Hope Never Lost

Unsolved Mysteries Continue to Haunt Those Touched by Them

By Lisa Gregory

Photography by Turner Photography Studio

One day, he was just gone. 

Jaime Romero, 30, a loving and doting uncle, an adored son and brother, a man planning a wedding with his fiancee, was nowhere to be found. His car was parked at his home with the keys in the ignition. Also inside the car were his wallet with cash inside and his cell phone. 

But no Romero.

Eleven years later, his family still considers where he might be and what happened to him. “It’s a pain that never goes away,” says Romero’s sister, Sonia Castell of Frederick. 

Whether it be a missing person, as in Romero’s case, or a Jane Doe found in a trunk at Gambrill State Park or the unsolved murder of a young man whose body was discovered on his 21st birthday, the Frederick County community has felt the pain of heart-rending, unexplained mysteries—leaving relatives, amateur sleuths and law enforcement all searching for answers. 

Like Romero’s family. 

Sonia Castell

“We’ve hit a wall”

Romero, who came to the United States with his family from El Salvador as a little boy, struggled with depression throughout his life. “He was molested when he was young,” says Castell. A master electrician with his own business, Romero was also suffering from a medical condition causing chronic pain in his legs. But there was a bright side as well, says Castell. “I remember he let me know that he had found a place where he and his fiancee were going to get married,” says Castell. “They had picked a venue.”

A devout Jehovah’s Witness, Romero, who was living at Montgomery Village in Gaithersburg with his mother, had gotten up and dressed for church the day he went missing. “He and my mother were always at church,” says Castell with a soft smile. The family later learned that he drove to the church, but never went inside. He turned around and came home instead. 

“He then went over to his fiancee’s house,” says Castell. “He called my mother that night and asked her to walk his dog and said, ‘I’ll be home later.’” The next morning, his mother assumed Romero had returned home and as she left to visit a family member, she saw his car. But she never heard from him. “He was always hugging her and telling [my mother] how beautiful she was and making her laugh,” says Castell. “He was always calling my mother. All the time. She heard nothing from him all that morning.” 

Police were notified. “They brought a dog to try and track him with his scent,” says Castell. “The dog walked around but it lost the scent right around the house.”

The family plastered flyers in the area. They even hired their own private detective. “We searched his phone, his computer,” says Castell. “There was nothing. Absolutely nothing. When people want to commit suicide, they might look up how to do it or the easiest way to do it. If they are running away, there is evidence of a plane or train ticket. Some interest in going away. Again, absolutely nothing.”

The family is still searching for answers. “There have been no leads, nothing new on the case,” says Castell. “We’ve hit a wall.”

Romero’s mother dreams of him. “He is always coming home,” says Castell. “Walking through the door.” Castell feels strongly that Romero did not kill himself or run away. “I think someone might have taken him,” she says. “He would never have done this to his mother.”

Terry Horman

“It’s a loss you can’t imagine”

Terry Horman knows too well the pain of not having answers. Her son, Joshua Crawford, didn’t disappear like Romero, but was murdered. In 2003, Crawford was found in his Frederick apartment beaten and stabbed with his hands and feet bound by duct tape. The duct tape also covered his mouth and nose, asphyxiating him. “He couldn’t see. He couldn’t breathe,” says Horman. 

For the past 20 years Horman has been on a quest to discover who murdered her child. As she excitedly lists his interests and accomplishments growing up, she breaks into a big grin. “He was a Cub Scout and worked his way up to being a Boy Scout,” she says. “He loved sports. His best was baseball.” Crawford also enjoyed a frozen treat with his mother at Dairy Queen. “We always argued about who was going to pay,” says Horman, chuckling.

As much as she adores her son, she is honest about the path his life took. “He got in with a bad crowd,” she says. That would lead to drug use and jail time. Right before he was murdered though, Horman says she was seeing a turnaround in Crawford. He was working, had a place of his own and was pursuing his interest in art. 

She visited with him shortly before his murder and of course they made a trip to Dairy Queen. “We were talking about what he might like for his birthday,” says Horman.

In the wee hours of the morning on July 2, 2003, Crawford’s 21st birthday, Horman just couldn’t help herself. “I was up at 3 a.m. and wanted to wish him happy birthday,” she says. “My husband said, ‘He’s probably sleeping.’ So, I texted him but there was no answer. I wanted to be the first to wish him happy birthday, you know?”

Later that same day, he would be found dead. “It’s a loss you can’t imagine,” says Horman. Law enforcement found no evidence of forced entry. “He was covered with sofa cushions, like whoever killed him didn’t want to look at him while they were there,” says Horman. The evidence pointed to Crawford maybe knowing his killer or killers. 

Kat Johnson

Horman has hired private detectives, done her own investigating and even went on The Montel Williams Show to speak with nationally known psychic Sylvia Browne. She remains in frequent contact with the Frederick County Sheriff’s Office, which handles the case. With advances in DNA evidence comes renewed hope. Recently, the sheriff’s office submitted a hair found on Crawford’s hand for testing that uses both DNA analysis and traditional genealogy research to solve crimes. However, a recent law in Maryland restricts the use of public genetic genealogy databases in criminal investigations, requiring judicial authorization and creating a backlog of cases. “It could take up to two years,” says Horman.

