Our card this week is Jeanette Jeviecki, the eight of diamonds from Texas. When 19 year old Jeanette left the little rented house she shared with her husband Matt in Odessa, Texas, on the evening of September 13, 1982, he had every reason to believe that she'd be back in no time. What he couldn't have known was that a silent countdown started the moment she walked out the door and that every passing minute brought him one step closer to a life he never planned, one where he would be left to raise their eleven day old daughter all on his own. I'm Ashley flowers, and this is the deck.

When Matt and Jennette moved to Odessa as newlyweds in the spring of 1981, the plan was never for Jennette to take a job at a gentleman's club. They'd come from Colorado Springs for Matt's job prospects after a friend told him that with the oil industry booming, jobs were a dime a dozen and good, well paying jobs. Neither of them had deep roots in Colorado Springs, and they were both free spirits at heart. So the idea of picking up and moving from the mountains of Colorado to the desert town 600 miles away probably sounded like an adventure, the first of many in their lives together. So when that same friend offered to let them stay with him and his wife while they got on their feet in Odessa, they were sold. They were young and healthy. It's not like they needed much. Matt would be able to find work in no time, and they could settle into this exciting new chapter. But you know the saying, right? Life is what happens while you're busy making plans. It was just as true in 1981 as it is today. And Matt and Jeanette hadn't been in Odessa long when the jobs started drying up.

Here's Matt recalling all of this.

We were in Odessa when all of a sudden the entire oil industry changed. Drilling was shutting down, oil servicing. There were tons of satellite businesses that serviced machinery and stuff like that for the oil wells, and everything was getting shut down. You just couldn't find a job.

By this time, Matt and Jeanette were in their own place. Im going to call their previous hosts, Duane and Betty. And Betty didnt share her husbands enthusiasm for houseguests, and she wasnt subtle about it. So even though they were strapped for cash, they were young and in love and they were happy. They had a roof over their heads, and they had each other. What more could they possibly need? It was an invite to a small, informal party from a neighbor named Danny that kicked off an unexpected new venture for Jeanette. You see, there was another young woman there named Brandi, who worked at a local topless club called the Dolls House. Well, it seemed like Brandi had a feeling that Jennette would be perfect for this place. So after some encouraging girl talk over a few drinks, Brandi challenged her to put on a little show in the privacy of the apartment. And Jeanette was up to the challenge, and she was a natural.

She came out of the bathroom, and she walked over. She stepped up on that table and started dancing, and she danced like an 18 minutes song. Uncut and Brandy walked up and gave her $20. Keep it, honey. You have no idea what kind of money you can make.

The rest, as they say, is history. It only took one appearance at amateur night at the doll's house for Jeanette to be hooked. Hooked on the money, for sure, because Brandi wasn't wrong. It was good money, but even more so on the energy of the crowd. I mean, she came alive on stage. Pretty soon, she was dancing four nights a week under the stage name Cherry, and Matt was her biggest, but far from her only fan. They even developed this little ruse to crack open wallets and get the tips flowing.

I would sit up at the edge of the stage while he was dancing, and I would tipper a $10 bill or a $20 bill, and one of the other guys over there, thinking he was being a little hotter, he tipped her a 20 or a 50, and we kind of turned it into a game. Nobody even suspected I was her husband.

So as 1981 came to a close and ushered in a new year, life was good. Sure, it might not work for everyone. Shakespeare wasn't wrong when he called jealousy a green eyed monster, but it worked for them. Jennette loved to perform and made damn good money doing it. And Matt loved to watch her blossom on stage as she mesmerized the audience.

I would say you could call her, especially around other people where she had their attention. She was effervescent. She loved attention.

Both were secure, knowing that at the end of the night, they'd be going home together. So, yeah, it was an unconventional lifestyle, no doubt, but it was their unconventional lifestyle. And so their plans for their lives in Odessa evolved. Matt's employment opportunities may have become unexpectedly shaky, but Jeanette made enough dancing to at least support them until things turned around. But remember that saying about life? It was about to once again run roughshod over their plans, this time in the most profound, beautiful way.

It was January or February. She came to me, and she said, I have been feeling right. And I took a test, and turns out I'm pregnant. And I was like, woohoo, that's great. And she's like, no, that's not great. I can't dance while I'm pregnant.

This obviously threw a wrench in things, but they both took the unexpected turn in stride. Jeanette wasn't going to quit dancing right away, although they knew the clock was ticking on how much longer they'd be able to keep their little secret to themselves. At some point, she'd start to show and she'd need to step back. But whether it was discipline or genetics or dim lighting or some combination of the three, they were able to keep her pregnancy under wraps longer than they'd expected. According to Matt, it wasn't until late July or early August that the jig was finally up.

