On the night of November 15th, 1974, a fifteen-year-old Visalia-area girl named Jennifer Lynn Armour disappeared while on her way to a local football game. She was last seen at about 8:30 PM while on her way to meet friends.
Her nude body was found over a week later in the Friant-Kern Canal near Woodlake – an area located northeast of Visalia and a fair distance away from where she’d disappeared. Her bra was wrapped around one of her wrists, and her clothing was found on the bank nearby.
Investigators were able to determine that the girl had died by drowning, but at first they couldn’t agree on whether it had been accidental or whether there was foul play involved. They ended up determining that Armour had been killed, and the Fresno Bee (along with the Fresno Guarantee Savings and Loan Association) set aside $2,500 for information leading to the arrest and conviction of her killer. The money was never claimed. The case got very little press, and unfortunately, it was never solved.
Recently, the Sun-Gazette has reported that Joseph DeAngelo, the man arrested for the Visalia Ransacker / Golden State Killer crimes, has been added to the suspect list. DeAngelo was a police officer in nearby Exeter at the time, and has been confirmed by police to be tied to a string of over 100 burglaries, a murder, and an attempted murder that occurred in Visalia in 1974 and 1975.
This murder, which has sat on the cold case shelves for far too long, is in desperate need of this new media attention and the new investigative resources. It’s our hope that something can come from this new push that will finally solve it.
Note: We cover the Armour case and the other Visalia Ransacker crimes in our new book, Secret Origin of the Golden State Killer: Visalia Ransacker.