The 1995 murder of Illinois teenager Shana Jaros haunts family 29 years later

When Janelle Jaros looks at her daughter, she is reminded of another person close to her.

“There are times when you look at her and you see Shana,” Janelle told Dateline.

Shana Jaros was Janelle’s older sister and they were only a few years apart in age. They dreamed of growing old together, watching each other have children, the children Janelle now has.

“My daughter wanted to be a researcher at one point because she said she would figure it out,” Janelle said.

Janelle’s daughter never had the opportunity to meet her aunt, but she knows the stories her mother told her. The good ones and what happened on November 1, 1995.

That was the day that left a permanent void in the Jaros family.

This was the day 18-year-old Shana Jaros was killed.

Shana was the oldest of four siblings growing up in Nokomis, Illinois. “Small town USA,” Janelle said. “They closed our one Kroger store, but now we have two Dollar Generals,” he said with a laugh.

“She was kind, helpful and caring,” Janelle said of Shana. “I looked at my sister’s face.”

In 1991, Shana started high school. Two years later Janelle joined him. “I was with him. We did everything together,” Janelle recalled. “If he didn’t want me to do this, I would have let my parents take me.”

He remembers those times fondly. Afternoons were spent driving around Nokomis in Shana’s black Camaro. “Alanis Morissette was played to ear-splitting levels,” Janelle said. “It was really nice.”

Duane is the father of the Jaros brothers. He describes Shana as a bright soul. “He was very tall, around six feet tall,” he said. “People weren’t always kind to him, but he never did that in return. He never took it seriously.

In the fall of 1995, Shana graduated from high school and was working as a certified nursing assistant in a nursing home; The family says Shana started working when she was just 16 years old. “She would go on to become an RN,” Janelle said. .

“He said he wanted to work with either older people or children because they were so similar,” Duane said. “He had a really good work ethic.”

On October 31, 1995, Duane took Shana’s 9-year-old brother to visit her. At the time, he was living with a roommate not far from the family home in Nokomis. “He asked her to come trick-or-treating,” Duane said.

Duane watched his son go to the apartment and Shana lead him inside. Shortly after, his son came out with his treats. His son told him that some of Shana’s friends were coming. “He was wearing a blue robe and looking at the car,” she recalled. “Usually I would always turn on the light and wave, but I didn’t. I can’t get it out of my mind to this day.”

The next afternoon, Duane received a call from the sheriff’s office. He had just gotten off work. “’Is this Duane Jaros?’ they said. I said ‘Yes’.”

Duane says he assumed they were calling about Shana’s Camaro, which had crashed just a few weeks ago. “I said, ‘I think we’ve got it all figured out.’”

But the meeting wasn’t about the Camaro. Duane said the officer told him someone would be coming to the house with more information.

“I heard a knock on the door and I got up and there was a man standing there,” he recalled. “He said, ‘Your daughter Shana was murdered.’”

It’s a moment Duane will never forget. “I went and sat in the chair and was just kind of trying to catch my breath,” he recalled. “I said, ‘I need to call my wife.’”

Janelle, who was 15 at the time, also remembers that day. His father was at home when he received the news. “I was home sick that day from school, so I was sleeping upstairs,” he said. “My dad yelled at me from the bottom of the stairs: ‘Janelle! Janelle, they killed her. “They killed your sister.”

Janelle says she envisions that day like a movie. “This will never be erased from my mind,” he said.

Duane’s wife, Debbie, was at work at the time. He ran home. “He came to the front yard and started walking towards the door and collapsed,” she recalled. “All kinds of people were coming and it was crazy after that.”

The Nokomis Police Department was the first to arrive at Shana’s apartment complex. They are investigating the incident along with Illinois State Police and the Montgomery County Sheriff’s Office.

Illinois State Police Sergeant Melissa Albert-Lopez said in an email to Dateline that “in order to protect the integrity of the ongoing investigation,” they cannot publicly share any additional information beyond what is provided on their website.

According to an article on the website ISP’s websiteShana was discovered just before 7 a.m. on November 1, 1995, in her apartment at 527 South Maple, Nokomis, Illinois.

The post states that “a neighbor reported hearing a fight at Jaros’ apartment at approximately 4:46 a.m.” and that they did not see anyone leave the apartment afterward. It is stated that Shana was stabbed more than 50 times “from just above her breasts to her neck” and that her death was due to massive blood loss.

Duane says he doesn’t know why the family would want to kill Shana. “He was a happy go lucky kid. Always smiling and always giggling; The last person anyone would want to kill.”

Duane had to put his lucky child to rest. Janelle had to say goodbye to her resident best friend.

“I went to school with the coroner and he called me and said he didn’t think he could show it to her,” Duane recalled. “I said, ‘Please, I want people to see it one more time.’”

According to the family, the medical examiner did what he could. She put makeup on Shana and dressed her in a turtleneck sweater to cover the gash in her throat. “It was so scary you could even see it in a turtleneck,” Janelle said.

The family says everyone around Shana was questioned by police, especially her new circle of friends.

Janelle says that after Shana graduated, she started hanging out with people she didn’t think were good influences. “He wasn’t very involved in high school, so he met a bunch of people he wouldn’t normally hang out with,” she said. “Then it happened.”

Family says this is the group Shana was hanging out with at her house that Halloween night. Many of those friends have since died, according to Janelle, who said no suspects have been named in Shana’s case.

Shana also had a boyfriend, although they hadn’t been together for long. “I didn’t have a good feeling about them,” Janelle said.

As the years passed, the family’s hope for a solution diminished. The family said they have been hearing from Illinois State Police for years, but there has been no progress.

Life goes on for the Jaros family, but it comes with a price. “They had four pieces of my heart and they only took one piece,” Duane said of the person who took his daughter’s life. And the pain of losing Shana eventually led to Duane and Debbie’s divorce. “My wife was never the same person after that,” he said.

It was neither. “Whoever did this to Shana actually did this to our entire family,” Janelle said. “They killed a piece of us all.”

The siblings are all grown up now. Janelle and her younger brothers, Jeffery and Stefan, are in their 40s. Their older sister Shana would have been 47 this year. “She would have been a mother, she would have been a nurse, and she would have been a wonderful aunt to her two nieces that she never met,” Janelle said.

Although her daughters have never met their aunt, Janelle says they know a lot about her. “We’re not afraid to talk about her. We’re keeping her alive,” he said. In fact, Janelle named one of her daughters Jahna, a combination of both her and Shana’s names. She is the daughter who once said she hoped to solve her aunt’s case.

A surviving hope in the Jaros family.

“I want people to know that he was a real person, that he had a family that cared about him, and that we still cared about him,” Duane Jaros said. “He had a huge heart. And when you love someone unconditionally, that never goes away.”

Anyone with any information is encouraged to contact Illinois State Police, Region 6 Investigations at (618) 346-3990 or Crime Stoppers at 1-800-352-0136.