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Jennifer Rayleen Casper was born on April 30, 1975, and grew up in Pocatello, Idaho. She learned to love the art of dance as a child and thrived in the industry. While many little girls take dance lessons when they are young, very few are talented and dedicated enough to make a career out of it. At a young age, Jennifer achieved every little girl’s dream and became a professional ballerina.

At 19, she would be the youngest woman to ever audition for the Greg Thompson Productions. She would go on to be the youngest hired by the production company. Her career in show business had finally taken off, but sadly, eleven years later, she would disappear without a trace. What happened to this beautiful dancer? The disappearance of her starlet was devastating for Jennifer’s mother, Carla. The beautiful young woman seemed to have the world at her fingertips.

After graduating from Highland High School, Jennifer moved to Las Vegas and danced in the American Superstars show. Her dreams were coming true. Jennifer was featured on show posters, giant billboards, and commercials. Everyone loved the tall, slender brunette, and she was living her dream.

In 1995, Jennifer moved from Las Vegas to Reno, Nevada, and got a job dancing for Harrah’s Hotel & Casino. The studious young woman immediately enrolled in college and began working on a major in Veterinary Medicine. Like many college students, she would eventually change her major. She had big dreams for her future and decided she wanted to find a cure for autism and cancer.

While working at Harrah’s, she meets and falls in love with a crewman named Sean Ross. They married and had a son four years later. Sadly, her career was cut short by an injury, so she began giving ballet lessons to help make a living. Life was good until then, but she continued pressing forward, battling her demons and trying to make a good life for her son. The showgirl glitz was pretty from the outside, but Jennifer was struggling with mental health issues and was diagnosed with bipolar disorder. If that wasn’t enough to deal with, her marriage was also beginning to crumble.

Most people have heard the term bipolar, but few understand what it really is. Bipolar disorder is a mental health issue that can range from mild to severe. This condition can cause extreme mood swings with bouts of severe depression. Coupled with losing her dancing career, motherhood, and marital woes, this would have been quite an overwhelming load.

Jennifer was a showgirl from childhood. She was smart, talented, and beautiful. She knew this, but her identity was on the stage, and she found it hard to find herself now that her life of glitz and glamour had vanished. She always had the adoration of those around her, but now she felt hopelessly inadequate.
How do I know this, you might ask? Because I’ve been there. Mental health issues are hard to deal with, especially for a driven, successful person. Now, everything she had worked so hard for was going up in smoke. What could she do now?

In a fit of despair and drowning in debt, the beautiful ballerina took a job as an exotic dancer at the Wild Orchid Gentleman’s Club. She wasn’t happy about it but couldn’t find another option with her current mental state.

Like many women, Jennifer also suffered from postpartum depression, or so her husband claimed, and her life spiraled down from there. That’s when her drug and alcohol use began again, according to her husband. Her family vehemently disputes this, and there isn’t any official record of Jennifer having postpartum depression.

In 2005, Jennifer sought professional help with her anxieties and mental health issues. She was diagnosed with Bipolar disorder and postpartum depression. It is unclear if the postpartum depression was just something Sean mentioned or if she was diagnosed with it as well. Whatever the case, Jennifer was given a high-powered concoction of medications and treatment to help her get her life back in order.

She seemed to respond well to the treatment in the following weeks. There was one problem. However, Jennifer was still unable to cope with drinking and experimenting with drugs along with her medications.
No one knows what happened between husband and wife, but the fighting came to a breaking point in the early morning hours of May 5, 2005, and Jennifer stormed out of the house. Sean says she left with a red bag full of clothes, but no one could verify this story, and no other reports mention the bag.

Jennifer walked to the Peppermill Resort, Spa & Casino, which was only a mile from her home. There, she shared a few drinks with a friend, and some witnesses recall marks on her wrists and arms. Were they from abuse, or were they self-inflicted? No one knows for sure.

Around 5 a.m., she used her friend’s cell phone to call her father in Las Vegas. She told him she wanted to come to visit. Then, around 5:30 a.m., she took a cab to the Reno Sparks Cab Company. There, she hoped to see her mother, who usually worked the graveyard shift.

