Jennifer Kesse Left for Work in 2006 and Never Returned Home. Here’s What Her Family Thinks Happened — and Why NASA Got Involved in the Case

Jennifer Kesse had it all — family, friends, a great job and a loving boyfriend — until she disappeared without a trace in 2006.

At the time she went missing, Kesse was 24 years old and a recent graduate of the University of Central Florida. She had gotten a lucrative job at a timeshare company and had already purchased her first home, a condo in Orlando, Fla., per Fox News. Little did she know it would one day be considered her last known location.

On the morning of Jan. 24, 2006, a few days after returning from a trip to Saint Croix with her boyfriend, Rob Allen, Kesse didn’t show up to her office. According to 48 Hours, coworkers knew it was out of character for her to not reach out, so they contacted her parents, Drew and Joyce Kesse. When they couldn’t get in touch with their daughter, they knew something was wrong and immediately drove to her place.

Shortly after they reached the complex, they discovered Kesse was missing. Her car was gone and her condo was left as if she was on her way to work — a damp towel in the bathroom, her pajamas on the floor and her hair tools on the counter, her mother told 48 Hours.

All that was missing were her keys, cell phone, purse and iPod, which have never been found. Meanwhile, her car was discovered a mile down the road, abandoned outside of another nearby apartment complex on the same day she went missing.

Kesse’s family and a team of investigators have spent the past 19 years looking for leads in the hopes of finding her — but have often come up empty-handed. Despite having no known suspects and only grainy video footage of a potential person of interest, they have vowed to never give up on looking for her.

“We don’t care when. We don’t care how and frankly, we don’t care who. We just want our daughter back, for the good or the bad,” her father Drew told Fox News in 2020. “We miss her every day.”

So what happened to Jennifer Kesse? Here’s everything to know about her disappearance and where the investigation stands today.

Who was Jennifer Kesse?

Kesse was born on May 20, 1981, in New Jersey. Her parents, Drew and Joyce, raised her in Tampa, Fla. where she attended Gaither High School in the late ’90s. She later enrolled at the University of Central Florida, where she studied finance and graduated with honors in 2003, according to Fox News.

Following graduation, Kesse was hired to work as a finance manager at Central Florida Investments Timeshare Company. She quickly earned promotions, and not long after being hired, she was able to purchase her own condo in Orlando.

Her childhood best friend Lauren McCarthy recalled to 48 Hours that Kesse had chosen Mosaic at Millenia condos because it was a gated community with a guard, making her feel safe.

“She was extremely safety conscious. She was very aware of her surroundings. She carried pepper spray with her all the time,” McCarthy explained. “She was the type of person who would call her mom or her dad or me when she was simply walking from Target in the parking lot and it was dark.”

What happened on the day that Jennifer Kesse went missing?

Before Kesse’s disappearance, she had taken a vacation to Saint Croix with her boyfriend Rob. The couple arrived back in Florida on Jan. 22, 2006, and Kesse returned to her condo while Rob traveled back to his home in Fort Lauderdale, about three hours outside of Orlando.

“Jen shared every detail about the trip. She was just really happy, she was on a cloud,” Joyce told 48 Hours of a phone call she had with her daughter shortly after her return.

The following day, Kesse resumed her work duties. After leaving her office, she spoke on the phone with her parents. She then chatted with Rob, and when they hung up at 10 p.m., it was the last time he ever heard from her.

On the morning of Jan. 24, Rob didn’t receive his usual morning text or call from Kesse. On The Nancy Grace Show, Rob recalled thinking it was strange, so he decided to ring her up on his way to work but it went straight to voicemail.

“I knew she had a lot on her plate and I knew she had a busy schedule. So I left a message with her and then went ahead with my day,” he explained in 2006. “I called her again, and once again I got her voicemail, which I thought was odd.”

By that point, Kesse’s employer had realized she hadn’t shown up to work without notice, which was unlike her. A coworker contacted her parents and when Drew and Joyce couldn’t get a hold of her, they began the drive to Kesse’s condo, where they didn’t find anything suspicious.

“When we arrived, there was nothing amiss. You know, typical Jen … hurriedly leaving for work, make-up out on the counter, hair dryer, what she wore to bed the night before on the bathroom floor, bed not made, a couple of outfits strewn on her bed,” Joyce said on The Nancy Grace Show.

