Chip Chick
AJ would always give her mom Jennifer plenty of information on where she was and who she was hanging out with, no matter what.
Jennifer kept texting AJ as the hours went by, and she continued to think AJ was not acting right.
Their text exchange ended around 4 in the morning. Was AJ ok? Was she just in need of some alone time?
When AJ failed to come home the following day, Jennifer knew something was very wrong. She wasn’t able to get a hold of her anymore.
She started reaching out to all of AJ’s friends, but not a single person knew where AJ had gone.
One of the family’s neighbors mentioned they saw AJ on her way out of their neighborhood, and she looked like she was in a rush to get somewhere.
By 9 p.m. that night, AJ was officially reported to the police as missing. It took an entire month to find her though.
Facebook; AJ is pictured above sitting in the woods
A month after AJ vanished, she was found 50 miles away from home, behind an abandoned house.
She was lying with her face on the ground, in a muddy stream.
She was underneath a board of plywood, and whoever had killed her had tried to cover her body up.
An autopsy report concluded her cause of death was acute heroin poisoning and homicidal violence. She also may have been strangled.
But what was weird about all this is that AJ had never used drugs. She didn’t have any needle marks on her.
As authorities continued to investigate what happened to her, they started looking into her step-father, Wesley Hadsell.
Police have said he gave them different stories about the events leading up to AJ’s disappearance. He told them he went to a gas station to meet up with AJ and give her some money, but the gas station had multiple cameras.
He was never on the video footage, and neither was AJ.
Facebook; AJ smiles, above
Authorities were able to determine the van he drove had been at the abandoned house AJ was found at. GPS put it there, right around when AJ went missing.
Heavy-duty gloves, a shovel, and duct tape were also recovered in the back of his van.
According to court documents, Wesley had left work around noon when AJ vanished, telling one of the people he worked with he was off to see his daughter.
Two hours later, he was back at work, and other people noticed he was clearly unnerved about something. He ended up leaving work again and not returning for the remainder of the day.
Eventually, Wesley was arrested and charged with concealment of a dead body and second-degree murder.
In February of this year, a mistrial was announced due to the attorneys for both sides being unable to agree upon what evidence the jury could be shown or told about.
Facebook; AJ sits on the railroad tracks, above
