Jade Janks and the Secret Nude Photos

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Speaker 8 Sheriff's Communication Dispatcher 5538. Well, I've got a situation.
Last night, a friend of mine asked me to come over.

Speaker 5 She

Speaker 8 said that she had

Speaker 9 possibly killed her stepdad.

Speaker 8 I don't know if she really did this.

Speaker 10 What exactly are she reports?

Speaker 8 It sounds like she killed this guy.

Speaker 7 It was the first day of a new year. The Sheriff's Department received a call from a guy that said she confessed to drugging him, suffocating him, and strangling him to death.

Speaker 11 Jade was very cool, very popular. They could not believe what they were saying that Jade did.

Speaker 11 Tom Merriman is Jade's stepdad.

Speaker 11 And 100% she loved Tom. She took care of him.
They lived next door to each other. She made him dinner.
She was always there for him.

Speaker 7 Detectives knew they had a phone call from her good friend that she confessed to murdering Tom Merriman, so they got a search warrant.

Speaker 13 We don't have to prove motive, but we want to show a motive.

Speaker 10 The photos.

Speaker 14 The photos.

Speaker 15 She accidentally bumped his computer and the screensaver came out.

Speaker 16 The screensaver is a nude photograph of her in the shower.

Speaker 16 She was able to find a lot more nude photos of her. Hundreds.
Hundreds.

Speaker 17 It was the most violating, just awful, gut-wrenching feeling ever. I felt sick.

Speaker 20 I couldn't even touch my own skin.

Speaker 7 She was beyond freaked out. She's sleeping with a knife.

Speaker 4 She is scared for her life.

Speaker 4 Yes.

Speaker 5 Did you love Tom?

Speaker 5 Yes.

Speaker 21 Does Tom love you?

Speaker 5 Yes.

Speaker 22 I mean, did you want your stepfather dead?

Speaker 22 Did you stand over him with a plastic bag and pull tight to keep him from breathing?

Speaker 24 No.

Speaker 22 Did you wrap a cord around his neck? No.

Speaker 25 And did you strangle him?

Speaker 23 No.

Speaker 10 So you have this supposed confession of her saying she strangled him, but no evidence of strangulation. Your own strangulation expert said it's not strangulation.

Speaker 9 That's right.

Speaker 10 So your big bomb fizzled.

Speaker 7 It was gone.

Speaker 10 San Diego County, California.

Speaker 10 An idyllic place.

Speaker 10 Most of the time.

Speaker 8 I stewed on this all night. I barely slept and I'm scared to death.
I don't want to be a part of this. I didn't have anything to do with her.

Speaker 10 That frightened phone call came in New Year's Day, 2021. The caller said his one-time girlfriend may have committed a murder.

Speaker 7 The Sheriff's Department received a call from a guy that said, my friend confessed to me last night that she murdered her stepfather.

Speaker 10 San Diego County Deputy DA Jorge Del Portillo.

Speaker 7 He told deputies, hey, I don't know if what she's saying is true. I didn't see see him, but this is something I had to tell the police.

Speaker 10 The alleged victim was a 64-year-old man named Tom Merriman. He lived here.

Speaker 15 I liked him. I thought he was very nice.

Speaker 10 Ramona Hamilton and her husband, George, were Tom's neighbors. Ramona knew him better, and she found out Tom also ran an unusual business.
More milkweed.

Speaker 27 More milkweed. More milkweed.

Speaker 10 A butterfly farm.

Speaker 15 I'm a gardener, and I love butterflies.

Speaker 10 Pat Flanagan also likes butterflies. He was Tom Merriman's business partner out at the farm.

Speaker 28 He was my best friend.

Speaker 10 Did he become kind of a butterfly expert?

Speaker 28 Oh, he is a butterfly expert.

Speaker 10 You say he is.

Speaker 10 Yeah. You still talk about him in the present tense?

Speaker 17 Yeah.

Speaker 10 I do. It was right here on December 31st, 2020, that Tom Merriman was last seen alive.
Ramona and George saw him in his stepdaughter's SUV in the driveway.

Speaker 29 And he was sitting on this side, the passenger side, with his feet out and this walker out in front of him.

Speaker 29 And he looked like hell.

Speaker 10 Tom had just spent more than two weeks in the hospital and a rehab center after a bad fall. He also had heart and liver problems.

Speaker 25 He looked awful.

Speaker 15 I don't even know if he knew me.

Speaker 10 But at the time, it just seemed like maybe he got sent home from the hospital heavily drugged. Heavily.
That's all we knew.

Speaker 29 That's all we knew.

