A Toxic Relationship

This episode is brought to you by Progressive Insurance.

Fiscally responsible.

Financial geniuses.

Monetary magicians.

These are things people say about drivers who switch their car insurance to Progressive

and save hundreds.

Visit Progressive.com to see if you could save.

Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates.

Potential savings will vary.

Not available in all states or situations.

I'm continuing to tell my sister's story and to memorialize her with music. She was a really exceptionally warm and sincere person.
She liked having us brothers. She wanted nothing more in life than to just have a family and be a mother.
Mark took joy in everything. He was just such a great personality.
Julie was the first real girlfriend. Mark was really enamored with Julie.
You could just see it. He loved her a lot.
I'm Florence Jensen, Mark's mother. Julie and Mark were a model couple.
Starting off, it was a very good marriage. They loved each other, they had a good time.
And then came this revelation of this affair. Julia said I had an affair with this guy.
She was so remorseful about it. She just felt terrible.
Never told us about it, but he was devastated. I felt something was amiss.
She just seemed unhappy. He knew that she had been depressed.
He knew she had the problems. She's the one that told him, there is no relationship between you and I.
She wanted the kids, the house. She wanted it all, and she didn't want a husband.
December 3, 1998, I was summoned by the Pleasant Prairie Police Department to this residence. My name is Robert Jamboyes and I'm the special prosecutor.
She was 40 years old, a healthy person. She's dead.
It was just the most unbelievable thing I could ever hear. It certainly was not death by natural causes.
We considered that it could have been a suicide. Julie had written a letter.
I'm writing this on Saturday, 11-21-98 at 7 AM. I know he's never forgiven me for the brief affair I had with that creep seven years ago.
In my view, it was almost like her last will and testament. She was planning a way of getting rid of her husband without a divorce.
Read this. This is the one that has been your wife.
Last meeting for Officer Radcliffe. The day Mark went for that police interview, he couldn't believe it.
He just kept reading it and reading like, oh my god, what in the world is this? I think he finally realized that, my gosh, they think I killed my wife.

If Mark Jensen didn't murder Julie and she committed suicide,

I just wanted to be able to prove it.

It wasn't murder.

It wasn't even suicide.

It was to set Mark up for attempted murder,

and she was not supposed to die.

The Letter, tonight's 48 Hours Mystery. Julie lived in Pleasant Prairie.
Pleasant Prairie, Wisconsin. It's about an hour north of Chicago, on the western shores of Lake Michigan.
It booms in the summertime. But when the Wisconsin winter settles in, the village becomes a cold, bleak place.
No one who lived here was quite prepared for what happened on December 3, 1998. My pager went off.
I got called to the scene. And they told me, the ME is saying it's probably natural causes, but we have some questions, so you might want to come out.
Bob Jamboys, then the Kenosha County District Attorney, had a lot of questions about what he found inside the house on Lakeshore Drive. 40-year-old women don't just drop dead for no reason.
Julie Jensen, a wife and mother of two small boys, was still in her bed where her husband Mark had found her. So you did consider that she might have committed suicide? We absolutely considered that right from the very beginning.
I was called the night of her death and told that she was dead and I was devastated. Julie's brothers, Paul.
You know, I didn't know she was sick, I didn't know anything. Patrick.
You get a call like that, it's like a baseball bat to your back. Mike.
It's a surreal thing that Julie's not with us. And Larry.
A demise that quickly, it was a shock. Julie's husband, Mark, also struggled to explain his wife's sudden death.
He appeared somewhat shaken. He was rambling on about some drugs that she had taken recently, Ambien and Paxil, and talking about some kind of a drug interaction.
We didn't know what to think. It was a mystery.
And it was a mystery to Mark. Mark's parents, Florence and Dan Jensen.
Mark was an emotional basket case. He was in tears.
He could hardly stand up. He didn't know what to say or he didn't know how to talk.
Mark had been with Julie for 20 years since they had been high school sweethearts. I think she thought she could depend on Mark and he just thought she was pretty and she was sweet.
They started college together too but Julie dropped out just one semester short of a degree in nursing. She did great with all the book work.
She had difficulty because she got very close to the patients and emotionally just she couldn't take it. What drew Julie to Mark, say her brothers, was his drive, a young stockbroker on the move.
She met this guy who kind of was success-driven and I think maybe she saw something solid in that. That is Mark and Julie's wedding picture.
It was a beautiful wedding. The only thing that marred it was the fact that Julie's mother was in the hospital.
On April 13, 1984, the night before Mark and Julie got married, Julie's mother June suddenly passed out. Our mother collapsed at the wedding rehearsal and we didn't know what the problem was.
And as it turned out, she was under alcohol withdrawal. So it was very, very disappointing for Julie.
She told me her mother had ruined everything that was important to her in her life. And if she had a wedding, her mother was going to ruin that too.
And of course she did. It was the first time that the Jensens realized that Julie's mother was battling alcoholism and depression.
Was Julie afraid of ending up like her mom? Yes, very much so. As she got older, she could feel that she was becoming more like her mother, and I'm sure her episodes of depression were part of that.
She was sweet and gentle outwardly, but she has had a problem of depression, as her family did and as her mother did. She was always camouflaging her mental illness.
It was very difficult to decide that she was mentally ill or just peculiar. Shortly after Mark and Julie's first child David was born in 1991, their marriage was rocked by a revelation.
She said I had an affair with this guy. I don't remember if she said one night or one weekend.
She was so remorseful about it. She just felt terrible.
Well, what was your reaction when you heard that Julie had had an affair? Disappointment in her. Very definitely.
There's always disappointment when you learn about an affair. Julie filed for divorce, but changed her mind after she and Mark went to counseling.
I never pried. She never offered details of home domestic unhappiness or trouble.
She never spoke ill of Mark. They had another son, Doug, in 1995, but the Jensen marriage was strained.
By the fall of 1998, Mark began telling friends that his wife was depressed.

