To them, she was a busy college girl with a rural background. At the University of Central Oklahoma in Edmond, she studied photography before switching her major to public relations.
She showed off her grades at work, saying her father would be proud.
But Hyman had slipped quietly into a dual life. Prostitution consumed her night hours, and her police record started to grow.
On Aug. 20, just four months after her first arrest, Hyman was found naked and strangled under a Tallahatchie River bridge near Oxford, Miss., more than 500 miles away from her Oklahoma City home.
Investigators in four states -- Oklahoma, Mississippi, Arkansas and Texas -- are considering whether Hyman and six other women may have been killed by the same person, perhaps a long-haul truck driver.
Police say the women worked as prostitutes at truck stops. Hyman was also arrested for offering to engage in prostitution.
Last April, Oklahoma City police Sgt. Jessi Neil did a routine check of an escort service, and Hyman showed up and made an offer.
A month and a half later, she was caught asking truckers at a Shell Travel Stop on the northeast edge of Oklahoma City if they wanted ''commercial company,'' according to a police report.
She was arrested for trespassing after she climbed into the cab of a red semi that had just pulled into the lot. Trespassing is a common charge if police can't catch prostitutes in the act of prostitution.
She was arrested for trespassing two more times before she vanished.
''I can't imagine her being engaged in prostitution,'' said Jay Smith, her former boss at Smitty's Wine and Spirits. ''She was a good girl. She was smart. People liked her.''
Smith cried when he learned Hyman had died, and he spent the afternoon in his clean, bright store talking with employees about what might have happened in Hyman's life to lead to her death.
Hyman's parents, Linda and Terry, declined to be interviewed, saying they didn't want to do anything to jeopardize the investigation.
Jennifer Hyman was born Feb. 22, 1979, in Marietta, where her parents owned a farm, said her grandmother, Leona Hyman. Her family moved to Stillwater in 1983.
She and her younger sister, Ann, used to pile onto their grandmother's bed with books and then beg for bedtime stories.
''You're going to read mine first,'' they would say.
Their favorite was ''The Three Little Pigs,'' Leona Hyman said.
She remembered her oldest granddaughter as a loving child and was proud that she had planned a career in writing.
Jennifer Hyman seemed to have effectively hidden her life of prostitution from others.
''Young people get together and probably do some socializing that you don't know anything about,'' Leona Hyman said. ''You always lose some of 'em through the crack, and she might have been one of 'em, for all we know.''
Jennifer Hyman's attorney, Robert Sisson, didn't think she took drugs, a common companion to prostitution.
''She was a classy lady,'' Sisson said. ''It looked like she was trying to work herself into a better position in life.''
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