Jake
Kositchek is the son of Stan Kositchek, and the brother of Chris and
Amy Kositchek. He is also the infamous Salem Strangler.
As a troubled teenager, Jake Kositchek, who had been mostly raised by his older brother Chris, had run away from home to Chicago. He had kept out of touch with his family for many years. But in June of 1981, Jake walked into Salem's Body Connection looking for Chris. A young woman named Renée DuMonde informed him that Chris was lying in the hospital with a concussion resulting from a fight. Jake immediately headed to the hospital. Chris was shocked to see his long-lost brother there. When asked, Jake said that he'd come to Salem only because he'd heard that Chris was hurt. An obvious lie. Jake was out to get something from Chris. In the years since Jake had last seen him, Chris had become a moderately successful. Not only was he co-owner of The Body Connection, but he was also an engineer who was on the verge of making millions off a new invention. This last bit is what interested Jake. Playing on Chris' emotions, he was able to gain his trust and secure a portion of the invention's potential profits. Unfortunately, the entire deal fell through when another company introduced a similar product into the market. Soon after this, Chris decided to buy a farm and leave Salem. To help Jake, Chris allowed him to take over his position at The Body Connection.
During this time, a radio call-in show run by Dr. Marlena Evans began to receive calls from a man who begged to be stopped from doing something.
There
really was no reason left for Jake to remain in Salem. However, while
debating whether to leave or not, he met a young girl named
Hope
Williams Though Hope was just
fifteen, Jake found her attractive enough to date. Her parents, on
the other hand, weren't thrilled at all with the fact that Hope
dating twenty-something Jake, or that Jake offered Hope alcohol and
marijuana. After a while, her parents decided to give Jake a chance
to prove himself worthy of dating Hope. But by this time, he'd grown
bored with her. Jake had come to the conclusion that Hope was too
young and innocent for him.
One night, Jake wandered into a sleazy bar called The Twilight to toss back a few drinks. All through the night, a red-headed barmaid wearing heavy make-up kept staring at him. Soon, they began talking and flirting with each other. The girl, who was rather arrogant and aggressive, made a very big impression on Jake and he developed an instant attraction to her. Jake was so captivated by Angel that he began bragging about her to co-workers and frequented the bar just to see her. Unfortunately for Jake, Angel wanted nothing to do with him. She constantly rejected his advances despite her own attraction to him.
At this time, the man calling Dr. Evans' show changed his tune. It was too late to stop him, he said! The next morning, a woman -- a secretary from University Hospital -- was found strangled to death with a pink silk scarf.
Meanwhile, Jake was so disappointed by Angel's rejection that he decided to go out with Hope again. However, he was still obsessed with Angel. When he kissed Hope, he was fantasizing about kissing Angel. Somehow, Angel found out about Jake and Hope and was jealous enough to promise Jake that she would go out with him. As soon as Angel accepted him, Jake broke up with Hope. Jake and Angel weren't dating for very long when she asked him to marry her. Though her proposal was remarkably abrupt, Jake decided to go for it. They decided to elope in Las Vegas as soon as possible. But right as they were about to be married in a Las Vegas chapel, Marie Horton stopped the wedding. Marie Horton was Angel's mother; Angel was, in reality, Jessica Blake. As she stopped the wedding, Jessica suffered a nervous breakdown and collapsed.
At the same time this was happenning, Dr. Evans received yet another call from the same man, begging to be stopped. However, the man hung up without telling Marlena his name. The next morning, another woman was found strangled to death. The method had been the same as the previous victim -- a pink silk scarf with a stone wrapped in the middle to damage the victim's voice box. The woman had been Denise Peterson, a waitress at The Twilight, where Jessica worked as "Angel."
As
it turned out, Hope had been so jealous of Jake's new girlfriend that
she had followed him and seen that "Angel" was Jessica. She'd then
alerted her aunt Marie. Jessica had apparently been leading a
double-life, and was diagnosed with Multiple-Personality Disorder
(MPD). Regardless of Jessica's problems, Jake stood by her and
pledged to love her, whether she was Jessica or Angel. After a few
months of therapy with Marlena Evans, Jessica's personalities were
more-or-less integrated. Unfortunately, Jake wasn't the only one to
stand by Jessica. Joshua Fallon, Jake's partner at The Body
Connection and a long-time friend of Jessica's, had also been very
helpful to her, which made Jake extremely jealous. Though Jake didn't
take out his anger on Joshua, he did begin to act very possessive of
Jessica in order to send the message that Jessica was off-limits.
Before long, Jake and Jessica became engaged.
