The Murder of Reet Silvia Jurvetson, November 1969

Reet Jurvetson was born on September 23, 1950 in Sweden. She was a Canadian citizen of Estonian descent. In the late summer of 1969 she left her home in Montreal to visit a man named either "John" or "Jean" in California.

Reet Jurvetson. Photo from People magazine.

She had become acquainted with John/Jean while working at a Toronto post office several months before her murder. According to family and detectives, Reet had been "absolutely smitten" by John/Jean, and saved her earnings so she could travel to meet up with John/Jean after he had relocated to CA. According to a witness, John/Jean had been a medical student with a slight French accent.

On Friday, October 31, 1969, Reet wrote a postcard in Estonian to her family, describing her "general satisfaction" with life in LA and encouraging her parents to maintain correspondence with her. She also sent a postcard to her closest friend; these were the final contacts she had with friends or family. She wasn't reported missing because her family assumed she was off being adventurous.

In the postcards, Reet stated that she had decided to stay in California, and that she had found a one-room apartment within a four-story building called either the Paramount Hotel or the Hollywood Executive Apartments. The individual who had lived across the hall from her, named M. Lindhorst, is considered a person of interest in the case, and investigators hope Lindhorst would be able to give more info on John/Jean. Lindhorst lived in apartment 305, while Reet and J/J lived in 306. The address of the apartment building was 5311 Melrose Ave in Hollywood.

The crime scene. Photo accessed here.

At about 3:15pm on Sunday, November 16, 1969, 19-year-old Reet's fully-clothed body was found in a dense bushland off Mulholland Drive in LA by a 15-year-old boy named Trevor Santochi who had been birdwatching. She died of multiple stab wounds, predominantly to her neck, about two days before her body was found, having been dumped in the ravine at the side of the drive. A tree branch had prevented her body from fully rolling the ravine and into a canyon; her body lay against this branch just 15ft down the ravine, parallel to the road. She was found on the south side of Mulholland Drive between Laurel and Coldwater Canyons. She had died 24 to 48 hours earlier, putting her death on Friday, November 14th or Saturday, November 15th, three or four days after Veterans Day.

She was found about 15 ft down a ravine on the side of Mulholland Drive in LA, approx. 0.3mi east of Bowmont Drive in the Hollywood Hills. Crime scene photos show that she was found near a telephone pole. According to the CBC, "When the branch caught her 112-pound body, her right leg was crossed over her left leg at the knee and her left arm was bent behind her back. The palm of that hand was facing up. Her eyes were wide open."

Evidence has led investigators to believe that Reet's body had been put in the back seat of a car and transported to where she was found before being "dragged out and then around the trunk." She was then discarded in an upright position.

Reet Jurvetson. Photo from FindAGrave.

An autopsy was performed on the body at 10am on November 17th. Reet had been stabbed 157 times in the neck, chest, and torso with a "common pen knife." Three stabs were to the chest, two to the abdomen, and some to the hands; the latter were defensive wounds. As the CBC stated, "There were so many stab wounds to the neck that until Dr. Gaston Herrera from the L.A. County Mortuary looked at it closely [during the autopsy], it had been thought it was just one gaping wound, according to the investigators' report."

Some of the stab wounds had severed Reet's carotid artery. She was killed about two hours after having eaten a meal, and she had no drugs or alcohol in her system. There was no evidence of "any form of sexual assault," and she was not the victim of a robbery. It is believed that her killer was right-handed.

On November 21, 1969, a street maintenance worker found a pair of black prescription glasses about 59 ft from where Reet's body had been found five days earlier. According to a note from May 1972, the LAPD consulted with an optometrist and other sources regarding the glasses. It was found that the glasses "appeared to be for a man who was 'very nearsighted.' The prescription was –75 for both eyes 'at 20/30 and 20/40.' The frames were the Liberty brand, available across the U.S. at the time. Retired lead detective Cliff Shepard [...] thinks it's 'very probable' that the glasses are connected [to Reet's] death."

The body was not identified for 47 years, during which she was known as Jane Doe 59. She had dark brown hair and green eyes, and was described as 5’8 to 5’9.5 and 112 to 120 lbs. She was believed to be between 20 and 23 years old, and had vaccination scars on her left arm and left thigh. She had a birthmark on her right buttock as well as a 0.25in horizontal scar beneath her left breast. According to her Wikipedia page, “She had also received several silver amalgam fillings in both her upper and lower jaw.” The body was fully clothed when found: she was wearing a blue jacket, blue denims, and riding boots. She was also wearing multiple rings.

In June 2015, a friend of the Jurvetsons came across photos of Jane Doe 59 while looking through NamUs. The friend noticed a resemblance between Reet and a postmortem photograph of the woman's face, and reached out to Reet's sister Anne. Anne submitted a DNA sample to law enforcement for comparison, and in April 2016 it was formally announced that Jane Doe 59 had been identified as Reet Jurvetson.

Yearbook photo from FindAGrave.

In late 1969, after several weeks with no contact, her parents sent someone to the return address on the postcard, only for them to be told that Reet had vacated the apartment several weeks before. The family then assumed that Reet, who was known to be a free spirit, had went to go explore life. Reet had previously told friends in Toronto and Montreal that she was going to visit her older brother Tonu, his wife Tiiu, and their maternal grandmother Johanna Pats at Tonu's home in Scottsdale, Arizona in November 1969.

The third person of interest in the case, alongside Lindhorst and John/Jean, is J/J's roommate, a man with a mop top, possibly also named "Jean." In spring 1970, this man informed one of Reet's close friends, Gilda Green, in Montreal that he and J/J had lived with Reet in LA the previous year. This roommate claimed that Reet left the two men of her own volition. According to Reet's friend Gilda, she and Reet knew the two Jeans from Montreal.

Jean No. 1, the man whom Gilda ran into in Montreal in spring 1970, was short, in the 5'6 range, and had black hair, blue eyes, and a French accent. Jean No. 2, or John/Jean, was described by Gilda as having brown eyes that were "shaped a bit like musician John Lennon's" and being slim and taller than 5'9. He also had long, fine, brown hair that was feathered back in 1969; Gilda recalled that he looked like Jim Morrison, frontman of The Doors. He was originally from Montreal and had a slight French accent.

Left: A roommate of Reet's, possibly named Jean (aka Jean No. 1). Right: John/Jean, a person of interest who Reet left Montreal to visit (aka Jean No. 2). Photo from the CBC.

Further sketches of John/Jean, the primary POI in Reet's death, released by the LAPD. Photo from the CBC.

For some time there was some speculation that Reet was a possible victim of the Manson Family; this line of thinking was especially popular before Reet had been identified. Investigators interrogated Manson about the girl's death, but he provided no evidence. The LAPD have since "discounted this possibility." The main person of interest in her case is John/Jean.

Reet was found off of Mulholland Drive, just as Rose Tashman and Marina Habe were six and ten months earlier, respectively. Rose, Marina, and Reet were all found in the same two mile stretch of Mulholland Drive within in a period of ten months. All three are older teenagers of European descent who were born outside the US and long, dark hair.

From west to east, locations of: Rose Tashman's body (orange), Marina Habe's body (dark blue heart), Marina Habe's purse (second dark blue heart), and Reet Jurvetson's body (dark blue phone). Created by me using Google Maps.

Reet's murder has been mentioned multiple times in various Zodiac forums and online spaces, often in conjunction with other cases above. This is how I found out about her murder, hence the Connection tag on this event.