Speaker 10 And then George saw Tom's stepdaughter, 37-year-old Jade Janks. Tom Merriman had come into Jade's life when she was 14, marrying her mom.
Jade and Tom were apparently close. She lived right next door.

Speaker 10 On this day, Jade had just driven him home.

Speaker 30 And he called her his daughter.

Speaker 10 He called Jade his daughter. Yes.

Speaker 10 They seemed close.

Speaker 15 And they seemed very close. She was fixing dinner for him every night.
She seemed to take care of him.

Speaker 10 What did you think of Jade?

Speaker 15 I thought she was a very pretty woman.

Speaker 10 Jade had done some work in Ramona's apartment.

Speaker 15 She was an interior decorator.

Speaker 10 That's Jade.

Speaker 11 She can be a tomboy and a girly girl all in the same day.

Speaker 11 She can get herself dirty for work, carrying rocks and concrete in her pickup truck, and we're dressed up, ready to go to like a nice fancy dinner.

Speaker 10 Heather Pierce grew up next door to Jade in San Diego County.

Speaker 11 Jade was very cool. I loved being around her.

Speaker 10 Jade was 13 years older.

Speaker 11 She's definitely a little more than a big sister and a little less than a mom.

Speaker 10 Her energy is just very strong.

Speaker 11 Loving and caring and genuine. And so when you're around her, like you feel good.

Speaker 10 She also knew Jade's stepdad, Tom Merriman.

Speaker 11 I think she always just loved him and cared about him.

Speaker 10 Back at Tom's place in Solana Beach, it was now January 1st, the day after he'd gotten back from the hospital. The day after George and Ramona had seen him looking so poorly in the driveway.

Speaker 10 This time, they only saw Jade in the driveway. She was standing by a pile of trash and boxes.

Speaker 29 I saw her out at the side here with the boxes and cartons.

Speaker 29 A little while later, I was a knock on the door, and she'd come to the door to tell me that she'd made a mess down here, but she'd clean it up later.

Speaker 10 Where was the pile?

Speaker 29 Right about right here. See where that druid is right there.

Speaker 10 Yeah, like right in this area here.

Speaker 25 Right there.

Speaker 10 It was a few hours later when law enforcement pulled into their driveway.

Speaker 8 I'm scared to death. I don't want to be a part of this.

Speaker 10 They came to investigate that strange phone call, the one that claimed Tom Merriman had been murdered.

Speaker 7 They were trying to find Tom. Where is Tom? They walked by this pile of trash in the driveway.
They knocked on his door. They went inside.

Speaker 10 They didn't find Tom, but they did see his stepdaughter.

Speaker 7 When they saw Jade Jenks driving out of her driveway, they pulled her over, brought her in for questioning,

Speaker 7 and asked that very question. Where is Tom?

Speaker 10 Jade said she was cold, so they gave her a blanket.

Speaker 21 But we're trying to find Tom. Do you know where Tom is?

Speaker 23 No.

Speaker 10 His family hasn't seen him for over 48 hours, though.

Speaker 21 He just got released from the hospital yesterday. Okay.
Did you see him yesterday? Yeah, I picked him up from the hospital. Okay, do you know where he went?

Speaker 31 No.

Speaker 20 Well, can you tell me other than he's just missing?

Speaker 10 We don't know where he's at.

Speaker 21 We're trying to find him.

Speaker 10 Eventually, they let Jade go, but there was still no sign of Tom. Officers spent all night combing through his apartment, looking for clues.

Speaker 10 Then, just after the first morning light, one of the officers was walking down the driveway toward Tom's apartment when she saw that pile of trash. It was just about here.
I have a picture of it here.

Speaker 10 There's a wheelbarrow there, some boxes, some bags.

Speaker 7 She moved a trash bag from that trash and immediately saw the silhouette of a man.

Speaker 10 And there he was, Tom Merriman.

Speaker 7 Tom Merriman laid dead and buried.

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Speaker 7 Never seen that. I've never seen a case where a body was buried under a pile of trash in the driveway.

Speaker 10 The apparent crime scene was smack in the middle of the driveway of this lush compound, just a mile from the beach.

Speaker 7 He was wearing the hospital bracelet that he was just in the hospital, the same t-shirt and the same pajamas that he was discharged.

Speaker 7 As soon as they found the body, they knew we have our suspect and they made the arrest.

Speaker 10 On the morning of January 2nd, 2021, Jade Janks was arrested and charged with Tom Merriman's murder. But things were about to get complicated.

Speaker 7 She lawyered up and didn't want to answer any more questions.

Speaker 10 So authorities continued to work the case, starting with that phone call.

Speaker 8 It sounds like she killed this guy.

