ARTICLE #110) Mother won’t stop looking for her daughter

Wednesday, February 27, 2008
Mother won’t stop looking for her daughter
Bridge River Lillooet News by Sydney Easton

Last week we ran a story about the disappearance of Jessie Foster and her mother’s efforts to find her. This is a continuation of that story.

Glendene Grant’s daughter Jessie, who disappeared two years ago, originally travelled to Los Vegas to visit a friend.

She met a man she later became engaged to named Peter Todd, who is the last person known to have seen Foster before she disappeared.

Todd, who is a British citizen but lives in the Los Vegas area, claims to know nothing about Jessie’s disappearance. He is known to the police as an individual with no legal means of support but nevertheless owns real estate worth upwards of a million dollars, has several cars and dresses in expensive clothing and valuable jewelry. He and Jessie lived together for 10 months yet he failed to report her disappearance to police.

Grant believes that Jessie was caught in a sex-trafficking ring. She disappeared just four months after moving to Las Vegas.

She found out later that Jessie had been working as a prostitute for an escort service and that she had been arrested five times on related charges.

She says that law enforcement officers don’t put forth the effort for missing sex trade workers that they do for everyone else.

Todd told Grant that Jessie’s disappearance has ruined his life, but Grant isn’t impressed. The well-to-do Todd hasn’t put forth any effort toward helping her locate her daughter and has a local reputation for being a pimp, according to Grant. Jessie was living with him and his twin brother before she disappeared.

The brother, who is a teacher in middle school for young kids, moved out two weeks after Jessie disappeared but claims he has no information.

Foster was returning to Canada for a visit, and had informed her mother on March 28/06 that she was packed and ready to go.

She had paid for one month’s car insurance so she could take her car, stored in Kamloops, to drive with her sister to Calgary. However, she never made it home. She disappeared leaving behind her hair blower and makeup, two items her mother feels Jessie would never forget.

Grant says she learned that Todd showed up at his ex-wife’s house one night from the desert. He was dirty, carried a gun and had $30,000 cash on his person.

He sold his Mercedes shortly afterward in California, and the car was never checked for blood traces. Todd has a police record for spousal abuse ad his ex-wife has been arrested in the past on prostitution charges.

Jessie has also been hospitalized because of a beating before her disappearance.

Todd has recently contacted Grant to inquire if the DNA results were in yet. Another girl associated with him was also arrested five times on prostitution charges and disappeared.

Her burnt remains were found, but no one has been arrested on charges connected to her death.

The remains of the Jane Doe, found in Kilgore, Texas on Oct 29, 2006 couldn’t be identified because the body was severely burned. But forensic experts reconstructed her face and aired the likeness on the crime-solving TV show America’s Most Wanted.

Todd Matthews, director of US based Project EDAN, which provides facial reconstructions of unidentified victims for police, said there’s a strong likeness between Foster and the reconstructed image.

“I do feel she looks like Jessie,” he said. “There are similarities in the bone structure and how the cheekbones line up.” His opinion is supported by a Florida-based certified forensic artist who volunteers for EDAN.

However, Grant feels strongly her daughter is alive somewhere, and until she gets a definitive answer, her search will continue, exploring every possibility.

Her website is http://www.jessiefoster.ca and has a complete list of all the newspapers and television shows which have featured her story.

Anyone who may have information can contact her through the site which she monitors daily. She’ll never give up her search.

There’s not a moment that goes by that I don’t think of her,” she says.