The only things missing from her apartment were her purse, keys, cell phone and iPod. With her car also gone, her family was led to believe that she had gotten ready for work and left for the day when something went wrong.

“She slept [in her condo] for sure and I think she got up for work as she normally would. ‘Okay, I’m going to work. I have a meeting, it’s busy.’ Locks the door of her condo, that’s where the mystery starts,” Joyce said on 48 Hours.

What happened during the investigation into Jennifer Kesse’s disappearance?

Kesse’s parents promptly contacted the police, began reaching out to local hospitals and spoke to as many people in their daughter’s condo complex as possible, per 48 Hours. Unable to find her, the Kesse family had to convince police that their daughter had not left of her own volition. On the night of Jan. 24, police officially began an investigation into Kesse’s disappearance.

Knowing time was of the essence, Drew and Joyce got in touch with local media outlets and handed out missing person fliers. Hundreds of people showed up to help with the search, covering the area surrounding Kesse’s home — but there was still no sign of her.

Kesse’s car, a 2004 Chevy Malibu, remained missing for several days. According to 48 Hours, a witness in Kesse’s condo complex believed they saw her car swerve out of the parking lot around 7:40 a.m. but didn’t know the direction it was headed.

On Jan. 26, her car was found abandoned in another apartment complex about a mile away from her home. According to security footage, it had been parked there since 12 p.m. on the day she went missing. No forensic evidence was found inside the car, which they believe was cleaned down.

While no one in the area knew about the car or its driver, it ended up providing one of the biggest leads in the case. The car’s abandonment was captured on a security camera and the person behind the wheel was recorded exiting the vehicle and walking away. Unfortunately, their face was obscured, making it difficult to see specific details about the individual.

“We’ve done quite a bit of measuring and work with the camera angles and also had people of different heights walk by,” Detective Joel Wright told 48 Hours.

He continued, “We’ve come up with a height of between 5’3 and 5’5 and this has been backed up by the FBI who also came down and checked out the figures. Now, the clothing looks to be maybe someone who is a painter or some type of worker.”

Investigators also looked into security footage at Kesse’s condo but no cameras had been installed on the property yet. A security guard who was hired to keep a log of visitors handed over incomplete records. According to the Kesse family’s GoFundMe, they discovered “a complete set of keys for the complex” had been stolen a month before she went missing.

Then, when police attempted to find forensic evidence inside Kesse’s condo, they discovered the scene had been compromised after several family members and friends used it as a gathering place.

The investigation continued for years, with many tips and leads coming up inconclusive. One of those tips led to a search of the nearby Lake Fischer in 2019.

According to ABC, investigators received information that around the time of Kesse’s disappearance in 2006, a witness saw a pickup truck dump a 6- to 8-foot piece of rolled-up carpet into the lake before driving away.

Dive teams searched the body of water for two days but came back with no results. A sonar company looked closely at the area again in 2024 but didn’t find the carpet.

Evidence has also suggested that markings on Kesse’s car could indicate that there was a violent struggle before she was taken somewhere, per Fox News. In photos taken of the vehicle shortly after it was found, handprints across the hood show there may have been an altercation.

“It looked like someone was thrown down on the top of the hood — arms spread out and then dragged back almost like off the hood to the point where you can almost see fingers scribbling down the hood,” Drew told the outlet.

The photos have not led to any further leads.

Why was NASA involved in the investigation?

NASA played an unexpected role in Kesse’s case early on in the investigation. When police retrieved the video footage from the apartment complex where Kesse’s car was abandoned, the quality was extremely grainy and they looked to the government agency for help.

According to Greta Investigates: The Mysterious Disappearance of Jennifer Kesse, NASA was contacted to use their advanced technology to get a better look at the person of interest in the video.

While NASA was helpful, the image was still not clear enough to identify the person with certainty.

What are the theories about Jennifer Kesse’s disappearance?

One of the most prominent theories surrounding Kesse’s disappearance is the alleged involvement of a construction worker or maintenance employee from Kesse’s condo complex.

At the time Kesse went missing, there were renovations going on and workers had moved into vacant condos around the property. Kesse had even admitted to her parents that she felt “uncomfortable” when she crossed paths with some of them.

