The Case of The Skeleton Left On The Porch

by Kirk Mitchell of The Denver Post, 5/8/2011

The skeleton of a woman last seen staying in an apartment with Jon Harrington was stuffed in a Rubbermaid container sealed with duct tape.

The container was found among belongings he left on the back porch of an Aurora home in 2005. He told police the box in which Carolyn Jansen's bones were found was his, though he said he hadn't seen her since 2002 and didn't know what happened to her.

But while Harrington was briefly arrested for investigation of murder, he has never been charged with the crime — and denies any role in her death. Jansen's murder officially remains unsolved — if it was a murder at all.

The case has exposed a deep disagreement among Arapahoe prosecutors, Aurora police and the county's coroner. The coroner said he believes Jansen's death was murder and police officers think there is enough evidence to make a case against Harrington.

But Arapahoe prosecutors say there is a chance Jansen died accidentally, perhaps during a drunken fall. They offer no hypothesis for how her bones came to be sealed in Harrington's Rubbermaid box.

"It's pretty doggone suspicious, but maybe he's covering up for a friend," said Chief Deputy District Attorney Daniel Plattner. "A gut hunch that he's probably the guy is not enough to try him on. You have to have proof beyond a reasonable doubt."

His position on the case aggravates the Arapahoe coroner, who has declared the cause of death a homicide, not an accident.

"I never knew it was the DA's job to determine cause and manner of death. The idea about this being possibly an accidental fall — I suppose there is a remote possibility of that," Dr. Michael Dobersen said. "The only problem is . . . why does she disappear in this suspicious manner?"

Aurora police determined that substantial circumstantial evidence pointed to Harrington, Detective Shannon Youngquist-Lucy said.

"We felt it was strong enough to make an arrest," Sgt. Scott Pendleton said.

But Aurora police also never searched the apartment where the alleged killing took place, which was in Adams County, not Arapahoe County where the murder charge was filed. Even though Jansen's body was not found until three years after she disappeared, a search of the apartment where she lived with Harrington may still have yielded evidence.

"I am very surprised they did not do a crime-scene investigation," former FBI profiler Pete Klismet said. Aurora Police Department officials declined to say why the apartment was not searched.

Harrington, now working out of a temporary labor company in east Denver, said recently that he doesn't really recall what happened to Jansen.

"I don't remember that much," Harrington said. "She just didn't show up some day. I never saw her again."

That Harrington is free is agonizing to a woman who searched for years for her birth mother, only to learn she was kept in a box like a forgotten souvenir.

"It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out he was concealing this body for a reason," said Victoria Baker of Racine, Ohio.

Baker, who is legally blind, has no memory of her birth mother. Jansen signed papers she thought would get Baker subsidized medical care, only to learn they were adoption papers, Baker said.

When Baker turned 31, she hired an Arizona private investigator
to find her mother. That was in 2001, the same year Jansen began working with Harrington at a Waffle House near 33rd Avenue and Peoria Street.

Richard Johnson, who was a friend of Harrington's, helped Jansen move her furniture into Harrington's apartment in late 2001. Harrington said they roomed together to save expenses, not because they had a relationship.

In February 2002, Jansen quit her Waffle House job when she was moved to an overnight shift. Harrington told Johnson that Jansen stole his rent money and left. He asked if he could store his things at Johnson's house after getting evicted, Johnson said.

Johnson said he helped Harrington move, but noticed that lots of Jansen's possessions, including her furniture, were still in Harrington's apartment despite his declaration that she had moved out.

Johnson recalled helping Harrington carry a large, heavy white Rubbermaid container sealed with duct tape through the apartment window. Harrington said he had work boots and quilts in the container.

They moved Harrington's things to Johnson's back porch, stacking boxes on his plastic container. Harrington later moved into Johnson's house with the agreement he perform home-health duties for his elderly mother, Bernice, and him. Johnson suffers from multiple sclerosis.

About 18 months after Harrington moved in with the Johnsons, he vanished one day in 2004. Aurora police arrested Harrington on suspicion of theft and forgery in June 2004. Johnson said he began noticing a foul odor coming from the back of his house but assumed it was caused by cats.

On June 28, 2005, when he was moving Harrington's things into a locked storage shed, he lifted the boxes off the Rubbermaid container and there was an overpowering smell. The lid was cracked. A blanket inside the container was teeming with insects. He saw a skeletonized foot and long brown hair.

"As soon as I saw the hair, the reaction in my mind was: 'Oh, my God, it's Carolyn,' " Johnson said. He called police.

Dobersen's autopsy determined Jansen died of a "blunt impact injury to the head." She had a 1 3/4-inch crack on her forehead over her left eye.

"This is about as suspicious as it gets," Dobersen said. He said it would require considerable force to cause a crack in the skull like Jansen sustained, making it unlikely that it was an accident.

Over the years, DA Plattner said Aurora police presented the case twice for charges and both times the most senior prosecutors reached the same conclusion. He said he not only has a right but a responsibility to disagree with the coroner or police on charging decisions when warranted.

"No matter how much our hearts go out to the victims we can't sacrifice our ethics," Plattner said.

Plattner's decision not to file also mentioned that if Jansen was murdered, it happened in Adams County. Harrington's apartment was a half block inside Adams County. He said he could have still filed the case in Arapahoe County, where the body was found, if evidence justified that, but, in his view, it didn't.

When contacted recently on Colfax Avenue, Harrington said about a week after Jansen left his house, someone from work told him they saw her at a bar. It was an alibi similar to one he had given to police.

He said he had his own theories about who put Jansen in the container, but he would keep them to himself. It wasn't him. Although he told police the container would have his fingerprints on it because it was his, he told a reporter that police never showed him the container, so he isn't sure.

Baker, who found her mother too late, said she hoped the investigation would continue.

"It's quite a twisted tale," Baker said. "I don't know why there is a lack of interest in this case."