Speaker 10 That call had come from that friend of Jade's, a man named Adam Siplack. He told police she'd called him to her apartment, and then she asked him for a favor.
And

Speaker 8 asked me to move the body with her.

Speaker 8 Okay.

Speaker 8 I can't help you. And I never saw the body.

Speaker 10 Adam Siplack may not have seen the body that night, but eventually.

Speaker 10 He did tell police that Jade confessed to him, that she knocked Tom out with an overdose of medicine and then strangled him.

Speaker 10 It was a pretty dramatic story, and authorities were confident that the autopsy would confirm it, that there'd be physical evidence that Tom Merriman was strangled to death.

Speaker 10 But that's not what happened.

Speaker 16 I was actually there for the autopsy.

Speaker 10 Assistant DA Teresa Phamm, who led the investigation, talked to the medical examiner.

Speaker 16 So, what they found was, unfortunately, not a lot of physical evidence.

Speaker 10 Right. So, you have this supposed confession of her saying she strangled him, him, but no evidence of strangulation.

Speaker 2 That's right.

Speaker 10 The final autopsy report created even more of a challenge for the prosecutors. It said that the cause of Tom Merriman's death was acute Zolpidem intoxication.

Speaker 10 Zolpidem is the generic name for the sleeping pill, Ambien. Is it possible that Tom Merriman died by accident? He was in poor health.
It's not that many pills that he took.

Speaker 7 Certainly it's possible, but the evidence belied that notion. This was no accident.

Speaker 10 But even if the autopsy didn't point to strangulation, investigators say other evidence clearly pointed to murder. Jade's cell phone was a gold mine.

Speaker 7 It was a gold mine.

Speaker 10 Jade's phone was full of texts. How would you categorize those text messages?

Speaker 16 Suspicious?

Speaker 7 Incriminating?

Speaker 16 A plan?

Speaker 10 According to prosecutors, that plan was to get rid of Tom Merriman one way or another.

Speaker 10 Investigators say it all started on December 23rd. That's about a week before Tom's body was found.
Tom was in the hospital after that bad fall.

Speaker 10 Jade says she was cleaning up his apartment when she found something.

Speaker 16 So she's at Tom's apartment and his laptop, I guess it must have been in sleep mode or something like that, but she knocked into it.

Speaker 16 and it woke up and on the screensaver is a nude photograph of her in the shower.

Speaker 10 And there was more, much more.

Speaker 16 She must have had his password. So once she was able to get into his laptop was when she was able to find a lot more nude photos of her.
Hundreds, hundreds.

Speaker 7 These were photos that she took willingly with her partner at the time. Some were of her in the shower, naked.

Speaker 10 Authorities don't know how Merriman got those pictures, but Jade says she never gave them to him. And prosecutors say she panicked.

Speaker 7 In her words, she was beyond freaked out. That's what she wrote to a friend that she couldn't shower alone.
She was vomiting at just the idea of looking at a shower based on what she had discovered.

Speaker 7 She's sleeping with a knife on the nightstand just in case he comes early home from the hospital.

Speaker 10 According to prosecutors, that's when Jade launches her plan. How? One of her friends connects her with a guy, a guy the prosecutors call the fixer.

Speaker 7 There's a text message where he tells Jade, if you have a problem, I can fix it for you. And that's how we came up with the label the fixer.

Speaker 10 The so-called fixer was a man named Alan Roach.

Speaker 10 Who is Alan Roach?

Speaker 7 Alan Roach is a guy. He's a security guard.
That's what he does. But I think he makes himself.
out to be someone else that he's not.

Speaker 7 We were thinking Jade views him as the character in pulp fiction, someone that you reach out to when you want one of your problems fixed. And that's what he was.
He was the fixer.

Speaker 10 He was the fixer. Is Alan a hitman?

Speaker 7 He is not a hitman. What's important is what does Jade think Alan is?

Speaker 10 Prosecutors say Jade wanted her fixer to help her get rid of Tom.

Speaker 7 She had a plan that she stuck to.

Speaker 10 The plan was murder.

Speaker 7 The plan was murder.

Speaker 10 It was December 2022, two years after Tom Merriman's body was found under that pile of garbage, and Jade Janks was about to stand trial for his murder.

Speaker 10 And let me just ask you flat out: did Jade Jenks murder her stepfather, Tom Merriman?

Speaker 27 Jade has maintained her innocence throughout this entire incident.

Speaker 10 Jade's attorney, Mark Carlos, he insists this was not a murder and says Jade had no reason to kill her stepfather.

Speaker 27 Finding nude photos of yourself on a stepfather's computer would make you angry, you know, might make you break off relationships with him.

