Nineteen-year-old Jan Andre Cotta was the eldest of eight children who lived with her family on a horse farm in Wall Township, NJ in 1973. According to Jan's siblings, while the family didn't have much money, they were a happy and tight-knit bunch. As one might expect for someone who grew up on a horse farm, Jan was an avid and highly-skilled equestrian who participated in horse shows and was even a substitute for the U.S. equestrian team. She was also active in 4-H. Jan's sister describes her as a pretty typical teenaged girl who knew many people in the horse community, but stated that Jan was really mostly just interested in her horses. She did not drink alcohol and was not involved in drugs.
On the night of June 26, 1973, sometime between 11:30 and midnight, Jan's brother and his friend saw Jan in the tack room of the family's barn. She asked them to leave, because she was waiting on a guy that she was seeing at the time. They later heard a vehicle (presumably Jan's boyfriend's vehicle) driving away from the farm. This was the last time that Jan was ever seen.
Jan's mother notified the police department that her daughter was missing within the first 24 hours. Police searched the whole property and nearby areas, contacted Jan's friends and people she knew within the equestrian community, and checked places that she was known to visit throughout the year.
It was thought that Jan had left on her own accord, at least initially. A letter that she had written was found in the tack room, the last place where she was conclusively seen by her brother and his friend. Jan's siblings remember this letter having an apologetic tone, and indicating that Jan wanted to go off by herself. It also stated that Jan wanted to give some of her favorite horses to a friend. The letter also contained a big piece of information that no one in the family had been aware of up until that point: Jan was pregnant (Charley Project says she was believed to be between 5 and 7 months pregnant at the time she went missing). Being an unwed mother in the early 70s was still very much a taboo, and they think she kept this a secret for that reason. She did not mention the baby's father by name in the letter, but her brother Jay believes that the father was her boyfriend at the time, the same one she was waiting for in the tack room the night she disappeared. Police say that they did look into this boyfriend, who denied that he had been to the farm to pick Jan up that night; they also can't prove if she was indeed pregnant or not, since it was not known until they discovered the letter.
In August 1973, two months after Jan went missing, a newborn baby boy was discovered abandoned in a mailbox on a farm in Jefferson Township, NJ; in fact, according to Charley Project, this was the same farm of the friend who Jan had given her favorite horses to before she disappeared. Additionally, if the upper estimate of how far along she was when she disappeared was correct, her baby would have been due around the time that the newborn was discovered, which led to speculation that this was Jan's baby. However, DNA tests later proved that the child was not Jan's.
So- what happened to Jan Cotta? Her siblings consider two theories: the first is that Jan, embarrassed by being pregnant, decided to run away. The second is that the man they believe to be the father of her baby knows where she is- he was apparently from an affluent family in Holmdel, NJ, who would have been embarrassed about him having fathered a child out of wedlock. I personally think that the boyfriend seems extremely suspicious- they know who he is, but there doesn't seem to be much conclusive evidence linking him to her disappearance since it doesn't seem like anyone actually saw them leave together.
Jan did have some notable physical characteristics that could make her stand out if she was still alive, or if she was an unidentified Jane Doe. At the time she went missing, Jan was 5'4 and 125 pounds with brown hair and blue eyes. She had previously fractured her left wrist and lower left arm, and she was clubfooted on her left foot, and it would turn inwards when she was tired. She had a lazy left eye that tended to droop when she was tired or sick. Her teeth were noted to be in poor condition, and she did not have any previous dental work. She had asthma, and she may have had epilepsy. If Jan is still alive, she would be 71 years old, and her baby would be 52 years old.
Jan's parents are both deceased, but her siblings are still alive and looking for her.
Sources:
NBC News Cold Case spotlight for 50th anniversary of her disappearance
“August 1973, two months after Jan went missing, a newborn baby boy was discovered abandoned in a mailbox on a farm in Jefferson Township, NJ; in fact, according to Charley Project, this was the same farm of the friend who Jan had given her favorite horses to before she disappeared. Additionally, if the upper estimate of how far along she was when she disappeared was correct, her baby would have been due around the time that the newborn was discovered, which led to speculation that this was Jan's baby. However, DNA tests later proved that the child was not Jan's.”
That’s wild.
I would really wonder if there was some screw up with the DNA testing.
There is at least one case where a woman with chimerism was wrongly ruled not to be the mother of her children, even the one that doctors watched come out of her and then DNA tested. Her name is Lydia Fairchild.
