Oh my god. Oh my god. Harper 901, what’s the problem? My daughter is blue. I went to wake her up and I just got home from for lunch and she won’t wake up. Is she breathing? I don’t think so. No. Oh, not breathing. I don’t think so. I I She’s blue. I I tried to wake her up and she’s not even waking up.
Do you know how to do CPR, man? She’s cold. She’s cold. She’s cold. She’s cold. Oh my god. She’s cold. Oh my gosh. She’s got Oh my god. Oh my god. Oh my gosh. Ma’am, is she in the line with me? We’re going to get EMS out for you. She’s got It looks like strangulation marks. There are strangulation marks.
That’s what it looks like. I don’t know what’s going on. I don’t know what’s going on. Okay, I’m going to stage out police. So, hang on. I will be with you just a second. He pulls out a binding um and places around her neck. Um he then strangles her while he continues to have with her. Um ultimately the the female party appears dead.
That morning, Joy Blahett did something any mother would have done. She opened her daughter’s bedroom door, saw her sleeping, decided not to wake her, and quietly left for work. She thought she was being kind. She had no way of knowing that the person she saw lying under that blanket was already gone and that the person responsible had been sitting in their living room just hours before grieving alongside the family.
Before we continue, please take a moment right now to press the thumbs up button below this video and share it with someone. Stories like this one deserve to be heard as widely as possible. The more people know about what happened to Jesse, the harder it becomes for something like this to happen again in silence.
Awareness is one of the most powerful things we have. Thank you for being here. Now, let me tell you who Jesse Blahit really was. Buck and Joy Blahett had wanted a child for a long time. Long enough that at some point both of them had nearly accepted the situation and begun building a life around that reality. Then everything changed.
Joy found out she was expecting and it was so unexpected that both parents could hardly believe it even after believing it had become absolutely necessary. Jesse came into the world at home without hospitals or doctors, just her father, his mother, and a midwife. When it was over, Buck and Joy looked at their daughter with the particular expression that belongs only to people who have received something they had nearly stopped hoping for.
She grew up in Hartford and from an early age was one of those people others simply notice. Not because she sought it out. It just happened that way. In first grade, her teacher put together a separate word list for her. Because the standard curriculum ran out well before her abilities did. While her classmates were working through simple vocabulary, Jesse was already handling words like metamorphosis and anesthesiologist.
Not because her parents pushed her. She was just interested and she did not know how to be bored. Music arrived early and quickly took up the kind of space in her life that usually belongs to one thing forever. Piano, violin, singing. She did not just play, she lived inside it. Her close friend Jacquine would later say that every time she came over, she had to stand in the doorway and wait for a pause in the music.
Otherwise, Jesse simply would not hear that someone had walked in. The music never stopped. It was the background of her existence. But there was something else about her that set her apart from most people her age and honestly from most people of any age. Jesse could not walk past unfairness at all. When she was 13, there was a group of popular girls at her school who made other students lives harder in that quiet, systematic way that is difficult to confront directly.
A lot of people saw it. Very few did anything. Jesse wrote a song not to become famous simply because it was the only way she knew to say something important out loud. She was a vegetarian at a time when that was not particularly common in a small Wisconsin town. Once she and her friend stopped their car on a busy highway because a turtle had wandered onto the road.
It is a small thing, but small things like that describe a person more accurately than almost anything else. By the time she graduated from Hartford Union High School in 2012, she had a clear picture of what she wanted from life. Not a vague dream, a specific plan. She wanted to become a coral director, work in a school or university, and use music to reach people.
She used to talk about it this way, 100 people a year, 40 years of work. She counted it in people, not in accomplishments. In the fall of 2012, she enrolled at the University of Wisconsin Milwaukee in their music education program. And within a year, she had received a named talent scholarship from the department. It was a strong start.
Everything was moving the way she had planned. The summer of 2013, Jesse spent at home in Hartford with her parents. She came back after her first year of college. And unlike most students who treat the summer as a justified break from everything, she went straight to work. Within a few weeks of returning, she had started her own small music teaching business.
Voice, piano, and violin lessons for kids around town. Within 2 months, she had 26 students. That is not a coincidence. That is what happens when someone is genuinely good at what they do. At the same time, she was rehearsing at the local Shower Arts Center. That summer, the Hartford Players Theater Company was putting on a production of Fiddler on the Roof, and Jesse had auditioned for and landed the central role.
