Paige Johnson's mom says verdict brings sense of relief but leaves unanswered questions

It's been nearly 13 years since 17-year-old Paige Johnson went missing from her Northern Kentucky home and three years since her remains were recovered from a secluded patch of woods in rural Clermont County.

On Monday, a jury found 35-year-old Jacob Bumpass, who authorities have long said was the last person to see the teen alive, guilty of tampering with evidence and abuse of a corpse.

The verdict followed three days of testimony in Clermont County Common Pleas Court.

Prosecutors say she died while together with Bumpass early on Sept. 23, 2010, and rather than seek help, Bumpass left her body unburied in a wooded area near State Route 276 and Mathis Road in Williamsburg Township.

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"She was tossed on the ground in those overgrown woods, cold and alone, left to the wildlife and environment," Clermont County Assistant Prosecutor Zachary Allan Zipperer said.

Bumpass has maintained his innocence, saying he dropped her off in Covington after he picked her up at her mother’s Florence home.

He has not been accused of causing Paige's death and the circumstances surrounding how she died remain unknown.

'This sadness will stay with me forever'

Donna Johnson, Paige's mom, has spent the last 13 years not knowing what happened to her daughter and many questions remain unanswered.

But seeing Bumpass put into handcuffs has brought the family a sense of relief and vindication.

"I didn't think we would get this far," Johnson told reporters after the verdict. "I thought maybe that I would die never knowing where she was or getting what I've gotten."

Johnson said she's known from the beginning that Bumpass knew what happened to Paige. She testified last week that when she went to his home looking for answers shortly after Paige vanished, Bumpass refused to let her look through his phone and closed the door in her face.

"I will always want to know what happened. I don't think he's ever gonna tell us," Johnson said. "This sadness will stay with me forever."

What happened to Northern Kentucky teen Paige Johnson?

Paige turned 17 years old just a few weeks before she vanished. She was a young mother of a then-2-year-old daughter.

The last time Paige's family saw her was the evening of Sept. 22, 2010, when Paige asked her mother if she could go to her sister's apartment in Covington, according to trial testimony.

Paige never arrived at the residence that night and her family and friends searched frantically to locate her.

The months and years that followed Paige's disappearance set off public vigils, exhaustive investigative searches, a flurry of social media including Facebook pages seeking clues about her whereabouts and offering support to her family.

Three different Covington police detectives were in charge of the investigation into Paige's disappearance over the years. They received and followed up on countless tips during that time, according to testimony. None of those led to the teen or to credible information about what happened to her.

It wasn't until March 2020 that a Williamsburg resident, Jason Kendle, stumbled across Paige's skull while walking through the woods on the hunt for deer antlers.

Law enforcement and volunteers from Texas EquuSearch, a nonprofit search and recovery organization, conducted additional searches of those woods in the days after that discovery and recovered a human jawbone and rib bone, according to the testimony.

Dental records were used to identify the skull and jawbone as belonging to Paige. Though the rib bone was never positively identified as Paige, forensic anthropologist Elizabeth Murray testified that it's "a very logical assumption" the bone is hers.

Murray, who examined Paige's remains after they were recovered, said she did not observe any signs of trauma inflicted prior to the teen's death.

The details of how Paige died may never come to light, prosecutors said.

"Only he knows her fate," Clermont County Assistant Prosecutor Clay Tharp said of Bumpass.

Case centered on Jacob Bumpass' phone records

Bumpass, then 22, has been described in testimony as a one of Paige's many friends.

Prosecutors say he hid Paige's body in the woods knowing there would be an investigation into her death. The case against him has largely relied on the location of his cell phone during the early morning hours of Sept. 23, 2010.

An analysis of phone records by a retired FBI special agent placed Bumpass' phone in the vicinity of Paige's home in Florence just before 1 a.m., then his home in Taylor Mill, before his device communicated with cell towers at Filager and Half-Acre roads in Clermont County between 4:13 a.m. and 4:18 a.m.

Roughly 40 minutes later, the records placed Bumpass' phone near the Combs-Hehl Bridge heading back to Northern Kentucky.

Prosecutors said those records are evidence that Bumpass disposed of Paige's body in Clermont County, adding her remains were found just over a mile from the cell tower Bumpass' phone used at 4:18 a.m.

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The phone records show Bumpass never returned to that area again in the years following Paige's disappearance, according to testimony.

Bumpass has not offered an explanation for why he was in Clermont County.

"I don't have to tell you what he was doing that night, he's got a right not to," Louis Sirkin, Bumpass' attorney, told the jury.

When Paige's sister reported the teen missing, a Covington police officer, Jay Zerhusen, called Bumpass, who claimed to have dropped Paige off at 15th and Scott streets around 1 a.m. on Sept. 23, 2010. That intersection is just blocks from where the teen's sister lived at the time.

"I just don't want this to come back on me," Bumpass said during that call, the officer testified.

There's no proof Bumpass was ever in that area, prosecutors say. A witness saw Paige and Bumpass together at his home as late as 1:50 a.m.

Lawyer says prosecution's narrative 'doesn't add up'

Throughout the trial, Sirkin has cast doubt as to whether Paige's remains were in the same location the entire decade she'd been missing. He noted the presence of billboards and a farm nearby, adding that workers would likely have come across Paige's remains at some point.

He also pointed to the presence of debris piled near the scene as an indication that people would at least sometimes use the area as an illegal dumping site.

"It doesn't add up to me," Sirkin said of the prosecution's narrative of events. "For 10 years, you mean to tell me nobody ever saw a thing."

In October 2010, Bumpass' phone records led investigators to East Fork State Park in Clermont County, where they searched for Paige. That search and subsequent searches at the park turned up nothing.

Sirkin has said someone besides his client may have taken advantage of the publicity surrounding Bumpass' phone records and the searches at East Fork to discard Paige's remains in hopes of framing Bumpass.

Bumpass is next scheduled to appear in court for sentencing on Sept. 7 at 10 a.m.

This article originally appeared on Cincinnati Enquirer: Verdict leaves NKY teen Paige Johnson's family with questions