In the winter of 2003, Jennifer Lynn Marcum, a 25-year-old White female, vanished from Denver, Colorado, leaving behind a young daughter and a mystery that would unravel into a story of a manipulative serial killer. On February 17, 2003, Marcum was last seen near Denver International Airport. Her brown 1999 Saturn was later discovered abandoned in a remote airport parking lot, but there was no evidence that she had ever boarded a flight.
In the days leading up to her disappearance, she had been in contact with her boyfriend, who was incarcerated at the time. The last phone call she ever made was to him, in which she expressed her love and her intention to see him in a few days.
The investigation into Marcum's disappearance eventually focused on Scott Lee Kimball, a man with a lengthy criminal history who had been a cellmate of Marcum's boyfriend. Kimball, who was acting as an FBI informant, had been released from prison and had developed a friendship with Marcum, meeting with her multiple times in the months before she went missing. Initially, Kimball provided misleading information to investigators, suggesting that Marcum had traveled to New York to carry out a hit for her boyfriend or that she had been killed by one of her boyfriend's drug associates.
As the investigation deepened, Kimball was implicated in the disappearances of other individuals. He was eventually arrested on unrelated charges, and in 2009, he pleaded guilty to the second-degree murders of four people: Jennifer Marcum, his uncle Terry Kimball, LeAnn Emry, and Kaysi McLeod. Despite his confession to killing Marcum, her body has never been recovered. Kimball claimed to have buried her in a remote, mountainous area but has provided inconsistent information about the location, leading investigators on fruitless searches. He is currently serving a 70-year prison sentence for his crimes. Jennifer Marcum is still officially listed as a missing person, and her family continues to hope for the recovery of her remains.
