Father’s pursuit for missing daughter heats up with new evidence in case that’s no longer cold
Nearly two decades after a Florida woman vanished from her apartment building without a trace, authorities have announced a new break that could breathe new life into a formerly cold case.
Jennifer Kesse, 24, vanished from her Orlando condo complex after leaving for work on the morning of Jan. 24, 2006, stumping both state and federal investigators as authorities raced to catch her abductor.
"About an hour and a half into the workday, I received a call from her work," Drew Kesse, Jennifer’s father, told Fox News Digital. "And they said, ‘Hey, Jennifer had a meeting this morning, it’s not like her to show up. Do you know where she is?’"
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Kesse immediately tried to reach his daughter – relying on a family rule that they would always answer each other's calls – but her phone went straight to voicemail.
"I knew something was wrong immediately," Kesse said.
Kesse and his wife, Joyce, quickly made the two-hour drive from their home in Tampa to Orlando, where they found their daughter’s apartment empty with several outfit choices laid out on the bed.
The parents immediately called the Orlando Police Department to report Jennifer missing.
"They looked around her apartment, shrugged their shoulders and said, ‘She had a fight with her boyfriend probably, she’ll be back,’" Kesse said. "They walked out. And that was Jennifer’s last chance."
More than a decade later, the family filed a lawsuit against the City of Orlando, OPD and the mayor’s office, citing a botched investigation into Kesse's disappearance and requesting documents pertaining to the search.
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OPD, the City of Orlando and the mayor's office did not immediately respond to Fox News Digital’s request for comment.
The lawsuit resulted in the first successful request for records involving an ongoing case, with the city handing over 16,000 pages of materials involved in the investigation. Drew Kesse compiled a team of 13 members of law enforcement – including former U.S. Secret Service and FBI agents – to continue advancing the search for his daughter.
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In November 2022, the Florida Department of Law Enforcement (FDLE) took over the case, with any leads into Kesse’s disappearance eventually running cold.
Until last month, when Kesse received a call from FDLE telling him that investigators had obtained new DNA evidence and, using a list compiled by Kesse’s team, narrowed down their persons of interest.
"[FDLE] said that they no longer consider Jennifer’s case cold," Kesse said. "It is active. They are on what they need to do and they truly believe that they are getting somewhere."
FDLE declined Fox News Digital’s request for comment, citing the ongoing investigation.
Kesse credits the break in the case to his own team of investigators and new technology removing previous roadblocks pertaining to evidence.
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The team asked NASA to enhance security footage revealing Jennifer’s car was removed from her apartment complex on the day of her disappearance, reemerging three days later at a separate condo parking lot one mile down the road, with the driver’s face obscured by a nearby gate where the vehicle was found.
"We have film of that [car] being parked," Kesse told Fox News Digital. "A person stays in it for 32 seconds, gets out and walks away."
Kesse hopes the use of artificial intelligence will lead investigators to identify the person of interest.
Additionally, two witnesses previously reported seeing Jennifer and a man fighting while in the front seat of her black Chevy Malibu. Records obtained by the family also indicated the hood of Jennifer’s vehicle was covered with dust from ongoing construction at her condo complex and indicated signs of a struggle.
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"An unidentified person of interest and possible suspect was photographed parking Jennifer Kesse’s vehicle and walking away. The unidentified person was approximately 5-foot-3 to 5-foot-5 and was wearing white clothes similar to a painter or a manual worker," a missing persons flyer from the FDLE says. "Prior to Kesse’s disappearance, she had complained about some construction workers that were working on her apartment complex and were making her uneasy."
For now, the family is anxiously awaiting any new information that could potentially reveal what happened to Jennifer.
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"I want to know where Jennifer is," Kesse said. "Dead or alive."
Anyone with information about Jennifer’s disappearance is encouraged to contact FDLE’s Orlando office at (407) 245-0888 or OROCColdCaseTips@fdle.state.fl.us.
In light of Jennifer’s disappearance, the Florida House of Representatives unanimously passed "The Jennifer Kesse and Tiffany Sessions Missing Persons Act," fundamentally reforming how missing persons reports are investigated in Florida by requiring law enforcement agencies to enact written policies for handling such cases.
"Until authorities finally put [Jennifer’s disappearance] together, hopefully very soon, we’ll keep working," Kesse told Fox News Digital. "We keep moving forward with the authorities, hopefully to bring her home someday."
Fox News Digital's Audrey Conklin contributed to this report.