James David Bachmurski enters the courtroom before trial on Monday.
Jeff Reinitz
DECORAH -- A missed birthday phone call was one of the first signs Jade Colvin was missing, according to the teen's aunt.
During the last years she was seen alive, Jade passed between shelters and foster families and had run away a handful of times.
But she had a special relationship with her grandmother, whom she would call once a month or more, said Jade's aunt, Tina McLaughlin.
So when Jade didn't phone her grandmother on her grandmother's birthday in June 2017, McLaughlin knew something was amiss.
"She certainly would have called on her birthday," McLaughlin told jurors on Tuesday as trial continued for James David Bachmurski.
Bachmurski, 66, formerly of rural Decorah, is charged with second-degree murder in Jade's disappearance.
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Authorities said he had been dating Jade's mom, LaDawn Colvin, in 2017, and Jade started living with Bachmurski in March of that year while LaDawn was to be setting up a house in Mallard and working out issues with the Iowa Department of Health and Human Services.
The last sighting of Jade was about a week later. Her remains have never been located, authorities said.
McLaughlin shed light on Jade's younger years, moving from Texas to Iowa, her parents' split and how Jade's mother, LaDawn "Josie" Colvin, struggled with drugs and mental illness.
With the missed birthday, McLaughlin phoned LaDawn. LaDawn said she didn't know where Jade was. Did LaDawn call police? LaDawn said she did and the police didn't know where Jade was.
LaDawn Colvin died in December 2017 at the age of 50 in Emmetsburg where she had been living.
Jade didn't attend the funeral.
It was then that McLaughlin said she realized it was up to her to reignite the search for Jade. She went to Emmetburg Police, then to police in Des Moines, where Jade had an earlier runaway report, and was referred to the U.S. Marshals Service.
Inspector Scott Cannon, the Marshals' missing children investigations coordinator for U.S. District Court's Southern District of Iowa, said Jade's case was included in a late 2020 initiative dubbed Operation Homecoming.
The operation started with a list of 25 missing children and soon picked up five others. Three of the children were being trafficked, Cannon said. In the end, the project located 28 children.
Jade Colvin was one of the two who remained missing.
Cannon said Jade's digital tracks - her phone use and social media presence - and interactions with friends and family all ended in March 2017 shortly after she arrived at Bachmurski's Sky View Drive home.
Cannon detailed leads he tracked down over the years, including a tip sent to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. A trucker said he was propositioned by someone who appeared to be an underage prostitute in Illinois who said her name was Jade and she was from Iowa.
Cannon said the trucker included a phone number for the girl, which the investigator then found in an ad with a photo.
"When I saw the ad, it was promising," Cannon said.
A reverse search on the photo produced another phone number for a female named Samanatha. He looked up Samantha's drivers license and left a message for her but never heard back.
Another tip came from a friend who said Jade had told her she moved to California and allegedly had been in contact in August 2017 - months after investigators believe Jade was dead.
"She threw a lot of people off the trail," Cannon said.
And another tip came from a family member who claimed to have been trafficked in Oklahoma and suspected Jade had met the same fate, Cannon said. He said the tip didn't lead anywhere.
A witness from Iowa Workforce Development testified Jade Colvin's name, birth date and Social Security number have never been used to obtain employment and request public assistance benefits anywhere in the United States. Her information hasn't been used to apply for a drivers license or ID card or even a phone number.
Last message
The last text message Jade Colvin sent before she disappeared was "FR."
The abbreviation for "for real" was sent out at 12:15 a.m. March 30, 2017, to James Bachmurski's son, Bryan, after the two discussed plans to talk on the phone during Bryan's break as an overnight stocker at the Decorah Walmart.
Bryan Bachmurski's break came and went without a call from Jade.
And in the following days, Jade didn't respond to text or Facebook messages, Bryan Bachmurski, now 27, told jurors Wednesday.
On the stand, Bryan Bachmurski recounted his childhood, living with his father and older brother in New York until age 12 when the three moved to a farm on Sky View Drive south of Decorah. His mother didn't live with them, and they weren't close, he said. He also testified he was in foster care at times and by 2017 was living on his own at an apartment in town.
He recalled how his father told him of arrangements to bring Jade Colvin to the farm and they started texting, talking about her situation and their shared interest in Japanese anime cartoons.
Photos showed them at the Pizza Ranch restaurant and burning a pile of cleared brush back at the farm in the week she was in Decorah.
The son described her as "bubbly, happy," easy to talk to.
Bryan Bachmurski also said his father told him that the farm was just a temporary stop for Jade, that she was to move on and assume another identity, live with another family.
So on March 29, 2017, when his father and Jade dropped him off to work Walmart around 10 p.m., Byran assumed Jade was on her way to her next stop.