He was overwhelmed by this depression. Our family knows nothing about depression.
Julie went to see her family doctor, who prescribed an antidepressant. Two days later, she was dead.
There was no report from the medical examiner as to the cause of death. With no obvious signs of injury and an inconclusive autopsy, the cause of Julie's death could not be determined.
She was miserable. She was distraught.
Isn't it possible that this was just a very low time and she took her life? No, it's not. It's just impossible.
There's no way. Julie had never talked about suicide, and she didn't leave a note.
But as it turns out, she did leave a letter. My life's greatest love, accomplishment, and wish.
My three D's. Daddy, Douglas, and David.
What did you think when you read that letter? It was always very difficult for me. I immediately cried and

it was Julie's voice. A lot of people tolerate ordinary.
Ordinary bathrooms, kitchens, entryways.

Well, not on your watch.

If you're a pro, you've got a new partner in town.

Floor & Decor. From tile to wood to stone, Floor & Decor has more styles and jawblock quantities of Schluter, Mape, Laidacrete, and other brands pros trust.

Come see a whole new way to wow with Florin Decor.

Coming soon to Gilroy.

I noticed she was acting very nervous.

She was wringing her hands and acting like she was afraid

to talk to me, but she wanted to talk to to me I just could see that in her face in the fall of 1998 Julie Jensen blurted out an unusual story to a woman she barely knew her son's third grade teacher Therese DeFaz. I think my husband's going to kill me.
And I said, I went, what? That's a very serious accusation to make. Julie also shared her fears with Ted and Margaret Voight.
When did Julie actually say to you, I think my husband's trying to kill me? I would say around three weeks, three weeks before her death. Julie's accusations shocked the Voids, who have been the Jensen's next-door neighbors for seven years.
Did they seem happy together? Yes, they did. They seemed very happy.
But Ted says, in August of 1998, after taking a new job, Mark Jensen seemed to change, becoming very critical of Julie.

He's telling her she's a bad mother, she's a bad influence on the kids.

Two months later, Julie said Mark was acting suspiciously, searching the web for poisons

and writing bizarre notes, which Julie photographed.

