He Stalked Her Since She Was 13..
Most people can feel it when someone is watching them. That quiet, uncomfortable moment when you look up… and someone is just staring. Usually it’s nothing. But sometimes… that feeling is the only warning you’re ever going to get. In January 2007, two teenage friends pulled into a parking lot for dance rehearsal at Cowley County Community College.
And almost immediately, one of them noticed a man sitting in a car nearby. He wasn’t texting. He wasn’t talking. He was just watching them… intensely. The girls hurried inside and tried to ignore it. But what they didn’t realize… was that this man had already been following them.
And within days, one of those girls would vanish without a trace. [intro] Jodi Sanderholm was born in Arkansas City, Kansas, to parents Brian and Cindy. She was one of three siblings, with a brother and a sister named Jason and Jennifer. From a young age, Jodi loved music and dancing, and it quickly became a huge part of her life—something she continued all the way through high school and into college, and she may have hoped to make a career out of this… but unfortunately, that college career was cut short.
See, Jodi was also super intelligent. She attended Arkansas City High School, where she was one of four valedictorians in her graduating class. She was a member of the National Honor Society, a Kansas State Scholar, and a Kansas Board of Regents Scholar. Because she loved dancing and had a natural talent for it, she joined the Ark City High School Dance Team and remained a member throughout high school. She also served as captain of the team for two years.
She was also a dancer and instructor at Ark City Dance, as well as a Universal Dance Association instructor. So, you could say that dancing ran through Jodi’s veins. She found it relaxing, and her teammates remember her as a hardworking girl who simply lived life at her own pace. She was also very friendly, and as dance captain, she was a natural leader, all skills that she planned to put to good use while in college… but she would never get that chance.
After high school, you might expect Jodi to pursue dancing professionally. But she had other plans. She wasn’t letting go of dance—that’s for sure—but she also wanted to study something in the medical field. So Jodi chose pharmacy as her major and enrolled at Cowley County Community College.
There, she pursued her studies while also joining the college dance team, the Cowley Tigerette Danceline. At that point, Jodi was simply living her life—growing up in a quiet neighborhood, studying for a future in medicine, and continuing the thing she loved most: dancing. But while Jodi was focused on her future… someone else had already started watching her.
And within days, Jodi Sanderholm would vanish—missing an important appointment and leaving her family and friends desperately searching for answers. JODI DISAPPEARS It was January 7th, 2007, and it was a seemingly normal day for Jodi—however, “normal” would be the last word to define how the day ended.
The morning of the fateful day, Jodi had to reach college for a dance rehearsal that would end at around 10:45 am. So, Jodi woke up and got dressed in her dance clothes, which were a Cowley Tigerette leotard and a matching black Tigerette jacket with her name on it, and she grabbed her bag and headed out the door. She drove her Dodge Stratus to college and attended the rehearsal.
After the rehearsal, Jodi was supposed to go home. She had an important appointment at noon, and later that evening, she also had a performance scheduled with her entire team for a basketball game. Jodi was the choreographer for the team. So, these were all important commitments that Jodi made, and she had to show up for them. But she never would.
After the rehearsal was over, Jodi left her college, and then she was not heard from again. Her mom, Cindy, decided to check in with her daughter after the rehearsal was over, because she would always text or call after her errands to keep them in the loop. Cindy never got the call from Jodi, and this worried her a bit.
She tried calling Jodi multiple times, but she wasn’t picking up her phone. This was highly unlike Jodi. She would always, always answer her phone. Maybe not at that exact second, but she would make it a point to call her parents or even her siblings back. If not a call, then she would shoot a text to let them know if she was busy.
But Jodi was radio silent. She wasn’t picking up her calls. Her messages were going unanswered, and it just made her parents feel a certain way, which wasn’t good at all. Cindy then reached out to Jodi’s dad, Brian, and he too hadn’t heard from her either. Brian also blew up her phone, but she wasn’t answering.
This was two times in a row now. Had she lost her phone? Did she accidentally leave it at rehearsal and just go somewhere last-minute? Her parents were trying to come up with every possible theory in their heads to keep them from falling apart from worry. Cindy was at work at the time, but she was so anxious that she decided to cut her workday short and go back home.
Jodi was supposed to go home right after the rehearsal, so maybe she was there. Cindy was praying she would be on the drive home. But when she pulled up to the front of her house, Jodi’s car was nowhere to be seen. The house was empty; Jodi’s room was left as it was in the morning. The laundry hamper was empty; the bathroom looked unused. Jodi wasn’t home either. Cindy was now unable to control her anxiety.
