Montana : Jeannette “Charlie” Atwater
Photo: findagrave.com
Billings is the largest city in Montana. It lies along the Yellowstone River and is at the base of the Rimrocks, which is a sandstone cliff formation. About 91,000 people lived in this city in the year 2000, which is when today’s case occurred. Now, it has grown to over 110,000. Billings is surrounded by natural beauty, including the nearby Beartooth Mountains and Yellowstone National Park. Outdoor enthusiasts can enjoy hiking, fishing, camping, and skiing in the nearby mountains. I have a cousin that I grew up with in California who now lives in Billings, and she seems to love it. The safety is anything but ideal, rated at a 2 out of 100 on Neighborhood Scout, which makes this city one of the most dangerous in the United States. Violent and property crimes are double the average of the rest of Montana, which I think is understandable because it's Montana, and I feel like there would be zero crime anywhere that isn't a large city. However, Montana is pretty close to the national average, so I would be wrong when it comes to the crime rate in this state. That is why we are Navigating Advocacy in Billings, Montana, this week.
Jeanette Renne Atwood, known to everyone as Charlie, was a vibrant 34-year-old mother of three when she was found dead in the truck of her 1987 Oldsmobile Cutlass Sierra in the early morning hours of January 16th, 2000. But first, let's talk about who Charlie was before this tragic night. Charlie was born to parents James and Donna on January 14th, 1966, in Miles City, Montana. The couple divorced when Charlie was very young, and she didn't have a relationship with her father for most of her childhood but would reconnect as a teen. Charlie got this well-known nickname even before she was born. You see, her Uncle would call her that while her mother was still pregnant, and honestly, it just stuck. Charlie attended Dawson County High School and then attended Montana State University, where she was awarded a scholarship for volleyball. However, an injury to her knee would prevent her from playing very long. She decided to move to Washington state, where her father lived and essentially started fresh. In 1987, she joined the Air Force and made it through basic training; however military wasn't her thing, so she would not stay long there either. She was just trying to find her place in this world, and in 1990, she married a man by the name of Robert Aiken and went on to have three children with him. However, after a while, the two divorced, and the two youngest children moved with Charlie back to Montana while the oldest stayed with their father. Charlie was a fun-loving, vibrant woman who loved her family fiercely, so when one of her uncles needed a kidney and she was a match, she did not hesitate to sign up to help. Because of this, her two younger children needed to move back in with their father so Charlie would have time to recover. Finally, after her recovery from the kidney donation surgery, she was getting back in the groove of things and started working at a local Napa auto part store. She was known to be a waitress at bars and restaurants, so this was a bit different, but she still made many friends and enjoyed it.
On January 15th, 2000, Charlie and her co-workers met for a work party at Eagles Nest Bar.
Photo: Billings Gazette
Then, a few of the attendees left this establishment and headed to the Players Club, another local bar. While there, they hung out and danced until around closing, but this is where things take a turn. At 2 am on the 16th, no one could find Charlie inside the bar, so they all started to leave and her vehicle was gone, so they all assumed she must have gone home. It wouldn't be until 3 a.m. that a passerby noticed a vehicle on fire across the street from the players' club.
Photo: Google Maps
This was a gravel parking lot area where people would park their cars to use the Metro Park Trail Bike Path. I will have images of this parking area as well as its location near the bar on our website, navigatingadvocacy.com. This couple calls 911 and reports the fire. Two officers show up, as does the fire department. They come and extinguish the fire, and they can see the truck still smoking, so to verify they have completely put it out, they pop the trunk and see the unimaginable. The unrecognizable remains of a person. At this point, they couldn't tell if it was a male or a female, age, race, literally nothing. However, they were able to run the plates and find out that the car.
The car was registered to Jeanette Charlie Atwood, so police would try to make contact with her without any luck. It would take a few days, but based on dental records that came all the way from Washington, they were able to positively identify the remains found in the truck as Charlie’s. This woman who has no enemies did not live a risky lifestyle, was a mom to three, and a person who would donate a kidney to someone in need, was murdered in such a brutal way. Police wouldn't release much information for quite a while, but they did start investigating, and they found out a man would purchase about a dollar's worth of gas and put it in a gas can from a gas nearby gas station, and while he was there he grabbed a pack of matches. This was just 30 minutes before the call came in about Charlie's car being on fire.
Photo: MontanaRightNow.com
There is surveillance of this man, but it is so grainy that it's hard to see what he actually looks like. The clerk at the gas station would describe him as a white male, about 5 foot 9 inches and about 170 pounds, with bad acne scars on his face.
Photo: Doe Network
He was driving a mid-80s hatchback car light brown with an orange stripe. Which I feel is a decently unique car, even for the year 2000. This was basically all the information the police released right at first. Of course, they said this person could be a witness, not that he was a suspect. However, he was never located. There will also be an image of the surveillance footage and a sketch of his vehicle on our website.
The fact that Charlie had no enemies, her ex-husband was all the way in Washington, and she was well-liked, police had a hard time finding any type of motive or lead. What they did have was one set of tire tracks coming into the gravel parking lot where the car was found and a single set of footprints leaving the area. Honestly, not much to go on at all, and since the surveillance footage didnt gain much traction, the case became cold very quickly. By January of the next year, police decided to release more details of Charlie’s death, and it turns out she was alive when she was put in the trunk and died of smoke inhalation. Obviously, this is one of the absolute worst ways to die, and my heart just sinks for her and her family. They still have never released if she was sexually assaulted or not or if they are even able to tell if she was considering how badly the remains were when they found them. They did say that there were zero other injuries to her body, including gunshot wounds or blunt-force trauma. They still could not come up with a motive, which has led to the thinking that this was a random attack and most likely from someone passing through town for one reason or another. A semi-professional basketball game and a Monster Truck show were held in Billings that night, so could this person have gone to watch one of these events? The fact that no one heard a commotion in the parking lot and no one saw Charlie leave that night. They couldn't even see her leave on the bar surveillance footage, which I find very strange. Another possible piece of evidence that authorities did have was a book of matches, like the ones that would be sold at that gas station, which were found by Charlie’s burned vehicle that night. It seems like there is a decent amount of evidence, but it has been 24 years since that night, and still no arrest and only a video of a grainy suspect that may or may not be linked to her murder.
Charlie’s friends hosted multiple fundraisers for a memorial and to help her children. America’s Most Wanted featured Charlie’s case on its 2000th episode, this generated some leads but not enough to get an arrest. The Player’s Club, the bar she went missing from was demolished in 2002, and now a Country Inn and Suites hotel stands in its place. Anyone with information is encouraged to reach out to the Yellowstone County Cold Case Unit at (406) 869-3530.
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