Unfortunately, her mother was off that night. Witnesses say she was seen climbing a fence and walking off. No one has seen her since. Here, the story begins to get a little strange. A beautiful woman is clearly upset and out on the town alone. She has a few drinks, paid for by an unknown gentleman, and then leaves the Peppermill to go to her mother’s job.

While interviewing family members, I was made aware of one gentleman who was particularly infatuated with the tall, gracious dancer. It was never brought out in the police reports, but it would seem a man at the cab company (I won’t name him) was always asking her mother if she had ditched Sean. He wanted to marry her and probably would have if it were an option. Here’s my question. Was this man ever questioned? Did his infatuation with the dark-eyed ballerina drive him to some nefarious scheme? We may never know.

Sean Ross called in a missing persons report when Jennifer didn’t return home the following day. Those closest to Jennifer found this odd because, according to Sean’s statements, Jennifer had run off before and would be gone for a few days. These reports could never be verified, but he would choose to call in a missing persons report right away if this were true. Wouldn’t waiting and seeing if she came home first make more sense?

Initial police reports say the investigators found two blood-stained notes in the home. After testing, they confirmed that the missing woman had written them and it was her blood. Were they written under duress? Was the medication and alcohol mix causing her to lose control? Maybe, but there’s more.

The young woman with a 3.9 GPA at the University of Nevada is on the opposite side of this dark spectrum. In 2001, she was inducted into the Dean’s List and remained there every year thereafter. She majored in veterinary medicine but switched to biomedical engineering and was awarded the NASA national space-grant college and fellowship program in 2000. She was smart, passionate, and independent. Was she pulling away from Sean? Was it more than he could handle?

Some people want to insinuate that Jennifer committed suicide, but would that really be like her? No one knows for sure. Yes, she was desperate, but she only had one year left before she received the degree she had worked so hard for. Surely, things would get better then.

Was her world really crashing down, or did an unknown monster bring it down? Investigators follow the night’s events and try to piece together a timeline of Jennifer’s last known hours. They talk to the employees at the cab company and hear a bizarre tale. The intoxicated woman had shown up that morning looking for her mother. When she was told her mother had the night off, Jennifer panicked and ran off into the night. She turned so quickly that the heel of her shoe broke. She ditched her high heels and ran off barefoot, jumping a small fence and heading toward her house.

Tracking dogs were brought in to help with the investigation. They found Jennifer’s scent behind the cab company and followed her trail until she reached the road. There, the trail was lost. Did someone stop and pick up the heavily intoxicated woman? The couple’s marriage problems and financial woes were a well-known fact. Did those issues cause Jennifer to want to abandon her life and start over somewhere else? Her family doesn’t think so. She adored her son, and no one believed she would run away. So, what happened to Jennifer?

Sean Ross is given a lie detector test shortly after his wife’s disappearance and fails. A second test is scheduled because everyone knows the tests aren’t 100% reliable. Sean agrees to the second test but never shows up. As if that weren’t suspicious enough, Sean told his mother-in-law that he thought Jennifer might be in the river before Jennifer was even officially declared missing. Investigators noticed his lack of emotion during the process.

Of course, everyone grieves differently, but that wouldn’t be the end of Sean Ross’ odd behavior. Three months after his wife’s disappearance, Ross divorces Jennifer and files for sole custody of their son. Who does that? Did he think she was out there somewhere refusing to come home, or did he know more? The strange behavior continues when Sean sells the home and moves to California with their son.

According to the divorce decree, Jennifer was supposed to receive half the proceeds from the house sale. Where is that? Is it still in the courthouse?

When this case was first reported, several news outlets claimed Sean had been cleared as a suspect, but that is not the case. Dateline did a write-up about this case recently, and the investigator claims Sean and one other unnamed individual are still persons of interest. I wonder who the unidentified person is. Could it be the guy at the cab company? I have no idea. I will leave that up to you to decide. The investigator also makes sure to mention the supposed suicide notes. He said they do not believe they were definite proof of suicide because they cannot prove that Jennifer wasn’t coerced into writing them. Sadly, Jennifer’s son is now coming of age and asking questions about his mother.

If you have any information about this case, please contact the Reno Police Department at (775)334-2155.

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