“She just said, ‘You know, there’s a lot of workers here and they tend to just stop when I’m walking by or go into my car and they just look,’ ” Drew recalled on 48 Hours.

In an interview with Fox News, he noted, “Whenever workers entered her apartment for painting and repairs, Jen was always on the phone with us. She’d stay on the phone in the doorway of her condo until they had left.”

Kesse wasn’t alone in her feelings: Several other women who lived on the property around the same time told 48 Hours that they were the subject of inappropriate comments from the workers and had unsettling encounters.

In the days after Kesse went missing, her brother Logan Keese attempted to speak with some of the laborers on the property. Reflecting on 48 Hours, he said they were uncooperative and he sensed that someone knew something. Many of the construction workers disappeared before police could talk with them and those who did speak with authorities faced a communication barrier, per the family’s GoFundMe.

The Kesse family’s private investigator, Michael Torretta, maintains that a worker was involved. After years of being on the case, he claims that up to 10 construction workers were living in the condo across the hall from Kesse — and it was one of those men who abducted her.

“What I’m thinking is, Jennifer comes out, she locks the door. Of course, she has her back to the apartment behind her and then is abducted by those individuals across the hallway,” he said on 48 Hours.

Torretta continued, “She’s locking the door and never sees it coming. She probably was attacked immediately upon exiting. She’s dragged into that other apartment and that’s the end.”

While that is Torretta’s theory, Kesse’s father noted on their GoFundMe that the unit was searched with scent dogs who produced “negative results.”

Who is now in charge of Jennifer Kesse’s disappearance case?

In 2010, Detective Wright was taken off of Kesse’s case, per 48 Hours. After years of little progress, the Kesse family asked to make the investigation a cold case, which would make more resources available to them. The police department declined, explaining that it was still an “extremely active” case.

In 2016, Kesse was officially declared dead by the state of Florida. In the years that followed, her parents decided to sue the Orlando Police Department in order to get access to her case files. Police chief Orlando Rolón gave his department six months to work on the case and when they were unable to come up with new leads, he agreed to hand the files over to the Kesse family.

The Orlando Police Department eventually handed over 16,000 pages of documents and 67 hours of video and audio, which cost the family over $18,000, per their GoFundMe. The files came with the stipulation that the police department would no longer lead the investigation. Upon receiving the files, the Kesse family learned that there had been no recorded documentation of investigation efforts between late 2012 and 2019.

From there on out, the investigation was in the hands of the Kesse family and their private investigator — who spent months pouring over the documents.

“There’s never been one quarterback on this case,” Torretta told 48 Hours. “There’s a lot of information that could have been developed that I believe wasn’t in the most critical hours of this investigation.”

In 2022, the family also enlisted the help of the Florida Department of Law Enforcement. In collaboration with their private investigative team, the FDLE planned to retest physical evidence as well as speak with new and old potential witnesses.

While the family agreed to “step back about a half a foot,” they later admitted on their GoFundMe that it was difficult to now be “pretty much in the dark” about the investigation.

What does Jennifer Kesse’s family believe happened to her?

Kesse’s family has various theories about what happened to her. In 2018, Kesse’s father Drew shared that he believed that his daughter may have been the victim of human trafficking. He explained that he felt it was possible that someone specifically targeted Kesse and then abducted her.

“Maybe they had to pay off a debt, maybe it’s what they do, maybe they had to get into a gang but I believe Jennifer was pointed out as, ‘That’s the one you want,’ ” he told Fox 35.

Despite the FDLE being in control of the case, the family has continued their efforts to find new tips and leads. Their search has proven to be expensive. As of 2019, the family had spent over $500,000 of their personal money to find their daughter.

“How can a missing person’s case with such awareness not produce even a direction 19 years later is inconceivable, yet very true and we, Jennifer’s family and friends, live with that very real fact day in and day out,” the family wrote on the 19th anniversary of her disappearance in January 2025.

They continued, “NO, time does not heal all wounds. But we still stay strong and fight the fight that needs to be fought for Jennifer’s sake. … We are continuously humbled by the people who still reach out on a very regular basis with leads. Maybe someday one will produce results.”

Kesse’s family keeps raising funds for their search efforts through a GoFundMe account.