Pardon me if I missed it...in this case was the baby's DNA compared to Jan's DNA directly or simply to family DNA? If it was compared directly to Jan's, a chimerism could explain the lack of match. However, a lack of familial DNA match could not be explained away by a chimerism because all of her many extra cells would reflect family DNA (assuming of course that her parents are infact her bio parents)
Unless it’s the baby who has chimerism. Granted the odds of that are so incredibly small that it’s more likely the baby isn’t Jan’s and it’s a crazy coincidence where it was left.
Both sets of DNA in the baby would reflect the DNA of both his parents. It seems to be a very a crazy coincidence indeed. We've always been told that detectives don't believe in coincidences so I think our skepticism is justified.
It’s utterly bizarre.
When was the DNA test done?
If the parents were still alive at the time of the DNA test, they would have likely mentioned an adoption, but her younger sibling might not know if she wasn't biologically related.
This case immediately came to mind for me.
Yeah I’m having a hard time with the idea that this baby is a random coincidence. I wonder if DNA ever conclusively proved who the parents of the baby were, then? If not I would hope the DNA was re-tested to ensure there wasn’t an error, especially if this test was done in the earlier days of DNA testing.
I was just going to say this.
Can they redo the DNA?
Apparently an act of God to get retested. Dunno
For sure
Right!?!?
unless DNA was done relatively recently and with an established source (from Jan and a both parents) I would even guess there may be a chance she was adopted or from an outside the marriage relationship, so unless they also tested the boyfriend they wouldn't establish that it WASNT Jan's baby...
If that’s not Jans baby that is a completely crazy coincidence. Surely coincidences of this magnitude don’t just happen. The friend here seems to have benefited from her death. Was the friend looked into?
Personally, I wouldn't call being the recipient of a mailbox baby a benefit. But I may be in the minority
Lmao. I agree with you.
I’m a very maternal person with two of my own. So the idea of a baby just being gifted like that my instincts as a mum take over. Protect protect protect and love ❤️
A proper response to my poor attempt of a comment. The world could use more empathy like yours.
My thought process as a mum is. If I put myself mentally in a situation where I have to give a baby up. Bad relationship, money, the babies safety, any reason at all. I would leave it with someone who I trust 100% would treat that baby like it’s their own. Love them and protect them fully. That’s why women chose safety shelters and rescue workers or people they know. So the fact that it just happened to be her best friend whom she left her horses to. I can’t wrap my head around that jut happening in the time frame. It’s completely insane.
Agree! This case keeps popping into my head. Entire thing so odd.
Right? That's crazy! I wonder if the test was done shortly after the baby's discovery, so in the early 70s. I wouldn't be suprised if something got messed up in the process, or maybe the sample of Jan's (if it was used) DNA was of bad quality, like hair taken from a hairbrush or something, since Jan obviously couldn't provide it.
The only other solution for this was that there was another girl/woman in the area that knew both about Jan's disappearance and the pregnancy and decided to leave her baby at the ranch hoping that the family will just accept that this is Jan's child and raise it...? It's convoluted, but that's the only other thing I can come up with :Y
I wonder what happened to that baby, they would be in their 50s now... I hope they're doing well. I wonder if they would be willing to try get their DNA tested again, with modern technology.
They didn't have DNA tests then. A quick google says they first started using DNA testing for paternity in 1988.
Exactly what I was going to mention! DNA in the 70s?? All they could do was blood typing!
The OJ Simpson trial in 1995 was the first time DNA evidence was used in any major forensic sense at all. People oft forget how very recent this stuff is. (One of the many reasons put forth why he was acquitted was the jurors not understanding how DNA evidence works).
Medical knowledge is probably the fastest moving set of knowledge we have. I still can’t believe that when I was growing up, having HIV/AIDS was basically a death sentence, and now, you barely hear of anyone dying of it anymore because ways to treat it (not cure it) are so widespread.
The trial of Colin Pitchfork in 1988 was the first time DNA evidence was used in a major forensic sense.
The Joseph Wambaugh book about that case is one of my favorites! It’s called The Blooding, because they took blood from every male in the area where the girls were murdered.
I wonder if they meant that the dna used for the testing was collected in the 1970s. Obviously, it couldn’t have been tested back then!
pretty sure first DNA tests with conclusions weren't until the 80's
50 year old baby. I wonder if it still lives in the mailbox.
Well if a little old lady could live in a shoe then I'd say that child is lucky to have all that space in the mailbox. But I only get my news from nursery rhymes so I might be off on the accuracy of my statement.
That sounds like a…I don’t know. It sounds like song or a book or something.
