Alaska State Troopers and the Sitka Police Department announced the closure of the Jessica Baggen cold case during a Tuesday briefing.
Steve Branch, age 66 of Austin, Arkansas, the suspect of the 1996 sexual assault and murder of Jessica Baggen, killed himself on August 3 of this year, after denying any knowledge of the crime and refusing to provide a DNA sample. Investigators, after securing a search warrant, collected Branch’s DNA during his autopsy.
On Monday, August 10, the State of Alaska Scientific Crime Detection Laboratory in Anchorage confirmed Branch’s DNA matched the suspect DNA found on Jessica and at the scene.
Investigator Randy McPherron of the Alaska State Troopers Cold Case Unit expressed satisfaction with the case coming to a close: “The genealogists were able to piece together a very complex family tree that eventually exposed Branch as Jessica’s killer. I’m very grateful to have played a very small role in this investigation and to bring closure to Jessica’s family and the community of Sitka.”
Jessica disappeared in the early morning hours of May 4, 1996. She just turned 17 the day before and was visiting with a friend and her sister at her sister’s residence, when she decided to walk home alone, which was about a mile away. Her parents woke the next morning to find that she never made it back. She was found dead just two days after being reported missing. Jessica was left discarded and hastily buried in a hollowed-out area beneath the trunk of a large fallen tree.
Jessica Baggen would have been 41 this year.