Inset: Patricia Jimerfield (YouTube/KPTV/Stephanie Ayersman). Background: The house where Jimerfield lived and was murdered (Google Maps).
A woman waited at an airport for her mother to pick her up in Oregon earlier this week — but futilely and in vain. Unbeknownst to the patient traveler, her mother had been murdered while she was in the air.
Patricia Jimerfield, 78, was found dead at her home late Tuesday night. Earlier that same day, she was alerted to possibly fraudulent charges by her bank and discovered that her wallet was missing. She subsequently filed a fraud report with the local sheriff’s office.
Originally termed a “suspicious death” by law enforcement, on Friday, the Clark County Medical Examiner’s Office said the septuagenarian had been the victim of a homicide and that she was strangled to death with some kind of a ligature — the medical name for a wire or cord.
“I don’t know, it feels personal,” her daughter recently told Portland-based CBS affiliate KOIN. “It feels personal.”
At 9:41 p.m. on the day in question, Clark County Sheriff’s Office deputies received a medical call from the victim’s sister.
At a house on the corner of Northwest 26th Avenue and 99th Street, in the unincorporated area of Hazel Dell, north of Vancouver, Washington, deputies and firefighters found Jimerfield deceased.
“We were supposed to grow old together, and I was supposed to take care of her,” the grieving daughter continued.
The slain woman’s daughter called her aunt after her mother did not respond to messages about being picked up at the nearby airport across the border — Portland is some 10 miles due south of Vancouver.
“I landed here at 7:30. Started texting her and calling her, and she never answered,” the daughter told the TV station. “I called my aunt, who lives in town, to come up to the house because something was wrong, and she found her.”
The woman’s death appears to have occurred in the time it took her daughter to leave Phoenix and arrive in the Pacific Northwest.
“I told Mom I was taking off, and she hearted it, so I knew she saw it,” her daughter told Portland-based ABC affiliate KATU. “She never responded. I texted, texted, texted; I called her home; I called her cell number — no answer — waiting about an hour.”
There were no signs of forced entry on the day the victim was found, law enforcement told KOIN and KATU.
Jimerfield’s daughter, however, says her mother’s home was broken into the day before.
“She was nervous,” the daughter told KOIN. “She didn’t know how they got in. She told our friend that she was not scared. I think deep down, she probably was.”
The investigation is ongoing.
The peculiarities of the case have family members reeling.
“You watch a TV show about it, see a movie, but it’s just not, it’s not something that’s real,” Jimerfield’s grandson told KATU.
Jimerfield was a great-grandmother and a retired nurse.
She lived in the same house since 1984, her daughter told Portland-based Fox affiliate KPTV.
“They took away my heart, my rock, my soul, and I don’t know how to go on,” the victim’s daughter said. “If anyone sees anything, saw anything, knows anything please call the police, I really want whoever did this to get caught.”
Law&Crime reached out to the Vancouver Police Department and Clark County Sheriff’s Office for additional details on this story, but no responses were immediately forthcoming at the time of publication.
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