She played the Fiddler. On top of that, she was continuing to write music with a friend she had been collaborating with since school. She was busy nearly every day, and that was exactly how she liked it. Opening night of Fiddler on the Roof was July 12th. The house was full. On Sunday the 14th, they had a matinea performance, another full house.
After it wrapped, the cast headed to a party at one of the performers’ homes, a place with a pool. Jesse spent a few hours there sitting by the pool with her castmates, talking, and at some point making her way over to pet some llamas grazing in a nearby field. It was a good day.
The party ended past midnight and Jesse drove home. Her mother was awake waiting. They talked for a little while and Joy noticed that her daughter seemed off. Jesse explained two men from the cast considerably older than her, had behaved in ways that made her uncomfortable at the party. They had been flirting, and at one point, one of them had pulled her onto his lap.
She had not wanted that and had not expected it. It was not something she would describe as serious, but it had left a feeling she could not quite shake. Joy asked a few questions, satisfied herself that nothing truly alarming had happened, and they said good night. Before she went to sleep, Jesse opened her diary, and wrote what would turn out to be her final entry.
She wrote about feeling a kind of pressure about certain people trying to turn an ordinary friendship into something else, into a kind of competition she wanted no part of. She wrote that she was not going to be helpless, that she would recognize problems and face them without fear. The last words in the entry were a quiet request for God to be with her.
Then she closed the diary and went to bed. This is a good moment to pause and ask. If you have not subscribed to this channel yet, please do it now and leave a comment below telling us where in the world you are watching from and when. These stories reach people in places we never expect and every comment reminds us that this work matters.
We read every single one and we are grateful for every one of you. The morning of July 15th began normally. Buck left for work first around 7:00. Joy followed shortly after. Before she left, she went up to Jesse’s room to drop off some clean laundry. Her daughter was asleep. Joy stood beside the bed for a moment, thought about waking her, saying something just because, then decided against it.
Jesse almost never got to sleep in. She always had somewhere to be, something to rehearse, a lesson to teach. Let her sleep. Joy quietly left the room, pulled the door shut, and headed to work. That moment, I cannot move past it without stopping because Joy made the right decision. Any mother in her position would have done exactly the same thing.
And that is precisely what makes everything that happened next so impossible to sit with. At noon, Joy came home for her lunch break. The house was quiet. She called up to Jesse. No answer. Her daughter’s car was in the driveway, so she had not gone anywhere. Joy called again. Still nothing. A student arrived for the lesson Jesse was scheduled to give.
Joy asked him to wait a minute and went upstairs. She opened the bedroom door and saw her daughter lying in bed covered by the blanket exactly as she had been that morning. She walked over. She leaned in and she understood. The call to emergency services lasted about 4 minutes. It looks like strangulation marks. There are strangulation marks.
That’s what it looks like. I don’t know what’s going on. I don’t know what’s going on. Joy was trying to do everything at once. Talk to the dispatcher, make sense of what she was seeing, refused to accept what she was seeing as the truth. She described what was in front of her. Her daughter was cold, not breathing, with marks on her neck.
She moved her from the bed to the floor and tried to perform chest compressions. I lifted her body down to the floor and I put a pillow under her head and then I just started doing compressions. When paramedics and officers arrived, they pronounced Jesse Blahit dead at the scene. She was 19 years old. Detective Richard Thickens of the Hartford Police Department was among the first to enter the room.
What he found told him enough to reach one clear conclusion. This was not a natural death. Someone had been in that room. When I entered the bedroom, I observed um a female. I later identified as the mother Joy um doing CPR on another female body. There were marks from a cord or rope on Jesse’s neck, wrists, and ankles. Someone had restrained her.
Whatever had been used to take her life was gone. The person responsible had taken everything with them. Her hair and clothes were damp, as though someone had wiped the body down with something wet after the fact. There were no signs of forced entry anywhere in the house. Nothing had been taken. That pointed to one thing.
Whoever did this knew Jesse, knew the house, knew she would be alone, and came with a purpose. Buck was called home from work. When he arrived, they would not let him go upstairs. The room had been secured as a crime scene. He could not see his daughter, could not say anything to her. That stayed with him for a long time.
Not as a detective or an investigator, just as a father who was not there when it mattered. Though, of course, no amount of his being there would have changed anything. But those kinds of thoughts do not follow logic. Detective Thickens started with the obvious. Potential persons of interest surfaced quickly. The men Jesse had mentioned to her mother the night before.
a crew of workers who had been trimming branches directly outside her bedroom window in the weeks prior and a co-orker from a restaurant job she had briefly held that summer with whom she had had a conflict. All of them were investigated. The workers and the co-orker had confirmed solid accounts of their whereabouts that cleared them completely.
