Kriti Mehrotra
When Jonelle Renee Matthews suddenly disappeared from her Greeley, Colorado, home on December 20, 1984, it honestly left her loved ones, the community, and the entire nation baffled to the core. She was just 12 at the time, really bright, and looking forward to celebrating Christmas, so as explored in NBC’s ‘Dateline: Footsteps in the Snow,’ her family knew she wasn’t a runaway in any form. But alas, not only was her body not discovered until July 24, 2019, but it also took almost four decades for her case to be resolved for good despite the authorities’ best efforts to find answers.
Jonelle Matthews Was Adopted by the Matthews
Jonelle Matthews was born on February 9, 1972, at the Cottage Hospital in Santa Barbara, California, to 13-year-old Terri Vierra, who decided to give her up for adoption. Two months later, it was Gloria and James “Jim” Matthews who subsequently took her under their wings after learning that they could not have any more biological children after their first. The Matthews thus comprised the religious parents, their elder daughter Jennifer Matthews, and their youngest, Jonelle, and they eventually decided to relocate and settle down in the wonderful city of Greenley in Colorado.
The family became a member of the Sunny View Church of the Nazarene there, and they were rather well-known in the community thanks to Jim later becoming the principal of Platte Valley Elementary School. As for Jonelle, she grew up surrounded by affection, kindness, and love, at every turn, which did admittedly make her a little spoiled and bossy, but she was also incredibly bright. In other words, with the addition of her passion for entertainment and her big social group, the Franklin Middle School student was a typical tween by the time December 1984 rolled around.
Jonelle Matthews’ Remains Were Found Nearly 35 Years After She Disappeared From Her Home
Since Jonelle liked to sing, she was a part of her middle school’s choir, which had a Christmas concert at the IntraWest Bank of Denver on the evening of December 20, 1984. However, since her elder sister also had a basketball game at the same time and her mother was not in town, her father dropped her off before going to Jennifer’s game, as planned. So, once the concert was over, she got a ride back home with her friend Deanna Ross and her father, Russ Ross, who dropped her off at around 8:15 pm. They knew for certain that she had made it into her home okay, because they didn’t leave until the tween gave them the signal for it by flicking the lights on and off within moments.
According to reports, at around 8:30 pm, Jonelle also answered the phone and took a message for her father, but by the time he returned an hour later, she was nowhere to be found. Her coat was gone, but her shoes as well as her shawl were still there, near a heater in the family room where she often sat. There was also nothing missing or misplaced from the home. Jim initially waited to ask Jennifer, who came home at 10 pm, if she had seen her sister, and then contacted her friends, but by the time 11 pm rolled around, he knew something was wrong.
That’s when Jim contacted the police to report Jonelle missing, which kicked off an extensive search for her that spanned not just days or weeks but months and years. Yet, despite the officers’ best efforts over the years, they couldn’t give the family any answers until they suddenly got a call from a few construction workers on July 24, 2019. They had been employed to install a pipeline near the intersection of County Roads 34.5 and 49, and while they were digging, they discovered human remains. The full braces still on the teeth and the scattered clothes made it evident to officials that this was Jonelle, and it was later confirmed with DNA analysis. Her subsequent autopsy report listed her cause of death as a gunshot wound straight to the head – the 12-year-old was heinously killed.
Although Investigations Led to 3 Suspects Early On, No Arrests Were Made for Decades
With the circumstances of Jonelle’s disappearances and the statements made by her family, investigators realized early on that foul play was likely involved. They asserted that running away would be extremely uncharacteristic of her, and even if she did plan on doing so, she would have made it a big deal already. Furthermore, Jim claimed that he was sure he had locked the home before they had left, which included closing the garage door, but it was open when he came in. In fact, even Russ Ross told officers that the garage door was open and a light was on inside when he dropped off the 12-year-old. However, there were no signs of forced entry – all that was there was a footprint in the garage, a footprint in the snow in the backyard, and likely more footprints around, but they had been raked. That’s when detectives honed in on Jonelle’s father as well as Russ as possible suspects.