Speaker 10 But enough to kill somebody?

Speaker 27 I don't think so.

Speaker 10 He says Tom's death was an unfortunate accident brought on by his poor health and self-administered prescription drugs.

Speaker 27 I think he took the medication himself. He had multiple substances in his system.
I think he made a cocktail of the drugs that he had with him and had a bad reaction to it and caused

Speaker 7 his death.

Speaker 10 At trial, Jade was supported by family and friends, including her biological father, Steve Jenks, and her longtime friend, Heather Pierce.

Speaker 11 Tom was a mess, an absolute mess, for a long time. There's no that she had like a plan and first degree and all of that.
I was like, there's no way because that's not Jade.

Speaker 10 Prosecutors Jorge Del Portillo and Teresa Pham were worried the jury might feel that Jade herself was the victim.

Speaker 16 She's a sympathetic defendant. She is.
I mean, she found naked photos of herself on her stepdad's computer.

Speaker 22 Call Jade Janks.

Speaker 10 Jade takes the stand to tell the jury what happened in her own words.

Speaker 35 My name's Jade Jenks.

Speaker 10 Jade says that ever since she met Tom when she was a teenager, they maintained a strong bond.

Speaker 32 It's hard to come by somebody you just feel that you can trust completely, and I did feel that way.

Speaker 31 I referred to him as my father, and he could call me his daughter.

Speaker 10 Which is why Jade tells the jury it was so devastating to find those photos on December 23rd while Tom was in the hospital and she was cleaning his apartment.

Speaker 19 I felt the mouse on his desktop computer and

Speaker 20 it shook the screen awake. And I looked at and there's a picture of female breasts on the screen.
And

Speaker 25 I look, I thought,

Speaker 17 those are my breasts.

Speaker 32 I just, I couldn't believe it.

Speaker 36 I was in complete shock.

Speaker 10 Jade describes finding even more on Tom's computer after that.

Speaker 30 There was a rolling screen,

Speaker 19 like a slideshow of pictures of me that I've taken over the years.

Speaker 22 What type of pictures were they?

Speaker 19 They were naked photos.

Speaker 13 Did you ever give naked photos to

Speaker 22 your stepfather?

Speaker 17 No.

Speaker 22 Did you ever show him naked photos of yourself?

Speaker 23 No.

Speaker 10 How did he get these photos? Jay doesn't know. These were photos that Jade had taken of herself.

Speaker 27 Jade and various boyfriends.

Speaker 22 Have you ever made any

Speaker 22 sexual overtures toward your stepfather? No.

Speaker 17 No.

Speaker 22 Did you tell him that you had lead photos of yourself? No. And you never showed him anything similar to those, correct?

Speaker 36 No, you my dad.

Speaker 10 Tom was still in the hospital, but Jade says she didn't feel safe.

Speaker 38 And you were afraid that he was going to come back and find out that you had found the photos?

Speaker 6 Yes. Yes.

Speaker 38 And you were worried about how he might react toward you.

Speaker 37 Yes.

Speaker 14 And he

Speaker 32 lived next door to you.

Speaker 17 Yes.

Speaker 10 And that's why Jade says she got in touch with Alan Roach, who worked in security the day she found those photos.

Speaker 38 So why did you think that you needed somebody like Alan Roach?

Speaker 17 I was scared.

Speaker 10 I mean when I first saw the photos I

Speaker 36 couldn't even use the bathroom.

Speaker 39 I just felt so disgusting.

Speaker 20 I couldn't shower either.

Speaker 10 I was just

Speaker 19 scared.

Speaker 19 I was scared of being nude and vulnerable.

Speaker 17 And

Speaker 17 I wanted somebody to just look out for me and make sure that I was safe.

Speaker 10 Over the next few days, Tom was moved from the hospital to a rehab center. And Jade felt she had to act.

Speaker 36 I can't continue just living next door to him and not feeling safe or feeling like this.

Speaker 32 I mean, you have to do something.

Speaker 38 When you say I needed to do something, I mean, did you need to kill him?

Speaker 20 No, I wanted Tom to just go away and leave me alone.

Speaker 10 According to Jade, Alan was planning to come over after she brought Tom home to help her confront him.

Speaker 35 I wanted Alan to basically,

Speaker 35 you know,

Speaker 32 explain to him

Speaker 20 this is not okay, or I can explain it, but Alan, just be there just in case.

Speaker 29 Your plan was to...

Speaker 10 Jade says that on December 31st, in spite of her feelings, she was doing everything she could to help Tom, who she says seemed preoccupied with finding medication.

Speaker 36 He started calling at about 6.45 in the morning and he's asking me to get him codeine, which I don't really understand.