Of the two men from the cast party, one was ruled out quickly. The second was not. His name was Randy Thally. He said he had gone home after the party and stayed there through the following day. There was no one who could back that up. He had been alone. That did not make him guilty, but there was nothing to clear him either. Thickens kept him in consideration and continued working.
In Jesse’s room, investigators found her diary. The final entry had been written just hours before her death. It named no one, but it pointed somewhere. The investigation continued. And meanwhile, in the neighboring town of Richfield, about 10 miles from Hartford, something entirely separate was unfolding. Something that would within days turn out to be the same story.
On July 12th, the same day as the opening night of Fiddler on the Roof, 3 days before Jesse was found, a 20-year-old woman named Melissa Richards drove to Richfield Historical Park to walk her dog. It was a weekday morning. The park was nearly empty. The only other vehicle in the lot was a dark blue Dodge Caravan. Melissa noticed it.
The driver was stretched across the front seats with his legs hanging out of the window. Odd, but not alarming. She walked past and started down the trail. When she came back around 30 minutes later, the van was still there. The legs were gone. Melissa opened her trunk, let her dog out, and started toward her car.
And then she heard the sound of fast footsteps behind her. She turned. The man from the van was running toward her. She said something something like, “You startled me.” And turned back around. The footsteps did not stop. She turned again. He had halted a few feet away and was staring directly at her.
He was holding a knife. What happened next is not easy to describe briefly because it almost never happens this way. Melissa did not run. She fought back. When he rushed at her and knocked her to the ground, she struggled and at some point she grabbed the blade of the knife with her bare hands and wrenched it away from him. The cuts on her palms were deep.
15 stitches later, but she had the knife. He tried to take it back, could not, and eventually asked if he could leave. She said no. He stood up anyway and ran back to the van. She made it to her car, locked the doors, watched him pull out of the lot, and drove herself to the hospital.
Detective Joel Clausing of the Washington County Sheriff’s Department took her statement in the hospital room. Melissa had a remarkable memory for detail. She described the attacker precisely. A white male around 18 to 20 years old, roughly 6’2, 210 lb, light blonde hair, plaid shorts. She remembered exactly where in the parking lot the van had been, and she knew the make of the vehicle, a Dodge Caravan, an older model.
Detective Clausing later said that in his entire career, he had never had a witness with that level of recall. A composite sketch was produced and released to local media. Almost no calls came in, but one lead did surface, and it came from inside the department. A deputy came to clausing and said that a few weeks earlier he had seen the same type of vehicle parked in that exact same spot in the park.
Something about the driver had seemed off to him at the time. So, he had run the plates as a routine check. That record still existed. The vehicle was registered to a middle-aged couple. No resemblance at all to the description Melissa had given. Clausing was nearly ready to set the lead aside when it came out that the couple had a son, 19 years old, around 6’2, light hair.
Clausing dialed his number on July 16th. The day after Jesse Blahett had been found in Hartford. The call was answered right away. The young man said he was not at home. He said he was at a gathering at the Blit family house, a vigil for his friend Jesse, who had just died. His name was Daniel Bartalt. Daniel Bartelt grew up in Hubertis, a small community about 10 miles from Hartford, an ordinary family, unremarkable in the way that most families are unremarkable.
His parents worked, he went to school, he did well in school, very well to be precise, strong grades, no behavioral concerns, nothing that pointed toward any particular trouble. He played violin, took part in school productions, and was known among his classmates as someone with a good sense of humor. the person who could ease the tension in a room, the one who made things less dull.
He was a good guy. He was always joking around. He was a He was a nice guy. So, I was pretty surprised. People who knew him back then later struggled to find the words when asked to describe him. They said smart, funny, easygoing. Nobody, not one person said anything that pointed toward where things would end.
Did you ever see him have a temper or any violence or? No, not really. I mean, he was he was always really in a good mood when I was around him. He was always joking around. I mean, if there was any like violence, it was just messing around, you know. So, this is couldn’t even see his coming really. He met Jesse Blahett in their first year of high school.
They ended up sitting next to each other in orchestra. She played violin second chair. He played first. Both loved theater. Both wrote music. both looked at the world in roughly the same way with that combination of irony and sincerity that is rare to find in a single person, let alone two people at once. For a while, they dated a few months in their freshman year.
Then Daniel decided he would rather just be friends. There was no falling out, no hard feelings. It just settled that way. They kept spending time together, kept performing in the same productions, and by the time they graduated, the friendship felt so natural that the brief romantic history between them seemed almost beside the point.