We had to start dealing with the idea that he was going to be having a baby here. He went to the bar, owner name was Johnny, and she told him, I'm pregnant. I'd rather work tables than dance now.

And this was fine by Johnny. He had no interest in shouldering the liability of a pregnant performer.

She started waiting tables in August. She waited tables for three and a half weeks, and she went to Johnny and said, I'm going to be having a baby pretty soon, but after I do, I'd like to come back to work. And he said, okay, fine.

So she spent those last few days of August in nesting mode with Matt. But her respite didn't last long. At 07:20 p.m. on September 2, 1982, Nicolette Jean Jeviecki made her world debut, knocking her parents little world of two clear off its axis as they became a family of three. But just nine days later, that happy little world would collapse in on itself, as if pulled under by the crushing gravity of the darkest black hole. Jennette spent the days following Nicolette's birth recovering in bed as she and Matt both fell more and more in love with the tiny houseguest that they didn't invite but now couldn't imagine life without Matt did his best to lighten the load where he could, taking care of as many of the baby duty responsibilities as possible, save for the one that he simply wasn't equipped. Breastfeeding. Before long, Jennette was feeling stronger and spending more time out of bed, and by September 13, she was getting a little stir crazy. So when Matt mentioned that he had errands to run that day and suggested that she and Nicolette tag along, she jumped at the chance to get out for a few hours.

Besides she could hardly wait to show off baby Nicolette. As luck would have it, they ran into some old neighbors while they were out, who, after a few obligatory moments of fawning over Nicolette, invited them to a backyard barbecue that afternoon. It was exactly the kind of low key gathering Jennette needed, and so they accepted the invitation. According to Matt, she, ever the social butterfly, was in her element. By four, though, he could see that she was losing steam. So they said their goodbyes and started to make their way home. But Jennette perked back up a few minutes later when she realized that they'd be driving right past the doll's house. She asked Matt to pull in so she could say hi. He sat in the truck with the baby while she ran inside, and he says, before he knew it, dancers were streaming out of the club and surrounding the truck in a chorus of oohs and ahs.

We went back home. She said, you know, I need to start getting out again. She said, you're great with the baby. Everything's good right now. I want to start at least waiting tables again. Baby was in the bath, cadet in the living room. I was sitting in the recliner watching tv, and he went over to Nicolette and kissed her. They kept her keys out of her purse and kind of blew me a kiss. She said, I'll see you here in a little bit. I'm going to go talk to John. I'll be honest with you. In 42 years, the thing that kills me is I didn't grab her and kiss her and tell her I love you. Of course she walked out the door. If I could go back and do that over again, I sure would.

He didn't know it at the time, but this would mark a sort of dividing line in his life, one of those moments that creates a before and an after. And this is just a personal observation I've made living in these stories for the past six and a half years, but it is one of life's greatest cruelties. I think that its not until were in the after that we even realize there was a before. It isnt a before until its already passed. By the time, you know, to cherish it, its gone. Its not totally clear what time Jeanette left that evening. The OPD case file puts it at around 530, while Matt remembers it being slightly later between seven and 730, whichever is correct. By 830 or nine, he was starting to feel that first twinge of anxiety creep into his chest. Though he was quick to talk himself down, Jeanette had been craving adult time out of the house. Shed made no secret of that. I mean, shed even told him before she left that she was going to have a drink at the dolls house when she got there. Her first in nearly nine months.

Who knows how many friends shed run into? She must have just lost track of time catching up. And his little self pep talk worked for a while, sort of. By midnight, it was becoming more of a mantra, a reality he was trying to manifest. If only he could believe it hard enough. And if youre wondering why he didnt just pack up the baby and go to the dolls house himself, it is a fair question. But there is an equally fair answer. They only had one, his Chevy pickup, and it was with Jeanette. To complicate things even more, they didn't have a phone. So for the time being, Matt was stuck in this place of panicked isolation. A newborn, his only source of emotional support. And by the wee hours of the morning, he had all but abandoned his mantra.

At 230 in the morning, I was sitting there, just staring at the wall, going, something's wrong, something's wrong. When he wasn't home by six in the morning, I bundled Nicolette up, and we walked two and a half blocks up to a payphone. And I tried calling the doll's house first, which, of course, there was no answer. And then I called the Odessa Police Department.

