Copyright CBS News
Jennifer Day was 14 years old when, on Sunday, June 26, 1985, she vanished from her part-time job at a Dallas donut shop. Jennifer had been working alone in the shop, just a five-minute walk from her home. "Back then, everybody had a part-time job. It's just what you did. It wasn't unusual for someone who was 14, 15 years old to have a part-time job working weekends," recalls her older brother, Jeff, who had also worked at Preston Donuts, a now-shuttered business. Another employee last spoke to Jennifer at 5:30 a.m. the morning of her disappearance. At 6:20 a.m., she served her last customer. At 6:35 a.m., another found the shop empty. "Jennifer's apron is laying here. We have her purse laying here. There's cash in the register. Her jewelry's still inside," said Plano police Detective Aaron Benzick. Witnesses report suspicious activity Several men working on a roof across the street reported seeing odd behavior in front of the donut shop — a woman with blond hair, like Jennifer, and a man getting into a car through the same door and speeding away. "Both getting in through the driver's side, kinda consistent with someone being taken against their will at this donut shop," said Benzick. Family's worst fears realized Jeff Day remembers being woken by his mother the day of the disappearance and being asked if he knew where his sister might have gone. "I said 'No, I have no idea,' and I went back to sleep. And, about 15 minutes later, I kind of woke up again, and the gravity of the question that she had asked me registered, and I went into the kitchen to ask what was going on." Jeff drove to the shop to find police taking fingerprints. "Instantly, I was thinking something's wrong. And then seeing the police presence at the shop made it — that drove it home to me. In my mind, she had probably been abducted and... It was brutal. I have a hard time even talking about it now... the feelings that I went through... not knowing." Their mother appeared on the news pleading for help in finding Jennifer. "My hope is that, as soon as possible, that I hear that she's safe, and that I can hear her voice, and that I can have her back," Patsy Day told reporters. Three days later, Jennifer's naked body was found at a construction site along Preston Road in Plano, just south of Highway 121. She had suffered several stab wounds to the neck. Plano police took over the murder investigation, but decades later, it remains unsolved. Brother pushes to reopen case "About a year and a half ago, I started thinking more about this," said Jeff. "I just decided to reach out to the Plano Police Department. I sent an email to the chief, asked if there's a way to revisit the case, try to look at some of the evidence with some of the new technology they hav,e and see if we could put some additional closure on the case." Within a few hours, he heard from Detective Benzick, who set up an interview with Jeff and his wife. "We spent probably three hours with Benzick and some of the assistants that he has to perform research and so forth," Jeff said. "So, it was a case that I was already familiar with, but when you hear that brother, when you see that email from the brother, it just kind of sparks you, it gets you going, like this is who I'm working for," Benzick said. "Talking about this case publicly, there are people who may know some things about this case, who know things about the donut shop and that area back in 1985... and we want to reach out to them." Detective expands cold case efforts Benzick is part of a new initiative at the Plano Police Department to take a fresh look at cold cases. It's something he is passionate about, professionally and personally. That's why, outside of work, he started a nonprofit called Solve the Case, a platform aimed at bringing attention to cold cases nationwide. "What we see is… one thing, these victims are underreported. There are victims I've come across that I've googled, and their name doesn't exist. They don't exist on the internet. Who's talking about their case?" said Benzick. "If these cases aren't even being talked about, how are witnesses going to be found, how are they going to be reached?" Online tools for unsolved crimes That's one of the first problems Benzick decided to tackle with his nonprofit — creating a website: solvethecase.org It's similar to the one run by the Plano Police Department: Plano Cold Cases. Each site features individual pages dedicated to unsolved cases, offering basic information to anyone searching online. As an organization separate from the police department and supported by donations, Solve the Case can extend its reach to thousands of cases across the country. "I think every law enforcement agency should have online, here's a list of our unsolved homicides, here's every missing person," Benzick said. "And we created tools with Solve the Case to take that load off of law enforcement. They don't have to carry the technical burden of that; our platform has built that all automatically in. We can host those case pages and integrate them into their sites." Nonprofit helps track down suspect Since launching in late 2023, the nonprofit has already seen success, helping locate a suspect wanted for a murder in Bandera County, Texas. "They took all this information, and they had done research to where they thought she would be and made sure to put it on their site and really push that message out there to that area. And within two weeks, they had two tips," said Stephanie Holan, whose grandfather was found strangled two hours from his home. A Ring camera captured the last images of Robert Isaacks alive, walking into his home with a woman family members didn't recognize. Police identified her as Freda Michelle Thomas and later located Isaacks' missing Jeep in Las Vegas, but for months there was no arrest. Then, Solve the Case received information that Thomas had been spotted in Okmulgee County, Oklahoma, and U.S. Marshals took her into custody. "It brought my family comfort to know that she's not just out there, she can't hurt somebody else but that she is going to have to go through the process of answering questions about why she chose to do what she did," said Holan. Family still hopes for answers Jeff Day wonders if he'll ever learn what happened to his sister. "I mean it would be nice to have closure… it would be nice," he said. "I think it would mean a lot to the community to be able to know who did this." Anyone with information on the Day case can email: policetips@plano.gov