After high school, they went separate ways. Jesse stayed in Wisconsin. Daniel left for the University of Wisconsin, Stevens Point. They stayed in touch, but saw each other less. Then, in early 2013, Daniel came home. He told his parents it had not worked out, that college was not for him. They accepted it without much question.
He told them he had found a job at a local manufacturing company, and life continued at its usual pace, at least from the outside. That summer, when Jesse came back from Milwaukee for the break, the two of them started spending time together again, nearly every day, writing music, recording songs, working on ideas. In May, they had posted a track online that they had made together.
her voice, his arrangements, everything looked exactly the way it looks when an old friendship picks back up after a gap. Jesse’s parents knew Daniel, were used to having him in the house, thought well of him. He was part of the familiar circle in which their daughter felt at home. What was happening inside Daniel Bartelt during those months, nobody knew.
He did not speak about it. From the outside, everything looked the same as it always had. And then on July 16th, a detective called him. When detective Clausing called Daniel and asked him to come in, Daniel agreed without any hesitation. He did not ask what it was about. Did not ask what the meeting concerned. He simply said he would be there.
Clausing noted this afterward as something that caught his attention right away. A person who gets a call from a detective asking to meet almost always asks why. Daniel came directly from the blahit house. Two friends drove him and waited in the parking lot. Joy Blahett, seeing him off, told him not to worry, that the police were probably just speaking with everyone who had been close to Jesse.
Daniel nodded and left. At the station, he was calm, talkative, open with no visible tension. Clausing began with general questions. Where he had been, what he had been doing, how he had heard about what happened. Where uh where were we at again? I uh a house in uh Hartford just bel Yeah, we were visiting her.
Okay. Sorry to hear about it. And the mayors. Are you working right now? Yeah. Where you working at? Well, associate associate engineering. And what do you do there? Uh mostly carry around materials and gopher. Yeah. Okay. So you don’t have like a trade or anything like that? It’s kind of I’m kind of Okay.
And what are your usual work hours? Uh usually 9 or 10 almost um 7 to 5. What kind of vehicle do you have? Uh I drive my parents uh caravan to 2002. Yeah. That Dodge. Yep. And what color is it? Uh, where’s that at now? At uh my friend Davis’s house. We met up at Richfield. Okay. Talked to Jose. All right.
Do you know what this is about? You think about? No. This is about an incident that uh Detective Walsh, our investig, right? Yes. Okay. So um this happened at a park and if you have any knowledge about what this is best tell me now I understand that. Yes. Okay. Were you at a park? No. At any park I don’t. Okay.
Is it possible that you’re at a park? Yeah. Okay. Because what we have is an instrument that we’re working on and it it could be painted on a couple different directions. Okay. Um what kind of cell uh basic spiders are? Okay. I do realize that those cell phones are kind of like UPS’s and be able to trace that. I just want to make sure. I don’t want any.
And early in the conversation, when the detective brought up Jesse, Daniel described what had happened to her. Not vaguely, not as speculation, with a level of specificity that had no explanation for someone on the outside. He mentioned details that had not appeared in any official statement. Details the investigators working the case in Hartford did not yet have fully confirmed, details that Jesse’s own parents did not know.
Where we at? house in Hartford just watched us. Did she who? You said the girl that just passed. Yeah, we were sting. Okay. Sorry to hear about it. The mirrors. What happened? Someone raped them right here. You think so? Or do they think so? Or what? You think so? Clausing did not change his pace.
He kept asking questions about the incident at the park, about July 12th, about the van, and then he noticed Daniel’s hands. There were cuts and scrapes on his right hand still fresh. He asked about them. So, it possibly red, but I don’t think I’ve ever So, man, you last Friday when you’ve been working. No.
Okay. So, go through your day last Friday. What happened? I probably me and I’m not saying that you were involved in anything. I was just wondering if you were there. Okay. You understand what I’m saying? It was a big deal with me being involved. What happened to your arm? What on your elbow? Oh, probably don’t remember.
Do you have any other injuries that we need to know about? No. See your hands go like this? Cuz I broke a screw at work. I got a card with my stuff around on there. When did that happen? It doesn’t work. last week. Where’s it? I don’t know. I already did in there. Went right in. So, I don’t want I thought pulling it away.
I grabbed onto it and immediately yanked it away. So, break my arm. Was there anything out there? No. Daniel said he had hurt himself at work, caught an edge while moving something in the warehouse. That would have been an entirely reasonable explanation, except for one thing Clausing already knew. Daniel did not have a job, had not had one for months.
