Janet Rose Shirar:1980, Kokomo, Indiana

   

  Janet Shirar was born on March 10th, 1951 to Elma Rose Marquis Shirar (later Fitch) and Richard Shirar. She had a brother named Steve and a sister named Kathy. The family lived near Converse, Indiana which is just a short drive east of Kokomo. 

   Janet was a graduate of Oak Hill High School in 1969. 

   She went on to college at Indiana University-Kokomo and did her senior year in Bloomington, Indiana. She worked first as a teacher in Aurora, Illinois. That’s a rural suburb of Chicago. She was a teacher of special needs students. 

  Her parents had divorced and each had remarried by 1980. 

  Janet Shirar was teaching in 1980 at Bon Air Elementary in Kokomo, Indiana. She had only recently moved back to Indiana. Aurora and the surrounding area had seen a lot of unsolved murders of young women. Now we know that serial killer, Bruce Lindahl, was responsible for many murders of young women there. On April 4th, 1981, he would accidentally stab himself in the thigh while murdering a male victim. Did Janet move back to a smaller town closer to home to get away from all the violent crime in the Chicago area?

  Janet was now 29 in the Spring of 1980 and living in a small apartment building east of Kokomo on Hardbeck Road. She lived in apartment number 11. 

  On May 18th, 1980, Mt. St. Helen’s erupted in Washington State. An ash cloud drifted across the United States in the following days and ash fell like snow even in Indiana. That story dominated the news that week.

  On Friday evening May 23rd, 1980, a female friend visited her at her apartment. That friend left late Friday evening. 

  It is believed that Janet was killed in the early morning hours of Saturday, May 24th, 1980. 

  Janet Shirar was found in her apartment on Sunday May 25th, 1980 by a family member. Janet had been stabbed to death by a knife from her own kitchen. She sustained approximately 10 stab wounds. One of those wounds severed her subclavian vein just below her collar bone and she bled to death. 

 There were no signs of forced entry. Her clothes were folded neatly in the closet. Janet was found in the bathroom but there was blood in the bedroom as well. Investigators believed the attack began there. 

  Who did this? 

  Investigators focused on her friends. They thought that because Janet had not been raped that the perpetrator could be a woman. (I imagine that because Janet was unmarried and 29, they made assumptions about her sexuality.) 

  

  Not all male murderers who intend to rape a victim actually complete that intention. A man might have entered her apartment, using a pass key or through a window or other access point and threatened her life with a knife. Perhaps he forced her to undress and fold the clothes. He might have been excited by her fear.  Perhaps she was complying with those requests but begging him not to harm her. Maybe she tried to scream or run and he stabbed her as she tried to get to the bathroom to lock herself in. He followed her in and kept stabbing. Now, with so much blood everywhere he was probably just eager to get away. 

  How do we know that the neatly folded clothes were the last things she wore? What if the killer took her nightgown and underwear with him? 

  Just because a sexual assault was not committed doesn’t mean that this was not a sexually motivated crime. 

  The knife was left behind near Janet’s body. Did the killer cut himself while stabbing Janet?  There are about ten chances that he did and that he left some DNA on that knife. Also, if it was a wood handled knife there is the potential for DNA to be left in the places where the handle attaches to the knife. I remember popular knives of that era with rivets holding two wooden sides on the metal center knife piece. 

  Who could have done this? 

  Some fingerprints were lifted from the apartment but have yielded nothing yet. 

  (It is not Robert L. Avery Sr. He was already in jail for the murder of Mandy Lewellen in Kokomo in 1978.)

  Who were her neighbors then? A lot of apartment buildings of that era had a shared attic space. You could use a ladder to get into your attic and walk down the length of the building to the attic access of another apartment. 

  I know of at least one murder where the killer gained access to the apartment of a victim that way. 

  A friend of mine lived in one of those older type apartments quite recently and I advised that friend to fill her hall closet full of boxes of breakable and noisy stuff. She did that one day after she heard footsteps in the attic one night over her bedroom. She was in an upstairs unit. I don’t know if Janet’s apartment was upstairs or downstairs. 

  If I were investigating this case I would look at her neighbors and anyone who did work at the apartment complex. 

  Was there a handyman? Had the place recently had any work done? Did anyone suspicious live in the other units? 

  Janet Shirar was greatly missed by her students, her friends and her family. She had a long career ahead of her. Imagine how many students she might have helped. She might have married and had children. She might have done a lot of things. 

   Rest in peace, Janet. 

If you have a tip that can help solve Janet’s case please call the Kokomo Police Department at (765) 457-1105.