"He was going to drop her off with someone else or somewhere else to relocate her," Byran Bachmurski said he was told.
He said the phone call that didn't come during his break, and her lack of responses the following day didn't cause any immediate concern. He assumed she was traveling.
But that changed as time progressed and she never responded.
Byran Bachmurski told jurors about a year later he saw Jade's pink luggage was still at his father's house. Then his father moved to Georgia without telling him in advance.
In the years that followed, the son said he kept trying to get answers from his father, talking to him on the phone and traveling to Georgia three times to visit to him in person.
Once the father said Jade was living in Tennessee. Another time it was Arizona. Then there were other states, enough he couldn't recall all of them.
One time the father said Jade was in Georgia a week before and he had just seen her. The son asked for a photo of her. He said his father responded that Jade was a "cam girl" working in porn. The son said he saw the response as a way to get him to stop asking about Jade.
"He obviously realized that I wasn't buying his stories, excuses or whatever. So he asked 'Do you think I killed her?'" Byran Bachmurski said. "I don't remember saying anything specific back other than just giving him a look."
Police go to Georgia
Agent Jon Turbett didn't get a chance to ask a question before James Bachmurski began talking about the missing teen who disappeared from his rural Decorah home.
"Something happened in Iowa, and it's affecting my life forever. ... This is why I've become paranoid," James Bachmurski gushed before Turbett had finished introducing himself.
Turbett, an agent with the Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation, had shown up unannounced in August 2023 at James Bachmurski's modular home on a secluded acreage outside Swainsborough, Georgia, where he lived under an assumed name.
Turbett told him he was a police officer from Iowa and had yet to even mention Jade Colvin, who dropped off the face of the earth at age 15.
James Bachmurski said he wanted to resolve the matter years ago and wondered why no investigators had approached him earlier.
"I still have nightmares about this," James Bachmurski told the agent.
Turbett took the stand on Thursday as the state rested its case.
Back at the Georgia home, Turbett pressed James Bachmurski on reports that he had told his son he had taken her to Tennessee to live on March 30, 2017. James Bashmurski denied to the agent moving her to Tennessee but was at a loss as to why put that story out there.
James Bachmurski admitted he had been less than honest with people inquiring about Jade.
He told the agent he didn't go to police about her disappearance because doing so would be "bad for me."
"If I ever did anything, I never did anything to hurt anybody ever. By the time her daughter left, I knew that if I said anything, I would only get myself in trouble," James Bachmurski told Turbett.
At one point, the agent noticed he was crying and asked why.
"It brought me to tears only because of what happened in the end," James Bachmurski said.
When asked about the last time he saw Jade, James Bachmurski told the agent she as at the house doing laundry. He went into town to shop at Norby's, and when he came back she was gone and there were strange tire tracks in his driveway.
Months later, during the second interview in Georgia in April 2024, Turbett accused him of killing her, and he denied it.
"A long time ago, I figured I'd go to the grave before I tell the truth. ... I'm not afraid of dying anymore," said James Bachmurski, who told investigators he had consumed a few legal-in-Georgia THC gummies before they arrived.
The agent then returned to the March 30, 2017, date when Jade disappeared and friends were looking for her.
"Jade was no longer OK, and you're starting to lie to the world," Turbett said.
"Yeah, I did," James Bachmurski answered.
He declined to tell Turbett what the lie was.
Towards the end of the interview, Bachmurski said
"Holy s---, it's crazier than you think."
Turbett reminded him he has been an officer for years, so nothing would surprise him.
"Try us," another investigator said.
"It's like the Amityville house, and it's just evil," Bachmurski said in an apparent reference to the Amityville Horror book and movie.
Bachmurski's property on Sky View Drive changed hands several times since he left Iowa, and the house was eventually torn down.
Also on Thursday, Bachmurski's attorneys asked the court to dismiss the case, arguing there wasn't any evidence Jade was dead or how she died.
Defense attorney Leigha Lattner also argued there was no evidence of malice aforethought, one of the elements that state must prove for second-degree murder.
"The best crime that we can use with the evidence is harboring a runaway," Lattner said.
Assistant Iowa Attorney General Scott Brown said there was plenty of evidence of malice.
"The defendant was the last person to be with Jade Colvin, that he had only been around Jade Colvin for four or five days. He made statements that, in our opinion, show he has a sexual attraction to Jade Colvin. She disappears literally in his custody," Brown said.
Brown also cited prior no-body murder convictions in Iowa, including the disappearance of Cora Okonski in Tama County that resulted in the conviction of Tait Purk, and the disappearance of Elizabeth Syperda that led to the conviction of her husband, Michael.
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