Jill Behrman case

[unsolved243]

So recently someone mentioned Jill's case on Unsolved Wiki and was stating that they believe that the man convicted of her murder was innocent. For those of you who may not remember, Jill was a freshman at Indiana University who vanished while home from school in May 2000. She had gone on a bike ride and never returned.

Her case was profiled on "Unsolved Mysteries" in 2001, her skeletal remains were found in 2003, and John Myers II was arrested and convicted for murder in 2006.

I looked around and found several websites about him being innocent and various people supporting his innocence. There main supports are that no physical evidence connected him to the crime, and that three other suspects had been questioned in 2002 about the case and one of them confessed (and later recanted).

However, I found several articles on the case and the evidence against him, although circumstantial, seems very strong. Here is a link to his appeal that was denied in 2007:
http://www.in.gov/judiciary/opinions...5300801cjb.pdf

The main evidence that I found:
-He had a van that was identical to a van seen near where Jill was last seen
-Two witnesses noted odd behavior at John's trailer the day Jill vanished (his trailer was covered, which was unusual; his car was a very far distance away from the trailer)
-He had no solid alibi for not only the day of Jill's disappearance, but that entire week as well
-Jill's bicycle was found less than a mile from his home
-The day after Jill vanished he was acting hysterically and talked about leaving town
-He made several bizarre statements to his aunt within the weeks following Jill's disappearance. He said that a girl had been abducted from the area and that he would be blamed for it. He also said "they haven't found her body yet" and assumed that she was dead. he also said that he was afraid of being stopped at a roadblock.
-A month after Jill vanished, John called his grandmother and asked to borrow $200. He said he couldn't go home because of roadblocks and that he was a suspect in Jill's disappearance.
-John's brothers Samuel owned a twelve-gauge shotgun that he stored in his parent's house. Shortly after Jill vanished, Samuel discovered the shotgun was missing. It was later determined that Jill had been killed by a twelve-gauge shotgun.
-Within the next few years, John made various bizarre statements about Jill's disappearance, talking about being questioned and where Jill's bike was, and that the authorities needed to look in different places.
-He told another girlfriend that he was the person that found Jill's bike, which was untrue.
-He told a co-worker that if he ever had to hide a body, he would hide it in a certain area, which ended up being the same area where Jill's remains were found.
-He bet with a family member that Jill would be found in a certain area, which he knew of because he liked to hunt there.
-While in jail on an unrelated charge, John wrote several letters where he said he felt bad about what happened to Jill and gave a list of several places investigators should look for her remains.
-After Jill's remains were found, he told another co-worker that he knew the area that her remains were found in, which were pictured on the front cover of a newspaper. The co-worker said the area did not appear distinctive.
-In 2004, he called his grandmother stating: "Grandma, if you just knew the things I've got on my mind. If the authorities knew it, I'd be in jail for the rest of my life," He also said, "Grandma, I wish I wasn't a bad person. I wish I hadn't done these bad things,"
-When interviewed by police in 2005, John denied that he was "scared" of roadblocks and denied that he had talked to anyone about Jill's disappearance; both statements were obviously false.
-While again in jail on an unrelated charge, John started talking to his cellmate about Jill and then stated if that "bitch wouldn't have said anything, none of this would have happened,"
-Authorities questioned John's ex-girlfriend Casey Goodman and she remembered a bizarre incident in March of 2000. She and John had gotten into an argument and he had drove her to a secluded area where they continued arguing until she got scared and asked her to leave. She remembered the way he took them to the area, and went with police officers to show them the area that John had taken her. When they got there, they found the place was just yards away from where Jill's remains were found.
-Finally, Casey broke up with John the day before Jill disappeared. Prosecutors believe that he was driving and noticed Jill. He abducted her, stripped her naked, to her to the area where she was found, raped her and shot her to death.

Sorry for such a long post, but I believe this shows that there was a pretty strong case against John Myers.
I'm wondering what you all think about the case and whether you think Myers may be innocent or guilty.

