Woman charged after diary says she moved woman's body

ST. LOUIS (AP) - A 37-year-old St. Louis woman is charged with abandoning a corpse, and she has her own diary to blame.

Joni Janis is jailed on $40,000 bond. She was charged Tuesday.

Police told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch that Janis kept a diary that detailed how she and two others moved a dead woman from Janis' home to a car and left her on the side of a highway. The diary was found Monday when police searched Janis' home.

The dead woman, 26-year-old Kierstin Whitcher of Waterloo, Illinois, died in February.

Janis' diary says a male tenant of an apartment in her home left behind the woman, saying she was in a coma. In fact, she was dead.

Janis wrote in her diary that she made the decision to move the body.

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Information from: St. Louis Post-Dispatch, http://www.stltoday.com