Jessica Cole was a 41-year-old Black woman from Washington, D.C., known in Park View by the nickname Bird. She grew up in the city, married her high school sweetheart James Cole, helped run a small cleaning business, and later drifted into street life amid addiction. Neighbors remembered her as funny and protective of her children; she had once lived on Princeton Place and knew several women who later turned up dead.

Jessica disappeared in October 1997. One account places her last on a stoop along Princeton Place on or around October 10. On the morning of Columbus Day a passerby found a dismembered human torso in a damaged plastic garbage bag behind a building on the 1400 block of Meridian Place NW; the remains were later confirmed to be Jessica’s. Her death joined a cluster of suspicious deaths in Petworth and Park View that investigators linked to Princeton Place.

Suspicion focused on a local man, Darryl Donnell Turner, who lived on Princeton Place; he was later prosecuted for other killings tied to the same pattern. Jessica’s family also named John Slack, a property owner who had argued with Jessica and was attacked by her son and a friend shortly after her disappearance. Does anyone have memories of Jessica, her circle on Princeton Place, or information that could shed light on what happened in October 1997?