The detective asked whether his employer would confirm that Daniel still worked there if he called right now. Daniel paused, then said, “No, he had left that position some time ago.” Daniel tried to revise the story, said maybe he had cut himself at home in the kitchen. Clausing said calmly that people do not lie about cutting themselves at home if it had happened in the kitchen.
That is what he would have said from the start. What is this about? This is where I already told you what it’s about. We’re investigating next park. Okay. Last Friday. Last Friday when you were off court and I just simply asked if you were there. No. Okay. What if I had to tell you that there might be something that limits you there? You ever been to You know what park we’re talking about? No.
It’s a park off of 164 uh south of Pleasant Hill. Okay. Okay. You ever been in that park before? Um probably. I think so. Okay. All right. Something happened there last Friday that we need to explain. Okay. And we have evidence and what happens is we have and do you ever loart’s exchange principle? No.
Edwin Lart he’s a scientist 200 years ago out in France and he came up you know the organics thing. What’s that? The economics thing. No, this is more of a he came up with a you know what what professors do is scientists do they they come up with really complicated names for something that’s very simple.
The exchange principle basically says is that wherever you are two things happen. You leave off something of yours and you take something of someone else’s. Okay. Which means that like for example um this room, okay, before we came in or when we leave here, we’re going to do two things. All we’re looking for is a truth.
You know what I’m saying? Yeah. And if something happened out there that we can explain what we have is we have evidence, okay? But we can’t snap our fingers in that evidence comes through. Okay? We got a tip or swap to you for whatever reason. Okay? What what happened with this was shut out? This is about an instrument that we’re invol investigating.
I can’t tell you everything exactly. Okay. All right. Okay. But my first question was that you were were you out there? And you say no. Okay. I’m just trying to let you know that if you were out there, we have evidence of the person who was out there. We have evidence from the person that was out there. Okay. Okay.
I can’t tell you everything right now because that would be unwise from my position. Okay. But we have evidence from the person that was out there which needs to be determined by the by the analyzed by the state crime lab. Okay. Just to to match up. Okay. In the meantime, we’re talking to people that we that we get tips on about what went on out there.
Okay. We also have an eyewitness. Okay. We haven’t shown the eyewitness angle photographs yet. Okay. I hate to put down your picture in front of the eyewitness and have him say that’s the guy that was out there. You know what I’m saying? Did I have any of the DNA or or fingerprint evidence or anything like that? Come back to to Daniel. Yeah.
I have to come back to remember this. We we talk so we talk about this. Here I am again. Okay. Why am I here? Well, I’ll explain to you because now I can prove that you’re out there. It’s not just a tip. I can prove and all I’m getting at is that um if you were out there just talk to us about what happened or what you saw or what you observed or whatever.
Okay, that’s all I’m saying. Okay, so it’s very important that that we talk about it on TV. But it wasn’t me. I don’t want to trouble. Obviously, again, the truth is going to help us bring some resolution to this for everybody involved. Okay? We have one scared person out there right now was looking over their shoulder every single second, okay? Cuz they’re scared.
They don’t know why this would have happened to them. Okay? We want to be able to put some closure to them so they don’t have to look over their shoulder. They don’t have to be scared of every person they see, every person that’s behind them, every person that’s in front of them and have sleepless nights day in and day out. Okay, we need to be over.
After a short pause, Daniel acknowledged that he had been at Richfield Historical Park on July 12th, that he had approached the woman, that the marks on his hand were from that encounter. What happens? Well, first of all, we need to get the truth. Okay? And based upon what we believe the truth is, we have to told by them.
Okay? We all have parts of the story put the rest of pieces together. We’ve given you the parts and doing you know the parts we have to prove that you’re adult. Okay. But we want to know more the why you were thinking where you were in your mind. You were there right? No. Correct.
And you were in your van after your mom’s van. And you and you went after that girl. Right. Okay. Why? What were you going to do? Have sex with her? No. What were you going to do? So, what happened? Step walk us through what you remember about what happened and and let me let me come to a place in time. Um, you’re in your van and you seen her pull it.
You know what kind of car she was driving? I think it was white. Okay. Van or car or SUV? Car and she gets out. What do you think? At that point, you only read 125. Her mom get. So, so then what? It was started on She disappears, right? Yeah. Then what? How long later was it till you saw her? Okay.
Then what happens? Yeah. I’m scared. You ran at her. Knock her down. Did she say anything to you? She herself. Tell her why. What the hell? How did you scare her? What do you do to scare her? With your hands or with the thing you found what the beard can what we’re not going to put words in your mouth. No, we need to version of events.