As she waits for answers, Horman still makes the trips to Dairy Queen, now alone. “I always save the wrappers from the ice cream cones,” she says with a sad smile. 

“I want to know”

Kat Johnson doesn’t have a family member missing or murdered, but she does have a passion for finding answers for those who do, and she has witnessed firsthand the devastation families experience. 

“I remember I was out in the woods with this mother looking for her daughter,” recalls Johnson. “She went over to what she thought was a grave and began digging. Or, you have the father who is out looking for his children and has to determine if a bone he has come across belongs to an animal or his child. No parent should ever go through that.”

Johnson is the founder of both the Maryland Missing Persons Network and the advocacy group Maryland Cold Cases. She also helped create the Doe Network, a nonprofit organization of volunteers who work with law enforcement to connect missing persons cases with John/Jane Doe cases, and has a Facebook page called Vanished Voices of Maryland. Through these efforts, Johnson has participated in missing person searches, held vigils, connected families of missing persons with each other for support and even assisted in solving cases. 

Yet, for all the work she has done for the past 25 years there is one case that continues to haunt her, one that touched her life early on. “I have become obsessed with it,” says Johnson. 

In 1991, an unidentified woman’s body was found at the bottom of an embankment along the southbound side of Interstate 270 in Frederick. The Jane Doe’s body was badly decomposed and it was estimated that she was 15 to 29 years old. 

Johnson, 21 years at the time, remembers it well. “I was hitchhiking to Frederick the same day she was found,” says Johnson, who grew up in Rockville but frequently visited Frederick. “I remembered thinking then that that could have been me.”

After a while, she heard no more about the case and assumed it had been solved. 

Sabrina Swann

Years later, while participating in online chat rooms discussing cold cases with like-minded enthusiasts and conducting searches for clues, Johnson came upon the I-270 Jane Doe. “It was still unsolved,” she says. 

She jumped into the case wholeheartedly, even raising funds to help Maryland State Police solve the mystery. “I am positive she has a local connection,” says Johnson. “She was seen in an apartment in Frederick a couple of weeks before she died.”

Johnson has developed a theory about the killer, as well. “I have walked the stretch of highway where the body was found, and I am convinced that whoever killed her is local,” she says. “She was found right near the Baker Valley Road overpass, which is directly below the Monocacy National Battlefield Worthington Farm entrance. If you weren’t from the area, you wouldn’t be dumping a body right at an overpass like that where you don’t know how often cars are coming up and down the road.
If you’re local, you are going to know that there aren’t a lot of cars on that road.”

Despite efforts by Johnson and others, the I-270 Jane Doe remains a mystery. Johnson is not giving up. “I want to know,” she says. 

“She deserves a name”

For Sabrina Swann, supervisor of crime scene investigations for the Frederck Police Department, helping solve criminal cases is her job. But she is especially intrigued by cold cases. “I loved solving puzzles when I was a little girl,” she says.

She is putting her skills to work on such cold cases as an unidentified female body found in a trunk at Gambrill State Park in 1982. “I dove into it years ago,” says Swann. “In between casework or if I was taking a break, I would look at it.”

The trunk, discovered by mushroom hunters, was in plain view with sticks and leaves on top. It was estimated at the time the unidentified woman had had been there at least a few months but may have died up to 10 years prior. Her age was estimated to be as young as 17 but no older than 45. She had evidence of injuries to her back and feet, more likely from physical activity than abuse. She also had extensive dental work that might have been performed by dental students since investigators were unable to trace its source.

Swann has spent hours, including on her own free time, delving into the case and searching for clues through NamUs, the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System, and the Doe Network, while building on previous investigative work which included a “trunk expert.”

“I started to think maybe she wasn’t from the United States,” says Swann, who expanded her search to Canada and even Europe. By broadening her search, she may have found someone else. “Looking in Canada, I found a couple who went missing I believe in 1974,” she says. “They were on their way to a wedding but had also talked about maybe just running away, like going on an adventure.”

There was even speculation that the couple may have crossed paths with serial killer, William Dean Christensen, known as the American Jack the Ripper. “Reading the missing person report, I guess they broke down on the side of the road and someone thought that they saw them standing there with a guy who kind of looked like Christensen,” says Swann.

She wonders if the “lady in the trunk,” as the case is sometimes called, could be the woman from the missing couple. “What if she went missing with her husband?” says Swann. “I wanted to see what the husband looked like. I brought up his missing person profile. Then, I wanted to see if I could find unidentified remains that matched him.”

She found a possible match with a body found in a hotel room in Anne Arundel County. “I showed it to my lieutenant at the time and the detective assigned to the case,” says Swann. “They both looked at me and they’re like, ‘Well, if this isn’t him it’s his twin brother.’  I contacted the detective in Canada and said, ‘Hey, I don’t know if the female could be ours but here’s a potential lead for you.’”

The detective in Anne Arundel County and the detective in Canada have been put in contact with each other. “They are working together to do a DNA comparison,” says Swann. 

As for the “lady in the trunk,” Swann will keep searching. “She doesn’t have a name,” says Swann. “She deserves a name.”