Still with no body, trial begins in 1987 murder case

Donna Mae Jokumsen, missing for more than 30 years, was the focus of attention in Maricopa County Superior Court on Tuesday.

Though her remains have not been found, Maricopa County prosecutors are trying to prove that her husband killed the then-22-year-old Jokumsen as the final violent act in a toxic relationship.

It’s a case that was investigated multiple times, but no charges were brought for decades.

Kevin Jokumsen, now 56, is charged with second-degree murder in connection with the presumed death of Donna.

The mother of two went missing on July 5, 1987, from her Chandler home. The couple had moved from Enumclaw, Washington, to Chandler six months earlier.

It’s not rare for juries to convict people in nobody murder trials. But the case against Kevin Jokumsen is considered one of the oldest no-body cases to go to trial in Arizona. Since Chandler police first investigated the case in the late 1980s, no new evidence has emerged.

Kevin Jokumsen pleaded not guilty.

Deputy County Attorney Robert Shutts, who in the 1990s had declined to present the case to a jury because there was no body, is now prosecuting it before Judge Ronda Fisk.

The Maricopa County Attorney’s Office has previously declined to comment to The Arizona Republic about why Shutts is prosecuting the case now.

On Tuesday, Shutts laid out a timeline that dated from the couple’s high-school years to 1987, when Chandler police detectives interviewed Jokumsen after his wife’s disappearance.

Shutts pointed out the inconsistencies in Jokumsen’s story about how his wife went missing.

He told the jurors that Kevin Jokumsen portrayed his marriage to police as a positive and healthy one, even though family members on both sides described it as a toxic relationship.

Shutts also implied that the logic in the husband’s side of the story didn’t make sense because her friends and family were expecting Donna Jokumsen to return to Washington that summer.

Kaitlin Perkins, one of Jokumsen’s public defenders, was blunter in her opening statement, saying Chandler police have been investigating an innocent man.

“Chandler police had never considered anything or anyone else for the cause of Donna’s disappearance,” she told the jurors.

Perkins theorized on other possibilities of what may have happened to Donna Jokumsen — but possibilities that can’t be proven, she said.

“Is Donna dead? They don’t know. Did she run away from her life to start a new one? We don’t know,” Perkins said, adding, “Did she go somewhere with the wrong people who killed her? They don’t know; we don’t know; no one knows.”

Kevin Jokumsen, wearing gray slacks and a light-gray button-up shirt, sat stoically at the defense table.

He has been held in the Maricopa County jail since he was extradited October 2017 from Washington, where he moved has shortly after Donna’s disappearance.

No one has reported having seen or heard from Donna Jokumsen since July 5, 1987. Her body has not been found.

The case had been cold before Chandler police reopened it in 2013, when detectives interviewed living witnesses again.

The Maricopa County Attorney’s Office presented the case to a grand jury, which determined there was enough probable cause to charge Jokomsen with murder.

According to data compiled by Tad DiBiase, a former federal prosecutor who tracks similar cases across the country, the Jokumsen case is among the oldest murder cases without a body ever presented to a jury in Arizona.

As of Jan. 5 of this year, 20 no-body murder cases have been presented to Arizona juries, and nearly all of them ended in a conviction, according to DiBiase’s data.

A 200-page report released by Chandler police includes statements from friends and family, tips received by the department and newspaper clippings. It paints a picture of a young couple who had physically fought since their highschool years — a couple who, by all accounts, should not have stayed together.

Kevin’s older sister later told police that Donna being with her brother was like “gas on a fire.” Fights between the two would sometimes escalate into physical violence, she told investigators.

“That relationship was not healthy. If I could have hog-tied him and got him away from her, I would have done it,” Kevin’s mother, Jeanne Jokumsen, told The Arizona Republic in March 2018. “But this is the end result, and we’ve all paid a price.”

The couple had moved to Chandler from Enumclaw, Washington, in part to start a new life with their two sons. The two settled into a house on Gary Drive, near Alma School and Ray roads, in 1987.

In July 1987, Donna Jokumsen called her father in Washington state to ask if she and her two sons could seek refuge at his home. She told him she was tired of the violent fights with her husband, according to the police report.

He said yes. But her family didn’t hear from her again. A little more than a week after she called her father, they reported her as missing to police on July 11, 1987.

Among the last people to see Donna alive were sisters Jackie Oxford and Myra Sandoval. Donna attended a bank teller school with Oxford, who then introduced Donna to her sister.

During a 2016 interview with police, Sandoval told detectives Donna spent part of the Fourth of July weekend with Sandoval’s family, and they had gone to a river in Donna’s blue Chevrolet Chevelle.

By the time they returned to Sandoval’s home, the car was dirty, she said.

Soon after her disappearance, police in 1987 asked Kevin why, if Donna had left it behind, the Chevelle was cleaned out and washed. Kevin told them he didn’t know.

Sandoval, whose health has deteriorated over the years, is expected to testify, Shutts said.

Kevin told police that his wife had abandoned him and their children.

In a written statement at the time, he said that Donna asked him for money because she wanted to take a summer vacation with the boys in Washington, he wrote. Kevin gave her $500 so she could rent a U-Haul van to take some of the boys’ stuff, he wrote.

According to him, Donna said she was going to say goodbye to her friends and return later that night to talk about when she would leave. But when he woke up the next morning, her car was washed and parked in front of the house and he never saw or heard from her again, he wrote.

Then, during an interview with detectives at a Chandler police station, Kevin wept when they told him they suspected Donna was murdered.

“He began sobbing and said that nothing has happened to her because she is too strong for anything to have happened to her,” according to a police report dated July 24, 1987. “He kept crying and uttering statements like, ‘Please God, don’t let anything happen to her,’ and ‘She’ll let someone know where she is.’ ”