Search Continues For Student's Missing Sister

The sister of a rising senior in Pforzheizmer House has been missing for nearly three weeks, prompting a large-scale search in the Southern California community where she was last seen.

Donna H. Jou, a 19-year-old student at San Diego State University, left her home around 5:30 p.m. on June 23 with an unidentified man who police now think is John Steven Burgess. The man, who according to Jou’s mother was a described by Jou as a friend’s boyfriend, was wearing a white, sleeveless shirt, blue jeans and a black motorcycle helmet when he and Jou left the family’s Rancho Santa Margarita home. Burgess, who was convicted on three counts of battery in 2002 and of performing a lewd act against a child in 2003, also owns a 1998 Ford Ranger pickup.

Jou told her family that they were going to a house party in Santa Monica, and she was last seen the night of June 23 at Burgess’ Los Angeles home, according to witnesses.

Daniel R. Jou ’08, Donna’s brother, said that he and his family were suspicious of the man, someone that none of them “had ever seen before,” when he came to pick Donna up.

“We didn’t know who these friends were, and I don’t think she’d met them before,” Daniel said. “She didn’t have many friends in Orange County, most of her friends were from San Diego, so we didn’t know how she’d met these particular individuals.”

The suspect also goes by the assumed name Sinjin Stevens, according to a report last week in The Orange County Register. According to various police reports, Burgess contacted Donna on the Web site craigslist.org, using fake photographs to convince her to attend the Santa Monica party on June 23.

“At this point, after two weeks missing, there’s the possibility that she’s the victim of foul play,” Orange County Sheriff’s Department Spokesman Jim Amormino told The Register late last week. “It’s believed he used false pictures over the Internet to disguise himself and cover his history as a sex offender.”

The Orange County Sheriff’s Department did not respond to repeated requests for comment from The Crimson.

“The police have gone to this person’s house, this person of interest, John Burgess, but he’s not there, he’s missing at this time,” Daniel said. “This is the last person that we know she had contact with on the day of, through phone records. They’ve also contacted this guy’s friends—he’s involved in all kinds of crime, so they’re just questioning anyone he’s had contact with.”

Daniel said that an initial hurdle in the search process was the fact that it didn’t begin as soon as Donna went missing.

“The police couldn’t do anything immediately because Donna’s an adult, so they have to wait a certain amount of time before they can get into investigating the whereabouts of the missing person,” he said. “There were a few days before the police could do anything. But now, the police have called all her friends.”

According to numerous reports, Donna sent her mother a text message on June 24 saying that she would be home later that day. The family began to grow even more fearful the next day, when Donna failed to show up at her part-time job or for her summer class at Santiago Canyon College in Orange County.

“By Monday we were getting kind of worried,” Daniel said. “We contacted the police, and she had a part time job and she was working on Mondays. She had work that Monday, and she also had classes, and when she didn’t show up for either of them we contacted police to report a missing person.”

Last Sunday, a passerby found a black plastic toolbox about one-and-a-half miles away from the home of Burgess, according to a story earlier this week in the Los Angeles Times.

“Inside the toolbox were the license plate to his truck, a black motorcycle helmet and some other items that may be linked to the case, Amormino told the newspaper, “but at this point in the investigation, we can’t disclose what they are.”

Various e-mails began circulating on House lists and the lists of student organizations at the beginning of this week, urging Harvard students to join groups on popular networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace in order to publicize Donna’s disappearance.

Daniel said that the best thing people can do to help the case is spread awareness—especially to people living in Southern California—and keep an eye out for either Donna or Burgess.

“She’s a college student, so if anyone knows anyone in California, just to get the word out with them,” Daniel said. “I know that college students aren’t usually in tune with local news, for example, and they don’t watch it on TV or read local newspapers. If there are residents of California themselves, residents of Southern California, just getting the word out, that would be the best thing in terms of helping jog someone’s memory or anything like that.”

Anyone with information on the whereabouts of Donna H. Jou or John Steven Burgess is asked to call the Orange County Sheriff’s Department at 714-647-7049.

—Staff writer Malcom A. Glenn can be reached at mglenn@fas.harvard.edu.