And if you think you know how this call played out, you're probably right. The response he got was as predictable as it was inadequate. But we also gotta remember the time period here, too. We're talking over four decades ago. Things were different, though. That doesn't make it okay.

They said, well, if she was up at the doll's house, don't worry. We know how those kind of girls are. She'll show back up. I slammed the phone down because they didn't know what we were dealing with, how we were trying to get along with our lives, just trying to survive. It wasn't that she was one of those kind of girls. You know what I mean?

This next voice you'll hear belongs to Detective Corporal Lauren Gonzalez. She's the OPD cold case detective working Jeanette's case today. Here's how she summarizes that call.

She had gone to the doll's house to check about a job and said she would be back shortly. She didn't take her purse with her, and she'd left a twelve day old baby at home with her husband. He immediately reported that he feared foul play and that she would have checked on the baby by now. She's never done anything like this before.

Now, keep in mind that Jeanette had been breastfeeding Nicolette exclusively. They didnt even own a baby bottle, much less infant formula. And I understand that whoever took Matts report was operating on limited information, but this feels like such a missed opportunity to me, an invitation to step back and reflect, say, like, hmm, is it possible im making too many assumptions here? For the sake of the argument, lets say Jennette had freaked out as the awesome responsibility of parenthood settled in, and she did just need to let loose. Would she really have left her husband with no transportation and no way to feed their newborn? And Detective Gonzalez totally acknowledges it makes no sense. What exactly happened next is a bit unclear. According to Detective Gonzalez, investigators visited the dolls house two days later on the 16th.

So they go over there and they speak with Joe, the bartender, and he said that he had heard that she was there drinking a beer, but he hadn't seen her for himself.

That's about the extent of what they learned during that visit.

It looks like it wasn't until the 17th that Ebolo was put out with a vehicle description.

That Bolo or be on the lookout was only put out after Matt showed up at the station that day, demanding that they do something. According to Detective Gonzalez, he was back on the 18th.

He gives them some photographs of the victim and also provides first names and phone numbers of a few people that might know about her whereabouts.

What investigators did with this info, if anything, isn't clear. Even through the fog of Jeanette's disappearance, Matt was making the pay painful realization that there was no pause button he could hit while his world fell apart. He had a newborn to keep alive, and that required funds hed already blown. $30 he found in Jeanettes purse on baby supplies. I mean, he was down to his life savings. A gallon sized jug that they used to collect change in. Thankfully, the parents of Matts friend, the one that we refer to as Duane, well, his parents, an older couple, well call Billy and Hollyev. They offered some relief. Billy had a few construction type projects that he could have used a hand on. How about Matt help him out? Which, great, but what about the baby? He couldn't exactly take her to Billy's work sites. Practically before the words could even form in his mouth, though, Holly piped up, saying that she would love to watch Nicolette while he worked with Billy. And so it was then, on September 20, exactly a week into his awful reality, Matt was walking home from Billy and Holly's house with Nicolette lost in a haze.

That showed no sign of lifting. When a guy he knew came out of a Texaco station yelling his name. And what this guy Jeff told him had the potential to change everything.

Jeff came out, and he said, matt, matt, I think a record just went around the corner towing your truck. So I got Nicolette, and I'm running, and the guy was just coming off my front porch, walking back out to his tow truck. And I said, hey, man, that's my truck. He said, well, it was down south at, like, motel tricks or something like that.

It was actually at the Sahara motel, but we'll let Detective Gonzalez take it over from here.

On September 20, Matthew comes to the police department again and tells the detectives that his pickup truck was found parked in front of the Sahara motel. He claimed that approximately $250 worth of stereo equipment and approximately $150 worth of tools were stolen out of the truck, but there was no other damage, and so he wanted to speak to detectives about the truck.

I can't imagine this felt like a positive development in terms of finding Jeanette unharmed.

I.

But Matt had already resigned himself to the idea that something bad had happened to her. I mean, he knew shed be with him if she could. Shed be with Nicolette, if she could be. So at least this was something. Surely investigators could salvage some evidence from the truck, maybe even develop a lead or two.

When I got the truck back, I asked them, would it make sense to maybe take some fingerprints and try to figure something out. They told me that if what I was telling them was true, that the stereo was gone, the toolbox was gone, that there were other handed fingerprints there that would make it impossible for them to figure out who was the one that actually had something to do with her disappearance. And I'm like, man, you guys gotta be able to do something.

But sadly, Detective Gonzalez told us there's.

Nothing in the file indicating that the car was searched or examined by law enforcement.

