Janet Lynn Shanahan was born on August 19, 1946 to Stanley Paul and Jean Lois (nee Wyse) Karin in Spokane, WA. Janet’s father Stanley was born on September 30, 1916 and her mother Jean was born on November 2, 1924 in Illinois. The couple had two daughters together (Janet and her younger sister Jane) but eventually divorced, and it looks like Stanley was involved in some lower-level criminal activity and even served some jail time. Jean got remarried to a man named Jared Thomas, and it looks like he adopted Janet and Jane; the couple had two sons together, Jared and Timothy. Blonde haired, blue eyed Janet was an honor student, and attended Willamette High School in Eugene, Oregon. She was very active during her time there and was involved in multiple after school groups and activities, including drama club, the art guild, and the newspaper. During her senior year she was crowned prom queen and was voted ‘Girl of the Year, and according to those that knew her, Shanahan was incredibly outgoing, well-liked, and she had a lot of friends. After graduating high school in 1964 she got a part time job at a credit card company and attended the University of Oregon with the goal of one day becoming a junior high school teacher; according to her mother: ‘she was a leader, queen of this and that, and in the National Honor Society. She was very likable, very easy to get along with, and an excellent student.’

Janet married fellow OU student Christopher John Shanahan on May 24, 1968. He was born on February 19, 1946 in Washington DC and after his family relocated to Oregon he graduated from South Eugene High School in 1963. On the Shanahans marriage certificate Chris’ occupation is listed as student, and in April 1969 the couple had been married for about eleven months. In between classes and her PT job Janet was also student teaching at Cal Young Junior High School, and at the time of her murder she was in the spring semester of her sophomore year (Chris was in his junior). According to an article published in The Eugene Register Guard on January 5, 1997, Janet’s mother said that she didn’t know her new SIL very well, as they haven’t been married very long, but did say he was ‘kind of a loner’  but that as far as she could tell he seemed to be treating Janet right.’

On the evening of Monday, April 21, 1969 Janet attended a night class then briefly stopped home before leaving around 9:30 PM to attend her younger brother’s fifteenth birthday party at her parents house, about two miles away on Rutledge Street. Christopher Shanahan was reportedly sick at the time and stayed at home in bed. An article published in 1997 says that after the party at around 11:00 Janet went out for around 30-minutes with Jane (who had just recently moved home to their parents house in Eugene) to get some food at the nearby Lynwood Cafe. After the girls ate they went to a local convenience store and picked up a car magazine for her husband, then Janet dropped her sister off at their parents house when they were done. The night she was last seen alive she was wearing a rust and cold colored brocade suit.

The timeline of when Janet was reported missing is a bit unclear: an article published in April 1969 states that she was reported missing later that same evening, but according to The Statesman Journal in 1997, Chris Shanahan woke at 8 AM the following morning, ‘and discovered his wife hadn’t returned home. After she failed to report for work at 1 PM at a credit company, Shanahan reported her as missing.’ 

I’ve seen some sources list the day Janet was discovered as April 22 and others that say it was April 23, but if she wasn’t reported as missing until one o’clock in the afternoon after she dropped Jane off at her parents house then it’s safe to say she was recovered two days after she was last seen, roughly thirty-four hours later. On the morning of April 23, 1969, Christopher contacted his SIL asking her to accompany him in an attempt to retrace Janet’s steps from the evening she disappeared in hopes of finding her 1951 Plymouth coupe. At roughly 9:40 AM after only ten minutes of looking they noticed the sedan in a ditch in an industrial area near a lumber mill, less than two miles away from her parents house on Cross Street, at the intersection of Roosevelt Boulevard and Maple Street. Employees from the nearby lumber mill report the vehicle being there since somewhere between 1 AM and 6 AM the previous morning. The keys were missing, but Chris was still able to get the trunk open, and that’s when they found Janet’s body; she had been strangled to death.

After finding Janet’s body Chris called police using a nearby pay phone, then dropped Jane off at home, and immediately went to his attorney’s office. A passing motorist saw Chris and Janes reactions and thought there was a car accident and contacted police as well. Where he did initially cooperate with police, after the discovery Shanahan told investigating detectives that he’d been on a ‘desperate search’ for his wife, but in reality he did everyday, mundane tasks like reading for class and getting new tires on his car. The night before she was found, he had been seen out, drinking beer and shooting pool. After April 25, 1969 he never contacted police for news again on his wife’s death, and didn’t stick around for long after either, and shortly after moved across the country to Connecticut, where he still resides as of January 2025. 

An employee at nearby Eugene Stud & Veneer, Inc named Earl Albert said he saw the couple walking towards the car, and after the young man ‘glanced’ in the front part of the vehicle he then opened the trunk and repeatedly screamed, ‘oh no, oh no, no’ over and over again. Police reported that the inside of her sedan was ‘neat and orderly,’ and there were no signs of a struggle. Janet’s body was fully clothed except for her shoes, which were found lying next to her, and despite there being no outward signs of sexual assault it was later determined that she was indeed violated. Upon searching the scene for clues investigators didn’t find much useful information, and Sergeant DW Carley said that to kill Shanahan her assailant most likely ‘used something flexible, such as a length of garden hose.’

Over the years detectives have interviewed hundreds of Shanahan’s friends, family members, school mates, and acquaintances, with little to no luck. Because genetic evidence was not properly stored in the 1960’s, there is no DNA sample related to Janets murder, therefore detectives are largely relying on tips from the general public to solve her case. According to cold case detective Drew Tracey, ‘we have already done a pretty thorough investigation, and we have our thoughts, but thoughts do not convict people.’