[TheCars1986]

John Myers was just released and his conviction was vacated due to ineffective assistance of counsel.

https://www.wthr.com/article/federal...days-retry-him

[TheCars1986]

So apparently the order for his release was reversed back in August, and he is now appealing the reversal.

https://www.idsnews.com/article/2020...ugust-decision

I found this appeal from 2015, which mentions the other three suspects who confessed to Jill's murder.

Sometime in 2002, Wendy Owings confessed to Behrman’s murder,
claiming that she, Alicia Sowders-Evans, and Uriah Clouse struck Behrman with a car on Harrell Road, stabbed her with a knife in her chest and heart, wrapped her body in plastic tied with bungee cords, and disposed of her body in Salt Creek. In September 2002, authorities drained a portion of Salt Creek. They found, among other things, a knife, a bungee cord, and two sheets of plastic. Owings later recanted her confession.

What are the odds that they would find the items from the confession in the place where the person confessing said they would be?!

The evidence against Myers is outlined above by unsolved243. I could be way off here, but I am getting Darrell Wilson/Sherry Eyerly vibes about this one. This was the 2019 decision that ruled that he had ineffective counsel at his trial. Myers repeatedly denied involvement and voluntarily gave his DNA to be tested. During the opening statement, Myers' lawyer made 2 false statements about a bloodhound following a scent to a coworker of Jill's, and that this same coworker was seen arguing with Jill 2 days prior to her disappearance. This was one of the reasons as to why the appellate court granted Myers post conviction relief.

What's interesting is that there were phone records which should phone calls being made from Myers trailer on the date of Jill's disappearance at 9:15 a.m., 9:17 a.m., 9:18 a.m., 10:37 a.m., 10:45 a.m., and 6:48 p.m. A friend of Jill's testified seeing her riding her bike on the morning of her disappearance on Harrell Road, which is south of where Jill lived. This is also the place where Wendy Owings confessed to hitting Jill with her car.

In the segment, Jill's parents said that she hated riding her bike through traffic. Jill and her parents lived south of Bloomington. The prosecution argued at Myers' trial that Jill was riding her bike in a northern route. But she would have had to have rode her bike through traffic and through Bloomington to do so. If she went on a southern route, she wouldn't have to have hit traffic, and this would mean that Myers had an alibi of sorts (because of the phone calls). Plus the distance from Jill's house to the proximity of where Myers lived at the time was roughly an hour and 10 minute bike ride. Jill left her house at around 9:38 a.m. on the morning of her disappearance and was scheduled to work at noon. Meaning that it would have been very close for her to ride her bike close to where Myers lived and be back in time to get ready and go to work. Interestingly enough, the appellate court chose not to rule on this particular aspect of Myers appeal.

The bloodhound tracking was another issue at Myers' trial. His lawyers never never objected to the testimony given that Jill's scent was tracked on the northern route towards Myers' home, nor did they bring up the fact that at the grand jury proceedings, there was testimony given that the bloodhound picked up Jill's scent on the northern and southern routes (which, if she was taking the southern route away from Bloomington, gives Myers an alibi).

Some other quick notes:

-Myers repeatedly told his grandmother (in taped phone calls arranged by police) that he had nothing to do with Jill's disappearance and death.

-Myers' ex-girlfriend's identification of the location where she claims Myers took her 3 months prior to Jill's disappearance and where Jill's remains were ultimately found happened 6 years after the fact.

-What's more damning to Myers, which wasn't brought up at his trial, was that he allegedly battered his ex-girlfriend and kept her locked inside his trailer for 3 days. This is why Myers' lawyers only did a minimal cross examination of her testimony. They did not want these past domestic violence incidents to prejudice the jury.

-The forensic pathologist who testified at Myers' trial about the cause of death of Jill described the case as a "rape homicide". But there was no evidence that Jill was raped.
Only bone fragments and a skull were found. This was another reason why the appeals court overturned the conviction in 2019.

-The defense also spent too much time trying to implicate Jill's coworker, who was completely ruled out as a suspect during the initial investigation because he had a concrete alibi, and did little to push the murder to cover up the accident theory.

Most of the evidence is summed up on page 95 of the 2019 appeal link. It's very interesting. I am not entirely convinced that he would have been convicted had he had better legal representation at his trial.