She started saying things like, I found some notes next to his computer that had lists of drugs and syringes and other paraphernalia that I think might be something he would try to use on me. Was there a side of you thinking she can't be serious? I didn't know what to think.
I was worried sick about her. When Julie said that her husband's looking up poisons, well, what did you think? To tell you the truth, I didn't know what to think of it.
But by early November, Margaret and Ted had become very concerned about Julie. She got very sick.
And what did she say? He's trying to kill me some way, somehow. My husband said, take the boys, leave.
You need the money. I give you money.
And she's like, no. And Therese suggested Julie go to a woman's shelter.
Again, she said no. He will find out where it is.
And he's also always said to me that if I ever tried to leave him, he would make it look like I was crazy. And I wouldn't get to see the children.
On November 21st, Julie handed Ted Voigt a letter to give to the police if anything happened to her. Did you read the letter? No, I didn't.
When's the last time you talked to Julie? December 2nd, which was Wednesday. That's when Julie called Margaret to say she wasn't feeling well.
I keep asking her, please let me help.

Let me do something.

And she keeps saying no.

I keep saying Mark is being good to me.

Mark is taking care of me.

And that was the last time I spoke to her.

Her voice was shaky, like she was drunk.

A little more than 24 hours later, Julie was dead. The Voids took Julie's letter to the authorities.
Assistant District Attorney Angie Gabrielle. I took this picture and I'm writing this on Saturday.
Julie's letter referred to the photo she took of a list. The same list she had mentioned to Therese DeFazio.
This list was in my husband's business daily planner, not meant for me to see. I don't know what it means, but if anything happens to me, he would be my first suspect.
I pray I am wrong and nothing happens, but I am suspicious of Mark's suspicious behaviors and fear for my early demise. That letter reinforced the suspicions that I'd had the night before.
District Attorney Bob Jamboyes grew even more suspicious when experts examined the Jensen's home computer. Someone had tried to erase its history, but not everything was gone.
The computer was a treasure trove of inculpatory evidence. First of all, it showed us the motive because there were the emails between Mark and Kelly.
We did know that Mark had a girlfriend on the side at this time. Kelly Labonte is a woman Mark met at his new job, and the emails spelled it all out for investigators.
IDLY means I do love you and then she's got IDLY too and then I-M-Y and I-W-Y, I miss you, I want you. Not exactly what you would be saying to a colleague at work.
Absolutely not. And that wasn't all Jamboys found on the Jensen home computer.
He was looking up ways to kill his wife on the computer. Just as Julie had reported to The Voice, the computer's history revealed search after search for various poisons, including ethylene glycol, the main ingredient in antifreeze.
It's easily obtained. It doesn't take much to kill someone.

Mary Mainland, a physician, is the Kenosha County Medical Examiner.

50 milliliters, I think, could have killed her easily.

A couple swigs from a can of soda.

But wouldn't somebody notice it if somebody is pointed in juice or in some drink?

It has a sweet taste, and it's easily disguised. Most of the ethylene glycol cases she's investigated were, in fact, suicides.
But Dr. Mainland believes this was a murder, and that Julie was poisoned sometime Tuesday night, two days before she died.
Because she started to exhibit symptoms in the overnight hours. And what were those? Acting drunk.
But at first, toxicology tests showed no sign of ethylene glycol in Julie Jensen's system. Frustrated, investigators confronted Mark Jensen with Julie's accusing letter.
Read this. This is the one that I've done with your wife.
Left me in a box. Mark seems a little stunned.
But finally, He had to do something to cause her death, Mark. Mark denies he had anything to do with Julie's death.

Like the police, Jamboys believes Julie's words prove that she was murdered.

I would never take my life because of my kids.

They are everything to me.

But others read the same words very differently.

What do you think this letter was?

It's premeditated.

It was planned in advance in years.

It was a very good thing. But others read the same words very differently.
What do you think this letter was?

It's premeditated.

It was planned in advance in years.

It was fabricated.

It was crafted.

You're saying that Julie wrote this letter to set up Mark?

Well, among all the other things she did, yes.

She wanted the kids, the house, and everything, and she wanted it all.

