TRUE CRIME FRIDAY: THE DUNGEON MASTER OF DEWITT

Ninetoes did some digging on the crimes of John Jamelske and now needs a hot shower with lots of soap. Take this as a warning…

(*EDITOR NOTE: I had personal experiences with this evil man and his victims. The women he kidnapped had Stockholm Syndrome so bad he could take them out to karaoke bars, ones I would attend. Frequently we saw him and one or two young women, not knowing they were kidnapping victims. He didn’t sing but they did. And they always went back home with him! Once, while outside FREDDY’S in Mattydale sometime around 1998 or 1999—a bar he frequented with the women—I interacted with the girls and they made it clear they were not to go out of this man’s eyesight. A few years later, we discovered why! I’ve included an MSNBC video at the end, featuring interviews with my karaoke DJing peer Cindy Ormond and her comments about this infamous kidnapper. BLOG MANAGER TOM)

Hey there, true crime lovers! It is your favorite investigator, Ninetoes, coming to you from Ninetoes HQ, and I am on the beat with the Case of John Jamelske. I have my notebook in hand and coffee in my system, so let’s get to it!

John Jamelske is an ordinary man. He graduated from Fayetteville High School in New York, married his high school sweetheart, Dorothy, and had three kids. He worked a series of blue-collar jobs and was a notorious penny pincher to the point that, over time, he had amassed over one million dollars, which he used to invest in property in California. He looks good on paper. Then again, pretty much everyone does.

In 1988, Dorothy became bedridden due to illness (she died in 1999), and this is where Jamelske’s story takes a dark turn.

In October 1988, Jamelske abducted a 14-year-old Native American girl and held her captive in a concrete bunker he had built under his backyard. To get the girl to do anything he said, he threatened violence against her younger brother. He released the girl after two years of captivity. The girl never made a report to the police.

In 1995, Jamelske abducted a 14-year-old Latina runaway. He lured her into his car under the pretense of paying her to deliver a package for him. The girl willingly went into his bunker, and he closed the steel door behind her. Again, Jamelske threatened violence against the girl’s family. After a while, he blindfolded the girl and brought her to her mother’s apartment. This time, the girl filed a report to the police, but they discounted what she said because she had a history of drug use.

In 1997, Jamelske kidnapped a 53-year-old Vietnamese woman off the street. He took her to an abandoned house, where he raped her. He then tied her to a bail of collapsed cardboard boxes and took her to his bunker, where he raped her daily and forced her to perform menial tasks. He released her in 1998 at a Greyhound bus station and gave her fifty dollars. The woman went to the police, but nothing came of it.

In May 2011, Jamelske offered a ride home to a 26-year-old white woman. She was high on LSD, and it was raining, and she accepted the ride. He took her back to his bunker and raped her daily. When she resisted, he would burn her with cigars. One of these burns led to an abscess on her lower back. He manipulated this woman by telling her he was part of an underground sex slave ring. The woman wanted to write to her family to let them know she was okay. Jamelske agreed but told her to tell her family she was in a drug rehab facility.

When she was released, she went to the police. Her case was complicated by the letter she wrote about the drug rehab facility. A further complication was that the rape test kit yielded no results because Jamelske stopped any sexual interactions with the woman several days before her release. She also told police that Jamelske drove a 1974 Mercury Comet. The police did a search for a vehicle matching the description in the New York area and found one, but the lead did not pan out because the description did not match the vehicle found. Had the police widened their search to include the years 1971 to 1977, they would have found Jamelske’s 1975 Mercury Comet of the same color the victim gave.

Jamelske picked up his final victim in October 2002. A 16-year-old African-American female who was a runaway from the Syracuse area of New York. On April 3, 2003, Jamelske felt confident enough to take her out to a bar for karaoke night. This worked out well enough that he took her out for another outing, and she managed to slip away to call her sister, who checked the caller ID, called the number (a bottle return center in Manilus), and convinced the employee to call 911. The employee called her boss (who was working at a pet store) and told him that Jamelske was on his way there. The employee also told her boss that Jamelske was raping the young girl. After the visit to the pet store, the police were called, and Jamelske was tracked down and arrested.

Jamelske pleaded guilty to five counts of first-degree kidnapping and is currently serving 18 years to life at the Mohawk Correctional Facility. Part of the plea agreement was that Jamelske’s assets would be sold off and divided among the victims. Jamelske thought that he would only get a few days in jail and would have to pay a fine and maybe perform community service. His lawyers spent several days explaining to him that taking women off the street and holding them in his dungeon (as he called it) was indeed kidnapping and a felony.

Jamelske has been denied parole three times so far: in December 2020, December 2022, and October 2023. Until the next time, keep your pencils sharp and your paper dry. I bid you successful investigating.

Darren “Ninetoes” Perdue is a book and media reviewer. When he is not reading, he is watching true crime shows, cooking for his family, or working on a plan for universal domination. If you see him on his porch, say hi. He does not bite…much.

PLEASE NOTE: The views and opinions of the staff of Memento Mori Ink do not necessarily represent those of Memento Mori Ink or Crystal Lake Publishing. Thank you for understanding.