‘He’ dumped her body in a field

WICHITA, Kan. (KWCH) - It’s an odd phrase, “gut feeling.” A feeling so strong, a person seems to know something even before they can actually know it. It’s a feeling Brenda Jones says she has about the fate of her daughter Cassandra.

“I can’t tell you exactly why. I just feel it in my soul, and my gut, that he knows what happened to her,” Brenda said.

The “he” Brenda speaks about is something she hopes someone reading this story can help investigators bring to justice. But to do that requires learning more about a story that, right now, does not have a happy ending. Cassandra Jones’ story.

“Cassandra was a loving child. She was a very loving child. She loved to give hugs, she loved to give kisses, she loved to dress up,” Brenda explained.

Brenda Jones spoke to 12 News Factfinder by phone from her home in Florida. In addition to describing her as loving, she says her daughter was outgoing, even as a little girl.

“I tried to make her independent because she was an only child, and I knew I couldn’t be around her 24/7 to guard her,” Brenda said.

She would have been there to protect her at every moment of her daughter’s life, but by the time Cassandra was twenty years old, she was more independent than ever...and busy. She was working as a CNA, going to technical school, and hoping to eventually become a lawyer. A dream that ended sometime in December 1998.

Cassandra didn’t visit at Christmas. She didn’t call. She just seemed to vanish. Brenda reported her missing and, not long after, sheriff’s deputies located her car stashed behind a home that has long since been torn down, according to Sgt. Matthew Lynch with the Sedgwick County Sheriff’s Office.

“It (Cassandra’s car) gets impounded in late December ‘98 behind a home on North Estelle and it’s returned to Mom at that point in time. It has some damage to it,” Sgt. Lynch said.

There was still, however, no sign of Cassandra, and no word until March 1999.

“She’s found by somebody that’s out walking in the area of 8300 East 77th Street North,” Sgt. Lynch explained. “Somebody had put her body under the brush or covered her up with brush. She suffered a single gunshot wound to the head.”

“My mother called me and told me that she thought it was my daughter they had found,” Brenda continued. “I went down to the sheriff’s department and they told me...I think my mom just had a gut feeling.”

A gut feeling. The same type of feeling that Brenda says she has about who may be responsible for her daughter’s murder.

“It was my worst nightmare. I just never thought...she didn’t deserve that. No one deserves that. She didn’t deserve that. It was just the worst day of my life. It’s still the worst day of my life,” Brenda said.

After she was discovered on April 1, 1999, authorities worked into the night at the scene, collecting what evidence they could, but still no arrests 24 years after Cassandra was murdered. Hope remains though. Not just with Cassandra’s family, but with the investigators now actively working to find her killer.

“That case is a solvable case,” Sgt. Lynch said. “I think it’s a prosecutable case with just a little bit of information or clarification from somebody.”

Investigators need information from someone who saw Cassandra’s teal green Pontiac Grand Am being hidden behind that house on North Estelle, or someone driving along 8300 East 77th in December 1998 when Cassandra was left in that field...or someone who knows that “he” Brenda has that gut feeling about.

“This absolutely was not a stranger involved in this case that killed her,” Sgt. Lynch said. “This was someone that Cassandra knew.”

“I don’t know. I can’t tell you exactly why. I just feel it in my soul and in my gut that he knows what happened to her,” Brenda said. “She was a good person. He could’ve just left her alone.”

“He” knows, Brenda says, and if someone else knows whom “he” is...this is what she wants to say to that person.

“I would say to them, ‘put yourself in my shoes. Think about your child.’ That was my only child. She didn’t deserve that.

If you think you may have information about the murder of Cassandra Jones, please call Sedgwick County investigators at (316) 660-3799 or Crime Stoppers at (316) 267-2111. Callers can remain anonymous.

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