Missouri Missing Person Case Turns to Murder After Two Arrests

Janice Cook’s disappearance in Missouri quickly hardened into a homicide case after witness statements put her on Billy Tabor’s property and described disturbing efforts to move her body. Cook was 43, and what began as a missing-person report soon led to murder charges against Tabor, 70, and abandonment-of-a-corpse charges against Colby Eisel, 39.

Cook’s social media went silent on March 27, and by the early morning hours of March 28 she was last known to be in the area between Leeton and Windsor, Missouri. Her disappearance alarmed friends and family because she had not simply gone quiet online. She stopped responding, could not be reached through normal contacts, and investigators later said phone records placed her last known location in Windsor, where Tabor lived. Police also learned that the last person Cook contacted was Tabor.

The case tightened further when investigators found Cook’s vehicle abandoned on March 28 in a rural area of Johnson County, Missouri. Her dog was discovered a mile away, a detail that friends and family said did not fit her normal behavior because she would never have left the animal behind. Then a witness told police he went to Tabor’s property in the early morning hours of March 28 and saw Cook lying on the ground while Tabor paced in an agitated state.

A second witness later told investigators Cook was already on the ground and apparently dead or near death around 2 a.m. on March 28. That witness alleged Tabor tied ropes to Cook’s body and to a Honda CR-V, then dragged her farther down the property while telling the witness to help dig a grave. Police charged Tabor with first-degree murder and abandonment of a corpse. Eisel was charged with abandonment of a corpse.

Authorities said the investigation shifted from a missing-person case to a homicide probe after detectives developed probable cause. Both men were being held at the Henry County Detention Center, with Eisel held on a $250,000 cash-only bond and Tabor held without bond. Cook’s obituary later identified her as Janice “Jay” Cook and listed her date of death as May 1, 2026, with arrangements entrusted to Vansant-Mills Funeral Home in Clinton.