The case of the missing 12-year-old went unsolved for more than three decades until construction workers made a grisly discovery.
Jonelle Matthews, from Greeley, Colorado, went missing five days before Christmas in 1984.
She was one the first faces to be featured on a US milk carton, which later became a common practice to help spread awareness of missing children.
The case went unsolved for 38-years, however in the summer of 2019, construction workers uncovered Jonelle’s remains while they were installing a new pipeline just 15 miles from her home.
Now, in a new two-part Hayu series, The Girl on the Milk Carton, the ex wife of Jonelle’s murderer Angela Hicks bravely came forward to share how she broke free from 20 years of fear to report her husband Steve Pankey.
Jonelle Matthews, from Greeley, Colorado , went missing in 1984 and she was one the first faces to be featured on a US milk carton to help spread the word of her disappearance
Angela Hicks (pictured) who was married to the man who murdered 12-year-old Jonelle Matthews in 1984 says one thing he said made her ‘blood run cold’ and convinced her of his guilt
US President Ronald Reagan first launched the missing children’s milk carton campaign in the hope that it would help solve Jonelle’s case
The case began on December 20, 1984 – the last day Jonelle was seen alive.
On that night she attended a Christmas choir concert held by her friend and their parent, who dropped her off at her home after the show.
Her father returned home about an hour later, after Jonelle’s sister’s basketball game.
But his youngest daughter was nowhere to be found.
Jonelle was the adopted daughter of Jim and Gloria Matthews.
Reliving the evening his daughter went missing her father said: ‘I drove home after the basketball game, I walked into the house and said ”hello Jonelle” and I got no response.
‘I could see Jonelle had been home, the TV was on, she had taken her pantyhose off, I thought maybe she was upstairs but she didn’t hear me, I walked back upstairs and Jonelle was not there, that’s when I thought something is out of place.’
Jonelle’s shoes were on the floor and the space heater was on in her bedroom but she was not in the house.
Steve Pankey was convicted of first-degree felony murder and second-degree kidnapping in the 1984 murder of Jonelle Matthews
Now, in a new two-part Hayu series, The Girl on the Milk Carton, the ex wife of Jonelle’s murderer Angela Hicks bravely came forward to share how she broke free from 20 years of fear to report her husband Steve Pankey
Angela revealed she was afraid of her husband and revealed he threatened to shoot their children if she ever tried to leave him
The then 12-year-old’s mother later said the only thing missing from the house was a pair of slippers that belonged to Joelle.
Her sister Jennifer said: ‘I had never seen my dad worry about Jonelle like that before, it was like she just vanished.’
Years of investigations left no one facing justice until decades later when a woman accused he own husband of the crime.
Angela Hicks came forward after harbouring suspicions about her then-husband Steve, fearing he was involved in the case.
He was an avid true crime enthusiast and his peculiar behaviour raised eyebrows.
Speaking in the documentary Angela said: ‘It was been broadcast quite regularly about this missing 12-year-old girl and he kept asking me to find more stations that were reporting on it.
‘I felt he was acting strange, we arrived home and all of a sudden I smell smoke, I look around the back of the property and there is our car on fire, Steve is standing near the car leaning on a shovel, why would he do that.
‘On Sunday morning the pastor suddenly said ”I have a word from the lord, the lord says that Jonelle is going to be safely returned and reunited with her family”.
‘Steve was sitting to my left and all of a sudden he says ”false prophet” and he stands up and he says ”false prophet” again, he was being a bit too angry, I was embarrassed, something about that had really really irritated him.
‘Two ushers got up and walk him out of the church, I didn’t say anything, I was afraid to, it wasn’t safe.’
Angela revealed she was afraid of her husband and revealed he threatened to shoot their children if she ever tried to leave him.
Three years after Jonelle’s remains were found, Steve Pankey was sentenced to life in prison for her murder
The case went unsolved for 38-years, however in the summer of 2019, construction workers uncovered Jonelle’s remains while they were installing a new pipeline just 15 miles from her home
Jonelle’s older sister Jennifer Mogensen listened to questions from District Attorney Michael Rourke during opening arguments in the trial against Steven Pankey in Weld County District Court in 2020
Jonelle’s sister Jennifer said: ‘I had never seen my dad worry about Jonelle like that before, it was like she just vanished’ (pictured in 2019)
She recalled the moment she realised her husband had something to do with the disappearance of Jonelle.
Angela said Steve used their rent money for legal fees because he wouldn’t tell the police what he knows about Jonelle.
She said: ‘That was the first time Jonelle Matthews name had come up in 10 years, he said ”do you really think I would hurt her when she looks so much like you”.
‘There is an expression when something makes your blood run cold, but it’s the only time in my life that I have experienced it.
‘All those odd occurrences, the quick trip to big bear, the car being on fire, the episode at church, in that moment, all that meant something different to me then it had before.
‘Something had happened to this 12-year-old girl and he is acting like he had done something. I had to find out.
‘I was really scared that my intuition was right, I started looking for clues, was there anything I could find.’
Angela said she went to the police to report her suspicions of her husband but she wasn’t believed and didn’t get a call back for more than 20 years.