She called up many of Jodi’s friends and dance partners to check if anyone had seen her. The dance team told Cindy that Jodi had attended the rehearsal, and after that, she left college. Aside from that, they didn’t know if she had any other commitments or errands to run after this. Cindy and Brian then found out that she didn’t make it to her appointment at noon either, and as evening fell, she was a no-show at the dance performance too.
Now, this was when everyone started to take her disappearance very seriously. She was not someone to miss so many important things. She wouldn’t just drop everything and go somewhere without telling anyone. She literally had no plans of doing that. So, at 6 pm on the same day, worried about trying to reach Jodi and failing every single time, Cindy and Brian called the police and reported 19-year-old Jodi Sanderholm missing.
THE INVESTIGATION The police, instead of giving Jodi’s parents the usual wait-48-hours spiel, got started on looking for Jodi. Cindy and Brian already told the police that Jodi hadn’t made it to two of her important commitments, and they knew that she wasn’t a runaway. The police helped her parents set up missing posters for their daughter, while officers got to work on trying to find her car.
This was the first thing that could lead to some direction in this confusing disappearance. While the police put an alert out for the car, they decided to look into people closest to Jodi. Her friends, acquaintances, and any love interests. They needed all the details. Jodi’s parents told the police about her boyfriend—a young man by the name of Coby—so the police looked into him.
They contacted him and found out that he was in Texas to meet his family. He had an airtight alibi, and he wasn’t even in Kansas when Jodi disappeared. Moreover, he sounded genuinely shocked when he learned that Jodi was MIA. He also didn’t have any reason to harm or be a threat to her. The police then decided to talk to people who most probably last saw Jodi. Her dance team members.
They all told the officers the same thing they told Cindy. She came to college looking like her usual self; she practiced, and then she left. When the police asked for specifics, nothing stood out. According to her dance team members and friends who saw her that day, She didn’t look on edge, scared, or anything like that.
She was her usual self. She wasn’t gloomy; she didn’t mention anything weird. It was all normal. The police hit a wall after this too. They knew something must have happened to Jodi as she left college after her rehearsal, but what? This, they had to find out. Next up were Jodi’s close friends.
The police decided to talk to them too to see if they had any useful information that might help them piece together Jodi’s disappearance. Well, one friend did have something to say… but it was the last thing police had been hoping for. THE MAN IN THE CAR Lori was Jodi’s best friend, and when she was approached by the police, she racked her brain hard to remember any details that stood out before Jodi disappeared, and she did remember something.
It was a couple of days before Jodi’s disappearance, and Lori remembered that on January 2nd, about 5 days before Jodi was last seen, Lori was getting off work at around 10 pm when she got in her car and made the drive to her home. On the way home, though, she spotted something bizarre in the rear-view mirror.
A light blue car was seemingly following her. At first, she thought nothing of it, but then, things got weird. Every turn Lori took, every intersection she crossed, and everywhere she went, the light blue car followed her movements. This really stunned her.
So, she made a beeline for the nearest police station and parked her car outside, hoping that this creepy driver—whomever it was—would leave her alone. She didn’t go inside the station to report the car’s driver because, well, she thought that someone was just playing a prank on her—messing with her. And besides, she didn’t see the driver, the license plate, or anything of importance, save the color of the car. It wouldn’t be that helpful, and she would probably be turned away by the police anyway.
Regardless, Lori sat in the car, and the driver did leave her alone, at least initially. When she thought the coast was clear, she zipped out of the police station parking lot, only to be tailed by the same blue car again. She was beyond frightened. She went back to the police station parking lot and waited for a long time.
After what felt like forever, she drove off for home once again, and this time, luckily, she wasn’t followed by anyone. Well, on January 5th, 3 days after the incident, Lori and Jodi reached Cowley County Community College and parked their cars in the parking lot for a rehearsal. When Lori glanced around the parking lot, she saw something familiar.
It was the same light blue car that had followed her not too long ago, and this time, she could clearly see the face of the person. It was 23-year-old Justin Eugene Thurber. Lori, or Jodi for that matter, did not personally know Justin. But Arkansas City was a small town where everyone knew everyone. If you saw someone on the road, you would definitely remember them and possibly see them again too. Lori had also seen Justin around town with his friends and brothers.
This was why she remembered his face. So now, the police were highly alert when they heard of Justin. The case was finally going somewhere, and since the police didn’t have any active leads in Jodi’s case, they decided to look more into Justin. Granted, he wasn’t even following Jodi – he’d been stalking Lori this whole time. But still… it was something.
When asked about Justin, a lot of girls from the dance team as well as Jodi’s friends told the officers that they had seen Justin numerous times at the college. But he wasn’t a student at this college. Nor was he there to pick someone up. He would park his car right in front of the college and then just sit there, staring at girls leaving or going to take classes.