And she didn't want a husband. You really think Julie was that calculating? Yes.
The evidence is abundantly clear that Mark Jensen, in a very cold and calculated fashion, murdered his wife. It is just the most cold-blooded case I've ever seen.
It takes more than two years and three labs, but tests finally reveal a small amount of ethylene glycol in Julie Jensen's stomach. You do not believe she committed suicide? Out of the question.
Assistant DA Angie Gabriel and Bob Jamboyz, now a special prosecutor. You believe she was murdered? This is a poisoner, a poisoning murder case.
And poisoners are a different breed of murderers. In March of 2002, Mark Jensen was arrested and charged

with the first-degree murder of his wife, Julie.

I absolutely do not believe he did it.

It was open to stop there.

Mark's parents believe the police have it all wrong,

that as a trained nurse, Julie is the one who knew all

about drugs and poisons. How do you believe Julie died? She died through misadventure, and we have the evidence to prove it.
Dan and Florence Jensen say that Julie, after going on the home computer to do research, took the small amount of ethylene glycol herself, but never intended to die. You're saying that Julie Jensen didn't mean to commit suicide.
Oh, God, no. And that she wasn't murdered, but that she basically was trying to make it look as if she was being poisoned by Mark so that he would go to prison and she would end up with the kids in the house.
Yes. She miscalculated as to what it was going to take, how much time she had left.
She had been starving herself. She was anorexic.
She lost control and she died. And even Julie's letter, they say, was part of her plan.
It was part and parcel of several years of her framing and planning how she was going to do this. She needed witnesses besides the poisons.
She made sure that she gave this letter to the next door neighbor. She needed to establish people who would be witnesses on her behalf.
Listen to the odd wording, says Florence. I fear for my early demise.
Early demise is a literary term. It reminds me of Jane Austen.
It doesn't sound real to you.

It's not real.

It is phony.

So the fact that Dan Jensen or Florence Jensen say they believe something, that carries no

weight with me at all. They're both a couple of liars.

But the Jensens aren't the only ones who think Julie may have orchestrated her own death.

A forensic pathologist hired by Mark Jensen's defense called the letter contrived, unbelievable, and self-serving. What matters is what jurors will think of the letter, and they may never see it.
By law, Mark Jensen is entitled to confront his accuser in court, but Julie Jensen is dead. So before trial, Jensen's attorneys argue that the letter should be thrown out of court.
And shockingly, the judge agrees. The letter means everything.
Julie's brothers are devastated. From the beginning of this case, the letter has been Julie's voice.
He kills the witness, and then he complains because he can't cross-examine her. That's the definition of chutzpah.
Jamboyes decides to fight for the letter. His appeal, which takes another five long years, goes all the way to the Wisconsin Supreme Court.
We fought hard to get this letter into evidence. By God, her words should be heard by that jury.
The state Supreme Court agrees. Julie's letter can be used to trial, but only if the state can show at a preliminary hearing that there's enough other incriminating evidence to point to Mark Jensen as the killer.
Almost nine years after Julie Jensen's death, free on bail, Mark is now married to his lover, Kelly Labonte. As the hearing begins, he is looking and feeling confident until suddenly a surprise witness takes the stand.
Your Honor, the state calls Ed Klug to the stand. Ed Klug, who used to work with Mark, Could you point to him? now claims that three weeks before Julie died, Mark told him he was looking up ways to kill her.
He started talking about websites that you could go to, different poisons that would be non-detectable in a normal autopsy. Wait a minute, suddenly he talks about going on websites on how to kill his wife? Yes, and it was the oddest conversation that I've ever had.
Kluge and Mark Jensen were in St. Louis at a company convention.
They'd been drinking. He put a lot of thought into how he was going to get rid of her, cover it up and make it look like it was a suicide or that she was a sickly, unstable woman.
Did he seem serious? You know, I never really saw anything in Mark that he wasn't serious. Yet Klug never reported the conversation to the police.
So you find out that Julie Jensen dies a month after Mark Jensen tells you he's looking at ways to kill her. Do you say anything to the police then? I didn't at that point, no.
Why not? You know, at that point I was busy transitioning my business and, you know, just... Wait a minute, though.
I mean, your life was busy, but we're talking about a possible murder. Right, right.
You know, I guess I just didn't, at that point, come forward. But you never tell the police.
No. You never tell the DA's office.
No. But you never told them you had a conversation with Mark about killing his wife.
Right, right. I was afraid to get involved.
In fact, Klug only became involved because one of his co-workers tipped off the prosecutor. Klug was then ordered to testify.
He wanted to stay out of this. He didn't want to get involved.
Not exactly heroic was he? Well I'm not putting him up for hero of the year. Do you believe that Mark did discuss with Ed Klug that night? No.
The research he was doing or the idea of killing his wife? No. What do you think of Ed Klug? You can't really rely on a story that comes out from drinking in the middle of the night.
And I find that the bond, as we currently said, is not appropriate. But the judge believes Klug and suddenly raises Jensen's bond to more than a million dollars.
In the event that that bond is not posted, he'll be committed to the custody of the sheriff. Unable to pay it, Mark Jensen hugs his son goodbye and is taken to jail to await trial for murder.
Some people follow the rules, but where's the fun in that? I'm Soraya and this is Rule Breakers, the podcast where we celebrate the rebels, the misfits, and the ones who make their own way. Every week, I sit down with the biggest rule breakers in sports, entertainment, and beyond to talk about the wildest moments, toughest lessons,

