Keana Barnes

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Kiana Barnes lived a life of privilege.

Her family was actually very affluent.

She never wanted for anything.

She went to private schools, got the best of everything.

And she had big plans.

She had dreams of being a model, being famous.

But somewhere along the way, her plans changed.

Children who come from really affluent backgrounds, they want to live like their friends or be something that they're really not.

So they rebel.

Although in Kiana's case, she didn't just rebel, she ran away.

She didn't have a place to live.

She was on the street.

Which was how she met PJ Jennings.

He was like big brother to all of us.

If we needed anything, he was there.

And he was there for Kiana, too.

He was trying to help Kiana.

But did she want more than just his help?

She told me she loved him very much.

Was PJ in over his head with this damsel in distress?

He told us that she was in some kind of trouble.

And would his generosity cost him his life?

He was lying on his bed with a single gunshot wound.

The shocking discovery would leave the police wondering, was Kiana trying to outrun a dark secret from her past?

She just said, there's no way I'm going back to jail.

And was PJ the only victim?

He was stabbed up on his arms, back, neck, all over.

The result was a massive international manhunt.

It was almost like a scene from a movie.

They had U.S.

Marshals lining the runway with rifles.

But could they catch the fugitive in time?

I'm like, are you kidding me?

Really?

Here we go again.

New Orleans, Louisiana, March 27th, 2003.

It was the dawn of another lovely laid-back day in the Big Easy.

Laissez Le Bente Roulette is really kind of the phrase that best describes New Orleans, let the good times roll.

And that's really how everybody here is.

You have Mardi Gras, you have Bourbon Street, and the food is unmatched.

It's just kind of a great place to visit.

However, the tourist traffic in the French quarter wasn't all that New Orleans was known for.

New Orleans was once considered the murder capital of the world.

You can pick up any newspaper, you can turn on any news channel, and you're going to see, you know, at least three or four a week.

At some point, our murder rate was almost 500 murders a year.

And that lazy spring morning, New Orleans would add one more victim to the talent.

It was a little after 11 o'clock when the New Orleans police received a 911 call from Algiers, a storied old neighborhood across the Mississippi from the French quarter.

It's just like a little drop of New Orleans on the other side of the river.

The woman on the phone was calling about her son, 30-year-old PJ Jennings, an Air Force sergeant who worked at the air station a few miles downriver from New Orleans.

She had been calling him and calling him and not getting any answer.

And he had not reported to work for two straight days, which was very unusual for him.

However, PJ's mother wasn't calling to report her son missing.

Earlier that morning, she'd gone to his apartment in Algiers.

She went to the apartment manager and he went inside and he came back out and told her that she needed to call the police.

And when officers responded, they found PJ Jennings dead in the apartment.

He was lying on his bed with a single gunshot wound to the head.

It was no suicide either.

Instead, it looked as if PJ's death was cold-blooded murder.

There was a pillow that had a bullet hole in it.

It's like it had been used as a silencer for the gun.

But was PJ the victim of a random crime, fated to become another depressing statistic in the city's crime rate?

Shootings, murders, robberies, that's something that happens pretty commonly.

Or was there more to PJ's murder?

According to the dead man's family, one person might know something, a young woman named Kiana Kiana Barnes, who'd been living with PJ the past few weeks.

He told us that she was in some kind of trouble.

He was trying to help her.

But had PJ's help cost him his life?

And where was Kiana?

Had the trouble she'd been fleeing finally caught up with her?

Born in 1979, New Orleans native Kiana Barnes had a solid upper-middle-class childhood.

Her father was, you know, former military, he's working for one of the cable companies.

Her mother was a children's book author.

She grew up with the best of everything.

She never wanted for anything.

She went to private schools.

She was a happy child in a close-knit family.

She was very charismatic, very bubbly, outgoing.

And even in grade school, she appeared to have everything going for her.

She was studious and smart.