It just made everyone so uncomfortable,but not only this, but Justin was well-known to the police. He had been charged with and convicted of possession of illegal substances in 2004, and then when he was released on probation, he was arrested again three months later for a robbery. He ping-ponged between society and the police station for similar felonies until just a few days before Jodi’s disappearance on January 1st.
Justin got in trouble with the police for impersonating a police officer, but he somehow got away with it. It’s still unclear why he wasn’t arrested and why they allowed him to roam the streets, but when the police came for him, he feigned medical problems and was taken to the hospital. After that, for some odd reason, he was able to walk free, without getting punished.
I can only imagine how much of an ego boost this incident was for Justin. He did something wrong, and for the first time, he didn’t even get a slap on the wrist for it, which is just unbelievable. So, with all of this information, the police went to Justin’s house to find out where he was the day Jodi disappeared.
But imagine the police’s surprise when they pulled into the driveway and saw a familiar light blue car parked right outside the Thurber family home. This was the same car that tailed Lori before Jodi’s disappearance. The police took note of this, and luckily, they found Justin, so that made things easier. When asked about Justin’s whereabouts on January 7th, he told the police that he was meeting up with some of his friends in Winfield.
The group was driving a car that belonged to Justin’s friend, but then the car got stuck in a dirt road near Cedar Vale. From there, Justin made the journey back to Arkansas City on foot. For context, Cedar Vale is 30 miles away from Arkansas City. This isn’t some light walking, that’s a full-on excursion. A few more hours passed, and Justin eventually gave up on his walk and called his dad to come and pick him up, which his dad did.
When he reached the place where Justin was, he noticed that Justin was covered in dirt and it looked like he either sweated a lot or took a dive in a lake. He was drenched. Then, the police asked about Justin’s car and what had happened to it. Well, Justin said that he left his car in Winfield, and his friends returned it the next day.
The police weren’t buying this story, but they didn’t have anything concrete to implicate him just yet. They needed more proof than just him being wet and dirty after a trip with his friends, no matter how suspicious it sounded. So, the police went back, and the next day, they paid a visit to Justin’s house once again.
This time, when they entered the house and looked around, they saw something strange. A pair of white shoes was laid on a towel. They were wet, and Justin’s dad explained to the police that he had helped clean Justin’s shoes as they were also covered in dirt. His dad also confirmed that these were the very shoes he was wearing when he went out for that trip with his friends. The police knew what they had to do.
They needed to go to the area where Justin was with his friends—according to him, at least. Because there, they knew, they’d likely find some sort of evidence… and how right they would be. THE CRIME SCENE The police narrowed the entire wooded area down to a remote place known as the Kaw Wildlife Area and Cowley State Fishing Lake.
If you remember, Justin looked drenched, and this was the only body of water that was nearby was this lake, so could this lead the police in the right direction? They had to find out once they got there. The police searched the wildlife area first, and sure enough, on the wet dirt road, they found a couple of shoe prints. They were identical to the shoes Justin’s dad had helped him wash.
But there was more. Smaller footprints were also found on the ground, indicating that there were two people in this particular area, and from the looks of it, it looked like a woman’s shoe prints. Then, the police went over to the Cowley State Fishing Lake area, and there they found even more bizarre things.
There were tire tracks in the mud, the same shoe prints as Justin’s… and some of Jodi’s belongings. Mail addressed to Jodi’s house, dance shoes, shorts, a wallet with Jodi’s driver’s license in it, as well as Jodi’s dance clothes and jacket. It was all just laying out fo the world to see. This was no coincidence.
They had found Jodi’s belongings in a place with what seemed to be Justin’s shoe prints, and it was a place where Justin was at the time of Jodi’s disappearance. The police knew that this was their chance. If they had any hope of finding Jodi’s car or even Jodi herself, it was here in this area, which was literally the perfect place to hide anything you don’t want people finding.
So, on January 9th, the Cowley State Fishing Lake was searched, and ultimately, Jodi’s car was found sunken to the bottom. The police checked the car, but there was no sign of Jodi inside. But a team searching the Kaw wildlife area had found something, and it wasn’t good. Under a bunch of twigs, leaves, and branches, the teams found something that looked like a mannequin. But we all know… it is never a mannequin.
It was 19-year-old Jodi Sanderholm. DNA tests were also done on the car, and even though water had destroyed and contaminated most of the car interior, the police were able to locate Justin’s DNA, so without a doubt, what had happened to both Jodi and her car… it was clearly Justin’s doing. The police also reviewed CCTV footage near the parking lot, and they saw Justin in his light blue Cadillac… just… waiting.
