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On a summer Monday afternoon in 2001, Bruce Koklich called the police to report his wife Jana missing.
Bruce said he’d kissed her goodbye at 6am after a quiet weekend together, the pair planning to meet at their Long Beach office, where they maintained a real estate business. But by 10.30am, Jana, 41, was nowhere to be found – not at home, not at hospitals, not anywhere near friends or family.
But there were a few signs something was amiss. Jana had flaked on her social plans. Disturbing voicemails kept arriving on the couple’s answering machine. Police were interested in questioning Jana’s longtime personal trainer and the couple’s business partner.
And then there was Bruce. After investigators found traces of Jana’s blood in her car and in the couple’s bedroom, they turned a critical eye toward the grieving husband.
But for a long time what happened that August baffled investigators, who spoke candidly about the case in the fifth episode of the Netflix true crime docuseries Homicide: Los Angeles.
‘It’s like she disappeared off the face of the earth’
After 11 years of marriage, everything appeared to be going well. Bruce and Jana lived in a beautiful home atop a golf course, were prepping to launch an internet business and planned to adopt children.
And then, Jana was gone. “It’s like she disappeared off the face of the earth,” her father said.
Bruce told investigators that his wife had gone to a concert Friday night and returned shortly after midnight. The couple spent the next two days together at home, Bruce said.
LA County homicide detective Karen Shonka found voicemails from an unknown male voice claiming to know Jana. Bruce said the couple hadn’t answered any calls because Jana was disturbed by them.
Shonka speculated that the voicemails may have been connected to Jana’s father Paul Carpenter, a former California state senator recently released from prison on corruption charges. Did one of Carpenter’s enemies kidnap his daughter, seeking revenge?
Investigators turned to the media for help, but no ransom note or demands turned up.
Ruling out suspects
Chris Botosan was a business partner helping the couple launch a software company, and he accompanied Bruce as they searched for Jana.
With Jana gone, Botosan could have absorbed more of the company’s profits. But his alibi that weekend showed he was hanging out with a girlfriend, making him an unlikely suspect.
Another person under question was Dean, Jana’s personal trainer of four years. The two had an appointment Saturday morning that Jana, who was never late, abruptly missed. But friends told detectives there was never anything unprofessional about the relationship between Jana and her PT.
Jana also missed a massage appointment with a friend Saturday afternoon.
Bruce was coy when explaining Jana’s aloofness: “We just wanted to blow everything off for the weekend.”
So detectives questioned the couple’s housekeeper, Consuelo Lopez. The week after Jana went missing, Lopez noticed the bedsheets she placed were gone, leaving only a flat sheet on the bed. Had Jana been abducted at home – perhaps by the unknown male voice leaving creepy voicemails?
It seemed unlikely: there were no signs of forced entry in the house.
Then, Jana’s Nissan Pathfinder was found abandoned four miles from the couple’s home. And in the trunk: a feather and a large splotch of blood.
If Jana had been murdered, surely her body would turn up nearby. A 140-member search team scoured the area but, once again, found nothing.
Investigators started looking a lot closer at Bruce.
‘All roads lead to Bruce Koklich’
Bruce refused to undergo a lie detector test, yet continued to plead on TV: “I’m doing anything I can to get my wife back.”
His statements attracted the attention of some women, who claimed Bruce made sexual and romantic advances toward them. A neighbor said she’d received a note on her windshield from Bruce shortly after Jana went missing, which read: “Would your granddaughter be willing to go out with me?”
Police found traces of Jana’s blood on the carpet of the couple’s master bedroom, which they matched with DNA from her hair brush.
Residents had also seen Bruce on Sunday, the day before she went missing, sitting alone in Jana’s car in a neighborhood far less fancy then their own. But in his testimony, he said he had been spending a peaceful weekend with Jana at their home.
Police wondered if Bruce purposely left the vehicle with the windows down and the keys in the ignition, hoping someone would steal it and take the blame.
“He was very ambitious, money-driven and goal-driven,” Titchenal added.
They started treating her disappearance as a possible homicide.
Investigators learned Jana had a $1 million life insurance policy. And while the couple was considering adoption, a friend said those plans fell through one month before Jana’s disappearance. Titchenal said Bruce “needed control” – of the couple’s finances and relationship – and now their marriage was going downhill.
Shonka suspected a financial motive: “Bruce wanted to be the real estate mogul, the guy with the money and the property, and Jana was in the way. So he came up with a plan to get rid of and murder his wife.”
A ‘no body’ case
Bruce was charged with Jana’s death and the trial began February 18, 2003. Prosecutors had to prove that Bruce had a financial motive that led to Jana’s disappearance. But there was one problem: her body hadn’t been found.
The jury deliberated for 6 days, but ended in a 7-5 deadlock and declared a mistrial. “I couldn’t believe Bruce got away with it. He killed Jana and he gets to walk,” said Jan Baird, a friend of Jana’s.
But that didn’t stop prosecutors, who pursued a different approach eight months later: a visual trial that would showcase the circumstantial evidence that showed Bruce must have been responsible. This time, jurors deliberated for just several hours – and quickly rang the buzzer, unanimously declaring Bruce guilty.
Bruce was convicted on a 15-year-to-life prison sentence.
For Jana’s family, full justice wouldn’t arrive: “It is especially devastating not to know where her body is so that we could have the comfort of a final goodbye,” her father said.
Koklich was denied parole in 2018, 2020, 2021 and 2023. In April, a court denied his appeal, finding him ineligible for a new sentencing.
Shonka said: “He’s an egotistical manipulator and thought he could charm his way out of this somehow and it just didn’t work.”
Source: independent.co.uk