By now, it was becoming clear that the man calling Marlena's radio show was the serial murderer who was now called The Salem Strangler. It was also clear that this Strangler was fixated on Marlena for some reason. Once again, he called her saying that it was too late, and that she should've done more to help him. The next morning, a nurse from the hospital, Lorie Masters, was found strangled to death. The killer had used a telephone cord to strangle her, and covered up her mangled neck with a pink silk scarf.
Because all of the Strangler's victims had worked out at The Body Connection, Jake and Joshua became prime suspects in the police's investigation. Both Jake and Joshua had known Denise and Lorie. Furthermore, when the police searched their lockers at the gym, they both had silk scarves. However, Joshua claimed that they used the scarves in their self-defense classes in order to teach women how to avoid being strangled. While that made perfect sense, though, there was something else that the police couldn't ignore: while Jake had solid alibis for the nights of Denise and Lorie's murders, Joshua did not. Also, Jake claimed to have still been living in Chicago when the first woman was strangled. Because Joshua was looking more and more guilty, Jake used this as an excuse to keep Jessica away from him. Meanwhile, Jessica's split personality continued to haunt her. One night, she turned into Angel and snuck out to The Twilight. When Jake found her there, she was flirting with another man. Outraged, Jake almost punched the man to death but was stopped by Abe Carver. Afterwards, after Jessica returned to normality, Jake warned her not to sneak out again because the Strangler could get her.
Following Lorie's murder, the Strangler increased his contact with Marlena. He now called her office blaming her for the murders. He also left a present for Marlena in her office to let her know that he was watching: a doll with a silk scarf wrapped around its neck hanging from a curtain rod. After this incident, Sgt. Roman Brady forcefully gave Marlena 24-hour protection by sleeping on her living room floor. The Strangler, who was observing Marlena's apartment, called her again and warned her that she would pay for being a tramp. He also threatened Jessica. After this last threat, Marlena was hired by the police department to create a psychological profile of the Strangler. He was diagnosed as a man who felt hatred toward women, especially those he viewed as having loose morals. Denise Peterson had been known for being "easy", and Lorie Masters had been letting her boyfriend spend nights in her apartment.
At this time, the Strangler attacked another woman, Renée DuMonde, who had dated various men. She was attacked in her bedroom but survived and fell into a coma. While recuperating in the hospital, the Strangler tried to kill her once again by turning off her respirator. Again, she survived. Renée was now a main target for the Strangler; although she couldn't consciously remember it, she had seen the Strangler's face in her bedroom mirror.
Meanwhile, Jake and Jessica made their formal engagement announcement and began to make wedding plans. Marlena Evans, Jessica's doctor, disapproved of their plans, though. She believed that Jessica was still not ready for such a step. Since Jessica looked up to Marlena's opinions, she began to have doubts about the wedding. All of this irritated Jake and he began to act very cool toward Marlena. Jessica and Joshua's continuing friendship didn't help matters. On the eve of their engagement party, Jessica didn't show up on time. Finally, Jake received a call from Jessica saying that she'd been caught in a storm with Joshua and had taken shelter in a hotel. When Josh and Jessica finally arrived, Jake could barely contain his fury. As Joshua gave her a good-bye peck on the cheek, Jake exploded and punched Joshua. Though Jake apologized, his jealousy sickened Jessica.
However, it wasn't Jake's attitude that almost broke their engagement. Soon after this, Jessica found out that her father, Alex Marshall, was cheating on her mother with Mary Anderson. The shock was so much that it turned her back into Angel. But even worse, it made her seriously consider breaking their engagement because of the possibility that all men were as unfaithful as Alex. Luckily, with Marlena's help, Jessica returned to normality and resumed her engagement to Jake.
During
this time, most of Salem believed that the Strangler had been caught.
A man named Eugene Bradford had been arrested for kidnapping Marlena
and had confessed to the murders. In early February 1982, The
Twilight re-opened under a new name: Shenanigans. The opening was
celebrated with a costume party that featured a mini-movie in which
the audience participated by shouting out the lines. During the
course of the movie, Mary Anderson left Shenanigans and was followed
by a man wearing a black costume; both Jake and Joshua had worn black
costumes to the party. The man chased Mary into an alley and wrapped
a silk scarf around her neck. At this very moment, the mini-movie
being shown at Shenanigans featured Jake's character sensually
placing a necklace around Mary's character's neck. Just as Mary was
dying, she ripped her murderer's mask off, revealing the Strangler's
identity. It was Jake.