In a January 1997 article published in The Statesman Journal, Eugene Police Detective Les Rainey said investigators were looking for an unidentified man and woman that may have been with Shanahan at a cafe on the evening she disappeared sometime after she left with her sister, which alludes to Janet possibly returning after she dropped her sister off. Rainey also said that he hopes to get in contact with two friends of the Shanahans, Robbie and Marcia Robertson as well as an acquaintance of Chris’ named Freida Jessey (this is her maiden name, which is all that was released). Detective Rainey made it clear that the three individuals were not suspects and could possibly help shed some new light on what Chris’s frame of mind was like after his wife was killed.

In 1996 while on the east coast for a separate investigation a detective working the investigation tracked Chris Shanahan down in New Milford, Connecticut and tried to talk to him about his wife’s murder, and this time his demeanor had completely changed: he became angry, and combative, and refused to answer any questions, directing the detective to his attorney. About Shanahan, Rainey said ‘we have some concerns and some suspicions, but if there’s information that would clear him, we’re interested in that too.’ In a 1997 (attempted) interview with The Register-Guard, Chris Shanahan said ‘no comment, that’s my comment. Please don’t contact me again. If you do, I’ll be real upset.’ Jean Thomas said of her son in law, ‘I don’t think he could ever do that, and I told the detective that.’  According to Les Rainey, ‘my instincts, based on my experience and training, indicate it was done by someone who was close to her.’

A week after Janet’s murder a waitress that was working at a cafe along Highway 99 in Eugene came forward to LE and told them that the young newlywed had come into the restaurant sometime after 11:30 PM the night that she was killed. She was with two other women and were eventually joined by a young man, and it was never made clear if the other woman she was with was her sister. The waitress was shown a picture of Christopher Shanahan, but was unsure if it was him. A second woman came forward and told LE that she saw a woman that strongly resembled Janet Shanahan on the evening she was last seen alive. Both reports were investigated, but nothing ever came of it.

In the beginning of the investigation authorities tried to link Janet’s murder to the strangulation deaths of two other Eugene women: twenty-two year old Linda Salee on April 23, 1969 and eighteen year old Karen Sprinker on March 27, 1969, who were eventually determined to be the victims of serial killer Jerry Brudos.

Despite there being no serious suspects in relation to Janet’s murder two serial killers that were known to be active in the Oregon area around the time were investigated: Ted Bundy and Jerry Brudos. In April 1969 when the homicide took place it looks like Bundy was attending Temple University in Philadelphia, and was living with his Aunt Julia in Lafayette Hill, Pennsylvania, so that pretty much rules him out as a suspect. Jerry Brudos operated mostly out of Salem, Oregon and is responsible for four deaths that took place between January 1968 and June 3, 1969, about a month and a half after Shanahan was killed. Also known as ‘The Lust Killer’ and the ‘Shoe Fetish Slayer,’ Brudos is also known to have attempted to abduct two other young women.

There are only a few commonalities that might make one think Brudo’s could be responsible for Shanahan’s death, and they’re weak and largely circumstantial: he was active at the time and he had a shoe fetish, and she was found without her footwear on… but that’s really where it ends. The serial killer was known to dismember his victims and was known to have saved certain body parts (usually their breasts or feet ), so the fact that Janet was found in one piece leads me to believe he isn’t the one responsible for her death. Also, YouTuber ‘Steve the Amateur Historian’ pointed out that he mainly operated in the Salem area, and not Eugene. Another reason I think Brudos wasn’t responsible for Shanahan’s death is the fact that all of his murders took place either in his vehicle or in his basement/garage workshop of one of the two homes that he lived in at the time, where he wouldn’t have had enough time to kidnap Janet, drive to his residence, kill her, bask in it, then drive back to Eugene to dispose of her remains in only thirty-fours hours time. 

On June 27, 1969, Brudos entered a plea of guilty to three counts of first-degree murder and was sentenced to three consecutive terms of life imprisonment with the possibility of parole served at Oregon State Penitentiary. He (unsuccessfully) appealed his conviction on multiple occasions, and died of liver cancer in 2006.

 In June 2022 some family and friends of Janet that wished to remain anonymous approached investigators offering  a $45,000 reward for the identification, arrest and conviction of her killer. They feel that because of how many years had passed, time is fleeting and this may be the last realistic effort to solve the case. According to Eugene Cold Case Detective Rick Gilliam, ‘the importance is, the fact this is 53 years old, and individuals out there are getting older, and the suspect may not have many more years to live. And the friends and family members would just like to resolve this case once and for all, so that’s why that reward’s out there.’

Janet’s biological father Stanley Karen died shortly after her murder at the age of 52 on June 10, 1969. Her mother Jean died on December 4, 1979 in Cook, IL, and her stepfather Jared Thomas died on May 5, 2009. Christopher Shanahan is now 78 and currently lives in New Milford, Connecticut. He never remarried and was never cleared in his wife’s murder.

Works Cited:
Bull, Brian. ‘$45,000 reward offered in Eugene murder case from 1969.’ Taken January 24, 2025 from klcc.org
Cascadia Crime & Cryptids: Episode 50: The Unsolved Murder of Janet Lynn Shanahan. Taken January 26, 2025 from cascadiacrimepod.libsyn.com/episode-50-the-unsolved-murder-of-janet-lynn-shanahan
‘Reward offered in 1969 Murder of Janet Shanahan.’ June 9, 2022. Taken January 23, 2025 from eugene.or.govo