suited Jill, who Jenna and joe Anne both described as very independent. Jill immediately started looking for a job. She was soon working at Carousel Center and then at

the shoppingtown Mall. Joanne said Jill wanted to become a paramedic and her big dream was to eventually become a pediatric nurse. So Jill was eighteen years old, working at the mall and living in her own studio. But fight this independence, she stayed very close to her family. Police were processing the crime scene and trying to figure out who could have done this to Jill. They knew Jill had been stabbed multiple times and that the murder weapon came from inside her house. It was a knife from

Jill's kitchen. Police found the knife at the crime scene, but according to media reports, they were not able to pull a DNA profile from that weapon, and unfortunately, police said there wasn't much physical evidence. According to media reports, police found no usable DNA at all. They talked to Jill's neighbors, but no one said they saw or heard anything unusual. No one saw anyone going into that apartment, either with or without Jill, but the fact that it

was Super Bowl Sunday presented its own challenges. Police stated Jill was killed the day before her body was found. Later, it was reported that Jill was killed between around noon and three pm on Sunday, January twenty eighth. Mary Jumblick, the chief medical examiner who spoke to Dateline, stated she believed Jill had known her killer, saying, quote, stabbing is a very intimate form of death, but she added that the evidence, in her opinion, also pointed to an acquaintance

of Jill's being the killer. She said that was due to the fact there was no forced entry. Jill's family last heard from her at eleven am, and at the time there was nothing to suggest that she was in distress. What could have happened after they hung up the phone. From the beginning, police seemed to focus on the theory that Jill knew her attacker. Again, this makes sense given the lack of forest entry and the fact that the knife came from the kitchen. In the beginning, there was

a flurry of activity. They went to Jill's apartment complex and interviewed a lot of people, but apparently no one had heard anything alarming. However, Jill's murder happened on Super Bowl Sunday, which is a day when loud screaming would not have seemed out of place. Captain Richard Walsh of the Syracuse Police Department's Criminal Investigation Division told The Post Standard a year after Jill's murder in two thousand and

two that it was a very tough case. They had no eyewitnesses, no one saw or heard anything weird that day, and Jill's body was not found for twenty four hours. Eventually, the case file turned into one of the biggest cold

case files in the Syracuse area. But Jill's family also wondered if there could be other possibilities that Jill's killer was someone she didn't know, maybe a neighbor or a handyman, or someone with a key or access to her apartment, or someone who had been let into the building by

someone else and ambushed at her door. If Jill didn't know her killer, her family wondered how would the killer have gained access to the apartment buildings and ended up at Jill's door, which led them to take a closer look at the apartment complex where Jill lived, and what they found, according to them, was shocking. They believed that

the apartment complex security system was seriously inadequate. According to the Syracuse Herald Journal, the James apartments had an intercom system, so to give people access to the apartment complex, residents would have to buzz them in. But Jill's mom told the newspaper the building security was a joke, saying, quote,

anybody could get into that building end quote. It seemed that Joanne now believed Jill had not known her attacker, at least according to what she said in this newspaper interview. Joanne said, quote, she must have been caught off guard. She wouldn't hurt a fly. She always was well liked, She helped older people and love kids. She didn't want anything more than to be married and have kids.

pain and suffering of Jill end quote. In the lawsuit, they stated Jill was murdered in the apartment and that the murder investigation remained open and unsolved. It's interesting because this lawsuit got me thinking about court cases where people are murdered inside apartments, especially where women are living alone, because obviously that's something we have a lot of and hear about a lot on this podcast. What are the legal responsibilities of the apartment complex in a case like this?

The New York courts ruled that quote, landlords have a common law duty to take minimal precautions to protect tenants from foreseeable.

negligently maintained entrance. In this case, the building owner and management company. The defendants were able to establish there was no provable history of Buell crime by third parties in the building, and the plainists failed to prove whether the defendants knew or had reason to know from past experience that there was a likelihood of violent conduct on a

part of third persons in the building. Now before and after Jill's murder, there are a lot of online comments in different forums talking about how that apartment complex was unsafe.

