She went missing in Canada in 1985. She may have been a Florida serial murder victim
DNA firm links human remains to Jeanette Marcotte who was last seen in Sask.
DNA firm links human remains to Jeanette Marcotte who was last seen in Sask.
Feb 3 2026
"It was in January of 1985 when the mixed skeletal remains of two people were discovered in a wooded area of Malabar, Fla., and while one woman was identified through dental records, the identity of the other person remained a mystery for 41 years.
Police now say the mystery bones belonged to Jeanette Marcotte, who was last seen in Saskatchewan in the early 1980s. A DNA firm that assists law enforcement with cold cases announced her identification last week.
1. Jeanette Marcotte
The other bones belonged to Kimberly Walker, whose disappearance was previously investigated for possible links to a suspected serial killer known as the "vampire rapist," and police theorized both she and Marcotte could have been his victims, according to Tod Goodyear, public information officer with the Brevard County Sheriff's Office.
"John [Brennan] Crutchley lived in Malabar. He's known as the vampire rapist. He is a suspected serial killer," Goodyear said in an interview. "He was suspected of just about anyone we found for a while. Now, whether he did it, who knows?"
2. John Crutchley in court.
Goodyear said Crutchley was convicted of rape and kidnapping, but never convicted of a homicide and died in prison 2002.
"There was always a theory that it possibly was Crutchley," Goodyear said. "He was very famous at the time. He's called the vampire rapist because he would drain (victims') blood and drink it."
He said Crutchley was found in possession of identification of missing people that led investigators to believe he may have been involved in unsolved deaths.
Florida Today, a newspaper in Brevard County, reported in 2010 that Walker's driver's licence was found in Crutchley's desk by police, along with those of five other dead women.
Goodyear said investigators were glad they could finally identify Marcotte's remains, and bring some closure to the case, even though the full mystery may never be solved for Marcotte's relatives, whom he couldn't immediately identify.
"Unfortunately we can't give them any of the other particulars that you'd like to give, which is why did it happen, what caused it, and if it was a criminal act, somebody was punished for it," he said.
"We can't give them those answers, but we were able to at least give them some closure as far as that they're not out wondering where that person is."
Sask. RCMP can't find info on case
Othram, the private DNA company that identified Marcotte, said she had gone missing from Vancouver and had reportedly been planning to travel to the city before she disappeared, but it's unknown if she ever made it out west, and to this day it's unknown how she ended up in Florida.
"We don't know why she was here, we still don't know that, and her death is undetermined because as happens a lot with skeletal remains, a lot of times you can't come up with the cause of death," said Goodyear.
Goodyear said the sheriff's office worked with the Florida Department of Law Enforcement and the University of North Texas, and sent a DNA profile to Othram, which developed a forensic genetic genealogy profile that led to Marcotte's identification.
The company said in a statement last week that Marcotte "was last seen in Saskatchewan in 1981 or 1982, three years before her remains were found in Florida."
"Prior to her disappearance, it is reported that Marcotte said she was headed to Vancouver, British Columbia. She was never seen again," the statement said.
The Orlando Sentinel newspaper reported in 1986 that Walker's death was among those being investigated for ties to Crutchley, who lived in Malabar in the mid-1980s.
Walker, the paper reported, was last seen getting into a small, light-coloured car at a convenience store in June 1984, and Crutchley owned a beige Nissan Stanza at the time.
Crutchley was an engineer in Melbourne, Fla., when, in 1985, he picked up a young hitchhiking California woman, raped her, used surgical instruments to drain some of her blood and then drank it.
She later escaped his home." Source
3. John Crutchley
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"Among the items Leatherow found at Crutchley's home were the handcuffs he used on the rape victim, a handgun, ropes, homemade sex tapes of Crutchley and his wife, dozens of candid photographs of women in public places and a book titled "The Dracula Syndrome."
Crutchley earned the moniker vampire rapist after a teen hitchhiker he picked up escaped his home after being bound and raped for 20 hours. Crutchley had drained and then drank her blood.
While Crutchley was at work at what was then Harris the day after Thanksgiving 1985, the teen escaped through a broken bathroom window and ran away shackled, cuffed and naked. She managed to stop a pickup truck. The driver, Thomas Harper, rescued the girl, bringer her to his nearby house where his wife tended to her and called an ambulance.
She was missing nearly half of her blood.
While Crutchley was at work at what was then Harris the day after Thanksgiving 1985, the teen escaped through a broken bathroom window and ran away shackled, cuffed and naked. She managed to stop a pickup truck. The driver, Thomas Harper, rescued the girl, bringer her to his nearby house where his wife tended to her and called an ambulance.
John Crutchley told agents Leatherow and Thom Fair that the sex had been consensual and insisted that the 19-year-old had wanted to try new things. He said he wanted to tell his side of the story, admitting to drinking her blood and even showing agents the beakers he used.
"John started talking about how he drained the blood into the beakers, he jumped up and got the beakers from underneath the sink and showed us how he drank the blood. I said, 'How did you get into this?'" Leatherow said.
"I'm a vampire," Crutchley said. "I drink of the blood."
Authorities believe he may have killed women in Maryland, Ohio and Washington, D.C., too, before women started vanishing in Brevard County.
Crutchley took a plea deal to kidnapping and rape and served 11 of his 25-year sentence. But a parole violation landed him back in prison where he died from autoerotic asphyxiation." Source
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"On March 30, 2002, Crutchley died in prison. Corrections officials reported on April 2, 2002, that he had been found dead in his cell at the Hardee Correctional Institute with a plastic bag over his head. The cause of death reported was asphyxiation. Subsequent reporting around August 1, 2003, from the Florida Department of Corrections declared that Crutchley died of autoerotic asphyxiation." WIKI
