Jacqueline Davis was bound and her body left in a ravine near the Paseo

Children looking for crawdads in a creek near where the Paseo and Meyer Boulevard branch apart found something horrifying instead.

A woman’s body dumped in the ravine. It was June 6, 1983, a Monday afternoon.

The woman had gone missing over the weekend.

Her name was Jacqueline F. Davis, and she was 26 years old. She would be 60 today had she not been murdered by someone who apparently got away with it.

Sgt. Merrill Rice of the Kansas City police homicide squad gave the basic details to The Star at the time.

“Police said her hands had been bound behind her back with a leather jacket and a plastic trash bag had been placed over her head,” the paper reported the next afternoon.

Davis was from Little Rock, Ark., but had lived in Kansas City most her life. She came from a large family — three sisters and two brothers — and had three kids of her own.

Where she lived is a bit of a mystery. The police said her last address was 4312 Cypress Ave., but her obituary, which ran in the paper that Friday, listed her address as 4433 S. Benton Blvd.

She had no known involvement in criminal activity, police said. She was a member of the Beacon Light Seventh-day Adventist Church at 4841 Paseo Blvd.

We don’t know if or where she worked.

But we know she had a broad smile from the photograph in the police file.

Davis was last seen with a male companion late that Friday night or early Saturday morning at a Midtown establishment called the Pink Garter. The exotic dance club at 3821 Main St. had managed to stay open despite redevelopment efforts for that area. Today, the address is a parking lot across the street from the Unicorn Theatre.

Davis’s twin sister, Jockenna O’Neal, still lives in Kansas City, but she declined to be interviewed.

“I really don’t feel like opening old wounds,” she said.

Anyone with information that can help solve this case is asked to call the Kansas City police cold case squad at 816-234-5136.

This story was originally published July 16, 2017 at 7:00 AM with the headline "Jacqueline Davis was bound and her body left in a ravine near the Paseo."