Residents said that they felt unsafe, and according to court documents, Joanne and her attorney were able to provide evidence of violent crime in proximity to the building, but they failed to prove whether this ambient crime had quote demonstrably infiltrated the premises end quote, so they were able to prove there was violent crime around the building, but not necessarily that it was in the building, and the owners and building management of the James were able to prove in

court that they did have security. They said the doors into the building had automatic locks and that the key fobs were only given to tenants. They also said there was an intercom system visitors could be buzzed in, and that the apartment doors were secured by a lock with a dead bolt. It locked automatically unless a tenant left it unlocked. Each door also had peep holes so tenants could look out and identify the person who was knocking

on the door. This case made it all the way to the New York Supreme Court, but in the end, the court found that Jill's mother and her attorneys had failed to prove whether her killer had gained access to the premises through a negligently maintained entrance, so they lost their case. The claim was dismissed. The last time that Jill's family talked to her was on game day in the morning, so could the final conversation that Jill had

with her family provide any clues. Jenna said her sister called at around eleven am, and that when Jill called, she said she wanted to talk to their mother, But Jenna said at that point she and Joe Anne were in a rush. They were planning to head to the grocery store before they picked Jill up to grab ingredients for their meal. That day, they were making tacos, which Jenna said was Jill's favorite. Jenna told Dateline, quote, it's one of my biggest regrets. I just wish I would

have let her talk to my mom end quote. After that, Jenna and Joanne both called back several times, but they were never able to find out what it was that Jill wanted that morning. Was it something but now or could Jill have already been dealing with a situation at home. Thinking about that phone call still troubles Jenna. She told Dateline that she was annoyed with her sister at first, which she now hates to admit. She thought maybe her

sister had blown them off and made other plans. It never occurred to her at the time to be scared. This was in the middle of the day on a Sunday. Later, of course, she said that really bothered her that she had ever felt annoyed even for a second, but it's a totally human reaction. The lawsuit against the managers of the James Apartments was dismissed in two thousand and six. In the years since then, the few statements that police have made publicly seemed to indicate that they are once

again focusing on someone Jill knew. One of the police officers, Christopher to Joseph, told news Channel nine WSYR Syracuse in twenty twenty one that he believed Jill knew her killer and had invited the killer into her home. Jill was a young woman, so I'm sure the police asked her family if she was seeing anyone at the time of

her death. We don't know whether or not Jill was dating anyone at that time, but there is an interesting tidbit in one of the old newspaper articles about Jill's candlelight vigil that her family held a few weeks after her murder. The Syracuse Harold Journal wrote about the case in March of two thousand and one. They covered the memorial vigil that Jill's friends and family had on what

would have been Jill's nineteenth birthday. They walked from a nearby church the apartment building where Jill had been murdered. They were holding candles in Jill's favorite color pick. A reporter from the Harold Journal talked to some people at the vigil. One of the people they interviewed was a twenty one year old guy named Mike Stanton. He said he had dated Jill, and he said they had broken up a week before she was murdered. Mike told the newspaper quote, the first time I saw her, I thought

she'd never be interested in me. I can't stop thinking that if we hadn't broken up, I probably could have been there to help. I could have done something end quote. I wonder if the police talked to him or to Jill's other friends, but we don't know. We also don't know what, if any phone activity Jill had on Sunday. Police haven't released that information, and Jill's family has not

commented on it publicly. Another cold case, one that took place almost exactly one year after Jill's murder in January of two thousand and two, was solved after over two decades. Thirty nine year old Catherine Scott was murdered in Utica, about fifty miles away from Syracuse. She was strangled and

left wrapped in plastic under a mattress. The police stated that in this case that one person's name, Jarvis jbo Simpson had come up early in the investigation, but they were unable to make a case against him because they had no witnesses and no definitive confession. This name was never released publicly, but law enforcement had him on their list for years, and it wasn't until after his death

in twenty twenty four that investigators reinterviewed key individuals. They developed information in some leads that led them to believe that Jarvis Simpson was definitely responsible and to close the case. Could Jill's case be on a similar trajectory. Detective Chris to Joseph of the Syracuse Police Department called Case Squad said, quote, in the past few years, there have been some people we've looked at in a different capacity, some names that have come up that were known to the case, and

we're keeping an eye on those. There have been numerous persons of interest who were considered suspects, but for various reasons, it did not lead us down that path to an arrest.

just didn't have enough to test with the previous technology. However, if they're hoping to do a familial DNA SARCH now with the recent change in law, they may be waiting a long time. Between twenty twenty and twenty twenty five, there have been a lot of shifts toward greater privacy in these genealogy databases. In August of twenty twenty five, Ancestry updated their terms of service to explicitly ban use of their services for law enforcement investigations, court proceedings, and

forensic genealogy. This was a huge setback for law enforcement, and ged match has also changed their policies. Now they require people to opt in to consent to their data being used by law enforcement. Over the years, Joanne did a ton of outreach on Jill's case. She became an outspoken advocate for her daughter. She made her life's mission to bring justice in Jill's case. Joanne held vigils, she posted flowers all over town. She covered her house in

pink ribbons. She also teamed up with a local company. They donated billboards, and in August of two thousand and one, Joanne posted billboards in town that read murdered Super Bowl Sunday with a giant photo of Jill. Jo Anne also went on talk shows like Montelle and Sally Jesse Raphael. She gave interviews to Unsolved Mysteries and America's Most wanted