Horror movie. I'm seeing the poster in my head. Black and white, dripping blood, all caps:
50 YEAR OLD BABY
IT LIVES!
in the mailbox
I thought the exact same! What a coincidence!
To be fair, back in the 70's stork hiring standards weren't as consistent as they are nowadays. So it was normal to find babies in strange areas due to incompetent and just lazy storks dropping them off somewhere close to BabyLogistics HQ.
Almost too wild!
I wonder how credible the claim is that a baby was found in a mailbox and then was later proven to not match Jan's DNA. She disappeared in June 1973 and the newborn baby was found in August. DNA testing wasn't even invented until more than a decade later.
So it's possible Jan was excluded as the mother via a different form of testing like blood type testing and a journalist, blogger, or someone else misinterpreted details and referred to it as DNA testing and that's been repeated as fact since then. Or DNA testing was performed, but not until a dozen or more years after the newborn was found.
I've looked for an authoritative source which mentions the newborn baby found in the mailbox or the testing which ruled out Jan as the mother. Either from 1973, the year the testing was done, or more recently via mainstream media or any source which includes a quote from law enforcement or someone in a position of authority. Or even a quote from a relative of Jan's, the newborn's adoptive parents, a private investigator, or anyone else. I've found nothing, though I haven't performed an exhaustive search.
Can anyone find an article from 1973 about the newborn that was found or anything at all that's authoritative or seemingly credible about Jan being ruled out as the newborn's mother?
I found several articles from 1973 -- here's the most detailed one. The mailbox was a very large one, and the baby girl apparently bounced back pretty quickly and was given to a foster family. At that point the mother had not come forward and I'm not finding anything saying they located her. The farm did not belong to a private family, but rather was owned by the Catholic church and served as a home for the mentally disabled. It's possible that Jan's friend lived or worked there, but it could also be that the friend lived close by and that later morphed into "a baby was left in her friend's mailbox." But the fact that the mailbox belonged to a group home opens up a lot of possibilities -- it could potentially (although hopefully not!) have been the child of someone living there who had hidden a pregnancy, it could be the child of someone who had once lived there and maybe chose it as a familiar/safe spot, or it could very well have simply been someone who was desperate to find a hiding place and the large mailbox was more inviting or seemed safer than a smaller one would have been. I can't find any articles from the 1970s which make the connection between Cotta and the potential that she's this particular baby's mother. Obviously people may have wondered at the time, or seen the story and remembered that her boyfriend was supposed to be from New Jersey and wondered about the connection, but there's nothing I can find in (online) papers from the time about it.
EDIT: I also found this article from 2011, it's mostly about the resident who found the baby but it mentions the baby visiting the farm when she turned 21 and that at the time she was a pre-med college student. It doesn't sound like her birth parents had been identified. Also, the DNA testing seems to have been done around 1997 -- this article is about a PI who made the connection between the baby and Cotta in the 1990s (though it's possible someone had brought it to police attention before, the article is frustratingly vague about what exactly he saw in the police file). But interestingly, it says that Jan's horses were taken "to Franklin Township" which is where the baby was found -- but there's nothing about the horses being at the exact farm that the baby was found. Just, she left her horses to someone in Franklin Township, and the baby was also found in Franklin Township. This is confusing because every other source says the baby was found in Jefferson Township and the two places aren't that close. I think later on that part of the article got truncated into "The baby was left at the same place she sent her horses" which may not be true, and even if it is, at most the baby turned up in the same town, not in a friend's mailbox.
This article should be included in the main post. A group home is wayyy different than a friend's house.
I’m suspicious this was the child of a resident and an attempt to cover up abuse
I thought the same thing!
Great find! And thoughtful analysis.
Based on what you shared I found a 2011 article which describes a 21 year old woman visiting that location in 1994 and introducing herself as the baby who had been left in the mailbox. In the article she's not named and the date she was removed from the mailbox was 3 days earlier than the date stated in the 1973 article, but I'd be shocked if two different newborns were placed in that mailbox 3 days apart! See Baby Found in Mailbox Came 'Home' To Jefferson. That article also doesn't mention Jan Cotta, though I wouldn't expect it to given the focus of the article.
Yes, I edited my post to update that -- it looks like Cotta was ruled out in 1997 via DNA testing so there wouldn't have been a reason to mention her in the article. The disparity in dates is a little weird, but I'm guessing it was just a matter of some wires getting crossed somewhere.