Jake viciously called Mary a tramp as she gave her last breath. After killing her, he managed to return to Shenanigans without being seen by a group of men looking for Mary. His brief absence from the party had gone unnoticed. When news of Mary's death reached the restaurant, no one acted more surprised than Jake. He then promised a frightened Jessica that he would protect her from the Strangler. Soon after Mary's death, Jake stalked Phyllis Anderson, Mary's mother. He noticed that she spent too much time with Neil Curtis and believed that she could be as "unclean" as Mary. However, he soon realized that she wasn't. Jake was saddened when he discovered that Neil was actually helping Phyllis while she grieved for her daughter. Knowing that she was just a mother missing her dead daughter, Jake spared Phyllis.
Realizing that both he and Joshua remained suspects, Jake tried to make Joshua out to be the killer. One day while Abe Carver was questioning Josh at The Body Connection, Jake goaded Josh into a fight. While manhandling Josh, Jake made a tear in Josh's coat pocket and slipped his copy of Jessica's house key into it. When the key fell to the floor, it appeared to fall out of Josh's pocket. Though this didn't get Josh arrested, it certainly took much of the suspicion away from Jake. Meanwhile, Jake found out that Marlena was placing Renée under hypnosis in the hopes that she'd remember her killer's identity. To find out what Renée remembered, Jake snuck into Marlena's office and played a tape of her session with Marlena. By placing her under hypnosis and confronting her with her bedroom mirror, Renée had recalled seeing the Strangler's shadowy face. As soon as he heard this, Jake turned around and noticed Renée's mirror hanging on the wall. The sight of it brought back the memory of attacking Renée and caused Jake to smash the mirror in shame. Before leaving Marlena's office, Jake scrawled a desperate message in the mirror: "Help me. For God's sake, please help me!"
Despite
this cry for help, Jake continued to plan his next attack on
Renée. However, he was almost caught more than once. One day
while visiting Jessica at the hospital, Jessica innocently told Jake
that Renée would know who her attacker was by the scent of his
cologne. Desperate, Jake went out and bought new cologne and splashed
it all over his face. Just as he finished, the police came to his
apartment with Renée. Since he was now wearing a different
cologne, Renée remembered nothing, and Jake looked even more
innocent. Meanwhile, Jake wondered how he would be able to kill
Renée. She now lived at the DiMera mansion, which had a
sophisticated alarm system. The answer came from Renée
herself. One night, while hosting a small get-together, she
unwittingly mentioned that the alarm system collapsed during
thunderstorms. Jake's good fortune would continue. Later, while at
Doug's Place, Jake saw Julie Williams drop some sketches. When he
picked them up, Jake noticed that one of them was the plan of a
secret room. Jake returned the papers to Julie, but later realized
that they were plans of the DiMera study (Julie was redecorating the
mansion.) The next time Jake and Jessica visited the mansion, he
slipped away to search for the secret room. He finally found it and
thought it would make a perfect hiding place. While investigating the
secret room, Jake noticed that it had an entrance into an underground
tunnel. He followed this tunnel and curiously ended up in the wine
cellar of Doug's Place. With all the bases covered, Jake prepared for
his final attack on Renée.
One
stormy night, Jake slipped into the DiMera mansion and hid inside the
secret room until everyone went to bed. He then snuck into
Renée's bedroom and tried to strangle her with a scarf.
Unfortunately for him, Renée elbowed him painfully in the
stomach, causing him to briefly release her. That gave Renée
enough time to scream for help. With no choice, Jake ran to the study
and escaped via the secret room, arriving at Doug's Place in time to
be seen by Julie and therefore have an alibi. Following this
incident, Renée left Salem with Tony DiMera. Both Jake and
Joshua were questioned in regards to the attack. While Jake had his
alibi, Joshua's was Jessica; they'd been together the night of
Renée's attack. Jake was furious.
However, his problems with Jessica worsened. She confessed to him that she was having doubts about loving him because she felt she still cared about Joshua. Jake seethed with anger when she said this and seriously contemplated killing her. A nervous Jessica then told Jake that perhaps her problem was that she was still a virgin. Although Jake promised to make love to her after their wedding, Jessica felt that she wasn't ready for marriage. As Jessica began to appear more and more "unclean", Jake felt a bigger urge to kill her. Finally, he coldly obliged and promised to make love to her in a hotel, but in secret. Under assumed names, Jake and Jessica registered at the Greenbriar Inn. While checking in, Jake found out that Tony and Renée were staying in the same hotel and made arrangements to get the room across from them. He planned to get rid of Renée once and for all. But again, Renée slipped through his fingers; she and Tony checked out before Jake had the chance to attack. Meanwhile, Jessica changed her mind about making love just as they were about to begin. Jake was relieved about this because it meant that he wouldn't have to kill her.