Speaker 19 He says that he hasn't, I think, slept and he wants to rest.

Speaker 10 Jade took Tom out of the rehab at a little after 11 a.m. He had a bag of medication with him, including ambiene.
And remember, the autopsy says ambiene is what killed him.

Speaker 10 Jade says almost as soon as Tom got into her car, he also helped himself to her prescription medicines.

Speaker 35 He kept saying, did you get any pain colours?

Speaker 18 Like, is this it? Oh, here. And then he just kind of took it.

Speaker 10 Jade says Top seemed fine when she stopped at this shopping plaza and texted Alan Roach to come meet her. She went into a couple of stores while she waited to hear back.

Speaker 35 I was just getting started on

Speaker 35 a house project, so I just went to go figure, get supplies and kind of shop around.

Speaker 10 Jade bought gloves, towels, and a nylon cord, and some spray paint. She says these items were for a painting project.

Speaker 36 Typically, I lay plastic down and kind of enclose it so that I'm not getting paint on all the foliage.

Speaker 10 Jade still hadn't heard back from Alan and took Tom home. She says Tom was now too groggy to walk on his own and she couldn't get him out of her car.

Speaker 10 I parked in the parking lot, but she says she was worried about him and drove him back to the rehab for help.

Speaker 36 I just explained, you know, my dad's just been released and something's wrong.

Speaker 40 He need to bring him back.

Speaker 30 They wouldn't let me inside though.

Speaker 40 They're pretty adamant with COVID. I couldn't go inside.

Speaker 10 Jade returned home with Tom, but says she was still not able to get him out of her car.

Speaker 10 Alan had finally texted back to say he couldn't make it over after all, but sent his friend, a man named Brian Solomon, to help her get Tom inside.

Speaker 22 Have you ever met Brian Solomon before?

Speaker 30 No.

Speaker 10 Jade says Brian wouldn't help her with Tom and left right away. So Jade reached out to her friend Adam Siplack and asked him to come over.
Adam arrived later that evening. I just said, I mean,

Speaker 32 I was just in tears. I said that, you know, I want to get him into my house or into his house.

Speaker 10 Jade says Adam quickly got upset and left without helping her.

Speaker 10 And this is where Jade's story doesn't line up with Adam's. Remember, Adam was the person who called police on New Year's Day.
She

Speaker 8 said that she had

Speaker 8 possibly killed her stepdad.

Speaker 10 Jade says she didn't confess to anything. She says Adam was distressed by how sick Tom looked and that's why he wouldn't help her.

Speaker 10 After he left, Jade says she didn't know what else to do and tried to get Tom situated in her car for the night so he could sleep off whatever he had taken.

Speaker 30 I made sure he was comfortable.

Speaker 19 Yeah, he had pillows and a china over.

Speaker 30 Yeah, I mean, he had a blanket.

Speaker 10 The next morning, in the cold light of New Year's Day, Jade says Tom was still in her car when she realized the worst had happened. Did you touch Miss Merriman?

Speaker 5 Yes.

Speaker 38 What did you feel?

Speaker 7 Ms. Janks?

Speaker 20 Did you think Tom Merriman was dead at that point?

Speaker 23 I knew he was.

Speaker 41 How do you think Tom died? Chat now with the 48 Hours team on Facebook and X.

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Speaker 10 After Jade told the jury how she found Tom's body, her own attorney challenged her.

Speaker 42 Did you think about calling 911?

Speaker 23 Um, I was scared too.

Speaker 13 Why were you scared?

Speaker 23 I don't want to get plain.

Speaker 17 I mean, I just...

Speaker 23 I was the one that picked him up. I didn't want to get blamed for

Speaker 23 killing him.

Speaker 10 And she tried to explain what she did with his body.

Speaker 23 I continued to

Speaker 23 follow him out.

Speaker 23 I still wanted to get him into his house. I mean,

Speaker 23 I didn't know what else to do. I panicked.
I put the blanket over him.

Speaker 17 I got empty boxes and just kind of

Speaker 23 stacked it, made it look like just like a pile of debris.

Speaker 10 Jade may have left Tom's body in the driveway, but she says she'd never meant him harm.

Speaker 22 I mean, did you want your stepfather dead?

Speaker 39 Oh, James, did you grab him with your own two hands and did you strangle him?

Speaker 25 No.

Speaker 22 Would you ever have done that to Tom Error?

Speaker 23 I'm doing that to anything.

Speaker 10 And then the prosecutors told their version of the story.

Speaker 39 We lied to the police about where Tom was.

Speaker 32 I didn't, so I just asked for an attorney and I kept asking for one.