Well, I’m somewhat confused. When I read the 1st article about Cotta’s disappearance and the baby found in the mailbox, it clearly said the baby was a boy(?)
The first article listed in OP's top-level post is on The Charley Project, which is a site entirely run and authored by a single person. Though it's a massive and valuable resource it frequently contains incorrect info. To be fair, sometimes that's due to the source info she referred to being wrong, but often it's just due to misinterpretation of source material, typos, and other mistakes.
Did it explicitly say Franklin Township? There are multiple Franklins Townships in New Jersey, and Franklin Borough is about 15 minutes from Jefferson.
The article I linked to (under "1997") says Franklin Township.
Thanks, I missed that link when going through your comment.
Thank you for linking these! I don't have a Newspapers.com membership so did not see these.
Library it’s free! 🤗
I’m an avid user of my library but I still didn’t know this! Will definitely look into it.
I haven't found anything yet, although I also haven't performed any kind of search.
God, that's sad.
Doe I found
The details match (Height, Weight could be explained with the time between the disappearance and discovery being over a year, Jan would have been in the age range of the doe, the doe's hair color was described as brown or reddish, the eye color is off (but blue can be mistaken for hazel)) The doe had given birth at least once, possibly the same year she was found. Doe was a smoker (don't know how they determined it), and Jan wasn't (but could have hidden it like her pregnancy)
Edit: Just looked at a newspaper article for the doe, and it said that she had very bad teeth. Jan was noted to have had dental problems!
The doe has brown eyes and Jan has blue.
But she was last found in Nj unless she runaway and got killed later in ohio which is kind of unlikely
Being pregnant at 19 was taboo, especially in the 70s. I think that would have been a good reason for her to have ran away
Yes but why 2 years later ?
One example: run away and try to start a new life in a new state where she could perhaps claim she was a widow or perhaps gave the baby up and then tried to start over with a new identity in a different place. Without any legit documentation or any family or friends to support her, she struggles to support herself and ends up living on the margins of society, eventually finding herself in a dangerous situation where she was killed.
That’s just one very specific example, there are plenty of ways in which this young woman could’ve ended up dying in 1975 in Ohio. Of course it’s also very possible that the doe is not Jan. But if it was 2 years too early that would exclude a match, 2 years later does not when we don’t even know why Jan disappeared, and Ohio doesn’t exclude anything as we don’t know where she went / where she was taken.
It says Jan had asthma so it’s unlikely she was a smoker. I have asthma and I can’t even tolerate second hand smoke.
From Jan Cotta websleuth thread-
There was an apartment in that barn that Jan actually lived in.
One of Jan's sisters saw the car drive away and recognized it as one of Jan's friends. (This makes Brother Brian and friend less suspicious.)
Family moved from Spring Lake Heights, NJ to the Wall, Allenwood farm.
Jan studied at the Morvath Riding Academy in VA. Possibly related- Secret Service was involved in the investigation for no apparent reason.
https://websleuths.com/threads/nj-jan-cotta-19-wall-township-26-june-1973.20702/page-5
Did they check if it’s actually her hand writing?
The note could be interpreted as suicidal
I agree. Giving away possessions (her horses) could also be interpreted that way.
I wonder if there was ever any doubt that she wrote the note?
I think this was either a suicide or she was murdered by the father of the baby.
Her leaving horses to a friend seems suspicious. What if the friend was the one who was pregnant and the mailbox baby was hers. She contrived the story about Jan being pregnant and then got rid of her to cover for her own pregnancy. Mailbox baby’s dna didn’t match Jan but did they check the friend for a match? The letter was either faked or they forced Jan to write it.
I like this theory! What a wild case. I hope Jan's family is able to get closure some day.
This was my craziest thought as well!
She was clearly a skinny girl. HOW could she be 7 months pregnant and nobody saw that?!
I’d also be shocked if the baby found was not hers. This was v early 70s so there must be a realistic possibility the dna test could be faulty. If not that got to be one of the greatest coincidences of all time!
They didn’t even have DNA tests at the time; I haven’t found too much info about the fate of the baby, but assuming he was adopted, and a DNA test was done much later?
She (the baby) was presumably adopted and, at age 21 in 1994, was a pre-med student. She could probably be located today, although I obviously wouldn’t recommend trying to contact her.
I didn’t even realize that it was a girl and not a boy! Hard to believe that she’s probably nearing retirement now.
If I ever met her, I’d say, “Eh….what’s up, Doc?”
What, you thought I’d interrogate her about a missing woman she isn’t even related to?! That would be pretty inconsiderate.