Unfortunately, Jessica didn't want to make love to Jake because she no longer loved him. When she told him, she explained that Marlena had made her realized that she still had feelings for Joshua. And with this, she broke their engagement once and for all. All of this meant only one thing to Jake: Marlena had taken Jessica from him. Wanting revenge, he vowed to kill her. He immediately quit his job at the Body Connection and got a job at the hospital delivering mail, hoping to have easier access to Marlena.
By this time, however, the police were beginning to close in on Jake. They discovered that Jake had lied about his residence in Salem; though he claimed to have been living in Chicago when the first strangling occurred, the police discovered that he'd been living in Salem. Jake nervously explained this by saying that he'd rented a place in Salem because he'd been thinking of moving, but hadn't actually come to live until later. Jake knew that his feeble explanation would only buy him a little more time. The police had already begun to connect him with the murder of another woman a year earlier -- Bonnie Bradford. With his days numbered, he began toplan Marlena's death. After finding out that Gwen Davies, his attorney, was Marlena's roommate, Jake stole her house key, made a duplicate, and returned the original.
While
delivering her mail, he noticed that she'd made travel arrangements
to Mazatlan, Mexico. Jake also made travel arrangements and hoped to
kill Marlena there. To finalize his plans, Jake called Chris and told
him that he'd be leaving town for a bit; he also got a vacation from
his hospital job. But on the day that Marlena was supposed to leave
for Mexico, she didn't show up at the gate. Worried that she might've
changed her mind about travelling, Jake headed for Marlena's
apartment. Using his copy of her key, he went inside. There was
Marlena, relaxing on the couch in the living room. Jake quietly
walked up behind her and strangled her with his silk scarf. As soon
as she was dead, Jake breathed a sigh of relief. His mission was
complete; he wouldn't have to kill again. But as he was about to
leave the apartment, he picked up and read a note that was sitting on
a table. The note's contents were unbelievable.
Jake
had killed the wrong person. The note on the table had been addressed
to Samantha, Marlena's twin sister, telling her that she'd gone to
Colorado, not Mexico. Jake realized that he'd killed Samantha, so he
waited until Marlena returned to make his move, while everyone in
Salem believed Marlena was dead. When she finally returned, Marlena
went to her old home on the lake. Jake watched from outside as she
talked with Don Craig, who was also there. After they put the pieces
together, Don left to tell the police that Marlena was alive.
Believing that Jake didn't know she was still alive, Marlena stayed
there. Once Don was gone, Jake entered the house and sat down with
Marlena to talk before killing her. Jake basically admitted to all
the stranglings, explained his twisted motives, and his special
reason for wanting to kill Marlena. Though almost succeeded in
getting him to surrender, Jake felt threatened at the last minute and
decided to kill her. At that moment, Roman Brady arrived, stopping
Jake just in time. At last, someone stopped him from killing; this is
what he'd been begging for all along. With no reason to live, Jake
reached out for Roman's gun. As they struggled, Jake pointed the gun
at himself and pulled the trigger.
For the record, Jake's victims
were:
1. Bonita Jean Bradford: He picked her up at The
Twilight and then strangled her. His motive? She was married and he
considered her a slut for being at a bar with men instead of with her
husband.
2. University Hospital secretary: Also picked up
at a bar. She'd had an affair with her former boss at a mental
hospital, making her "unclean."
3. Denise Peterson: Jake met her at The Twilight
and signed her up for aerobics classes at The Body Connection. The
woman was considered an easy catch by most men, making her
very "unclean."
4. Lorie Masters: Jake taught her self-defense
classes at The Body Connection. He heard of her relationship with
Evan Whyland. He thought it inappropriate of her to let him
spend nights with her.
5. Renée DuMonde: She actually worked for
Jake. She seemed to be dating too many men. Jake deemed her immoral
because of this. Survived her attack.
6. Renée DuMonde: Since she survived her
first attack, Jake tried to pull the plug on her respirator at the
hospital. Again, she survived.
7. Mary Anderson: Casual acquaintance of Jake's.
Not only was she having an affair with Alex Marshall, but it was this
affair that gave Jessica her first bout of cold feet. Mary had
2 strikes against her in Jake's book.
8. Renée DuMonde: Jake tried to kill her a
third time! Funnily enough, she survived again. Go Renée!
9. Samantha Evans: Jake didn't even know she
existed; he mistook her for Marlena.
10. Marlena Evans: Casual acquaintance. Jake blamed her for
everything he had done, and also for his failed relationship with
Jessica. She survived.
The character of Jake Kositchek was
played by the following:
Rene Lamart (1981)
Jack Coleman (1981-1982)