Family seeks end to misery of missing teen ordeal

Family members embraced one another and sobbed. They stared with wet eyes past yellow crime tape as drops of rain fell from a gray sky. And they paced around a sandy wash overcome by emotion.

“It’s too late for her,” said John Kinard, the uncle of a missing Gilbert woman.

“We’re glad there’s an end to it, but it’s hard.”

On Sunday night, an all-terrain vehicle rider found the body of an adult woman in the area east of Fountain Hills, where police and hundreds of volunteers have been searching for 19-year-old Jackie Hartman, family members said.

Police have not said whether the body is Hartman’s, a nursing student attending Chandler-Gilbert Community College who disappeared Jan. 29. However, they said Monday’s investigation was connected to her case.

“It could take a day or could be several days to get positive identification on the body,” said Sgt. Andrew Duncan, a Gilbert police spokesman.

“This most recent discovery has confirmed that we were correct in our investigative information from the beginning,” Duncan said.

The body was located about 4.5 miles west of southbound state Route 87 in the sandy Sycamore Creek, an area where ATV and dirt bike riders zip around the dusty roads. The site is also about a mile northwest of the Saguaro Lake exit. Police would not say what condition the body was in, or whether it was buried.

An autopsy by the Maricopa County Forensic Science Center will determine if the body is Hartman’s.

“I’m sure it is,” said the young woman’s father, David Hartman. “I don’t really have much doubt in my mind.”

After spending nearly 20 days searching for his daughter, David Hartman said Monday was a “strange day” and it felt odd not to be looking for her. Police had advised him against going to the scene, he said, then added that he felt he had been kept in the dark during the course of the investigation.

David Hartman has been joined by hundreds of volunteers in the past three weeks who have looked for some sign of her in the rugged landscape that stretches from Fountain Hills to Payson. Authorities and searchers have targeted the area because it is where the man suspected of killing her, Jonathan Ian Burns, used his cell phone in the hours just after her disappearance.

Hartman’s family and friends even created a Web site to organize their efforts.

“I’m glad it’s over — don’t get me wrong — but it’s still just one of those scary things,” David Hartman said.

The possibility that she has been found and that the search may be over is of little consolation to him. Questions remain unanswered.

“I thought maybe when this happened that I’d feel better about it, but I don’t,” he said.

Burns and Hartman were supposed to attend a party together the day of her disappearance.

The next day, authorities arrested Burns, 25. On Feb. 9, he was charged by a grand jury with first-degree murder and sexual assault in connection with her death — even as authorities, family and friends were searching for her and her belongings.

Police made a break in the case when they found Hartman’s bloody shirt spotted with bullet holes, her ripped bra, purse and other items in a trash bin down the street from Burns’ home just after her disappearance.

Burns admitted to police that he had sex with Hartman, but he has denied killing her. He is being held in Maricopa County’s Fourth Avenue Jail without bond.

Police have searched Burns’ Mesa home multiple times for evidence and confiscated his red pickup truck, but they have not said what they’ve found. The Maricopa County Attorney’s Office was prepared to prosecute the crime without a body, but the family is hoping that if Hartman has been located, the case will be stronger.

“Without her, it might be a little harder, but she’s helping now,” John Kinard said of his niece Monday morning while staring off in the direction where the body was found. He held his own 20-yearold daughter in his arms and cried. “Hopefully, we found her and the search is done,” said family friend Gary Bennett. “Then we can just go on to the next day.”

— Tribune writer Gary Grado contributed to this report.