But if the baby was abandoned in a mailbox, depending on the season, would he even be alive??
She was seemingly alive in 1994 and returned to the location to introduce herself. See my comment which links to a 2011 article about that.
That’s a very good point- I haven’t seen any indication that he was dead.
My mom also got pregnant as a teen and in 1969, and she was extremely thin. My parents had ye olde shotgun wedding, and even though my mom was about 6 months pregnant at the time, you'd never guess it. She's wearing one of those slim-fit sheath dresses, so you'd fully expect to see a bump, but no. She absolutely does not look pregnant. I think build has a lot to do with it but also foundational garments at the time held things in a lot better.
There were no DNA tests in the 70s. The test had to have been done much, much later using, perhaps, family DNA.
It's worth pointing out that, if she was still alive, she could have miscarried- many first pregnancies (about 1 in 3, but numbers may have changed since the 70's) end in miscarriage or stillbirth. This is more likely to be true if she wasn't getting proper pre-natal care and nutrition (not casting aspersions on anyone).
It is very strange a different baby would be found, but I suppose it's possible. Maybe they were hoping people would think it was Jan's baby, based on where it was placed... if she ended up with a group with another pregnant woman. (I know that sounds sinister, and it might be, but it's my best explanation if we assume the infant truly isn't Jan's, as per DNA.) Like, a group that preyed on young and vulnerable women, of which there have always been many- religious groups/cults or insular communities, for example, including ones that were 'off the grid.'
I could imagine a 19-year-old pregnant girl accepting an offer to live or work in a more accepting community, only to learn too late that they had bad intentions, including wanting to take her baby for themselves. Some totally different group may've taken and raised her child.
The mailbox the baby was found in was at a group home, not a private residence- I'd say that it is likely the baby's mother was either a resident or former resident rather than Jan's, sadly.
Oh OK, that does make sense- probably a coincedence that it had proximity to her friend. Yes, probably someone who had lived there or still did.
I mean, babies are weird. There's this famous case. In neither of these photos would I assume she's pregnant. She had the baby 6 weeks after the bikini photo and days after the formal one.
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/photos-of-cheerleader-in-bikini-just-weeks-before-she-secretly-gave-birth-shown-in-court/F673EVQZ52AL6BSGLIOTVOUE6I/
She very clearly has a baby bump in the formal photo, and the bikini one shown cuts off her lower abdomen.
I had a thin friend who didn't show until 7 months.
The host of the f1 tv broadcasts announced her pregnancy earlier this season, she is also a thin woman, and she didn't look noticeably pregnant until this past month (I'd assume she's around 7/8 months as well). Like it seemed like between two races she just SUPER pregnant out of nowhere. Pregnancy is wild like that!
Fwiw, I weighed about the same as Jan when I was 19 and became pregnant with my daughter, but I am three inches taller (so possibly looked even thinner than she did) and still didn't really show until I was 7 months prego.
I was a pregnant 16yo in 1970/71 and hardly anyone noticed. I was thin but had really strong stomach muscles and I think that’s why I didn’t look pregnant. (My daughter was a little premature so if I had gotten to 9 months, I might have looked very different.)
I also imagine it would be difficult to mount a horse at 7 months pregnant
Great write-up. I've never heard about this case, and the hidden pregnancy and abandoned baby coincidence is insane. I really think some type of mix up occurred and the DNA test results may not be accurate?
My instinct is that the friend knew more than she divulged. I'm guessing she never received the gift horses? That fact raised a red flag, but not sure why.
The boyfriend (it could have been another man than the NJ guy) may have been older and married or had another reason why a baby was not welcome news. Her sibling suggest her letter eluded to a broken heart. My thinking here is convoluted but too many facts and details have been lost to time.
Weird case with several flags but they all point in opposite directions. Nothing cohesive here and it's jarring.
One of the links says the brother and his friend saw Jan in the barn at around 11:30 pm. I find that a little odd...Jan was allegedly out there waiting for her boyfriend but what were they doing out there at that time? And they’re the only ones who heard the boyfriend’s truck too, and the last people to see her alive.
I wonder how old they were at the time and if they were thoroughly investigated.
Her brother Brian who gave the witness statement was seemingly 16-17 at the time based on info I found online.
Jan was the oldest of 8 children at age 19 so Brian was at most 18. According to his wife's 2022 obituary they had been married for 43 years when she died at 63 so they married March 3, 1979 or earlier. Jan disappeared June 26, 1973. So if Brian and his wife married on that date and he was the same age as his wife he would have been 20 on the wedding date and 13-14 when Jan disappeared. They could have married as early as March 4, 1978 which would make him 12-13 when Jan disappeared. Of course, he might have been older than his wife (or a little younger than her) when they married so these are just educated guesses.
