Jon French’s statements about his missing fiancée unraveled as investigators traced her car and recovered evidence from two states.
PORTLAND, Ore. — Jon French told police his missing fiancée’s car should have been outside their Portland home, but investigators learned it was already in Washington, where French had been driving it and where Jeannie Enyeart’s body would be found concealed in the back seat.
That contradiction became one element in a homicide investigation that ultimately produced a first-degree manslaughter conviction rather than the murder trial prosecutors had been preparing to pursue. French, 35, pleaded no contest to manslaughter and guilty to second-degree abuse of a corpse on Sept. 4. Ten days later, a Multnomah County judge sentenced him to 16½ years in prison. The case resolved more than two years after Enyeart, 47, disappeared from the Northeast Portland home she shared with French.
Investigators did not begin with a body or a homicide report. They began with a worried son. On Jan. 29, 2024, Enyeart’s son told Portland police he had been unable to contact his mother for an unusually long time. Family members said Enyeart normally stayed in regular touch. She was a mother of two, had recently welcomed her first grandchild and worked as a certified nursing assistant in hospice care. Her relatives said she had last been seen Jan. 27 and had been preparing to move, with plans to collect belongings from storage in Vancouver, Washington.
French told police he had last seen Enyeart on Jan. 28, prosecutors said. He indicated that her vehicle should be in their driveway. According to court records later reported by KATU, he also offered investigators a theory involving a drug dealer named “Julius,” suggesting that the man could have kidnapped Enyeart or that she might have gone with him voluntarily. While French was offering those explanations, however, police were learning that Enyeart’s car had traveled east from the Portland area and ended up on a rural road near Stevenson, Washington.
A Skamania County road employee had encountered the Kia Soul in the snow on East Loop Road on the morning of Jan. 29, according to the court documents. French was there. The worker said he appeared to be under the influence and asked for a ride to his cousin’s property. French’s cousin later told police that he showed up wearing a light jacket, appeared to have injured hands and had beer and car keys with him. The cousin said French did not provide a clear explanation for why he had been driving through the winter conditions.
The car was towed, creating a second crime-scene-like location for investigators even though authorities did not initially know the full significance of what was inside. Once police connected the vehicle to Enyeart and searched it, they found her body in the rear passenger area, covered by a moving blanket and other objects. The Multnomah County District Attorney’s Office said an autopsy determined that Enyeart died from blunt trauma to the neck and that her death was a homicide. Those conclusions transformed the case from a disappearance into a homicide investigation and focused scrutiny directly on French.
Physical evidence recovered afterward added another layer. Court-document reporting said investigators found a ceramic piece associated with a broken coffee mug in Enyeart’s body. Detectives executing a search warrant at the Portland residence recovered pieces of a broken mug in the master bedroom. Authorities believed a piece from the home matched the fragment recovered during the examination of Enyeart. Law enforcement also documented suspected blood evidence in the residence, according to reporting on the investigative affidavit. The publicly released district attorney’s summary did not provide a complete forensic inventory or disclose every laboratory result.
Investigators also worked to reconstruct the period between Enyeart’s last known movements and French’s appearance in rural Washington. Neighbors said the couple argued often and told detectives that they saw Enyeart with French in a vehicle on Jan. 27. Surveillance footage from Craft Cannabis in Vancouver showed French arriving in Enyeart’s car on Jan. 28, KATU reported from the court records. The footage supplied an independently documented location for French and the vehicle during a period when police were trying to determine what had happened to Enyeart.
Another statement came from a former girlfriend of French. She told investigators that French knew logging roads near his cousin’s Washington property and alleged that he once said he would use the area to hide something if he needed to make it disappear. The account was included in the evidence described publicly before trial. Prosecutors did not have to prove the meaning or significance of that remark to a jury because the case was later resolved by plea. Its role remained that of an investigative statement attributed to a witness rather than a separately established fact about French’s intent.
French’s public conduct during the search also became part of the story surrounding the case. He posted messages asking for Enyeart to return and portraying himself as a worried fiancé. Her family, however, grew suspicious. Relatives later said they believed there had been serious problems in the relationship. Enyeart’s brother Mychal told The Oregonian that his sister had ended plans for the couple’s wedding and intended to move out. He believed that decision was connected to her death. Prosecutors did not adopt that explanation as an officially established motive in their public statements, leaving the precise motive outside the facts necessary to resolve the charges.
Police arrested French on Feb. 5, 2024. The prosecution that followed moved slowly. French was accused of second-degree murder constituting domestic violence and abuse of a corpse, according to reporting on the court case. He was found competent to stand trial in June 2025, and by the spring of 2026 a trial was scheduled for Oct. 12. Prosecutors were preparing to rely on a chain of circumstantial and physical evidence that included French’s statements, witness accounts, surveillance footage, the Washington vehicle and items recovered from the couple’s home.
The trial never began. French appeared in Multnomah County Circuit Court on Sept. 4 and entered a no-contest plea to first-degree manslaughter. The distinction is significant because a defendant who pleads no contest accepts a conviction without making the same express factual admission required by an ordinary guilty plea. French did plead guilty to second-degree abuse of a corpse. The district attorney’s office said Chief Deputy District Attorney Todd Jackson and Deputy District Attorney Ryan Solomon prosecuted the case. Detectives Brent Christensen and Scott Broughton of the Portland Police Bureau’s Homicide Detail were specifically credited for the investigation.
By the time French returned to court for sentencing Sept. 14, the central legal question was no longer whether a jury would convict him of murder. The pleas had resolved that uncertainty. Instead, the hearing gave Enyeart’s relatives and friends an opportunity to describe the lasting effects of her death. Her sister Kristin spoke of profound emotional pain, and friend Amy Nickerson told French she did not forgive him, according to KXL. French was invited to address the court but did not make a statement. He was sentenced to 16½ years in prison.
The case now stands as a completed prosecution built from evidence that crossed jurisdictional lines and repeatedly tested French’s early statements against independently discovered facts. The car was not in the driveway where he said it should be. It was in Washington. Enyeart had not simply vanished; her body was concealed inside it. Evidence from the vehicle, the home, witnesses and surveillance footage moved the investigation toward French, and the September pleas ultimately removed the need for prosecutors to present that evidence at an October murder trial. Enyeart’s family has since established a nursing scholarship at Clackamas Community College in her memory.
Author note: Last updated October 20, 2026.