John Jamelske

Jamelske is currently housed in the Mohawk Correctional Facility. On December 22, 2020, Jamelske was denied parole in his first appearance before the parole board. Jamelske's next parole hearing is scheduled for December 2022.

In 2004, MSNBC produced episode 12 of their MSNBC Reports series subtitled "Sex Bunker" on the Jamelske case, periodically rebroadcast several times a year as part of their "doc block" documentary marathons.

On April 3, 2003, Jamelske felt confident enough to take the girl out to karaoke at a local bar. Emboldened by this success, he then took her on another public outing, where she slipped away from him long enough to phone her sister. The girl's sister checked the caller ID and dialed the number back, which turned out to be a bottle return center located in Manlius. The older sister persuaded the employee who answered the phone to call 9-1-1. The employee in turn called her boss, who was working at a local pet store several blocks away, telling him that Jamelske—who was scheduled to visit him at the store shortly—had apparently kidnapped a young girl and had been raping her. After Jamelske and the girl had made their visit and left, the boss immediately called the police; Jamelske was tracked down and arrested shortly thereafter.

In October 2002, Jamelske picked up his final abductee, a 16-year-old African American runaway from Syracuse.

On May 11, 2001, Jamelske offered a ride home to a 26-year-old white woman walking in downtown Syracuse while on LSD, which the woman accepted due to the poor weather. Jamelske took her back to his bunker, where he raped her daily. When she resisted, Jamelske inflicted cigar burns on her, from which she developed an abscess on her lower back. Jamelske also manipulated her with claims that he was actually part of an underground slavery syndicate, of which the police were a part.

On August 31, 1997, Jamelske kidnapped a 53-year-old Vietnamese woman off the street. She was a foreign refugee who spoke little English. He forced her into his car and took her to an abandoned house, where he raped her. Then he tied her to a stack of flattened cardboard boxes and drove her to his house. He raped her daily while holding her captive, and also forced her to fulfill various menial tasks for him. He released her on May 23, 1998, at a Greyhound bus station, with $50. She reported to the police that day, but nothing came of it. She claimed that the police did not believe her, but Syracuse Police spokesman Sgt. Thomas Connellan stated that they investigated all leads, none of which panned out.

In either 1995 or 1996, Jamelske abducted a 14-year-old Latina runaway whom he lured under the premise of paying her to deliver a secret package. The girl willingly walked into his bunker (which he called "the dungeon") and Jamelske closed the door behind her. Eventually Jamelske put a blindfold on her and drove her to her mother's apartment and dropped her off. Although he also threatened her family, she went to the police with a description. Because of her previous drug use, they questioned the credibility of her story and dropped the investigation shortly after.

Jamelske's wife Dorothy became bedridden from disease in 1988 and died in 1999. Jamelske and his wife lived in a three-bedroom single-family home at 7070 Highbridge Road in DeWitt, New York.

In October 1988, Jamelske abducted his first victim, a 14-year-old Native American girl. He held her captive for over two years, and she had turned 17 by the time he released her. Jamelske compelled her to his will by threatening violence against her younger brother. She made no attempt to report to authorities after Jamelske released her.

The victim also told police that he drove a tan 1974 Mercury Comet. Police searched for registered vehicles matching this description in the New York area and came up with a single hit. However the lead didn't pan out due to the victim's description of the vehicle not matching with the one discovered. Due to this inconsistency, the investigating officers closed the case. It is noted that, despite that body style being available from 1971 to 1977, police failed to search any other year, as the car Jamelske drove was a 1975 Mercury Comet of the same color.

Jamelske was born and raised in the DeWitt area. He graduated from Fayetteville High School in 1953. In September 1959, he married Dorothy Richmond, a schoolteacher with whom he had three sons. At this time, he worked at Acme Market and other grocery stores. Later he started working in a series of blue-collar jobs, as a handyman and carpenter.

John Thomas Jamelske (born May 9, 1935, in Fayetteville, New York) is an American serial rapist-kidnapper who, from 1988 to his apprehension in 2003, kidnapped a series of girls and women and held them captive in a concrete bunker beneath the yard of his home in DeWitt, a suburb of Syracuse, New York, United States.