I don't know how many of you remember this. Younger listeners may not, but I grew up watching Montel and I remember for years he had a psychic named Sylvia Brown on the show. She would go on there and tell parents, including jo Anne, her predictions about their loved one's fates, and it was later revealed Sylvia Brown got none of her predictions right, but she was responsible for

preying on the misery of many families. She famously told Amanda Barry's mother in two thousand and four that her dog, who had been kidnapped, was dead, saying bluntly, she's not alive, honey. Amanda Barry was still alive and was found being held captive in a house in twenty thirteen. Amanda later revealed she actually saw that show and it had devastated her at the time. Because she believed that what Sylvia Brown saying that to her mother meant that her mother would

stop looking for her. She told one family their daughter had been sold into sex slavery in Japan, and another one that their loved one was working as an exotic dancer in Hollywood. It was later revealed both young women had been murdered shortly after they disappeared, and they were both dead when Sylvia Brown made these predictions. Sylvia was actually charged, along with her husband at the time, with securities fraud and grand theft in nineteen ninety two. She

pleaded no contest. She ended up being convicted of grand larceny and getting probation. Still, even after all that, for years, Sylvia had a huge following, it just goes to show the links that parents like Joanne went to to try to do anything that they could to get answers. Jo Anne ended up quitting work and going on disability because, according to what her daughter said in interviews, she was unable to function at anything other than searching for her

daughter's killer. Joanne told reporters she spoke with detectives almost daily, sometimes multiple times per day. She devoted her entire existence to figuring out who killed Jill. Joanne said, quote, I promised her I won't stop until her killer is found. I'll be putting those posters out until I die.

that she became the main advocate for Jill. But Jenna told Dateline that, in her opinion, her mom had really died the day that Jill did. She said, quote what she saw killed her like. She couldn't function really after her whole life revolved around Jill and getting justice end quote. In the years since Joanne's death, Jenna has been the one doing most of the media outreach in connection with

her sister's death. She told Dateline she still thinks about the message that she left Jill on the day she died, the one where she was still feeling a little annoyed about Jill not showing up for the game that day. Jenna told Dateline quote, I pray to God like she didn't hear, you know, like yelling at her, you know, to be like, where are you? Why aren't you picking up the phone that haunts me?

that day. Jenna says she believes if her sister were alive, that Jill would be a mom, because that was something that Jill really wanted. One of the biggest questions we keep circling back to is did Jill know her attacker, because if that's the case, someone in her friend group may have information they don't even realize as important. Was there someone close to her who the police could have missed her mom, Joanne, seemed to change her mind about

this several times as the years went on. First she thought it was someone Jill knew, then seemed to shift her attention to the apartment complex, letting someone shady in who randomly targeted Jill. But by twenty sixteen, Jill's uncle, Steve seemed to allude to the fact he believed someone in Jill's friend group had killed her. He told the Post Standard he believed Jill trusted people too easily and that her killer quote took advantage of her trusting nature

end quote. But the bottom line is still no one knows for sure. This year twenty twenty six marks twenty five years since Jill was brutally murdered, and police still

have no suspect and it made no arrests. Police have said they were not able to get a DNA profile off the kitchen knife, the murder weapon, but he is there more testing that could be done, maybe with more sensitive methods that are available in twenty twenty six versus the testing they did in two thousand and one, though Jill's family has indicated they hope DNA may provide answers detected to Joseph has said he believes the key to cracking this case would not be physical evidence, but quote

intimate knowledge of what happened that day end quote. He said, quote Jill knew who her attacker was, she allowed him into her home, and things went horribly wrong.

and this is still an open case. They are going to need someone to come forward in order to solve it. Syracuse Police are still interested in hearing from anyone with information, including anyone who lived in the building at six hundred James Street when Jill lived there. They can be reached at three one five, four four two five two two two. I'm Catherine Townsend. This is Helen Gone Murder Line. Helen Gone Murder Line is a production of School of Humans

and iHeart Podcasts. It's written and narrated by me Catherine Townsend and produced by Etie's Perez Special thanks to Amy Tubbs for a research assistance and James Wheaton for legal review. Noah Camera mixed and scored this episode. Our theme song is by Ben Sale, Executive producers of Virginia Prescott, Brandon Barr, and LC Crowley. Listen to Helen Gone ad free by subscribing to the iHeart True Crime Plus channel on Apple Podcasts.

If you are interested in seeing documents and materials from the case, you can follow the show on Instagram at Helen gonpod. If you have a case you'd like me and my team to look into, you can reach out to us at our Helen Gone Murder Line at six seven eight seven four four six one four five. That's six seven eight seven four four six one four five.