John Jamelske

John Jamelske (born May 9, 1935) is an American serial rapist-kidnapper who, from 1988 to his apprehension in 2003, kidnapped a series of girls and women and held them captive in a concrete bunker beneath the yard of his home in DeWitt, a suburb of Syracuse, New York, United States.

Jamelske was born and raised in the DeWitt area.

He graduated from Fayetteville High School in 1953.

In September 1959, he married Dorothy Richmond, a schoolteacher with whom he had three sons.

At this time, he worked at Acme Market and other grocery stores.

Later he started working in a series of blue-collar jobs, as a handyman and carpenter.

Over the years, Jamelske amassed over $1million, which he invested in real estate in California.

It is noted that, despite that body style being available from 1971 to 1977, police failed to search any other year, as the car Jamelske drove was a 1975 Mercury Comet of the same color.

Representatives from the Syracuse police appeared on Dateline NBC and criticized the woman for providing insufficient information.

In another interview on the program Cold Case Files, an Onondaga Sheriff's Department detective stated:

The victim also told police that he drove a tan 1974 Mercury Comet.

Police searched for registered vehicles matching this description in the New York area and came up with a single hit.

However the lead did not pan out due to the victim's description of the vehicle not matching with the one discovered.

Due to this inconsistency, the investigating officers closed the case.

Jamelske's wife Dorothy became bedridden from disease in 1988 and died in 1999.

Jamelske and his wife lived in a three-bedroom single-family home at 7070 Highbridge Road in Fayetteville, New York.

In October 1988, Jamelske abducted his first victim, a 14-year-old Native American girl.

He held her captive for over two years, and she had turned 17 by the time he released her.

Jamelske compelled her to his will by threatening violence against her younger brother.

She made no attempt to report to authorities after Jamelske released her.

In either 1995 or 1996, Jamelske abducted a 14-year-old Latina runaway whom he lured under the premise of paying her to deliver a secret package.

The girl willingly walked into his bunker (which he called "the dungeon") and Jamelske closed the door behind her.

Eventually Jamelske put a blindfold on her and drove her to her mother's apartment and dropped her off.

Although he also threatened her family, she went to the police with a description.

Because of her previous drug use, they questioned the credibility of her story and dropped the investigation shortly after.

On August 31, 1997, Jamelske kidnapped a 53-year-old Vietnamese woman off the street.

She was a foreign refugee who spoke little English.

He forced her into his car and took her to an abandoned house, where he raped her.

Then he tied her to a stack of flattened cardboard boxes and drove her to his house.

He raped her daily while holding her captive, and also forced her to fulfill various menial tasks for him.

He released her on May 23, 1998, at a Greyhound bus station, with $50.

She reported to the police that day, but nothing came of it.

She claimed that the police did not believe her, but Syracuse Police spokesman Sgt. Thomas Connellan stated that they investigated all leads, none of which panned out.

On May 11, 2001, Jamelske offered a ride home to a 26-year-old white woman walking in downtown Syracuse while under the influence of LSD, which the woman accepted due to the poor weather.

Jamelske took her back to his bunker, where he raped her daily.

When she resisted, Jamelske inflicted cigar burns on her, from which she developed an abscess on her lower back.

Jamelske also manipulated her with claims that he was actually part of an underground slavery syndicate, of which the police were a part.

The victim wanted to write home to her parents letting them know she was alive, and while Jamelske did agree he insisted she tell them that she was in a drug rehabilitation clinic.

After the 2001 victim's release, police investigations were complicated by the letter she had been forced by Jamelske to write.

Further complicating the case was the rape kit test showing no evidence of sexual assault—Jamelske had no sexual contact with the victim for several days prior to releasing her.