Spotlight on kidnapped teen
- From: The Daily Telegraph
- December 08, 2007
Jessica Beth SMALL
| Name: | SMALL Jessica Beth | Sex: | Female |
| Year of Birth: | 1982 | Age Now: | 28 |
| At Time of Disappearance | |||||
| Age: | 15 | Height (cm): | 172.0 | Build: | Medium |
| Hair Colour: | Blonde | Eye Colour: | Blue | Complexion: | Fair |
| Nationality: | Racial Appearance: | Caucasian | |||
| Circumstances |
| Jessica was last seen in the Kelso area on 26 October 1997 |
Posted - ABC
Detectives from the New South Wales unsolved homicide team have released new information about the disappearance of Bathurst teenager, Jessica Small, 12 years ago.
The 15-year-old was last seen in the Bathurst CBD, in the state's central west, in the early hours of October 26, 1997 when she and a friend got into a car driven by an unknown male.
Police believe the pair were assaulted.
The friend managed to escape but Jessica was never seen again.
The head of Strike Force Carica II, Detective Sergeant Peter Smith, says new information about the car was received after witnesses were re-interviewed.
"The motor vehicle was a light coloured VK Holden Commodore with an orange blanket on the back parcel shelf and a number of holes on the front passenger footwell," he said.
"That's very significant information and we believe it's a very particular vehicle and those particular descriptions should jog somebody's memory."
He says even a small piece of new information can provide significant leads.
"The holes in the passenger footwell combined with an orange blanket on the rear and a VK Holden Commodore, I think someone would remember that car," he said.
"The holes have been described as not big enough to put your foot through but big enough to see the road through, so I think it would stick in someone's mind if they've been in that vehicle."
A coronial inquiry into Jessica Small's disappearance is due to be conducted, possibly next year.
Jessica Small was kidnapped at 12.40am on October 26, 1997, after she and friend Vanessa Conlon accepted a ride from Bathurst to nearby Kelso to visit friends.
She was the fourth young female hitch-hiker to be killed over an eight week period that year with Lee Ellen Stace, 16 and Lauren Barry, 15, and Nichole Collins, 16, all vanishing.
Jessica's mother Ricki yesterday welcomed the renewed interest by police but remains bitter at what she says has been a lack of information on the case's progress.
"We haven't been told a lot over the years," she said.
"The new strikeforce might bring something but not before time.
"We've been sick of waiting for it to come.
"We've been on the backburner long enough."
A police spokeswoman said the force had always taken the investigation of Jessica's kidnapping seriously.
"We've got the resources of the Chifley command and Homicide devoted to this case," she said.
However, she would not reveal any new lines the investigaion may follow.
Strikeforce Carica is understood to be reviewing all of the material gathered by Bathurst detectives since Jessica's kidnapping.
The case was re-opened in October after Deputy State Coroner Carl Milovanovich requested the police make further inquiries before the matter went to an inquest.
Mrs Small said she had been told there was a hope advances in DNA technology could help the case.
"I didn't even know they had anything that related to Jessica's DNA," she said.
Bathurst Police have spent years trying to track the kidnapper who Jessica's friend, Vanessa, managed to escape.
The pair had been playing the juke box and chatting with friends at the Amuse-Me games parlour in Bathurst when they decided to visit friends in Kelso about 12.40am.
A man, driving what police believed to be a white sedan similar to a VK or VL Commodore, offered the girls a lift.
About 100m short of their friend's house the man stopped and assulted both of them.
Vanessa broke free and ran to a house to raise the alarm but Jessica was never seen again.
It had been just a five minute drive with a man neither of the girls had ever seen in Bathurst.
The night of Jessica's kidnapping remains etched forever in her mother's mind as the night she lost her baby.
"I'm like every mother. I love my daughter," Mrs Small said.
"We'd like to know where she is, where she might be buried and we'd like to know who killed her.
"We grieve for her everyday.
"There's no closure, it's there every day and every night; and they (nights) are the longest."
