Christopher and Jessica Olsen pose in the summer of 2023 during a visit to Hiroshima, Japan. (Dominique Arguinzoni)
Before her death at the hands of her husband last year, Jessica “Jesse” Arguinzoni Olsen was an avid learner and a beloved substitute teacher at a naval base in Japan, her sister said.
Olsen, 37, was found dead in a hotel room in Fukuoka, about 80 miles northeast of Sasebo Naval Base, on the morning of Oct. 28. Her husband, Lt. Cmdr. Christopher Olsen, pleaded guilty to second-degree murder during a hearing at Naval Base San Diego last month.
He faces 23 years in prison, will be separated from the Navy and forfeit all pay and allowances. He also paid $10,654 in restitution to his wife’s family for funeral expenses, U.S. Naval Forces Japan spokesman Cmdr. Paul Macapagal told Stars and Stripes last month.
Christopher Olsen — assigned at the time to the amphibious transport dock USS New Orleans at Sasebo — killed his wife “on or about Oct. 26” by “strangulation and blunt force trauma to the head,” according to a May 13 Navy charge sheet.
Sometime later, a teacher at Sasebo’s Ernest J. King Middle High School, where Jesse taught chemistry to special education students, sent Jesse’s sister, Dominique Arguinzoni, a portrait painted by one of those students.
“She told me that one of the last things that she had was Jesse’s handwriting on the whiteboard,” Arguinzoni told Stars and Stripes during a Sept. 13 phone interview from Goshen, N.Y. “She had written down a recipe or something. But she was laughing because they work with autistic children, and Jesse went out and bought pancake mix and made pancakes for the kids.”
Christopher and Jessica Olsen pose together in October 2018. (Dominique Arguinzoni)
Jesse Arguinzoni was three years younger than her sister. The siblings were “complete opposites,” Dominique said. Jesse was outgoing and athletic, while Dominique was more reserved.
“We only became friends as we were adults,” she said.
Jesse, inspired by the 1996 film “Twister,” studied meteorology from 2004 to 2008 at the State University of New York at Oswego, where she met Christopher Olsen, Dominique said. They were married Aug. 16, 2009.
Olsen joined the Navy in 2014, and together they served in Hawaii, Italy and California, according to his service biography.
At his Sept. 10 plea hearing, Olsen told the judge he blacked out while drinking the night Jesse died, and remembered only “bits and pieces,” Dominique said.
Dominique said Olsen testified that he remembered brushing his teeth in his underwear as Jesse was putting on a jacket and saying she was leaving. Olsen hit her, knocking her to the ground. He blacked out and when he came to, he had his hands around Jesse’s throat.
He testified that he remembered seeing her take her last breath. He also testified that Jesse was “the love of his life,” Dominique said.
“The impression I received from this hearing was it was completely out of the blue,” she said. “He did say he was extremely angry, so I believe he was insinuating that there was a crime of passion.”
Christopher Olsen’s mother, Deborah Blanchard, said the two families’ lives changed forever that day.
“Good people make mistakes,” she said by email Wednesday. “Christopher is a good person and loves Jesse very much, as did our whole family as she was like a daughter/sister to us. Everyone continues to suffer from this terrible tragedy. Our hearts go out to the Arguinzoni family and we are all still coping with this tragedy and looking for ways to heal.”
Dominique and her mother, Dee Arguinzoni, spoke in court at Olsen’s plea hearing.
“When our parents leave this world, Jesse won’t be standing with me to share the pain of losing them,” Dominique said, according to a copy of her statement. “We won’t laugh about how different we were growing up or how we ended up having similar personality traits and were not so different, after all.”
AloJapan.com