and why breaking the rules might just be the key to success.

Follow and listen to Rule Breakers with Soraya,

an Odyssey podcast available now for free

on the Odyssey app and wherever you get your podcasts.

So many what-s, you know.

What if I would have called her that day and said, let's have lunch.

What if I would have stopped by your house?

I can't even imagine being pushed to the point of writing a letter like this. She had to have been just at wit's end.
Very desperate, I think. Julie Jensen's brothers struggle to understand why Julie never shared her fears with them.
The defense says Julie planned this whole thing. She was going to commit suicide and punish her husband with it because he was having an affair.
Isn't that a possible reason why she shouldn't tell any? It's not. Julie would never, ever try to get back at her husband and leave the kids she loves with the guy she hates.
It doesn't make sense. But will it make sense to 12 jurors? than nine years after Julie's death, Mark Jensen goes on trial for her murder.
And at the heart of the case is her letter. The judge will allow it in as evidence.
And I'm writing this on Saturday, November 21st, 1998. If anything happens to me, he would be my first suspect.
Special prosecutor Bob Jamboys wastes no time letting Julie speak. But he also begins the trial with a bombshell.
Jamboys no longer believes that poison alone killed Julie Jensen. She was poisoned with ethylene glycol and it may have killed her except we now have very good reason, very good evidence that what actually killed her was Mark Jensen sitting on her in that weakened state, shoving her face in a pillow and suffocating her and that's what I believe happened.
Julie Jensen was suffocated? why after more than than nine years with Jam Boys, suddenly change his theory of how Julie died? Because of this man, Aaron Dillard, and what he has to say. Mark Jensen murdered her.
How do you know that? Mark Jensen actually told me what he had done. Tell me about meeting Mark Jensen.
We just started talking and just had a general conversation in the beginning. Just months before the trial, Aaron Dillard suddenly came forward with a shocking story.
He says Mark Jensen confessed that he had killed his wife. That at first, he tried to spike her drink with a small amount of ethylene glycol.
So he gave her juice to drink and that was when he told me at that point it was mixed with the antifreeze. He was laughing at it.
He laughed about her acting drunk and jumping around on the bed. At that point, I started getting to thinking that, wow, you're really a piece of crap.
You know, you're laughing about this lady dying. You had just poisoned her with antifreeze.
But according to Dillard, the poison didn't work. What did he do when he came home and found that she was breathing better? He said that he got really nervous.
He got scared. Did he tell you why? Well, she was breathing better and he didn't think she was going to die.
And why would that scare him? Because the kids wanted to take her to the hospital. And if she wasn't better by the time he got home,

that's where they were going to go.

That's when Dillard says Mark Jensen took matters into his own hands.

That's at the point where he rolled her over and he sat on her back

and actually pushed on her neck into the pillow.

Does he tell you when she dies?

He said, that's when I killed her.

Then did he tell you what happened?

Said she died.

