Shoelaces, DNA link man to 1987 rapes and murder in Ohio

(WJW) – A suspect has been identified in two brutal attacks in 1987 that left an Ohio woman dead, the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation (BCI), the Attorney General’s Office and local law enforcement announced Thursday.

According to a news release, Thomas Collier Jordan, who died in 2009, is linked to both cases.

On August 10, 1987, Janice Christensen went for a jog on a park bike path in Hudson Township, Ohio. She never returned home and was reported missing.

The following day, her partially naked body was found with five stab wounds, according to a news release.

A pair of shoelaces was found next to her body. She had also been sexually assaulted, according to investigators.

Christensen’s car and car keys were missing. The car was later found abandoned in Bedford, Ohio.

Investigators now believe that Jordan was responsible for the killing.

They have also linked him to the rape of a teenager in another part of the county that happened two months before Christensen’s murder. Michelle Puett-Howard, who was 17 at the time, reported a sexual assault at a park in Cuyahoga Falls on June 16, 1987.

The teen was walking alone on a trail when a man armed with a knife grabbed her, bound her hands and ankles with shoelaces and sexually assaulted her, according to a press release.

The suspect took her underwear and the victim’s car and car keys.

DNA evidence was obtained in both cases, according to a press release, but the case grew cold, due to a lack of DNA technology, investigators say.

At the time, investigators even noted the similarities between the cases – the park locations of the attacks and the use of shoelaces to bind the victims – but it wasn't until DNA evidence was resubmitted to BCI’s laboratory in 2022 that they got answers.

The DNA matched the offender profile of Jordan, who was born in Cleveland in 1926 and died in 2009 in Yuma, Arizona, at the age of 83.

BCI agents traveled to Yuma in April 2024 to exhume Jordan’s body and obtain his DNA. They say testing confirmed the link between Jordan and the crimes against Christensen and Puett-Howard.

BCI says Jordan had an extensive criminal history in Ohio. He was sentenced to prison in 1959 for grand larceny; sentenced in 1961 for burglary; sentenced in 1972 for malicious entry; and sentenced in 1976 for rape, stabbing and burglary and was imprisoned until 1985.

Jordan is also known to have had ties to Arizona, Nevada, California, Louisiana and Michigan. BCI is sharing information about the case to law enforcement nationwide, in hopes that additional cases might be solved.