Killing of Reet Jurvetson

Reet Silvia Jurvetson, an Estonian-Canadian woman born September 23, 1950, was stabbed to death in Los Angeles, California, in November 1969 at age 19. On November 16, 1969, a 15-year-old boy birdwatching found her fully clothed body in dense bushland off Mulholland Drive, resting against a tree branch partway down a ravine that otherwise fell into a 699-foot-deep canyon. An autopsy found she had been stabbed 157 times in the neck, chest, and torso with a common pocket knife, severing her carotid artery, with defensive wounds on her hands. She is believed to have died about two days before her body was found, roughly two hours after eating a meal. She had not been robbed or sexually assaulted, and no drugs or alcohol were found in her system.

Evidence indicated her body had been placed in a car, driven to the location, and rolled down the ravine by someone investigators believe was right-handed. On November 21, 1969, a pair of Liberty brand eyeglasses was found about 50 feet away, though it remains inconclusive whether they are connected to the case. Her boots had been made in Spain and her jacket in Canada, leading investigators to theorize she might be a native of one of those countries. Facial reconstructions of her, including work by Project EDAN artist Barbara Martin-Bailey, were later criticized by Jurvetson's sister as not resembling her.

Because a woman closely matching Jurvetson's description had reportedly been seen with Manson Family members at Spahn Ranch days before the murder, and because her body was found roughly six miles from where Sharon Tate and four others had been killed three months earlier, investigators looked into the Manson Family, including Charles Manson, who was interviewed both before and after her identification. The Los Angeles Police Department has since discounted Manson Family involvement, stating its most likely suspect is a man Jurvetson knew only as "John" or "Jean," whom she had traveled from Canada specifically to meet weeks before her death.

Jurvetson had left Canada in late summer 1969 to visit this man, whom she had met months earlier while working at a Toronto post office. On October 31, 1969, she sent postcards written in Estonian to her parents and her closest friend, saying she was happy, had decided to stay in Los Angeles, and had found an apartment at the Paramount Hotel — her family's last contact with her. Her family did not report her missing, assuming she was building a new life; they later made informal attempts to reach her and hired a private investigator, without success.

Jurvetson's body went unidentified for 46 years, known informally as "Sherry Doe" and officially as "Jane Doe 59." In June 2015, her sister Anne was contacted by friends who noticed a resemblance between a National Missing and Unidentified Persons System morgue photograph and her estranged sister; Anne submitted a DNA sample, later compared against DNA from a bloodstained bra retained from the case. In April 2016, authorities formally announced the body had been conclusively identified as Reet Silvia Jurvetson. Family members and Los Angeles cold case detective Luis Rivera said Jurvetson had been infatuated with the man she traveled to meet. A probable roommate of that man told a friend of Jurvetson's in 1970 that the two men had lived with her in Los Angeles the previous year and that she had left them of her own accord. Neither man is known to have filed a missing person report on Jurvetson, and neither has been charged. The case remains unsolved.