Jennifer Servo

Case background and investigation

Jennifer Lynn Servo was born in 1979 and grew up in Columbia Falls, Montana. According to a CBS News 48 Hours report, she joined the U.S. Army Reserve to help pay for college, worked for television stations in Missoula while studying, and graduated from the University of Montana's journalism program in May 2002. That summer she took her first full-time reporting job at KRBC-TV in Abilene, Texas, more than 1,700 miles from home.

CBS reported that a boyfriend she had met through the Army Reserve followed her to Abilene, and that the relationship ended soon afterwards when she learned he had left a fiancee in Montana. He moved to a separate apartment in the city.

On the night of September 15, 2002, Servo left work at about 11:30 p.m. and went shopping with a colleague, according to Wikipedia's summary of reporting by Oxygen and the Abilene Reporter-News. They left the store around 12:30 a.m. and she spoke to a friend by phone at 1:39 a.m. on September 16. When she failed to appear at work she was checked on, and on September 18 she was found dead in the bathroom of her apartment. The autopsy found she had been strangled and had suffered blunt force trauma. Investigators told CBS there was no sign of a break-in, which led them to believe she knew her killer.

Abilene police collected fingerprints, blood and DNA evidence and took samples from several people close to her. In 2008 a detective told CBS that the department did not have probable cause for an arrest. Local station KTAB/KRBC reported that police said in 2014 they were pursuing new leads without elaborating, and Wikipedia notes that evidence was later sent to private laboratories for further DNA testing.

In 2024 the department's cold case unit reworked the file with the television series Cold Justice. The Abilene Reporter-News reported on April 29, 2024, that detectives re-interviewed witnesses, said on the programme that the colleague who had been with her that night was cleared, and announced that they would present a case against her former boyfriend to the district attorney's office, which was considering charges or a grand jury. The newspaper noted that anyone accused is presumed innocent. The former boyfriend has not been charged.

No arrest has been made. Servo's family, including her mother Sherry Abel and her father Norm Olson, have continued to press for a resolution, and a scholarship in her name was established at the University of Montana. Tips can be given to Abilene Crime Stoppers.