And then what happened? ran away. She got away. Okay. What happened? So when I when I called her, what do I tell her? I don’t know who it was. Why didn’t you pick her? Almost there. This knife sheet. Where was it? Yeah. Where was Did you have it on your torson when you attacked her? Probably. Where was it? On your to.
Not the ninth itself. Yeah. Yeah. All right. So, it wasn’t on your belt? No. Okay. Why did you throw that out? Ab why did you throw it out? didn’t want to be found with me. And where did you go? Where did you go after this happened? Off the road a little side. Freaked out. And I’ll go right there.
That was an admission to the attack on Melissa Richards, not to anything involving Jesse, only to the attack in the park. But inside Clausing’s mind, a different picture was already forming. Daniel was held in custody while investigators turned to his home and his computer. What they found was not a scattered collection of dark curiosities.
It was a sequence dated, ordered, and building towards something. In the early hours of July 12th, the same day he attacked Melissa in the park, Daniel had been awake at around 2:30 in the morning researching a convicted criminal from South Africa who had specifically targeted women in isolated outdoor locations, not as a passing search, as study.
Hours later that same morning, he looked up definitions of terms describing people who commit multiple acts of serious harm against others. His browser history from the weeks prior showed a sustained pattern. The same territory returned to again and again, including one specific video that prosecutors described in court as deeply disturbing, something Daniel had gone back to repeatedly in the days leading up to both incidents.
Then there was the writing. On his computer, investigators found an unfinished manuscript written under a false name, as though even in fiction, he needed distance from what he was putting on the page. The main character was a young woman named Jessica. In one section, a character identified only by the letter D does serious harm to her.
Read in isolation, it might have meant nothing. Read alongside everything else, it meant exactly what it looked like. But here is the detail that for me sits differently from all the rest. The lie about having a job turned out to be much older than that one conversation with Clausing.
Investigators found records showing that for months, not days, not weeks, but months, Daniel had been waking up every morning, putting on his work clothes, picking up his lunch, and leaving the house at the same time each day. His parents thought he was going to work. He was not. He had no job. He drove to parks, sat in parking lots, came home in the evening.
Day after day, the same performance for an audience of two people who trusted him completely. clothes, lunch, the door, and nowhere to go. When the Hartford detectives learned what Daniel had said at the very beginning of his first interview, the details about Jesse that he should not have known, they asked Clausing to arrange another conversation.
So, obviously, you heard heard about this kind of at this at this moment. How did you hear about Jess? I heard it on Tuesday morning. Um, my friend George texted me a status. Someone had posted on I think Twitter and said, “Rep Jesse.” Tried to find out more from other people and eventually my friend Davis called.
They were even better friends than we were. And we met up and then went over to her parents house. this time specifically about the blahit case. Daniel came in for a second session. The investigators asked him directly about Jesse, how often he had seen her that summer, what their relationship had been.
And here, Daniel did something that looked at first like genuine honesty, but turned out to be another layer of misdirection. He said that over the summer, what was between him and Jesse had become something more than friendship. That there had been a closeness, something romantic developing, and that was why he had said nothing about it.
He had a girlfriend at the time and did not want it to come out. Orchestrin. Okay. That she played violin, too. Yeah. Okay. She was concert master. She was second chair. Okay. said we were spending a lot of time together. Did you I mean was your did you have a physical relationship either in high school in recently anything like that? A few times.
Okay. When was that? Was that in high school then? The past few weeks. Okay. see how it I mean when and I’m I’m not trying to ask the I’m not trying to embarrass you or upset you any more than I have to but I do have to ask these questions. Um I when I say physical I mean you guys had was that just like kissing or was it intercourse like physical sex? It sounds like you had a fairly close relationship with her.
Is there anything in what you saw that she was depressed? Upset about anything? No. I don’t think she’d ever hurt herself. No. Okay. Why not? I mean, everybody can be low. Everybody can be upset. She wasn’t living for herself. If she could help others, she would. And she always would be able to do that. She had a I don’t believe she okay when she was living I mean did she have a she had a pretty well defined direction in life and she knew where she was going or was she still trying to figure that all out? She had a general idea was a good one.
She wanted to teach music. Okay. She was already doing it. She had students. She always thought I was a better musician, but never came close to anything like that. So, when was the last time you actually physically saw Jesse? Monday or Tuesday last week. Okay. I’m a little confused. What’s You said you didn’t actually meet up on Maxwell Street days. We didn’t.