Dillard's story makes sense of something

that has troubled investigators all these years.

The odd position of Julie's face when her body was found.

What do you mean her nose and mouth were pushed to one?

Oh, the nose was off to one side.

The mouth was off to one side. Like she'd been shoved into something.
People don't sleep like that. So she was put in this position.
Somebody put her like this. The prosecution still believes that Mark Jensen poisoned his wife's drink.
Would you like to try a Swift of ethylene glycol right now? I have no objection. Please take a taste of it.
And in a rather startling demonstration, the Kenosha County Medical Examiner tastes a minute amount herself just to show the jury why Julie wouldn't have noticed she was drinking a poison. So how did that taste? Sweet.

But Dr. Mainland has changed her opinion on what actually killed Julie Jensen.
What is your opinion to a reasonable degree of certainty as to the cause of Julie Jensen's death? The cause of death is ethylene glycol poisoning with probable terminal asphyxia. All because of this man.

But there is a serious problem with Aaron Dillard. And how did you meet him? I met him in the Kenosha County Jail.
That's right. Aaron Dillard is a jailhouse snitch with a long record of fraud.
He's got seven criminal convictions? We think more. We're not sure.
And this is your star witness? I would not buy a used car from him. But you're gonna put him on the sand and rely on winning over a jury in this murder trial on the guy that you wouldn't buy a car from? You want to know why the jury's gonna believe him? Because he's telling the truth.
You promised to begin telling the truth when you started dealing with these prosecutors, right? Yes. You would agree that you're a liar? Sure.
Was. Defense attorney Craig Albee goes after Dillard, who was released from jail in exchange for his testimony.
Mr. Dillard, while you were in the Kenosha County Jail, you saw Mark Jensen as a way to get out of jail, right? Yes.
And your plan to use Mark Jensen to get out of jail has worked pretty well, hasn't it? Yes, it has. The defense says that this whole story is just your get out of jail free card and that you made the whole thing up.
I'm pretty good and that's all I can say is to make up a story that I was told and have it fit so well with everything that they had. And Dillard has at least four believers, Julie's brothers.
Listening to Aaron Dillard describe the cold, sickening manner in which Mark smothered her just broke me up. It was just very hard to listen to.
Why don't you ask Mrs. Jensen to come up, please? To establish a motive for murder, the prosecution calls Kelly Jensen, Mark's former mistress, now his wife.
As soon as he added somebody available, as soon as he had somebody on tap to replace her, bang, she was out of the picture. But the defense says the affair wasn't a motive for murder.
It was the reason for suicide. It's why Julie took the ethylene glycol herself and tried to blame it on Mark.
Someone who's concerned about being poisoned, it's very difficult to get them to drink anything. Treated many paranoid patients.
Someone was really trying to kill her and she knew it in advance. Why in the devil would she then drink it? A defense psychiatrist testifies that Julie was suicidal.
It just doesn't make any sense.

That, to me, suggests the state of mind of a person attempting suicide.

Julie's own doctor concedes she was depressed.

Is there any other way that you'd describe her?

She seemed to be depressed and distraught and almost frantic, actually.

Frantic?

Mm-hmm. Yes.

And that's when another surprising witness is called, Julie's own brother, Patrick. I had an episode when I was 16 years old, yes.
Reluctantly, he admits to the jury that at age 16 and angry at his father, he cut his wrist. I took a razor blade and I carved ever so slightly.
Which one? My left wrist here. And do you still see that? Yeah, I see a scar.
Where is it? Right here. It's right there, okay.
Did you actually intend to kill yourself? I have to say yes because I wouldn't hurt myself if I didn't. Was there a side of you concerned that because of something you did so long ago,

that could make the jury find Mark not guilty?

Yeah, I was very afraid of that.

Mark Jensen is the only person who really knows what happened to Julie Jensen.

And is it your desire that you not testify in this case?

