Being a single mom is
hard, even harder when you are stuck in a cycle of generational poverty
and nothing is looking up. Many people stuck in the cycle turn to drugs
for a pick-me-up when they face endless days with no hope in sight of
things getting better. They say dying young is the fastest way to become
a saint, which is true unless you're lower middle class or poverty
level.
This is the story of
Johanna Weaver. Johanna was a single mom who fell into drugs like a lot
of 20 somethings do when they are looking for an escape. She might have
made poor decisions, but she always tried to shield her children from
her troubled life.
Johanna's mother would
take the kids on weekends when Johanna would drop them off before she
would engage in unsavory activities. Johanna was addicted to cocaine,
which was quickly growing in usage in Indiana in 1995. The young mother
would spend her weekends chasing highs and hanging out with less than
decent people, so she would always leave the kids with her mother so
that they were not exposed.
Johnnie Huddleston,
Johanna's mother, tried multiple times to put her daughter in rehab.
Sadly, since these programs were not court ordered Johanna was allowed
to leave at any time. Many times Johanna would start a program, but then
leave before finishing. Her mother was left with no choice, but to
watch her daughter continue to make poor decisions and try to protect
her grandchildren from them.
When Sunday night rolled
around, Johanna would sober up and pickup her two small children.
During the week she was a typical single mom, hustling to provide for
her children. She was a semi-functioning addict who used prostitution to
pay for her addiction according to many accounts.
In June of 1995, a
Sunday night rolled around and Johanna did not return to her mother's
home to retrieve her children as she normally did. That was when her
mother began to suspect that something was terribly wrong. Her mother
managed to find help to watch the children while she went to work the
next morning.
Johnnie Huddleston,
Johanna's mother, over the next week would receive a series of
voicemails from her daughter that made her fear for the young mother's
life. Nothing was explicitly said in the messages, but Johnnie said she
could just tell from the tone. When she contacted the police over her
daughter's absence, she was told that the voicemails constituted
contact. Johanna could not be reported missing at that time.
After all these years,
Johnnie can't remember the exact day on which the voicemails stopped and
the phone companies didn't keep those records for very long at the
time. When they stopped Johnnie began to fear for the worst.
On July 13, 1995 a
mowing crew found the body of a thin, black woman under branches and
debris in the median of the I-65 and I-70 slit in Indianapolis. The body
had been burned and was unidentifiable.
After a week, on July
21, 1995, the body from the median was finally identified as Johanna
Weaver. The picture above indicates where the body was found.
In 2007, twelve years
after Johanna's murder, a detective from the Indiana State Police was
assigned to the cold case. Sergeant Jeff Coffey was the officer that
took over the case. He was able to narrow down the timeline of Weaver's
disappearance. He discovered that the last time Johanna was seen alive
was on July 8 in 1995. Her "friends" had seen her with a man that they
didn't know. This sighting occurred near 17th and Park Street.
(The highlighted box is
the area in which Johanna was last seen. The highlighted road is an area
in which she worked as a prostitute and where she obtained drugs.)
Sergeant still had a
period of four days where he was unable to account for her. He tried
reaching out to her "friends," but many have remained tight-lipped. This
has proved problematic since DNA was recovered from the body that is
believed to belong to Johanna's murderer.
Anyone who saw Weaver in
those for days has been asked repeatedly to contact police. Call the
Indiana State Police at (317) 899-8577 or 1-(800) 582-8440 if you have
any information regarding the murder or disappearance of Johanna
Weaver.
_____________________Sources___________________________
"Indiana Unsolved: Four
Days a Mystery in Death of Troubled Mom Johanna Weaver." Diana Penner.
Indy Star. January 17, 2014.
http://www.indystar.com/story/news/crime/2014/01/17/indiana-unsolved-four-days-a-mystery-in-death-of-troubled-mom-johanna-weaver/4582213/
"Indy Unsolved: Mother's
Body Found Burnt Beneath 1-70 Overpass in 1996." Russ McQuad. Fox 59.
October 24, 2016.
http://fox59.com/2016/10/24/indy-unsolved-mothers-body-found-burnt-beneath-i-70-overpass-in-1996/
Maps via google maps.
IPS Cold Case Database.
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