Janett Christman

Case background and investigation

Janett Christman was born in Columbia, Missouri, on March 21, 1936. On Saturday, March 18, 1950, three days before her 14th birthday, she agreed to babysit the three-year-old son of Ed and Anne Romack at their home on the edge of Columbia while the couple spent the evening out.

According to accounts of the case, at about 10:30 p.m. the Columbia police received a telephone call from a girl who was screaming and who asked them to come quickly. The line went dead before she gave a name or an address, and the call could not be traced.

The Romacks returned home in the early hours of March 19. They found the porch light on and the front door unlocked, and Ed Romack discovered Janett's body on the living room floor. She had been beaten about the head, sexually assaulted and strangled with the cord of an electric iron. The child she had been looking after was unharmed. A side window had been broken from the outside, and a garden hoe was found nearby. Accounts of the investigation state that fingerprints and blood samples were collected and that dogs followed a scent for some distance from the house before losing it.

The investigation was shared between the Columbia Police Department and the Boone County Sheriff's Department, and later accounts describe friction between the two agencies over control of the case. A number of men were questioned in the first weeks.

Attention eventually turned to a 27-year-old local man who knew both the Romacks and the Christman family and for whom Janett had previously babysat. According to published accounts, he had been with the Romacks earlier that evening and left before the time of the murder. He was questioned at length, reportedly without a warrant or a lawyer, and is reported to have passed a polygraph examination. A grand jury considered the matter and found that there was not enough evidence to charge him. He was never charged with any offense in connection with the death and is reported to have died in 2006.

Writers on the case have noted its similarities to the 1946 killing of Marylou Jenkins, 20, in the same part of Columbia. Floyd Cochran was convicted of that murder and executed in 1947, and some authors have questioned that conviction. No connection between the two crimes has been established. Janett Christman's murder has also been cited as an influence on the urban legend of the babysitter and the man upstairs. No one has ever been charged with her killing.