Okay. As I was touring around Richfield, I told her I was working because I didn’t I didn’t feel like going to see her, but I wanted her to think I was just This explained why he had spent so much time at her house, why he knew the family’s routine. It gave the investigators an answer, just not the one they were looking for.
Throughout this conversation, Daniel performed emotion. He spoke quietly, his voice broke at moments. He put his face in his hands several times. The investigators watched him carefully, and both of them said the same thing afterward. Through the entire conversation, they never saw a single real tear, the sounds were there, the gestures were there, the tears were not.
At her house, I mean, is that where you guys would hang out mostly or? Yeah. Okay. She didn’t go anywhere else in the house. If we were going to do anything, we went upstairs to where? Okay. So, you better. Okay. When was the last time you were you were in her bedroom? Last week. This was prying a little bit.
What did you guys do in the picture? from around. So would you guys where would you guys be standing or sitting or laying after bed? You guys just kissing? No. Okay. Anything else? Yeah. You have intercourse with Did you have intercourse? No. You okay with that? They asked you to how long were you making out? I wear your underwear, too.
At a certain point, the tone of the questioning shifted. The questions became more direct. The pressure increased. Daniel said he was uncomfortable, that he felt they were trying to accuse him of something, that he did not have to put up with it. He asked for a lawyer. The interview ended. The investigators did not yet have enough to charge him with the case, but they had his account of his whereabouts on the morning of July 15th.
He said he had been driving around as usual and had stopped for a while at Woodlon Union Park. Did our parents tell that you were there? I don’t think they know we were doing anything. When did you guys go upstairs? After your parents left, whose idea was it to go upstairs? It’s hers. Started kiss me on the couch and she asked me if I wanted to go up with her.
You ever had intercourse though? I’ll come home. I couldn’t do that to Ashley. Think of Jesse. I didn’t want to hurt her. Jesse or Ashley? You say you want to hurt her? Neither one. Ashley. Okay. So, you’re kind of torn between the two ladies. Are you intimate with the parishly? Yes. I didn’t think it would be fair to either of them to be intimate at the same time.
I didn’t do anything till we had it resolved. You’re just talking about somehow resolving it. freak eventually. What were you thinking about going down? Just sat there, he said. Did some reading, tried to work on his writing. They checked the park’s security footage. Daniel was there, captured on camera that same morning, his account checked out, but that gave them an idea because if he had been at the park after everything that happened, he might have left something behind.
Officers went to Woodlon Union Park, and worked through the trash recepticles one by one. In one of them, they found a cereal box, an ordinary cardboard box packed with paper towels. When the contents were removed and laid out, it was clear this was not discarded garbage. Inside were lengths of rope, several antiseptic wipes in their original packaging, and a handmade gag.
Everything had been packed carefully, as though whoever put it there wanted it to blend in with the rest of the trash. The ropes went to the lab. The DNA profile found on them matched Daniel Bartel. It also matched Jesse Blahit. At the same time, forensic examiners returned to the Blit house for a second look at Jesse’s room.
Near the foot of her bed, in a spot that had been missed during the first examination, they found a roll of a specific type of silver duct tape. The same brand of tape had been found at the Bartelt family home during the search. The same brand of tape had been found at Richfield Historical Park after the encounter with Melissa. It had apparently fallen from Daniel’s pocket during the struggle.
The roll found under Jesse’s bed had Daniel Bartelt’s fingerprints on it. Biological material recovered from beneath Jesse’s fingernails matched his DNA profile. That was enough. I had become aware of a kiss that he tried to um push upon her that she did not appreciate. A tan braided rope. The defendant’s DNA was found under both sets of fingernails for Jesse’s hand.
These pieces of evidence alone are not sufficient. There are other reasonable explanations for those. I noted that there was a significant red mark um running l across her neck. There was u more reening at the right side of her neck. Did you locate any ropes in the room? No. Did you locate any ropes near Jesse’s body? No, I did not.
He indicated that he had last physically seen her um the prior Monday or Tuesday of that week, some six or seven days earlier. So much of of this evidence that the state has given you is subject to multiple interpretations. One of them is theirs, but there are many others. Her body was in her room.
Do we have any evidence of the defendant on Jesse’s body? It’s all over her body. Jesse’s screaming to us. She’s screaming to us. She’s telling us a story. His DNA is all under her fingernails. Daniel Bartelt was formally charged with taking another person’s life. He was 19 years old, exactly the same age as Jesse.
