The mother of Jaylen Griffin, the 12-year-old New York boy who vanished on his way to a neighborhood corner store in 2020, died of a broken heart, six-and-a-half months before her son's remains were found in a stranger's attic.
Health issues coupled with the impossible grief of losing her youngest son, 48-year-old Joann Ponzo didn't live to see the day Jaylen's remains were discovered five miles from where he mysteriously disappeared from their home on a hot, summer day in Buffalo, New York.
"She died of a broken heart. She never recovered from it," close family friend and spokesperson Pastor Tim Newkirk told HNGN during an interview Thursday.
"We knew the relationship that Jaylen had with his family, his mother," said Newkirk. "That's her baby."
Jaylen went missing in August 2020, but his case soon went cold, and law enforcement classified him as a runaway. It wasn't until Friday, nearly four years after loved ones last saw him, that his decomposed remains were found by a maintenance worker servicing a home unfamiliar to Jaylen.
He was identified through dental records. His death was ruled a homicide, and a cause of death remains under investigation.
But before Jaylen's mother died in September 2023, months before Jaylen's remains were recovered, her mother's intuition told her he was murdered.
While taking her final breaths at Sisters of Charity Hospital, Joann devastatingly admitted she had a feeling her youngest son – a soft-spoken, young man who had dreams of becoming an entertainer – was dead. Jaylen's 18-year-old brother, Jawaan, was shot to death across the street from their home, just three months after Jaylen went missing, and she could no longer deal with the heartbreak of losing her two boys.
"She said, 'I think my son (Jaylen) is gone. And I still want confirmation. I want to see my son laid to rest, properly,'" Newkirk recalled of his final conversation at Joann's hospital bedside. "She said, 'Don't stop searching for my son.'"
Newkirk promised Joann he wouldn't stop leading the charge with GYC Ministries and the Community Action Coalition to find out what happened to Jaylen that fateful day. After all, he said he saw a lot of his younger self in Jaylen.
"He had a lot of swag," Newkirk recalled of the homey pre-teen who loved his family, TV, and video games. "He wouldn't want to be away from the house and his mom for too long, or his father, either."
Newkirk suspects Jaylen was on the way to the corner store to buy some snacks with money he earned doing little jobs around the neighborhood when he disappeared, and that he had every intention of going home to his parents, but he was wickedly robbed of the chance to make it back alive.
Despite the discovery of Jaylen's body, Newkirk says his work has just begun, as Jaylen's killer or killers remain on the loose. And he has every intention of keeping the promise he made to his lifelong friend, Joann.
Said the pastor, "We won't stop this until it comes to a full conviction, and it won't be a cold case file. It won't be something that just gets left on the shelf."
