Las Vegas Sun

March 29, 2024

Missing woman’s family holds out hope she wasn’t one of Neal Falls’ escorts

map which states is serial killer Neal Falls being investigated in

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Jessica Foster

The last time Glendene Grant saw her daughter Jessica Foster, Foster was leaving Kamloops, British Columbia, for Las Vegas. It was Christmas Day 2005.

Grant hoped Foster, then 21, would stay longer, but Foster had a 2 p.m. flight to Las Vegas, back to her boyfriend and her new life.

“I can still see in my mind her face,” Grant said recently.

Foster grew up in Kamloops and was an honor roll student. She attended Bible camp in summer.

When she turned 20, Foster began traveling with a friend. She visited New Jersey and New York before heading to Las Vegas in May 2005, two weeks before her 21st birthday.

Foster kept in touch and visited her family that Christmas. Then, she disappeared from her North Las Vegas home.

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This undated Oregon driver identification photo released Monday, July 27, 2015, by the Charleston, W. Va., Police Department shows Neal Falls, of Springfield, Ore., killed by a women he attacked on July 18 in Charleston. Police are investigating whether Falls had any connection to cases of suspicious deaths and missing women in other states, including Nevada.

Her family hasn’t heard from her since March 28, 2006.

“It’s horrific,” Grant said. “We could not have gone through a worse thing as a family.”

Foster is one of four women in the Las Vegas area whose disappearances police have connected to Neal Falls, an Oregon man killed last month in Charleston, W. Va., after he tried to choke an escort he met online, police say. Falls now is being investigated in connection with the deaths and disappearances of sex workers in at least nine states. Authorities believe he may have been a serial killer.

All four women missing in the Las Vegas Valley, including Foster, worked as prostitutes, according to police.

Lindsay Harris, 21, disappeared in May 2005. The Mercedes she was driving was found in a parking lot near the Excalibur, and a PT Cruiser rented in her name was found in the desert near her Henderson home, police said.

Leg parts identified as Harris’ eventually were found along an interstate near Springfield, Ill.

Parts of 25-year-old Misty Saens’ body were found in 2003, wrapped in plastic and cloth near Red Rock Canyon National Conservation Area.

Metro Police continue to investigate Saens’ death, as well as the death of 19-year-old Jodi Brewer, who disappeared in August 2003. Parts of Brewer’s body were found along Interstate 15 in San Bernardino County, Calif.

Foster is the only of the four women who has not been located. All went missing while Falls was believed to be living in the Las Vegas area. Little information about Falls has been confirmed.

Among what is known: The 45-year-old had contact with or had been investigated by police in at least 20 states.

Falls worked as an unarmed guard for a third-party security company at the Hoover Dam, according to U.S. Bureau of Reclamation spokeswoman Rose Davis. Falls worked at an inspection point on the Arizona side of the dam and is believed to have been employed there from about 2004 to 2008 before he was fired for behavioral issues, Davis said.

State records show Falls lived in a Henderson house near Equestrian Drive and South Boulder Highway for at least part of his time in the valley.

The escort in Charleston shot Falls with his own handgun. In Falls’ car, police found handcuffs, axes, a shovel and bleach, as well as a list of names of other escorts.

Grant, Foster’s mother, called the woman who killed Falls a hero.

“He was so narcissistic that it did not even cross his mind that he was not going to leave that building,” Grant said.

Grant doesn’t want to believe Falls killed her daughter. She is suspicious of the circumstances of Foster’s disappearance and believes the crowd Foster hung out with in Las Vegas may have killed her or forced her into human trafficking.

“Jessica is beautiful, an all-Canadian girl, who just became friends with the wrong person,” Grant said.

Grant said she resents the associations people have made between her daughter and the other victims. Grant wants people to know instead about her daughter’s fun personality, what a wonderful big sister she was and how close she was to her family.

“A lot of people are throwing her name out there like she’s the dismembered prostitute who hasn’t been found,” Grant said.

Whether Falls is connected to the case or not, Grant said she wants someone with accurate information to come forward and help solve the case.

She believes her daughter still could be alive, but if she isn’t, Grant at least wants her daughter’s body found.

“If Jessie is dead and in the Mojave, or if Jessie is dead and in a box along the highway, she’s not resting in peace,” Grant said. “We need to bring her home so she can.”

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