TBO.com - TBO is Tampa Bay Online

Slain Teen's Case Revisited

ADVERTISEMENT

By VALERIE KALFRIN

vkalfrin@tampatrib.com

Published: February 23, 2009

TAMPA - Jessie LaDon Albach has been like a ghost haunting her family.

A brother who was supposed to take her to a ballgame the night the 15-year-old vanished can't shake the knowledge that he never found her. Denise Yand, the sister she was to visit that summer, sees traces of her in the long hair and the walk of passers-by.

"Not long ago I saw a girl in the mall who looked like her," said Yand, 47, of Defuniak Springs. "I had to chase her down to make sure it wasn't her. I made a fool of myself doing that."

After more than 20 years, Tampa police are investigating whether Wayne Tompkins, executed Feb. 11 in the murder of Jessie's friend Lisa DeCarr, killed Jessie too. Both girls vanished three months apart in 1983 and were found strangled a year later.
Yand said she and her siblings are grateful for the renewed attention. Police said years ago they didn't have enough evidence to charge Tompkins and ever since, the family has felt like Jessie was ignored.

"We need peace in this family," Yand said.

To them, Tompkins' execution is irrelevant. "We're not looking at this for him," she said. "I want acknowledgment for Jessie. No baby sister deserved that."

Tampa police Detective Eric Houston, who specializes in cold cases, said last week that he wants to obtain justice for the family. He is resubmitting evidence for DNA testing and looking for witnesses.

The detective said he tried to re-examine the case a few years ago but held off because of Tompkins' pending appeals, many of which mentioned Jessie. Tompkins' attorneys had accused prosecutors of withholding possibly favorable evidence regarding Lisa's slaying from police reports about Jessie's disappearance, such as a rumor the girls might have run away from Seminole Heights and East Tampa to Hyde Park. The Florida Supreme Court concluded those reports only made general statements about the girls' friendship.

The youngest of nine children, Jessie preferred to be called by her middle name, LaDon. She was shy, not apt to be blunt. "She had a sweet disposition about herself," Yand said.

Lisa's mother, Barbara Williams, remembered Jessie as being like a sister to her daughter, trading clothes because they were about the same height and shape.

Jessie and Lisa became friends living in a Tampa mobile home park. The girls stayed close after Lisa's family and Tompkins, who was Williams' boyfriend at the time, moved to Southeast Seminole Heights.

Tompkins also knew Jessie's mother, who died in 2005, and worked with one of Jessie's brothers, Yand said.

Lisa disappeared in March 1983. Tompkins told Williams she had run away, according to Williams and police.

That June, Jessie was looking forward to spending the summer in North Florida with Yand, who was having a difficult pregnancy. She never made the trip.

On June 7, 1983, Jessie went off to cancel plans with a friend so she could go to a nearby softball game with her brother. "My brother was supposed to pick her up and take her to the ballgame," Yand said. "She never returned home."

Yand, who was 21 when Jessie vanished, said her sister's disappearance caused a flood of tips from people who claimed to have seen the girl. "I watched my grandparents, parents and brothers go from place to place with these coldhearted people saying they'd seen her. They'd go there and look and look and nothing would come of it."

In May 1984, Jessie's strangled body was found under debris in a vacant lot in the 5000 block of North 43rd Street, police said. A month later, Lisa's body turned up buried under her family's former home in Southeast Seminole Heights.

Testimony from a jailhouse informant was among the evidence used to convict Tompkins of first-degree murder in 1985 in Lisa's death.

"Once Wayne was charged in Lisa DeCarr's murder, that was the last my mom heard of them," Yand said of police. "She Jessie was just pushed to the side."

Williams said last week that she and her family often thought of and prayed for Jessie's family.
Yand said she thinks of Lisa's family too, saddened for their loss but tortured by a lack of resolution for Jessie.

"I'm ecstatic over the fact the DeCarr family has the justice they deserve," she said.

When she learned of Tompkins' execution, she said, "I cried for days."

Reporter Valerie Kalfrin can be reached at (813) 259-7800.

Share this:

Loading Comments...

Email Print

ADVERTISEMENT