Yes. But he decides not to take the stand in his own defense.
Mark, there's no question about that. And the only person that could have done that was you.
The jury will have to rely on what he told the police nine years ago. What can you tell me to disprove that? That's what I'm trying to figure out.
Then how can I stop breathing, Mark? I don't know. I got it.
go. I think she wanted to die.
She was so depressed. It's like banging your head against the wall for nine years.
You kind of get used to it. The mystery of Julie Jensen's death has taken so long to resolve that both sides are ready for some answers.
You think maybe the pain isn't as great as it is, but it's even worse. For nine years I've been trying to tell a jury about what happened to Julie Jensen.
She expresses her pain. In closing, Special Prosecutor Bob Jamboyes uses Julie's letter to convince the jury that she was poisoned.
She wanted the world to know the truth. She wanted you to know the truth.
At the time she wrote these words, Julie Jensen had no motive to lie. While the defense argues that the letter is the work of a sick woman who wanted to punish Mark Jensen.
She wanted a trail left behind that pointed the finger at her husband. Determining the truth was rougher than any juror could imagine.
Eight of them and one alternate say they didn't believe the prosecution's new theory that Julie Jensen was suffocated. How do you believe Julie Jensen died? Ethnic life, always me.
And suffocation? No. Which means they also didn't believe the prosecution's star witness, Erin Dillard.
Did anybody believe Erin Dillard? No. No.
And even after seven weeks of trial, they still found Julie Jensen herself a mystery. We were held up trying to determine if she had enough depression in her to take her life.
For three long days, the jurors were split. The idea of a hung jury just stuck sideways in my throat because then there's no closure for anyone.
But finally, the jury has a verdict. The defendant will rise and face the jury.
We, the jury, find the defendant, Mark D. Jensen, guilty of intentional homicide of the first degree trial and trial and trial.
Guilty of first degree murder. What do you think Mark was feeling inside? Devastated.
He knew he hadn't killed her. He just thought that the jury would see that.
And of course they didn't. And when you heard the word guilty.
I was relieved. It was kind of like a big weight had been lifted off.
In the end, Julie turned out to be the most important witness. The jury believed her letter was truly a cry for help.
How important was the letter? To me, it was extremely important. It was extremely important.
Then we took her picture of the day planner with a Post-It note and put beside it and re-read the letter.

This list was in my husband's business daily planner,

not meant for me to see.

And it said, like, nicotine, booze, bottle.

Julie in her letter said, I do not smoke or drink.

You could see where she was taking the things from the Post-It note

Thank you. bottle.
Julie in her letter said, I do not smoke or drink. You could see where she was taking the things from the post-it note and incorporating those in her letter.
I will

not ever take my life. The reference to the razor blades.
She was leaving a clear road

map to her murder. Here's this jury, just common people, you know, and they finally, they set the letter right by the list, which was the way Julie intended it to be, and then her letter just simply became a response to this list.
And it all made sense. Less than a week later, Mark Jensen appears for sentencing.

I hope the court shows the same mercy and compassion that the defendant had shown to our sister Julie.

I ask today for the maximum. No mercy.
No parole for Mark Jensen.

But also in court is Mark and Julie's oldest son, David, now 18.

And there is another letter.

This is a very good thing. But also in court is Mark and Julie's oldest son, David, now 18.
And there is another letter, this time written by David and his brother, read by the defense attorney. After the death of our birth mother, Julie, he took care of us.
If we ever need help, advice, or just someone to talk to, we know we can go to him for anything. He cares deeply for his family.
In light of this, we request that our dad be eligible for parole as soon as possible. We love you, Dad.
Thank you. For the first time, Mark Jensen shows emotion.
But the judge is unmoved. Your crime is so enormous, so monstrous, so unspeakably cruel, that it overcomes all other considerations.

Mark Jensen is sentenced to life in prison without possibility of parole. I loved hanging around with my sister.
Patrick's loving tribute to his sister, an album dedicated to her life.

It's for my family to share in remembering Julie.

You know, I believe that now there can be

some emotional healing start to take place.

And we can finally remember Julie in the pictures,

who she was, a great mother, a humble, sincere person. In April 2021, a Kenosha County judge vacated Jensen's conviction after the Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled he deserved a new trial.
In 2023, Jensen was convicted for a second time of killing his wife with antifreeze,

and by suffocation, he was sentenced to life in prison without parole.