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Criminal Records - Most Wanted |
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Profile |
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Name: Gina DeJesus
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Race: Hispanic |
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Age at Disappearance: 14 |
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Age Now: 18 |
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Height: 5''1' |
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Weight: 130-140 lbs. |
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Hair (Color, Description, Facial Hair): Brown
Gina has long, curly, dark-brown hair. |
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Eyes (Color and Correction): Brown
Glasses |
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Other Physical Characteristics: Gina wears glasses, but left them behind when she disappeared.
Gina has a light brown birthmark on her right leg and a second birthmark on the right side of her chest.
Gina's ears are pierced, and she also has a piercing in the cartilage of her right ear. |
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Wanted for :
Missing |
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Location(s) |
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Last Seen : Cleveland, OH
Gina was last seen after she left Wilbur Wright Middle School on Parkhurst Drive in Cleveland, Ohio. She walked with one of her friends, but began walking by herself at the intersection of West 105th Street and Lorain Avenue. Gina disappeared somewhere along Lorain Avenue. |
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Possible Location : Ohio |
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Last Known : Cleveland, OH
Gina lived with her family on the West Side of Cleveland. |
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Traits |
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Gina was very close with her family, and did not spend a lot of time away from home. |
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Gina is right-handed. |
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Case Story |
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Anything But Ordinary |
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It was a typical school day at Wilbur Wright Middle School on Parkhurst Drive in Cleveland, Ohio. Around 2:30 in the afternoon, Gina DeJesus left the school with one of her good friends, Arlene. The two girls began walking down Lorain Avenue, making plans to spend the afternoon together. Arlene needed to call her mom to ask permission to hang out at Gina's house, so Gina gave her 50 cents to make a call from a pay phone.
Arlene's mom told her that she had to come straight home, so the two girls parted ways. Gina began to walk the remaining thirty blocks to her home. Her mother had given her $1.25 that morning so that she could take the bus, but since she had given 50 cents to her friend, she didn't have enough money left to ride the bus. It wasn't out of the ordinary for Gina to walk home from school.
According to Gina's parents, she was usually home by 3:35 when she walked home from school. By 3:45, Gina's mother began to worry. By 5:30 she was very alarmed that her daughter had not made it home yet, and called the police to report her missing. |
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Dead Ends |
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When the police first arrived on the scene, they investigated Gina's disappearance as a runaway child. There was no evidence to support that she had been abducted, and nobody had seen anything out of the ordinary. But according to police, the more they learned about Gina's disappearance, the more suspicious it seemed.
The Cleveland Office of the FBI became involved after two of Gina's friends from school claimed that they had seen a strange man hanging around the school asking for Gina the day before she disappeared. The FBI worked with the girls to develop a composite sketch of the man they had seen.
Police dogs were also used to try and track Gina's scent down Lorain Avenue. The dogs picked up her scent at the payphone she had stopped at with Arlene, and followed her trail down the road for about 100 yards. Then, the trail abruptly went cold and the dogs could find nothing else.
Are Two Disappearances Connected?
Police and FBI looked into the possibility that Gina's mysterious disappearance could be related to the disappearance of another teenage girl almost exactly a year before.
Amanda Berry was 17-years-old when she went missing, and there had been very few leads in her case. When Gina also went missing, almost exactly a year afterwards, and just a few blocks away from where Amanda vanished, officials could not ignore the fact that the cases could be related.
Although no concrete evidence has of yet been discovered to definitively link the two cases, a connection also cannot be completely ruled out. Agents say too many similarities exist that keep them from determining that the cases are unrelated. Both girls were young, attractive teenagers walking home on the same street as it began to get dark. Both girls disappeared without anyone seeing anything, and both cases have had surprisingly few promising leads.
Time Marches On
Months and years passed, with no promising leads about Gina's disappearance. Tips continued to steadily flow in to the FBI, but still there were no answers. Then, in September 2006, the FBI received a tip that they thought could actually lead somewhere. A tipster left information about a registered sex offender who lived on Cleveland's West Side, close to where Gina disappeared.
Agents went to the house to question the man. They did not have a warrant to search the premises, because they had not yet gathered enough evidence. But when authorities asked the man if they could dig up the cement floor of his garage and search through his backyard, he agreed. The FBI was acting on information that Gina's remains could be hidden underneath the garage floor.
Although a thorough search was performed of the garage and the backyard, nothing was found to substantiate the claim that this man had been involved in Gina's disappearance. The FBI concluded that the information they received had been false, and this man was not involved with Gina's case. |
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New Efforts To Find Answers |
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Soon after the third anniversary of Gina's disappearance passed, the FBI released an age-enhanced photograph. The picture shows what Gina would look like at age 17. Agents hope that the release of the picture into the media will help bring some attention back to this case. The more people that are exposed to this picture, the more likely it is that someone will recognize Gina, or maybe remember something important about the day that Gina disappeared. |
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