The Carrie Ann Jopek cold case murder has apparently been solved after she “haunted” her killer for three decades to get him to confess.
Over the weekend that’s what the unidentified man finally did -- phoning a Milwaukee newsroom and admitting to reporters there that he was responsible for the girl’s gruesome death.
Jopek, 13, vanished in March of 1982 following a suspension from school for skipping classes.
A year later her decomposing corpse was discovered by a building contractor working in the backyard of a house across the street from her own residence.
The 50-year-old confessed murderer actually lived on the property in the early 1980s and was just 17-years-old himself when Carrie Ann Jopek was first reported missing.
In fact, Wisconsin officials say they questioned neighborhood teen “Junior” on several occasions during their initial inquiry, but, until he came forward in October 2015, never had grounds for arresting him.
In the years since Jopek’s unexplained death, however, the suspect had become a career criminal; even confiding to his victim’s mother that her dead daughter “was haunting him,” although never explaining why.
Now the cold case victim’s mom at last has a partial answer, and Junior is in police custody pending further investigation of how Carrie Ann Jopek met her tragic end 33 years ago.
According to Junior’s voluntary admission on Sunday to WISN television, she “fell and broke her neck” while “partying” with him and his friends in the spring of 1982.
Thinking the girl was “only unconscious,” he says he then raped Jopek, enlisting the group to help bury her in a shallow grave behind his house when he realized she was dead.
If true, Junior’s grisly confession is long overdue and should provide some closure for this decades-old cold case.
Still, there must be a few holes in his account of Carrie Ann’s “accidental death.” Why else would her ghost be haunting him?