In the obituary Brian is listed as being from Wall, NJ. There's a Brian Cotta living in Neptune, NJ (5 miles east of Wall) who is 69 per info available online. That would make that Brian 16-17 when Jan disappeared.
I suspect both are the same person and that he was 16-17 when Jan disappeared.
Yes, this. Assuming I understand the situation correctly, it sounds like basically everything we know about this case comes from what the brother and his friend said.
They said they saw her in the tack room. They said that she said the boyfriend was coming over. They said they heard a car. I don’t know whether or not they are the ones who found the letter, but since their testimony is what placed Jan in the tack room, anyone, including them, could have simply put the letter there, and Jan had nothing to do with it. and it was this letter of questionable authenticity that claimed Jen was pregnant. As far as I can see, there was no independent corroboration of that.
I have no idea of what the motivation might have been, but I wonder whether anyone has looked into the brother and the brother‘s friend…
Yeah, exactly! Literally all the information comes from them and I find that concerning. Especially since the boyfriend claimed he was never there that night and presumably there was no evidence proving otherwise since he was never arrested or charged with anything.
I don’t know what the motive might’ve been either but to me they seem like the most obvious suspects, especially if they were 16-17 at the time like another Redditor said. I feel like if this happened nowadays they’d be thoroughly investigated but in 1973 who knows. It was a different time, perhaps the police just assumed teenagers couldn’t do something like that.
I wonder if they ever tested the mailbox baby’s DNA against the brother’s friend. But who knows, the whole pregnancy thing could’ve been made up anyway. I feel like this is the type of case that will always remain a mystery unless someone confesses on their death bed or something. There’s just so little to go on.
Homicide is the leading cause of death for pregnant women in the US. And the most common perpetrator is the partner. Occam's razor -- the boyfriend knows exactly what happened to Jan.
Yes, that’s my thought as well. There’s sadly probably not enough evidence to prove beyond a reasonable doubt though- they can’t even definitively prove that he was the one she left with since the boys only heard the car leave and didn’t see the car or the driver- or even see Jan get into the car. It would have been very easy for him to convince her to run away and get married, run away and have the baby and give it up, go get an abortion… only to kill her and dispose of her body and all the evidence.
It's also possible her boyfriend wasn't the father. Or that she wasn't even pregnant.
In 2014 Wall Township Police published a press release which stated they were looking for a person of interest who was 40 at the time of her disappearance.
With no other details it's impossible to say what his involvement may have been, but perhaps he was the driver of the vehicle that Jan may have left in. If so, he could have been the father, someone acting on behalf of the boyfriend, or just someone she'd befriended through her equestrian activities or elsewhere. There are numerous other possibilities and it seems detectives have not shared when his name surfaced nor in what context.
Since she gave away several horses shortly before she disappeared it seems likely she was not planning on returning. That could point to suicide or running away from home.
From the 2023 article Siblings hoping for answers in 1973 disappearance of New Jersey teen Jan Cotta:
It sounds as though her parents and 7 younger siblings were unaware that she was pregnant. If true and she was really pregnant she may have left in part because it was becoming more difficult to conceal her pregnancy. The full contents of the letter may be telling, but all we have is a couple of paraphrased retold parts which might not even be accurate or could be interpreted differently in context.
I like to think that she headed out west to work at an equestrian facility and that she gave birth to a healthy baby that she raised. Unfortunately, the details which have been made public allow for lots of speculation and don't really rule out any scenarios.
So some random person that wasn’t Jan put a baby in her friends mailbox? That seems highly unlikely.
Was the DNA tested against the boyfriend’s? (Assuming he is still around).
Is the property still a horse farm today?
Not actually her friend’s mailbox - the first article doesn’t quite clarify that. The property belonged to the Catholic Church and was used as a group home for mentally handicapped people.
that certainly makes a difference. Back in the 70’s law enforcement never took cases of missing girls and women seriously , they were always chalked up to “runaway hysterical women” or something equally offensive.
Leaving a note indicating to give away your most precious objects and then dipping almost always means they killed themselves.
Why even include the bit about the baby that is absolutely not related to Jan in the story?
This article from May 1, 1973 (three months before Jan went missing) says she had plans to move to England that fall. I wonder if that's where she went, albeit earlier than expected due to pregnancy.