In the winter of 2002, the life of twenty-nine-year-old Janice Marie Buono, a Native American woman and mother of three, came to a tragic and mysterious end. She was last seen on New Year's Day in Lawton, Oklahoma, a city that would become the backdrop to a series of unsolved deaths. Janice had been facing personal struggles, including a battle with drug addiction, and was staying at the Sheridan Inn with a roommate.
Shortly before her disappearance, she had expressed a desire to return home after a devastating cancer diagnosis. On that fateful day, she and her roommate parted ways, and Janice was never seen alive again.
Weeks turned into a somber month and a half before any news of her whereabouts surfaced. On February 23, 2002, a grim discovery was made in a pond under a bridge in rural Comanche County. It was the body of Janice Marie Buono. An initial examination determined her cause of death to be an overdose of meth and cocaine, but the circumstances surrounding her death raised suspicions. Her case, along with the deaths of other women in the Lawton area around the same time, fueled fears of a potential serial killer.
Despite the suspicions and the clear pattern of women being found deceased under similar circumstances, no arrests have ever been made in direct connection with Janice Marie Buono's death. Her case remains a cold case, a source of enduring pain for her children, who were raised by their grandmother. The investigation into her death and the string of similar cases in Lawton has been marked by a lack of significant leads. Over the years, theories have emerged, including the possibility of a 'Lawton Serial Killer,' with some speculation pointing towards individuals like Cory Morris, John Robert Williams, and Karry Tidball as potential suspects in the broader series of killings. However, no definitive evidence has publicly linked any specific individual to Janice's death, leaving her family with unanswered questions and a quest for justice that continues to this day.