It wasn’t until a former classmate of Jonelle’s sister, now a detective, was assigned to the cold case and vowed to solve it that Angela was contacted by police to make another statement.
The detective was shocked to learn she had already flagged to police years earlier about her husband.
After police raided Steven’s home they ceased computers and what they found was shocking.
Steve was found guilty in 2022, nearly four decades after killing Jonelle Matthews in December 1984
The detective said: ‘He would search for Jonelle thousands of times, once he learned that Jonelle’s remains were found he was up on his computer for the better part of 36 hours. He didn’t sleep.’
Three years after Jonelle’s remains were found, Steve Pankey was sentenced to life in prison for her murder.
Steven, who was the 2014 and 2018 governor candidate, had maintained his innocence in the case since his arrest in 2019 when Jonelle’s remains were found buried at an oil and gas site not far from where she disappeared in Greeley.
‘I am Christian, I will be in heaven,’ Steven briefly said during the trial. ‘I am innocent, and this is not justice for Jonelle.’
Steve’s DNA wasn’t found on Jonelle’s clothes or body – but prosecutors used his eagerness to learn about the case as a way to pin him as the suspect.
Steve was found guilty in 2022, nearly four decades after killing Jonelle Matthews in December 1984.
He was found guilty of second-degree kidnapping with use of a deadly weapon and first-degree felony murder. Pankey was acquitted of first-degree murder.
Steve was on trial in 2021 but the jury failed to reach a unanimous verdict on charges that he abducted and murdered Jonelle after she returned home from a Christmas concert – leading the judge to dismiss most of the prosecution’s case.
During his trial, defense attorney Anthony Viorst’s opening statements addressed Pankey’s infatuation with this case, his Asperger’s condition, and his confessions to knowing key details surrounding Jonelle’s disappearance.
There was no DNA evidence, fingerprints, or show prints linking Pankey to Jonelle’s death. But Weld District Attorney Michael Rourke said Pankey’s written and verbal comments about the crime made investigators consider him as more than just a true crime fan who was obsessed with the case.
Pankey has said he was in California with his family at the time of the killing – but his ex-wife previously came forward to dispute that claim, and says the trip was only planned after Matthews vanished.
He previously told police he was a person of interest but his defense attorney dismissed his comment as Pankey enjoying the ‘limelight’ and being a ‘true crime junkie.’
Jim Matthews, Jonelle’s father, said during the trial that his family has carried around the unanswered questions from this case for almost four decades.
‘As these two trials have shown, you have been obsessed with your actions, and your consciousness could not let you forget,’ Mr. Matthews said. ‘You have been a prisoner of your own mind.
‘You’ve claimed to be a Christian on many occasions. There’s still hope for you. It’s not too late to confess your sins, which is the first step to your forgiveness. The second step is to repent or turn away from your evil ways… It’s up to you, and it’s not too late Steve Pankey.’
Gloria Matthews, Jonelle’s mother later added: ‘I cannot forgive him for how he killed Jonelle. God’s the only one that can forgive evil, and I feel that this is evil.’
A year after Jonelle was born, the Pankey family moved to Greeley, Colorado, and became neighbors to the Matthews family.
Pankey, from Ventura, California, worked as a youth minister at Sunny View Church of the Nazarene after serving in the US Army and doing a tour in Panama. The Matthews family attended the church Pankey gave sermons at.
In 1993, Pankey wrote and self-published a book titled Graveyards: The Untold Story. In it, he penned a plot where a group of pastors at the Sunny View Church in Greeley are part of a secret society called The Inner Circle. In the plot, the pastors committed ‘rape-murders.’
Pankey argued that Greeley police had a vendetta against him. He said that in 1977, four years after moving to Greeley in 1973, he was accused of the ‘date rape’ of a 23-year-old woman he was seeing. Pankey at the time was 26.
He claimed the sex was consensual and prosecutors dropped the charges, but authorities in Greeley never forgot him because of the allegations.
‘Once you’re accused of something like date rape, you’re forever stigmatised,’ he told the Statesman.
Pankey also wrote a letter in 1999 to the Supreme Court of Idaho that he was nervous about revealing the details of where Jonelle’s body was after revealing to police that he had ‘knowledge’ that she died before crossing 10th Street.
Pankey reportedly made multiple visits to cops over the years saying he had knowledge about the missing young girl but in return, he wanted to know where they were at in their investigation.
In 2008 Pankey’s son was shot dead by his girlfriend. At the funeral, Hicks told investigators that she heard Pankey say: ‘I hope God didn’t allow this to happen because of Jonelle Matthews.’
Then in 2013, he wrote a letter about where he was on the night Jonelle went missing.
It wasn’t until November of 2014 that Pankey left Colorado and ran for Governor of Idaho as a Constitution Party candidate. He lost the general election.
He ran again as a Republican Party candidate in 2018 and lost the primary election in May of that year. He gained just over one per cent of the votes.
One year later, in the summer of 2019, Jonelle’s remains were finally found. Oil and gas workers uncovered her body by chance while digging a pipeline in rural Weld County, Colorado.
Investigators later found out through an autopsy that she had been fatally shot with a single gunshot wound to her forehead.
