WA JAMIE GRISSIM: Missing from Vancouver, WA - 7 Dec 1971 - Age 16

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NCMEC - http://api.missingkids.org/poster/NCMC/1056325/1
NamUs - Charley Project - Doe Network -
Jamie's photo is shown age-progressed to 56 years. She was last seen the afternoon of December 7, 1971, walking home from school in Vancouver, Washington. The last time she was seen, Jamie was wearing blue jeans, a red and white striped shirt, and white tennis shoes. Jamie's ears are pierced. She may spell her last name Grisim.

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Jamie left her residence in the vicinity of the 5300 block of northeast 58th Street in Vancouver, Washington on the morning of December 7, 1971, and went to Fort Vancouver High School, about two miles from her home.

It is established that she arrived at school. She had only two classes that day, and she did attend them. She told her foster mother she would walk home from school and would arrive at 1:00 or 1:30 p.m., but she did not appear as scheduled. She has never been heard from again.

Jamie's purse, identification, and other possessions were found in May 1972, five months after her disappearance, in a wooded area alongside a road in the Dole Valley area of Northern Clark County, northeast of Vancouver.

Authorities initially believed Jamie had run away from home, and as a result, she was not officially declared a missing person until January 1972. Her loved ones never thought she left of her own volition. She and her sister had been wards of the state since they were toddlers. Their father was in prison and they had been taken from their mother.

Jamie was a good student, got along well with her foster mother and was close to her sister in 1971; she was also a talented artist and writer, and a member of the 4-H Club. She had a savings account at the time of her disappearance, but the account has not been used since she went missing.

Police eventually decided Jamie had probably not run away; she is now believed to be the first victim of a suspected serial killer, Warren Leslie Forrest, who is thought to have raped and killed at least six young women in the Vancouver area. In 1978, he was convicted of murdering nineteen-year-old Krista Kay Blake and received a life sentence. He is a person of interest in the 1974 disappearance of fourteen-year-old Diane Gilchrist.

He attended the same high school Jamie had, albeit several years before she did, and was popular and a good student. It's possible he and Jamie knew each other slightly. A photo of him is posted with this case summary. Forrest is still incarcerated and was denied parole in 2017.

The bodies of three other women have been recovered in rural Clark County. Two of them were located within a mile of where Jamie's possessions were found: nineteen-year-old Carol Platt Valenzuela and seventeen-year-old Martha Marie Morrison. Martha was not identified until 2015, however. In 2017, authorities discovering Martha's DNA on a dart gun which Forrest admitted he'd used to attack another woman. In 2010, they announced they plan to charge him with murder in her case.

edited by staff to add media link
 
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Forty-five years later, Warren Forrest charged with second murder

More than four decades after he was sentenced to life in prison for the 1974 murder of Krista Blake, Warren Forrest was back in Clark County Superior Court on Monday morning facing a second murder charge.

If convicted, it would be the second murder charge to stick for a man police believe killed at least seven women and teen girls during the 1970s on both sides of the Columbia River.

Investigators believe Forrest, now 70, committed his first murder in 1971 with the abduction and killing of 16-year-old Jamie Grissim. Though Grissim’s body was never found, her school ID was recovered along Doe Road in a remote area of Clark County. Two other victims, Martha Morrison and Carol Valenzuela, were found nearby.

In 2017, new DNA evidence recovered from a gun Forrest admitted using in an attack on a woman who survived, was linked to Morrison, who lived in Portland, leading Clark County investigators to file the new murder charge.

 
Though these recent charges are not directly related to Jamie's case, her family is extremely pleased that Forrest has been charged in Martha's case. One step closer to justice for Jamie as well.

 
Missing 49 years TODAY.

"Please pray for Jamie today. Light a candle that she can be found to come home to Rest In Peace.
Forty nine years ago today she was murdered. Still I wait forever justice and for truth. Truth, such a simple thing, and one man withholds it.
Sadly I don’t have another 49 to wait.
Pray for truth at long last."
 
Missing 49 years TODAY.

"Please pray for Jamie today. Light a candle that she can be found to come home to Rest In Peace.
Forty nine years ago today she was murdered. Still I wait forever justice and for truth. Truth, such a simple thing, and one man withholds it.
Sadly I don’t have another 49 to wait.
Pray for truth at long last."
I will pray for her. May a miracle be in store for this family! :praying:
 
Not for Jamie's case but the same suspect.