Then, as Jodi made her way out and drove away in her car, Justin followed her. What is so heartbreaking is that Jodi had made it to her home, but as she was busy checking the mail right outside her house, that was when Justin forced her into her own car and sped off. Then, it is believed that he took her into that wooded area and ultimately ended her life following a prolonged attack, disposed of her body, got rid of all her stuff, and drove her car into the lake.
Then he went back to Jodi’s home to retrieve his car and drove away—just like that. Well, Justin was ultimately arrested on an unrelated charge at first, but then he also racked up Jodi’s murder charge, and his bail was set at $1 million. His trial was held sometime later, and at the trial, many of his ex-girlfriends testified against him. According to these women, Justin was very abusive and aggressive with his previous partners.
It also turns out that Justin had spied on Jodi ever since she was a young girl. According to his recent ex-girlfriend, Justin knew who Jodi was because he would lurk in the shadows and just creep on her – while they were literal children. This man had been a stalker since childhood. If that doesn’t make you sick to your stomach, I don’t know what will.
The attack on Jodi was not a random one. He purposely spied on her and then decided to escalate things for whatever sick and twisted reason. Well, Justin’s attorneys tried to paint him as a mentally unstable man who didn’t realize what he was doing, but this argument was pretty soon kicked to the side. Was he unstable? Clearly. But did he realize what he was doing? Absolutely.
See, Justin had a decent IQ; he went to a regular high school and even attended college. He was not mentally unfit by any means. In fact, I’d say he knew how to cover his tracks pretty well. He knew all the right ways to get rid of Jodi’s car and belongings; he knew the best place to carry out the attack.
He knew how to spin a story in front of the police. That is not something a mentally unfit person would do. Well, in February 2009, Justin was found guilty. But his sentencing… it came as a complete shock to everyone in court that day. THE AFTERMATH After being found guilty for the murder of Jodi Sanderholm, Justin Thurber was sentenced to death.
He is still incarcerated at the El Dorado Correctional Facility in Butler County, and he appealed his conviction multiple times on the grounds of intellectual disability – a disability that, for a fact, he does not have. But regardless, in 2018, the Kansas Supreme Court postponed Justin’s death sentence.
He is still currently on death row, even after 17 years have passed since he was sentenced. This was not appreciated by Jodi’s family as well as other families of victims that he’d abused, assaulted, or both. For context, Kansas reinstated the death penalty back in April 1994, and ever since then, including Justin Thurber, 9 people sit on death row in Kansas. But none of them have been executed.
Now, executions are not done with a timetable or schedule in mind. It is pretty random if we’re being honest, but the fact that thousands of dollars, paid by US citizens, including the money of victims’ families, go to keeping these criminals alive in prison while they await their execution day is a topic of extreme controversy and frustration.
They have committed horrible crimes and have destroyed families and their peace, but their punishments are simply not being carried out for one reason or another. Now, I’m not here to advocate one way or the other when it comes to the death penalty – but the truth of the matter is, the penalty was instated as law.
These people were convicted. These people were sentenced. So why is all this money being wasted while the prosecutors just stick their hands in their pockets and kick dirt? Regardless, Justin was responsible for Jodi’s passing, but what was his motive for taking things this far? We still don’t know.
He’s still here, and Jodi isn’t. And Justin isn’t talking. But considering that it was confirmed that she’d been taken advantage of… I think we all know why he took her life. This was something that hit Jodi’s parents the hardest. Jodi dreamed of graduating from college, getting married, building a family, and so much more, but everything was ruined because of this one person, if you could even call him that.
This man was an insect from day one, as proven by his childhood habits that carried over into adulthood. Because of this one man, Jodi can never fulfill her dreams or make anyone laugh or smile again, and now her family is left… to let time pass by without her. Cases like this… they never truly end.
Even once Justin’s time comes and his punishment is carried out… there will be no peace. The consequences of his actions will no longer be born by him, they’ll just be passed on to Jodi’s family, who are forced to live the rest of their lives without one of the people they loved the most. The only peace that can be found in times like this, if you can call it that… is just the mercy of life itself.
And sometimes the mercy of life… is that it just keeps going. While Jodi may be gone, we all live another day to experience joy, to experience happiness, and to share that love, that joy, and that connection with others. For Jodi… its too late. But please let her case be a reminder to not waste the time that you have filling it with regret, with negativity, with hatred.
I’m sure that Jodi’s family would do anything to have one final peaceful moment of happiness with their daughter, with their sister. You can be that peace and happiness for someone else. I think Paul said it best in Romans 12 when he said, “Rejoice with those who rejoice. Weep with those who weep. But repay no evil with evil. Never avenge yourselves, for it’s written ‘Vengeance is mine. I will repay.
’” Live in the light, not the shadow.
