A St. Louis woman’s diary explaining how she and two others pulled off loading a dead woman into a car and leaving the car on the side of a street led to the writer’s arrest Tuesday on a charge of abandonment of a corpse.
The diary was found Monday when officers searched the home of Joni R. Janis in the 8000 block of Morganford Road after several witnesses reported that they had last seen the dead woman at Janis’ home.
The dead woman was identified as Kierstin Whitcher.
The charging documents written by St. Louis Police Detective Martin Garcia cite an extensive entry from Janis’ diary. In it, Janis claims that “everything came crashing down” around her “the night of Mardi Gras Saturday night.” In 2017, the Soulard Mardi Gras parade was on Feb. 25.
Janis writes that police forced their way into her home the next morning “and guns were pointed at my face along with flashlights,” the documents say. The police search was prompted by the discovery of a man passed out in a car in front of her home, Janis claims.
The police wanted to check out the entire house, including the downstairs apartment of a tenant who refused to open his bedroom door, the diary entry says.
The officers left but said a “building inspector” would be sent over and that the bedroom would be checked, Janis wrote.
The tenant quickly “took most of his crap and burnt out” but he left behind a woman who was “in a coma,” Janis wrote,
“He (the tenant) told me she was ok and would wake up,” Janis wrote.
But by 3:45 a.m. Monday someone realized that the woman was dead, the diary entry says.
“So I made the decision,” Janis wrote. “Load her in the car, drop her off on the side of the highway with her lights on so she’s found fast, and we walk home.”
Janis wrote that she was helped by two people, identified only by first names. One, she wrote, “was (expletive) useless, hyperventilating like a moron.” The other, she said, “was less than stoked about moving and handling a dead body, but something had to be done and quick.”
The diary entry mentions that all three wore latex gloves as they put the dead woman into the car, drove it “a few exists (sic) down the highway” and “walked home back down the freeway … tossing our gloves along the way.”
Janis, 37, bail was set at $40,000.