Warren Forrest, Suspected Southwest Washington Serial Killer, Set to Go on Trial​

The cold-case murder trial for suspected serial killer Warren Forrest will begin Monday morning in Clark County Superior Court.

The trial is expected to last approximately three weeks, with jury selection likely taking a full day Monday.

Forrest, 73, is charged with first-degree murder in the 1974 slaying of 17-year-old Martha Morrison of Portland. Her remains were discovered Oct. 12 of that year by a member of a hunting party in a densely wooded area of Dole Valley in eastern Clark County. They were not identified until July 2015, however.

The murder charge came following a breakthrough in Morrison's cold case. Blood found on an air pistol that Forrest used to torture another woman in 1974 was identified as Morrison's.

The former Battle Ground man is believed to be responsible for the abduction and slaying of at least six women and girls in Clark County in the 1970s, and he is a person of interest in another missing-person case:

— Jamie Grissim, 16, disappeared in December 1971 after leaving her foster home to attend class at Fort Vancouver High School. Her wallet was discovered in May 1972 beside a road in Dole Valley.

— Barbara Ann Derry, 18, was last seen in February 1972 hitchhiking along state Highway 14. Her body was found in March of that year, covered with boards and debris and partially undressed at the bottom of a silo at the Cedar Creek Grist Mill in northern Clark County.

— Diane Gilchrist, 14, left her residence in downtown Vancouver and was never seen again.

— Gloria Nadine Knutson, 19, went missing in May 1974 while walking home from downtown Vancouver. Her remains were found in May 1978 near Lacamas Lake.

— Carol Valenzuela, 18, went missing while hitchhiking. In October 1974, a hunter found skeletal remains of two women — Valenzuela and Morrison — in shallow graves in the Dole Valley area, about 100 feet apart and about a mile from where Grissim's wallet was found.
 

Suspected serial killer Warren Forrest found guilty in slaying of teen Martha Morrison nearly 50 years ago​

Suspected serial killer Warren Forrest was found guilty by a southwest Washington jury for slaying 17-year-old Martha Morrison of Portland, Oregon, nearly 50 years ago.

After about 90 minutes of deliberation Wednesday, the Clark County jury found Forrest guilty of first-degree murder, CBS affiliate KOIN-TV reported.


State prosecutors called on more than 30 witnesses to testify over six days in court, including Norma Jean Lewis, who was 15 in 1974 when she said Forrest abducted and attacked her. She testified that he left her bound to a tree and that she was able to break free.

"So many of those young girls, their parents died without knowing what happened to their daughters," Lewis told KOIN-TV. "I don't care about anything else, I just want answers for those families that don't know what happened to their loved ones."

Forrest - who has already spent over 40 years in prison as part of a life sentence for the 1974 killing of Krista Kay Blake - will be sentenced in this case on Feb. 17.

Morrison's brother, Michael, told KOIN-TV there is still work to be done for the other suspected victims.

"This isn't about just killing Martha, it's about all the rest of us that have had to deal with this for years and years. That's hard on people," Michael Morrison said.

 

Dog team picks up search for Southwest Washington girls missing since 1970s​

A group of certified handlers with the Texas Star Dog Search and Recovery Team are hoping to solve two cold cases in Southwest Washington.

Three women from different parts of the country, and three dogs, will be scouring parts of Clark County, hoping to bring closure to the families of Jamie Grissom, who disappeared in 1971, and Diane Gilchrist, who went missing in 1974.

The two missing teenage girls are believed to have been victims of convicted murderer Warren Forrest who is currently serving a life sentence for killing a teenage girl and a young woman in the 70s.


The search team picking up the case said that the dogs they are using are trained to search for artifacts up to 100 years old.

“We train on training products that are over 100 years,” the searchers said. “So it is feasible, and what the dogs can do is just amazing, you really have to see it to believe what they can do. So we have done up to 30, 40-year-old cases with success.”
 
Based on the circumstances. And the fact they found some of her belongings in a wooded area. IMO She has been deceased since day one.
 

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