Jay, 20, was last seen on
February 27, 2010 His body was found in the Calumet River at 126th and Stony Island.
Initially, police ruled his death “undetermined”. Jay’s parents hired
experts to take another look at the case and they determined that skull
fractures suggested Jay was the victim of an assault. Based on
information from the outside experts, Jay’s cause of death was
officially changed to ”drowning due to multiple injuries due to
assault,” a homicide.
If you have information that could help investigators solve this
mystery, call a toll-free tip line at 866.514.4459, text information to
312.985.5642 or send an email to
centinv@chicagopolice.org.
Jay Polhill's death is a mystery spanning 20 miles, 18 months
How Jay Polhill's body turned up far from his downtown Columbia College dorm baffles police as much as how he died
August 22, 2011|By Annie Sweeney, Tribune reporter
A
year and a half ago, as the late-season snow and ice still clung to the
bank and stretches of the wintry gray Calumet River, a body bobbed to
the surface near 126th Street, startling a worker collecting a water
sample.
Identifying him as Jay Polhill, 20, a happy-go-lucky
photography major at Columbia College Chicago, proved to be a
deceivingly easy start to the investigation.
How Polhill, who drowned and sustained head injuries, wound up in a
remote, industrial area some 20 miles from his downtown university dorm
has eluded Chicago police detectives in spite of an unusually lengthy
and extensive investigation driven in part by a family who has refused
to let the case slip away.
"I would go through a lifetime of pain
if I just knew that (in) Jay's last moments he wasn't scared,"
Polhill's mother, Jane, said last week in an interview. "I would take
it. Jay was a loved kid. He was a loved kid. And I just want him to have
felt that love till his last breath."
Polhill was born and
raised in Lena, about 130 miles northwest of Chicago but a world away
from the artsy community of Columbia. Friends say he talked fondly of
his days in the small town, where he bagged groceries and was close to
his parents and older brother, Billy.
After graduating from the
local high school, where he wrestled and ran track, he came to Columbia
to study film and met other budding artists: dancers, fiction writers
and musicians who recognized him as a lighthearted kid with a quick,
sometimes surprising wit.
Polhill blossomed at Columbia, his
family said. Lena, a picturesque and quaint community where cornfields
nudge against cemeteries filled with family plots, just wasn't wide
enough for him.
"He was very witty, had a great sense of humor," his mother said. "He had an open mind. He accepted everybody."
By his sophomore year, Polhill had turned his attention to photography
and took pictures of everything, according to friends and family.
His framed photos hang on the wall of the Polhill home. In one shot a
friend took of him, Polhill stands at the edge of a dune, his shirt off
and his arms stretched wide as if to greet the world.
In the last
image of Polhill on his dorm security camera two days before he was
found dead, he was captured walking out of the building on South State
Street that Sunday with a camera strapped around his neck and his laptop
in a bag. Neither has been found. His wallet is also missing.
Though they cannot even be certain where Polhill went into the water,
detectives believe it's possible that his love of photography had
brought him to the Calumet River to take pictures of its weather-beaten
bridges.
But detectives are plagued by a nagging question: How would Polhill, who didn't have a car, have gotten to the desolate spot?
He never told anyone about visiting the area. None of his friends who
have cars said they gave him a ride there. His CTA card was last used on
the Sunday at a subway station near his dorm, though he could have
taken a Metra train and Pace bus and walked a short distance to get
there.
"Where did he go?" said Polhill's friend Taylor Streiff,
21. "That's the thing that is bothering us. He got on the Red Line, but
what on earth happened after that?"
The manner in which he died is also still in dispute.
According to the autopsy performed at the Cook County medical
examiner's office, Polhill suffered serious head injuries before
drowning. He had two identical wounds on his legs that appear consistent
with being cut by a boat propeller after he died. In addition, Dr.
Mitra Kalelkar found no signs of drugs or alcohol use — or of a sexual
assault even though Polhill was clothed in only a T-shirt.
But Kalelkar did not rule on how Polhill died — homicide, suicide or accident — calling it undetermined.
Without a clear direction from Kalelkar, police had to consider all the possibilities.
Detectives have not found anyone who believed Polhill would hurt
himself. Those closest to Polhill say he had a deep appreciation for
life, having struggled through multiple childhood surgeries because of a
tumor in his sinus cavity.
Police have considered the
possibility that he fell from a bridge or lost his footing on the icy
embankment while shooting photos, striking his head and drowning.
In the weeks after Polhill's body was pulled from the river, the
Chicago marine unit searched the waters for clues and detectives checked
the department database of pawn shop records to see if someone had sold
his computer or cameras. They pored over his debit card records but
found no activity. His phone — after a last text he sent to his mother a
day before he was found — was no help. They asked the Illinois
International Port District for video footage from area bridges but
found none. They discovered that he had not activated the LoJack
tracking device on his computer — yet another dead end.