There is no way to fully describe what it must be like to learn that the person you had embraced at your daughter’s vigil, the person you had told not to worry, the person you had walked out of your own home was the person you had been looking for. That is how Joy Blahett found out. Not gradually, not with any preparation. It simply became known.
People who have been through something like that say it is a second blow, sometimes a harder one than the first. The trial opened in August of 2014 in Washington County. The jury heard nothing about Melissa Richards. That case was separate and the judge kept it out entirely. The prosecution had to win on the blit evidence alone.
And the evidence was considerable. his fingerprints on the tape found under her bed. Both their DNA on the ropes recovered from the park. Biological material that placed him at the scene, the browser history, the manuscript with the character named Jessica, a witness who had seen an unfamiliar dark vehicle outside the blit home that morning during the window when Jesse was alone.
The defense did what defenses do in cases built on physical evidence. Argued contamination, argued coincidence, argued that a man can spend time in someone’s home and leave traces of himself without being responsible for what happened there. The attorney told the jury that dishonesty about having a job does not make someone responsible for another person’s death.
It was a reasonable thing to say. The jury listened to it for 7 days. I don’t believe that you have heard in the last six, seven days any testimony that would give you reason to believe that Dan Bartel had any motive to cause the death of Jesse Bl. Um, I just have compassion for both um the Blit family and and the Bartell family for the very very difficult and ordeal that they’ve they’ve been through.
Then they went into a room together and came back in 3 hours. For a case of this weight, that is nothing. That is people who looked at the evidence, looked at each other, and did not need much time. The verdict was unanimous. Guilty. Sentencing was set for October of 2014. The courtroom that day was full.
More than a thousand letters had come in from people across the country who had never met Jesse. Strangers who had heard her story and felt the need to say something. Buck blah read from some of them. You charmed us. You challenged us. You dazzled us and inspired us. So confident and free to be yourself.
So encouraging of others to do the same. Then he put the letters down, turned toward the man who had taken his daughter, and said something that made the room go completely still. He said he forgave him, that he had done so every single day since learning the truth. That he held no hatred toward him and never would.
Nobody in that room was ready for that. When Dan murdered Jesse, he killed not just who she was, but who she would become. She will never have the chance to be that woman. and I will never have the chance to know and love and admire and take pride in that woman.” Then Daniel got his turn. He spoke about his own suffering in confinement, about philosophical questions of guilt and innocence, about how he hoped someday to stand before a higher court where his conscience would be recognized as clear.
He said he could not give Jesse’s family the answers they were looking for. Not a single word of regret, not one acknowledgement of what he had put them through. Just a smooth, practiced speech about himself. I have a disgustingly innate ability to lie to myself that I have exercised far too many times in my life.
this jumpsuit that I’m wearing, these shackles that I’m put in don’t make me guilty. And I know there’s evidence that I can’t refute that would make you believe that I am guilty. I can’t prove that I’m innocent to anyone, not even myself. Judge Todd Martins sentenced Daniel Bartelt to life in prison with no possibility of parole.
The separate case involving Melissa Richards, the woman in the park who had fought back, disarmed him, and ultimately led investigators to his door, was resolved through a plea agreement. He received an additional 5 years for that attack to be served on top of everything else. He is still there. A later appeal was rejected.
The case is closed. What is not closed is what Buck did next. In the days after losing Jesse, he used to go into her room and lie down on her bed. Just lie there and hold his breath, trying to feel for even a few seconds what his daughter’s last moments might have been like. That is a detail that is hard to read without stopping.
And yet that same man right after the sentence came down walked across the courtroom and put his arms around Daniel’s parents because they had lost something too and he understood that. He later founded an organization called the Love is Greater Than Hate Project. Words he had spoken at Jesse’s funeral without planning anything by them.
They spread through Hartford on their own. Banners, wristbands, signs. People needed something to hold on to. And those words were it. Buck still travels and speaks today. There is a music scholarship in Jesse’s name. She wanted music to reach people. Through everything that happened, it still does. Some stories end with a verdict.
This one ends with a father who chose not to let hatred be the thing his daughter is remembered for. That was her whole life’s work, and he refused to let it stop. Please go check right now that you are still subscribed to this channel. YouTube quietly removes subscriptions more often than people realize, and we would hate for you to miss what comes next.
If you say videos that stay with you, add this one to your playlist. Sharing stories like Jesse’s is one of the most meaningful things an audience can do because the more people understand how something like this unfolds, the better chance we have of recognizing the signs before it is too late.
Thank you for watching and thank you for caring enough to stay until the end.