The latter was arguably one of the last people to see her alive, so the hypothesis was that he could have returned to the Matthew residence to harm her after dropping off his own daughter at home. As for Jim, statistically, in such cases of disappearances, a family member is likely involved, and his behavior in the hours and days after the fact was strange at best. As per records, he didn’t raise the alarms about the tween’s vanishing until 2 hours later, seemed rather calm during his police questioning and later search for her, and even failed two polygraph tests. Yet, because of a lack of evidence in either direction, officials made no damning arrests; instead, they simply kept an eye on each individual as a suspect. We should mention that detectives also placed Jonelle’s birth mother under surveillance for a while, thinking she possibly wanted them to reunite after so many years, but she was soon cleared.
Then, in November 1989, another name was brought into the pool of suspects since he was right across from the Matthews home at the time in question. Norris Drake was unemployed and struggling with substance abuse when he visited his mother/Jonelle’s neighbor on the evening of December 20, 1989, before leaving well after 9 pm. He claimed he went straight to a friend’s place, where he had been residing at the time, but the friend’s sister told officials he came back around 2 am. What’s more is that he had allegedly previously told an ex-partner he was attracted to young girls, and he reportedly seemed to know of Jonelle’s disappearance before it even hit the news. He also knew of the raked footprints despite this piece of information never having been released to the public, only to claim he had likely heard it through his mother. Norris maintained his innocence at every step, and the subsequent search of the vehicle he’d been driving at the time as well as his mother’s home also came up empty. Hence, again, owing to a lack of any form of concrete evidence, he was never taken into custody.
Jonelle Matthews’ Killer Was Convicted of His Offenses Against Her in 2022
Although Jonelle’s case had gone cold in the late 1980s, Greenly officials always came back to it in the hopes that fresh eyes would help them bring the missing 12-year-old some justice. She was legally declared dead in 1994, shortly following which even her family moved out of Colorado to move on with their lives while still keeping her memories alive, but they still continued their pursuit. It was in 2019 that new detectives realized a strange name had popped up twice in the initial investigations, only for it to never again be repeated despite their claim they knew information regarding the matter. That’s because this individual, Steven Pankey, had told the original officers he wouldn’t reveal anything until they told him all the details they had and gave him a deal.
Therefore, he was reached out to, only for him to suddenly assert he knew nothing before going on a rant and telling a detective they were looking at the wrong place if they were just focusing on what happened with her that day. Steve was a former Greeley resident who had relocated to Idaho by this point and even unsuccessfully run for governor twice, so that’s where investigators went to question him. He didn’t really agree to be interrogated, but they did manage to arrange an interview with his ex-wife, Angela Hicks, who told them she’d been waiting for a call from them for years. That’s because she had noticed her then-husband’s obsession with Jonelle’s disappearance and had even found a shredded note in his handwriting stating something along the lines of raked footprints in the snow. Hence, worried about what he might have done, she had written a letter to the Greenley Police Department around 1999, but they never received it.
With all this, Jonelle’s body being found, and all the documentation of Steve’s obsession with her vanishing, he was arrested on the charges of her kidnapping and murder on October 13, 2020. After all, he had previously asked “for immunity in exchange for information” regarding her disappearance, had moved away alongside his family in essentially the dead of night after the matter started gaining public traction, and rambled about this case in an unrelated lawsuit he had filed. Furthermore, a search of his devices revealed that he had kept up with the investigations into the matter and had later allegedly even confessed to an inmate while awaiting his second trial. In the end, while his first trial ended in a mistrial owing to a hung jury, his second concluded with him being found guilty of first-degree kidnapping and first-degree murder. He was convicted on October 31, 2022, and later sentenced to 20 years to life in state prison.
Read More: Where is Jonelle Matthews’ Family Now?
