After fire and a questionable autopsy, a mystery lives on
CRIME | Bruce Rushton
Jade Ostermeier was barely grown up – a hippie at heart, she wrote on her Facebook page:
Im a pretty out there kinda girl. Taking life as it comes. Music gets me through the day. Im 17
Karen Fitzgerald, a freelance writer living in Pleasant Plains, made substantial contributions to this report.
Marc Fagan, Ostermeier’s boyfriend, was wild – Springfield police recognize him on sight, according to police reports memorializing investigations for such crimes as assault and gun possession. Marc’s three brothers also have extensive criminal records – one is serving 25 years in Iowa for robbery – and his mother and father have also been in trouble with the law. Marc, who turned 21 in July, doesn’t shy from the bad-boy rep: His Facebook page includes pho tos of bongs, pit bulls, liquor bottles, people with middle fingers in the air and plenty of four-letter words.
Janie Smith Rowden, Ostermeier’s mother, says she worried about her daughter.
“All the time,” Rowden says. “But she was an adult, emancipated.”
Rowden says her daughter was never in trouble, save one time when she was 15 and police found her walking a friend home after curfew in Buffalo. Still in high school when she got pregnant by Fagan, Ostermeier on her Facebook page comes across as a proud mother, tough and vulnerable all at the same time. One week before giving birth a year ago, she poured a can of soda over the head of a girl at Tri-City High School who had called her a slut. A brief fight ensued.
I wasnt defending myself. I was defending who she called a mistake. That was a mistake on her part.
“I told Jade I was proud of her for standing up for herself, but it wasn’t the smartest move in the world,” Rowden recalls. “It was just high school bullshit.”
Ostermeier can’t speak for herself anymore.
She was found dead in the aftermath of a Springfield-area house fire last Dec. 2, along with her daughter, Alexis, who was three weeks old. They are buried together in Mechanicsburg Cemetery, beneath a green-granite headstone specially imported from India that matches both Ostermeier’s name and her eyes.
The case has been tough from the start, both for those who loved Ostermeier and for detectives who suspect a crime but haven’t been able to prove it. The sheriff’s office long ago said investigators have identified a person of interest, but there have been no arrests. Detectives are looking at Eric Fagan, Marc’s older brother, but the sheriff’s office won’t confirm that.
Now, investigators plan to exhume Ostermeier’s body in hopes of determining how she died, according to two sources with knowledge of the case.
Rowden said investigators told her last month they wanted to re-examine Ostermeier’s body, which was laid to rest in the same casket as Alexis.
“It’s not something that I want to do,” Rowden said. “By the same token, if it’s something that could lead to putting a clincher on the case, then I have to do it.”
Sources say the work of former Sangamon County Coroner Susan Boone, forced out of office last spring by county officials who didn’t trust her to perform adequate death investigations, has complicated the case.
Speaking on condition of anonymity, two sources with knowledge of the investigation say that Boone failed to x-ray Ostermeier’s body, despite requests from a sheriff’s detective and the Springfield Fire Department.
Boone couldn’t be reached for comment.
Dr. Jessica Bowman, who performed autopsies on Ostermeier and Alexis, declined comment.
