Full Name: Amber Rene Jenkins

Alternative Name:

Case Status: Missing

Record ID#: 0446

*The names “Jane Doe”  and “John Doe” are English names used when the person’s true name is not known. If used above, the name refers to a person of unknown identity.

Date of Birth*: April 19, 1985
Birthplace:
Age at the Time: 16
Age Group: Teenager (13 to 19 Years Old)
Biological Sex: Female
Hair: Dark Brown or Black
Eyes: Brown
Skin Complexion:
Shoe Size:
Ethnicity: African or Black
Nationality: United States
Languages Spoken: English, Spanish

*If the date says January 1, this is often just a placeholder for an unknown specific date. It usually means “sometime that year”.

Physical Build:

Height:

Weight

Distinguishing Marks:

• Scar, Tattoo

Medical Condition:
Physical Abnormality:
Dental Condition:
Scars & Other Marks: Stone-shaped burn scar on her upper left arm.
Piercings:
Tattoos: "AJ" on her upper right thigh (her initials)

Other Descriptors: Attending Kankakee High School's SALT (alternative education) program at the time

Clothing

Possessions:

Date of the Disappearance*: September 11, 2001 or July 3, 2001

Description: In the summer and early fall of 2001, a sixteen-year-old girl named Amber Jenkins vanished from Kankakee, Illinois, and the world barely noticed. More than two decades later, her case remains open, her whereabouts unknown, and the record of what happened to her is frustratingly thin.

Amber Rene Jenkins was born on April 19, 1985. At the time of her disappearance, she was sixteen years old, stood five feet one inch tall, and weighed between 125 and 130 pounds. She had brown hair and brown eyes, and carried two distinctive physical identifiers: a tattoo of her initials, “AJ,” on her upper right thigh, and a stone-shaped burn scar on her left upper arm. She was also known to wear a tennis bracelet on her left wrist. One detail that stands out in her profile is that Amber was bilingual, fluent in both English and Spanish, which speaks to a beautiful mind full of capability and potential despite her un-orthodox education situation.

At the time she disappeared, Amber was enrolled in Kankakee High School’s SALT program. SALT stands for Students All Learning Together, and it was an alternative education program designed for students who were at risk of expulsion from the traditional school setting. The SALT program was meant to be a lifeline, a way to keep teenagers connected to education when the conventional school environment was not working for them. That Amber was part of this program tells us something about where she was in her life: she was a teenager navigating circumstances that had already put her on an unconventional path, and she was still in school, still present, still trying.

One of the most confounding aspects of Amber’s case is the uncertainty surrounding the exact timeline of her disappearance. The Doe Network, which catalogs missing and unidentified persons cases, lists Amber’s missing date as July 3, 2001, with that being the date she was last seen in Kankakee. The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) and the Charley Project, both widely trusted repositories for missing persons information, list September 11, 2001 as the date she was last seen, specifically at her home. NamUs, the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System maintained by the Department of Justice, records September 11, 2001 as the date of last contact.

Perhaps as troubling as the timeline confusion is how long it took for Amber’s case to be formally entered into national databases. Her NamUs case file was not created until 2016, fifteen years after she disappeared, and the Kankakee Police Department case also appears to have been input around them. This suggests her case was not documented until well over a decade had passed

Multiple Victims?: No

Rumored or Actual Sightings: According to a Kankakee Police Department flyer, there may have been an unconfirmed sighting of Amber after she was last documented, though the details of that potential sighting have never been made publicly clear, and investigators have not indicated that it led anywhere definitive.

*If the date says January 1, this is often just a placeholder for an unknown specific date. It usually means “sometime that year”.

Date the Body was Recovered:

Description: Unknown

Time of Death:

Cause of Death:

Recovered Remains (if partial):

Suspected Homicide?:

Multiple Victims?: No

DNA Tested (No Match):

• Kankakee County Jane Doe from 2002
• Madison County Jane Doe from 2002

*If the date says January 1, this is often just a placeholder for an unknown specific date. It usually means “sometime that year”.

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