PLANO — Just two months shy of her 16th birthday, Jessie Marie Twilight Song Crooks died at the hands of a killer or killers who have not been found 10 years after her death.

Late on Aug. 28, 2001, Twilight walked away barefooted from the Larmon Mill Road home she shared with her father, Bob Crooks, and his wife, Linda. A man walking his dog on Matlock Old Union Church Road found her body 5 miles from her home on Sept. 10, 2001, near a dried-up pond in a wooded area behind what is now a soybean field.

Someone placed a small marker at the spot where the girl’s killer left her body. She was found fully clothed, and her killer attempted to cover her with leaves and plants pulled up from the roots.

The Warren County Sheriff’s Office is the lead investigative agency in the case, along with help from retired police officers, the Kentucky State Police Central Lab in Frankfort and the FBI in Quantico, Va.

“This group of individuals is following up on several new leads as well as the old leads, and new forensic laboratory reports made available through new DNA technology,” Warren County Sheriff’s Capt. Tony Chism said. “The DNA technology is improving every day. It is only a matter of time.”

Investigators have never released the cause of her death.

Not even Twilight’s father knows the details of the final moments of his daughter’s life – information he prefers not to know until her killer is taken into custody.

“I have a beautiful daughter, and a certain part of me wants to keep that image,” Bob Crooks said. “I’ll eventually have to know. But it hasn’t bothered me for the last 10 years to not know. I’ve got this image of her growing up, what she looked like and how she acts. That’s what we hold on to.”

Linda Crooks remembers Twilight’s smile.

Twilight was a New Mexico native and was half Arapaho on her maternal side and part Cherokee on her father’s side. She was an active girl who enjoyed swimming and playing soccer. When she spent time with her mother, she learned about her Arapaho heritage and created beadwork for her friends and family.

“Every parent looks forward to the high school graduation,” Bob Crooks said. “They look forward to enrolling (their children) in college, college graduations. They look forward to their children falling in love and having children.

“That’s probably what you think about the most at this point,” he said as he and Linda Crooks fought back tears and talked about the things that the killer took from them.

“The life events that you look forward to as a parent in one quick moment is all taken away, completely blindsided,” he said. “I don’t think we breathed for months after August and September. You’re numb. You’re just numb.”

On Aug. 28, 2001, Twilight took a shower and told her dad and Linda Crooks goodnight. But about an hour later, they remember hearing the phone ring. At 10:56 p.m. Twilight answered a phone call that was traced to a pay phone at the Plano store, Chism said.

Shortly after the phone call, Twilight slipped out of the house without the consent of her father or Linda Crooks, presumably to meet the person who called her house. At 6 a.m. the following morning, Bob Crooks called the sheriff’s office to report his daughter missing.

Police didn’t find any leads until her body was discovered in the field. She was wearing an Edmonson County High School baseball jersey with the number 10 on it. Her family and friends never remembered seeing her wear the jersey before her body was found, Chism said. However, it is possible that she owned it and left the house wearing it on the night she was killed. The original jersey owner had donated the jersey to a Goodwill collection box in Brownsville before it landed in Twilight’s hands, Chism said.

While Bob Crooks wasn’t aware that his daughter used to sneak out of the house frequently, her friends knew about it, Chism said. Investigators learned from Twilight’s friends that she usually left the house without wearing shoes if she wasn’t going far from home.

Bob and Linda thought Twilight would sneak away only during the summer months, and they would put restrictions on her when they found out. However, they didn’t know that sneaking away from the house carried over into the school year.

Twilight was a straight-A student. They learned after her death that she had written about her dream of attending Harvard University. She never said what she wanted to do with her education.

“She was a good student,” Bob Crooks said. “The world was really open to her.”

He and Linda appeal to anyone with information about Twilight’s death to come forward.

“Twilight knew the person who caused her death well enough to leave her house to meet this person at the Plano store and trusted them enough to leave with them,” Chism said. “This was an impulsive act that took Twilight’s life. It was not planned. The person who is responsible still lives in our community.”

No matter how trivial the information may seem, Chism asks anyone with information about Twilight to call the sheriff’s office at 842-1633.

“This is not a petty crime,” he said. “It is a murder of a 15-year-old girl that is a daughter, sister and friend to many people.”

If you have information about this case and prefer to remain anonymous, you can send it to:

Warren County Sheriff’s Office

Attn: Twilight Crooks Investigation

P.O. Box 807

Bowling Green, KY 42102-0807

You can also call Crime Stoppers at 781-CLUE. You will not be asked for your name, and your information could lead to a reward.