Speaker 39 You didn't want the police to know that Tom died in your car.

Speaker 18 I wasn't trying to hide it, but I didn't want to go alone and tell them that.

Speaker 10 Prosecutors said Jade was lying to cover up her plan.

Speaker 7 The plan was to drug him, suffocate him, and

Speaker 7 stage it to look like an overdose.

Speaker 10 Del Portillo says after she picked Tom up from the rehab, Jade used his own prescription sleeping pills to knock him out. And he says he has proof Jade's DNA is on those packs of pills.

Speaker 7 The package of Zolpidem, which is the ambient sleeping pills, that had the defendant's DNA on it, but not Tom's.

Speaker 7 And I think it's important that the jury heard that, that it was Jade Jenks' Jenks' DNA on that Sulpodim pack.

Speaker 10 And according to prosecutors, there's much more evidence too. Jade, they say, left a real-time trail of clues that day.
Remember her cell phone, the one they called a gold mine?

Speaker 10 Turns out it was packed with texts. Messages that they say outlined her plan to kill.

Speaker 16 We're talking 11, 12 minutes after being discharged, she sends a text message to Alan, the fixer, saying, I just dosed the hell out of him.

Speaker 13 When someone says, I dosed the hell out of them,

Speaker 39 you would agree with me that that means

Speaker 39 someone gave another person a whole lot of drugs, right?

Speaker 32 I guess it's a poor phrase thing.

Speaker 10 Del Portillo thinks Jade's explanation is nonsense. He says, first she drugged Tom, and then she needed to stall for a bit.
And her texts even say that.

Speaker 10 Stopping at Dixieland Dixieland to stall.

Speaker 7 So she was stalling for the drugs to really kick in and make him asleep and unaware of what she was about to do.

Speaker 7 She's stalling to see if this guy, Alan Roach, can come by and help her commit the murder.

Speaker 10 And remember those supplies Jade said she picked up for a painting project? According to the prosecutors, they were actually Jade's murder kit.

Speaker 7 She goes to the store and buys this murder kit.

Speaker 28 Zip ties, gloves, gloves, rope, and towels.

Speaker 10 Prosecutors say up to that point, Jade's plan was on track. But by a little afternoon, things started to go wrong.

Speaker 7 You can see from the text messages that she was in a panic.

Speaker 10 She writes, he's waking up. Jade's texting her so-called fixer, Alan Roach, and she adds, can you come over? But the fixer is not responding.

Speaker 7 This plot was a total mess, and it fell apart right away.

Speaker 10 Finally, the fixer texts her back. He says he can't come, but he's sending someone he knows, that guy named Brian Solomon.

Speaker 10 Okay, so the plan is Brian will bring Tom into the house.

Speaker 7 Brian Solomon later told us that when he went over to help Jade, that she told him something that he'll never forget. I want you to bring him inside, strangle him, and I'll take care of the rest.

Speaker 10 Brian Solomon quickly left the house without doing anything. And soon, Jade is back texting the missing fixer again.

Speaker 7 At 3 p.m.,

Speaker 39 you texted Alan. He's waking up, and I'm not sure how much longer I can control my temper.

Speaker 1 Is that right?

Speaker 35 Yes, it goes to Alan.

Speaker 39 You texted Alan. He's waking up and getting way more aggressive, so it's way more real.

Speaker 23 True?

Speaker 35 True.

Speaker 39 I think, again, I was just panicking and trying to urge Alan to come over.

Speaker 4 You would agree with me that this looks very suspicious, this text message.

Speaker 17 Oh, yeah.

Speaker 10 Jade texts Alan again. I can't keep a kicking body in my truck.

Speaker 39 Now that we know Tom was found dead in his driveway under a pile of trash that you put together,

Speaker 38 that this text message looks very suspicious.

Speaker 23 You'd agree with me, right?

Speaker 18 I mean, I will.

Speaker 36 Yes.

Speaker 10 It's now around 4 p.m. Alan has disappeared.

Speaker 39 At 4:08 p.m., you texted Alan.

Speaker 39 He's up. I guess I'm on my own.

Speaker 23 True?

Speaker 23 True.

Speaker 10 How do you think she killed Tom?

Speaker 7 We believe that the evidence shows that she put a bag over his head. When the bag's not working fast enough, she has to strangle him.
And she has no other choice. It's too late to back out now.

Speaker 10 Investigators even even found a plastic bag in Jade's car. It had her DNA on the outside and Tom's on the inside.

Speaker 10 But there's a huge problem with the prosecution's case, and that's the autopsy. The autopsy never said Tom was strangled.
There weren't any marks on his neck. So what happened?

Speaker 10 How could Jade possibly have strangled him to death?

