This Is How Serial Killer James Wood Was Finally Caught

May 2024 ยท 1 minute read

In 2016, 23 years after Jeralee's violent death, her parents talked to reporter Nate Eaton with East Idaho News. Jeff and Joyce called their daughter "the perfect child" and told Eaton she was "kind, loving, smart and a friend to everyone she met." "She was a lot of fun," Jeff remembered. "She was always fairly outgoing, and she always liked to include everybody on things." 

But they also told Eaton about a sharp-eyed neighbor, who may be part of the reason police were able to arrest Wood, get a confession out of him, and find almost all of the young girl's body parts in the Snake River in Idaho Falls a week after the crime (via the East Idaho Times). Indeed, it was this tip a week after Jeralee's disappearance that finally broke the case and led to the arrest of serial killer James Edward Wood (via Deseret News). Wood confessed to raping and shooting Jeralee Underwood before dismembering her body.

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