The Abduction and Murder of Jennifer Day

Gone Cold - Texas True Crime

Vincent Strange

True Crime, Society & Culture, News

4.6 • 1.8K Ratings

🗓️ 10 November 2025

⏱️ 30 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In the early hours of June 23, 1985, fourteen-year-old Jennifer Leigh Day opened Preston Road Donuts in North Dallas for her usual Sunday shift. She brewed the coffee, stocked the shelves, and rang up her last customer at 6:20 a.m. Fifteen minutes later, the shop was silent. Jennifer’s purse and jewelry sat untouched on the counter, her apron on the floor, and the cash drawer still full.

Three days later, construction workers discovered her body in a field off Preston Road and State Highway 121 in Plano—eleven miles north. Jennifer had been bludgeoned and stabbed through the throat.

Her murder shook a city that believed it was safe. Detectives followed every lead, chased sightings of a white 1970s sedan, and combed the area for evidence, but the case went cold within weeks.

Jennifer’s mother, Patsy Day, turned heartbreak into advocacy, helping other families navigate life after violent loss. Decades later, the case remains unsolved, but her daughter’s story endures as one of North Texas’ most haunting reminders of how quickly ordinary moments can change forever.

If you have any information about the abduction and murder of Jennifer Leigh Day, please contact the Plano Police Department’s Crimes Against Persons Unit at (972) 941-2148, or go to this Plano Police website where you can submit a tip anonymously: https://www.planocoldcases.com/case/1985-7/jennifer-leigh-day

Sources: The Plano Star-Courier, The Dallas Morning News, The Fort Worth Star-Telegram, KXAS-TV archives accessed on texashistory.unt.edu

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Gone Cold Podcasts may contain violent or graphic subject matter. Listener discretion is advised.
0:08.5	Even North Dallas can be quiet in the early hours. In the suburbs, sometimes the only sounds you'll hear are sprinklers, air conditioners, and the low hum of traffic from the highways and main roads.
0:23.6	On one Sunday morning in June of 1985, someone still unknown took advantage of the relative stillness,
0:32.0	moving both beneath it and brazenly out in the open. Before the first rays of heat touched Preston Road,
0:41.3	a teenage girl unlocked the door to a small donut shop
0:45.0	tucked inside a sleepy strip mall.
0:48.0	She'd done it many times before.
0:50.7	The smell of glaze soon filled the air,
0:53.5	the coffee hissed, and the hum of the refrigerator
0:56.5	and fluorescent lights drowned the silence. Sometime after 6.20, the shop went quiet again.
1:04.6	A customer walked in minutes later to find the girl's purse on the counter, the register
1:09.6	untouched, and no one behind it.
1:13.2	By the time the sun burned off the morning haze, a child was missing, and three days later,
1:20.2	a city's sense of safety would vanish with her.
2:05.1	Thank you. her. In 1985, Dallas was shining. The skyline glimmered. New glass towers caught the sun. Cranes hung over downtown construction. Oil money still flowed. Banks were bold, and the city's boosters swore Dallas had become the business capital of the southwest.
2:12.1	Even the nation saw the city through a kind of glossy filter. The TV show Dallas was still one of the most watched programs in America,
2:21.9	a primetime soap opera about power, greed, and family betrayal that made South Fork Ranch a household name.
2:30.7	That year, viewers gasped as Bobby Ewing was killed off, only to learn a season later it had all been a dream.
2:39.2	For the rest of the country, the twist was pure melodrama.
2:43.5	But in Dallas, Texas, it felt fitting.
2:47.2	The real city was living its own dream, one that looked too good to last.
2:53.1	Away from the bright lights and skyline shots, cracks were showing.
	...

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