Speaker 7 That presented a big difficulty for us strategically of of going forward in trial.

Speaker 10 Right. So you have this supposed confession of her saying she strangled him, but no evidence of strangulation.

Speaker 12 Right.

Speaker 10 Turns out the prosecutors had an answer for that. They say it's totally possible to strangle someone to death without leaving marks if the victim is already knocked out.

Speaker 16 I think that is part of the plan is to dose him just enough to where he's incapacitated. So if you're unconscious, your breathing is already depressed.

Speaker 16 When someone is already unconscious, it does not require that much pressure and would not leave bruising. It would not leave breakage of the cartilage that's inside the throat.

Speaker 16 It would not leave physical evidence.

Speaker 7 It only takes four pounds of pressure to kill, to cut off the blood supply to your head. And when you and I shook hands earlier today, that was about 11 pounds of pressure.

Speaker 7 So it's less than a handshake to kill.

Speaker 10 After she murdered Tom, prosecutors say she left his body in her car overnight. And the next morning, Jade had to do something about it.
In a story full of strange twists, this may be the oddest.

Speaker 10 Prosecutors say Tom's body was still in Jade's car, and she wanted to make his death look like an accident, like he'd overdosed on his own medicine, but she couldn't get his 180-pound body out of her car and into his apartment, and no one would help her.

Speaker 10 So they say she drove to a hospital with Tom dead in the back of her car, picked up a wheelchair, put it in her car, and drove back to Tom's place.

Speaker 39 How'd you get the wheelchair in your car if Tom was still in there?

Speaker 36 It's big.

Speaker 42 The trunk was up.

Speaker 32 Tom was kind of, you know, his legs were akimbo when he was laying down.

Speaker 42 And I kind of hoisted it up and so the back window of the forerunner can roll down.

Speaker 13 When you were doing this, at this point, did you know Tom was dead?

Speaker 35 I did, but I didn't want to know it yet.

Speaker 13 So you suspected Tom was dead, and you're at Scripps Hospital, and you don't tell anyone at the hospital that Tom might need some help.

Speaker 10 And there was just one more thing. On the day the cops came by looking for Tom, they didn't know anything yet, just that Tom might be missing.
Jade jumped into her car.

Speaker 16 4.30 when she was pulling out of her driveway when when they were getting ready to do the welfare check, she was pulling out of her driveway and she was getting detained after being pulled over.

Speaker 16 The very last text message on her cell phone was to Alan Roach saying, lose my number.

Speaker 10 What does that say to you?

Speaker 7 Get rid of the evidence.

Speaker 41 What do you make of Jade's text messages? See more evidence from the case at 48hours.com.

Speaker 7 That was the biggest hurdle in our case, we feel

Speaker 7 the jury might dislike Tom Arriman so much that they would vote to either acquit or reduce the murder to something else.

Speaker 10 As Jade's trial is drawing to a close, prosecutor Jorge Del Portillo wants to make sure the jury's attention is on what Jade Janks has done and not on Tom.

Speaker 7 Tom was not on trial. This wasn't his trial.
He didn't get a trial. She was his judge, jury, and executioner.
And so it all comes back to Jade.

Speaker 26 Mr. Carlos, you wish she made a quote.

Speaker 10 In his closing argument to the jury, Mark Carlos emphasizes what he says are the weaknesses of the prosecution's case.

Speaker 22 What type of evidence do we have? We have a lot of speculation. It's speculation upon speculation upon speculation.

Speaker 10 He argues Adam Siplack's story that Jade confessed is a lie. Mr.
Siplack, no credibility.

Speaker 22 He wants to get out of something that he thinks might have happened.

Speaker 10 And he says Brian Solomon, who also claimed Jade confessed to him that day, can't be telling the truth.

Speaker 10 He claims that immediately, and this was his testimony, immediately upon entering, she says, he's in the car, go strangled.

Speaker 22 This is somebody that Jenks has never met before.

Speaker 10 Neither Adam Siplack, Brian Solomon, nor Alan Roach was charged with any crime in this case. And Mark Carlos urges the jury to stick to what he calls the truth.

Speaker 22 And the truth is, they have zero, zero evidence to support a murder.

Speaker 9 Her DNA was on the blister pack.

Speaker 10 But Jorge del Portillo gets to make the last argument the jury will hear.

Speaker 9 It starts with, I just dosed the hell out of him.

Speaker 9 The plan is starting.

Speaker 39 And with Alan, it ends

Speaker 9 with, lose my number. I'm getting pulled over.

Speaker 9 And buried in between all of those text messages is a murder plot.

