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Jody LeCornu was murdered 23 years ago. Now her twin wants answers.
By Rebekah Kuschmider — Written on Mar 25, 2019
In a case of life imitating art, a woman in Baltimore, MD has bought billboards asking for information about who killed her twin sister 23 years ago this month. Inspired by the movie Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, where a mother bought the billboard space to find who raped and murdered her daughter, Jenny Carrieri has purchased three billboards in the hopes of finding out who killed her sister Jody LeCornu on March 2, 1996.
“I saw the movie, 'Three Billboards Outside Ebbing Missouri,' and I just thought it was brilliant. And I am constantly trying to figure out ways to share her story and find her killer,” Carrieri now 46, Lester Holt in an interview.
Jody was shot in a parking lot in the earliest hours of March 2, 1996, by a man whom police say was “a black male, stocky build wearing a green Army fatigue-style jacket driving a white BMW.” While police know roughly what happened the night Jody LeCornu died, they have never been able to solve who did it or why.
Who is Jody LeCornu and what happened to her? Read on for all the details.
1. Murder
On the night of her murder, Jody went to a bar. After she left, she met the male suspect in a parking lot of a shopping center.
“There was some kind of exchange between the suspect and Jody in the parking lot to where she started to drive off. At that point a suspect pulled out a handgun, shot one time at her direction,” said Cpl. Shawn Vinson, spokesman for the Baltimore County Police department. Jody was able to drive away to another parking lot, where she died inside her car.
Witnesses at the time told police that the suspect followed her in his car, walked to her vehicle and removed something, then drove away. To this day, they do not know what was taken from her car.
2. Confusion
Her family says nothing about the night makes sense. Jenny tells NBC that “The whole night was very out of character for her."
"She wouldn't have driven in the snow. I mean, she was terrified of everything. She was actually afraid to live in Baltimore. She would say she was afraid she was going to get shot.”
3. Cold case
Experts say that the key to solving this case all these years later will be figuring out what was taken from the car and why. Sheryl McCollum, a crime scene investigator, said “The key to this whole thing is what he wanted in that car."
"When he gets to her in her car where she is clearly dying, he then reaches in to get whatever that is that is so important, before he flees.”
McCollum also told NBC that talking to witnesses will be key to finding out more information, saying “You've got to talk to those witnesses. Maybe they told you everything, maybe they didn't. Maybe you haven't talked to everybody that knew something. That's why her billboard is so critical of this whole thing. I guarantee you people talked. Whoever was involved with this told somebody.”
4. Will the billboards work?
It’s unclear if the billboards will help bring in any new or helpfully information so long after the crime took place. The signs are eye-catching, with stark red lettering and images of Jody before she died.
The signs also offer a $100,000 reward for help identifying the killer. But police say that so far no calls have resulted in any helpful leads.
5. Hope
Jenny sees this as a way to keep her sister’s story alive and maybe find justice for her after all this time.
“I just feel part of me was ripped away. And the other part of me is going to find out what happened.”
She goes on to talk about how close she was to her sister and how she has had to be strong in her absence, saying “I always said we were one. It's almost like I have her strength now, you know? She was always the strong one.”
This set of billboards is the second time Jenny has posted this way. She rent one billboard last fall and now has three up simultaneously in different areas around Baltimore. She plans to keep renting space to ask for help in identifying who killed her twin sister. Baltimore police say they have never seen a family do this before. If it works, maybe this will be a new tool in solving cold cases.
Rebekah Kuschmider has been writing about celebrities, pop culture, entertainment, and politics since 2010. Her work has been seen at Ravishly, Babble, Scary Mommy, The Mid, Redbook online, and The Broad Side. She is the creator of the blog Stay at Home Pundit and she is a cohost of the weekly podcast The More Perfect Union.