So they just did nothing. Whatever secrets the truck might have held went undiscovered, inevitably lost to time. Matt held onto it for weeks. But when a stranger approached him in the parking lot of a 711 and asked if he'd consider selling it, he didn't hesitate.

Because every time I sat in my truck, there was a big hole in the dashboard, and everything missing out of it was like, well, here's a reminder of everything that's missing in your life. I couldn't do it.

But maybe it wasn't all so bad. The truck's discovery did seem to inspire investigators to take a slightly more proactive approach to looking for Jeanette.

On September 21, detectives go to the Sahara motel, and they said that they had observed the truck outside of room 16, and they had checked with the people renting the rooms in that area of the motel, and no one had seen anyone leave the pickup. They gave information for who was staying in room 16, but they also said, hey, we asked him about it, and they said he didn't know anything about that truck.

By this time, Matt had already been there and had talked to one of the owners himself, and the information he gathered was more detailed. Here's detective Gonzalez summing it up.

The truck had pulled in sometime on Monday and had parked in front of a room, and that three people got out of it, but it was too dark to see what they looked like. The truck was still there in the morning. And then on Wednesday, a group of mexican looking guys pushed the truck to another area of the motel, took the toolbox off of the back, and took some things from inside. And left.

Were the men who looted the truck the same people who abandoned it a few days prior? We just don't know. The motel owner had told Matt that they couldn't even tell if the three people who had abandoned the truck were all men or all women or some combination of the three. And if they couldn't tell that, they definitely couldn't determine their ethnicity. And, look, there's no point in crying over spilled milk here, but it's got to be noted if this timeline is right, the truck was abandoned the night Jennette disappeared. It had just been sitting there the whole time. Who knows what investigators could have uncovered if they'd taken Matt's report more seriously? I can only imagine they'd have been more inclined to process it for prince if it had been found before it got raided on Wednesday. But the only direction to move was forward. So on the 22nd, investigators went back to the doll's house and got their first real lead from a dancer named Tammy.

She said that she had seen Cherry in the club but did not speak to her at that time. She did say that when Cherry left, she thought she saw a blonde man, about six foot one, medium build, with collar length straight hair and blue eyes, follow her out of the bar.

Investigators also spoke with a bartender named Linda, who said she saw Jennette talking to some roofers that night, including the blonde guy Tammy said followed her out. She didn't know their names, but she thought she knew who might. A regular named Ron. She volunteered to see what she could find out from him the next time he came in. And when investigators followed up on the 24th, Linda was a lady of her work. She told them that the guys Jeanette talked to that night worked for armor roof company, and they had done work for Ron, and, as luck would have it, who strolled in while Linda told them this. The man himself. According to Ron, Armor roof company was based in Midland, Texas. It was owned by a guy named Randy, and the blonde man was Randy's brother in law and his sometimes employee named Rickey. And for a hot minute, this Ricky lead seemed real promising. Ron polled investigators that he had kicked Ricky out of his house when he caught Ricky looking the wrong way at his 15 year old daughter. Randy thought that Ricky was more than capable of violence, including violence against Jeanette.

And he just looked more suspicious when investigators found out that he'd skipped town for Dallas on the 17th, just four days after Jeanette vanished. But if investigators ever talked to Ricky, there's no record of it. And now they never will. Ricky passed away in 2001, taking whatever information he may have held to the grave. Now, strangely, another tip came in in October about two women who also believed they saw Jeanette leaving the doll's house that night with an unidentified man. But they described him as being dark haired and of mexican descent.

We're getting two very different descriptions of who she might have left with, and.

This is notable, given the motel owner's description of the men who raided Matt's truck. But it's hard to know just how much significance to place on that. There wasn't a whole lot of movement in the investigation until March of 1983, when the woman who we're calling Betty, who, if you remember, was the wife of Matt's friend Duaneous, she went to investigators with a wild story. She said that she had been at a topless club in Dallas, and she says she saw Jeanette.

Betty calls the detectives and tells them she had seen Jeanette in downtown Dallas in the later part of December 1982 or early January 1983. This is after her disappearance. She's already been reported missing at this point. She goes on to say that she even talked to Jeanette, and Jeanette told her that she did not wish to be found and didn't want to return to Odessa.

Now, remember, Matt and Jeanette lived with Duane and Betty at one point. So Betty knew Jeanette. Investigators contacted the club and spoke with a manager, this guy named Carl. And when they described Jeanette, Carl was like, yeah, she actually sounds pretty familiar. I think she was dancing here up until, like, a few weeks ago. But he said he couldn't be certain. Because his club hired dancers through a talent agency. So they weren't like club employees. Their contracts were with the agency, specifically the Nikki Joy talent agency.