Speaker 9 Find her guilty of murder. Because the evidence proves it, the law requires it, and justice demands it.

Speaker 10 The jury went out that afternoon and was back the next morning to continue their deliberations.

Speaker 7 Jury comes in at 9 a.m.

Speaker 7 We get the call at 9.30 a.m. We have a verdict.
We were shocked.

Speaker 16 We were a little bit nervous.

Speaker 7 The quickest verdict I've ever had was 15 minutes and it was a not guilty. So I don't put a lot of stock in quick verdicts.

Speaker 10 Tom's business partner, Pat Flanagan, got a text about it.

Speaker 4 I was very anxious.

Speaker 28 My hands were sweating. I was nervous.

Speaker 21 We have your own. We, the jury, in the above entitled Cause, find the defendant, Jade Sasha Jenks, guilty of the crime of murder in violation of penal code sections.

Speaker 10 Guilty of first-degree murder.

Speaker 37 Subsection A, a felony as charged.

Speaker 10 Jade appears stunned.

Speaker 21 Jury number one. Yes.
Number two. Yes.
Number three. Yes.
Number four. Yes.
Number five? Yes. Number six? Yes.
Number seven? Yes.

Speaker 10 Number eight? Yes.

Speaker 7 It was a huge relief.

Speaker 3 It was an absolute relief.

Speaker 10 And when you heard that word, guilty?

Speaker 28 It felt right.

Speaker 10 Guilty of the. Pat Flanagan says he saw Jade's reaction to the verdict later online.

Speaker 28 I still go back and watch that sometimes.

Speaker 25 Why?

Speaker 28 Because I feel bad for Tom. He died buried in trash.
Now she gets to feel a little of that pain that we've all been feeling for years.

Speaker 10 But there's still the matter of those photos. Jade said that she found nude photos of herself on Tom's computer.
Do you believe that?

Speaker 28 I can't disprove it.

Speaker 14 I find it...

Speaker 25 I

Speaker 28 don't want to believe it.

Speaker 10 It's interesting you say you don't want to believe it.

Speaker 28 Yeah.

Speaker 10 Tom's hard drive was not recovered after his body was found, but prosecutors who spent two years investigating this case believe Jade is telling the truth, at least about this.

Speaker 10 Did you have any doubt that these photos actually existed?

Speaker 3 We talked about that, but we had no doubt.

Speaker 7 We found that photo on Tom's laptop showing that it had been used as a wallpaper, showing that it had been on his laptop since August of 2019. So we had no doubt that these photos existed.

Speaker 10 In March of 2023, three months after she was convicted of Tom's murder, Jade was in court for her sentencing and listened as a local pastor shared his memories of Tom and the butterfly farm.

Speaker 26 I still remember Tom and wish I could drop by for a smile.

Speaker 26 To ask a question about plants or butterflies or just to recharge those batteries that keep seeming to wear down as I get older.

Speaker 6 I believe my life is richer because I knew Tom,

Speaker 14 Stephen Jaggs.

Speaker 10 Jade's biological father, who had not spoken publicly since she was charged, put the focus back on Tom's betrayal.

Speaker 14 Firstly, I can only imagine what she went through when she found out that Tom, her stepfather, a person she trusted, that she called dad, was a sick, perverted individual.

Speaker 14 All I can say is this fight is not over. I truly believe that an injustice has taken place.

Speaker 10 Jade Janks spoke that day, too.

Speaker 31 Tom came into my life when I was just a little girl and exerted influence during that early stage of development when I was still figuring things out.

Speaker 31 Unfortunately, that influence manifested itself into appropriate touch, coercion, reckless behavior, and complete violation of what I now realize is years of psychological manipulation.

Speaker 31 All of this came crashing down on me when I found hundreds of naked photos of myself and his computer. It's all chattered.

Speaker 10 Jade did not tell this story during trial, and we can't verify it. Jade still insists she didn't kill Tom and only admits to covering up his dead body.

Speaker 37 I'm still picking up the pieces, and my sincerest hope that over the next few years, I can put the pieces back and heal from this trauma. I'm sorry I didn't act the way I was supposed to that day.

Speaker 17 I think about it every day since.

Speaker 22 She will be committed to the Department of Corrections.

Speaker 10 The judge sentenced Jade to serve 25 years to life.

Speaker 10 And as the prosecution looks back on a difficult and emotional case, they say it could have easily turned out very differently.

Speaker 7 She could have gotten away with murder. Had she carried out her plan and the police did a welfare check and found Tom laying in his bed, she would have got away with murder.

Speaker 10 Join me Tuesday for post-mortem from 48 Hours, where we'll dive even deeper into today's episode and answer your questions about the case.

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