PIKESVILLE, Md. — A high school valedictorian at Eastern High School in Baltimore, Joan Ann Charlton's family moved to the US from Jamaica, and she was the first in her family to go to college - two hours west to Frostburg State.
"She was definitely, by all accounts, a promising student with a bright future," noted Maryland State Police Sgt. Chris Taylor.
As a college freshman in September 1983, Charlton went to a party and reportedly went back to her dorm to do laundry, Taylor said. Her friends never saw her again.
Maryland State Police searched the area and found her stabbed to death in a wooded area near the football field; her laundry bag was just up the hill.
"She's not from the area," Taylor explained, "so she didn't have a very large footprint in that town or that college at the time, her roommate and her didn't get along. So she was in the process of moving or switching roommates, either that week or the week after that she was found."
Charlton's limited time in Frostburg was limiting for investigators. But that's not to say there weren't suspects.
"There definitely were, a lot of them just never panned out," Taylor told WMAR. "We actually even put a trooper undercover in college for about two months to try to sum up some kind of information, dig up something and nothing really panned out."
An hour west from Frostburg, Maryland State Police hope a college program a state over can help them in the investigative process.
The program, dubbed the "Unsolved Case Project" is helmed by Tiffany Edwards, a teaching assistant professor at the Department of Forensic and Investigative Science at West Virginia University.
"Just because the case may have been 40 years [ago], Joan is very much alive with us, and we we think about her, we talk about her case every day," Edwards explained.
In an interview, Edwards told WMAR the project's participants 'immersed ourselves' in the Charlton case. Students have visited the Frostburg campus twice, developed spatial relationship maps and family trees, and have digitized paper case files, so if the case isn't solved in the near future, it will be easier for investigators down the line to reabsorb.
"It's kind of a two for one," Edwards said, "we're helping [police], but this is also giving our students incredible exposure and incredible experience to apply the skill sets that they're learning here, which is going to help make them even better when they get into the field themselves."
Edwards described the program adds a perspective from students near Joan Ann's age, and helps with the workload on Maryland State Police.
"My students are anywhere from 19 to 22, Joan was 19," Edwards added, "so they see things a little different than seasoned investigators, or people who are in a different time of their life."
"This case, particularly, she has such a bright future with academics, and she had goals that she wanted to do with regards to the sciences, and that was taken away, obviously, very prematurely," Taylor said.
It's been over 40 years since Charlton's murder. Taylor believes the passage of time gives way to a growing conscience.
"I think it's human nature for people to want to talk. I think people eventually tell somebody," he said.
HOW YOU CAN HELP:
If you have information pertinent to this case, please call investigators at 410-996-7881.
If you have a Cold Case you'd like us to highlight, please contact us at storyideas@wmar.com or jack.watson@wmar.com.