So they contact Nikki Joy of the Nikki Joy talent agency, and she said that she would check her files for Jeanette and would also talk to other talent agencies and clubs in the area.

But they didn't hear back. In fact, all they got was radio silence.

March 31, 1983, they tried to get in touch with Nikki Joy at her talent agency again to follow up, and no one answered the phone. And that's the last we hear of the Nikki Joy talent agency.

To make it clear, Matt doesn't think this sounds like something his wife would do, like at all. He has no reason to believe she would have ever just up and left. That's where Jeanette's case stood for the next seven years, until 1990, when a skull was found by oil workers near Odessa in neighboring Crain county. This became known as the Crane county skull. And sure, they considered it might have been Jeanette. But when investigators couldn't get their hands on her dental records for comparison, the skull and its possible connection to her case were largely forgotten about. So it wasnt until a detective with OPD, then Detective John Sykes, picked up Jeanettes file in 2013 and saw this loose end that DNA was extracted for comparison. He all but convinced himself it could have been Jennette. But when it was compared to a sample from Jennettes mother, it wasnt a match. And just like that, Jeanettes disappearance was a cold case once again.

On our 20th wedding anniversary, I kind of in my head, had a funeral for Jeanette because now, this far away, she would not be the woman I fell in love with, and I would not be the man that she was in love with. But I would beg anyone, anyone who has any evidence of any kind, that they would at least notify me so I could let my daughter know. Because she has lived her entire life wondering what it was like to have a mom.

In 2013, Matt decided to memorialize this chapter of his life, Jeanettes chapter of his life, or posterity, in a sort of autobiographical essay. It almost reads like a tribute to Jeanette and their life together. And he doesnt sugarcoat things. Here he is reading the opening paragraph.

Have you ever cried so hard that you thought your soul was pouring out through your eyes? Have you ever fallen to the ground, landing face first, not caring if the warm fluid pulling beneath your face was blood or not? Have you ever called God names that you thought would bring the apocalypse? Want to take a walk in my shoes. What the hell? I'll carry you.

A reporter asked Matt how he coped in those hardest moments.

In your most vulnerable moments, all you can do is pray and ask God, can you give me the strength? I am not going to ask you to make my life any easier. That's not a good prayer. But I can ask you to give me the strength to get through this today.

The newborn that Jeanette had fallen so deeply in love with is a mother herself. She goes by Nicole Reeder these days, and she's never known a life that didn't revolve around a giant void, this missing piece. She may not ever know her mom, but she spent her whole life missing her.

All the same, I wish I knew my mom. I wish my mom were here. I wish we had answers. I wish I had closure. I wish everybody who's missing could be found. I wish nobody had to feel the way that I feel every day, you know, always having that wonder of what if I still have that? What if I. Is she still alive? Or is she not? I don't have a place to go visit. I don't have a headstone to go visit or plant flowers for Mother's Day. My whole life has just been this, you know, this huge mystery.

We asked Nicole what it means to her to know that people are still looking for her mother after all this time.

That brings a sense of hope. I mean, one that people still care enough that they haven't given up. They haven't just thrown it on the back burner and shut the stove off. Maybe somebody out there will call in and give something that would lead to some sort of a resolve. And I think anybody in the world would want answers. If it was them, if they were in my shoes, they would want to know. So I would ask, if you know something, no matter how big or little it may be, please say something.

It's been more than four decades since Jeanette Jeviecki kissed her newborn goodbye and seemingly vanished off the face of the earth. But it doesn't have to become five.

Jeanette's family deserves to know what happened to her, especially her daughter. She had to grow up without a mom. I can't even imagine how hard that was. All she has is the memories of her family and photographs that they can show her. She was robbed of that relationship with her, and that's not fair. And there's nothing we can do to give that back to her. But I'm hoping someday we can give her answers, at least.

If you know anything about the disappearance of Jeanette Javiecy from Odessa, Texas in September of 1982. You can leave an anonymous tip with Odessa Crime Stoppers at 432-333-8477 you can also reach Detective Gonzalez on her direct line at 432-335-4926 the deck will be off next week, but we will return the following week with a brand new episode. The Deck is an audio Chuck production with theme music by Ryan Lewis. To learn more about the deck and our advocacy work, visit thedeckpodcast.com. so what do you think, Chuck? Do you approve.

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