Kiana was very beautiful and petite.

And she had big plans for herself.

She had dreams of, you know, being a maho, being famous.

But in her teen years, Kiana's ambition suffered a setback.

From what I understand, there were issues in the home.

Issues that started when Kiana's parents objected to her choice of friends.

Typically, I've seen that children who come from really affluent backgrounds, they want to live live the street life and be something that they're really not.

So they rebel.

Kiana didn't just rebel though.

By the time she was 16, she had left home.

She was living with different girlfriends and other people that she'd meet.

And to rebel further, Kiana left her Tony Private School and transferred to public school.

She went to pretty rough schools.

She went to schools that were near areas of town that were not so affluent.

She did manage to graduate but put off going to college.

And in the meantime, New Orleans offered plenty of ways for pretty young women to pay the bills.

She did dabble in

stripping.

Bourbon Street in general, every block, you know, has a place where you can go see the exotic dancing.

However, the 18-year-old had only been dancing a short while when she met Orleans Parish Sheriff's Deputy Clinton Lewis.

I was just getting off work and had my uniform on.

I stopped at a gas station on the way home and she was hanging out there with her girlfriends and apparently her come from a club.

Started a little brief conversation with her and so forth before you knew it,

you know, we were living together.

Clinton convinced Kiana to quit stripping.

I thought that you know I could bring her back to you know being the nice little girl she was.

According to Clinton, things started out well.

We've been together for about a year or so, and we decided to start building a life together.

And in 1999, Kiana and Clinton married.

She enjoyed, you know, cooking, she enjoyed cleaning, she enjoyed keeping the books,

everything you could really want from a wife.

But in the end, just as she'd rebelled against her parents, Kiana resisted Clinton's effort to turn her into his idea of a perfect wife.

Over time,

we just had domestic problems

over and over and over.

And on multiple occasions, their arguments grew heated enough that the police got involved.

When we would have domestic disputes,

sometimes it would be a neighbor to call.

By the end of 2001, 22-year-old Kiana had moved out.

We weren't living together, but we were still seeing each other.

And from what I understand, she...

was back and forth with friends and so forth.

And Clinton figured that it would be best if they both moved on.

I knew for sure that if we continued to have domestic problems that my career was going to suffer and

first he was pretty mad about it but it wound up being well that's okay.

I found me somebody new.

The man Kiana had found was an Air Force sergeant named Perry Jennings Jr.

He was seven years older than Kiana, and no one who knew him called him Perry.

He's always been called PJ his entire life, seeming small.

That's what we all call him.

And unlike Kiana, he'd had a stable, uneventful childhood.

He liked things like chess and reading.

He was quiet, and he was very into computer games and this type of things.

After high school, PJ had joined the Air Force.

He got away from here.

and he got to see some of the world and met different people and was exposed to different things and that's when he kind of started to be a little bit more outgoing.

And by 2001 he was still in the Air Force living in Algiers and serving as a sort of mentor to his little brother and his circle of friends.

PJ was like the quintessential big brother, like, you know, super cool.

ladies man, all that sort of stuff.

He was like big brother to all of us because he was older than us.

He was the person that we called for advice.

If we needed anything, he was there.

Which more or less explains how he became friends with Kiana Barnes.

When we first met Kiana, he brought her to my home and he introduced her to me and he kind of told me that, well, she's someone who's in trouble now and needs help.

She was a beautiful girl, pretty girl, but she looked like she had been sleeping on the streets or something, like she was homeless almost.

Kiana spent a few weeks sleeping on PJ's couch.

He said that Kiana was in a relationship or she was in a marriage and she was being abused, and she came to stay with him for a little while.

But despite what Kiana had said to her ex-husband about finding someone new, they were only friends.

Thought it was odd, but PJ's friend, I guess our friend, you know, I mean, it wouldn't be rude or anything.

He was just helping her out until she could find somewhere to stay.

It appeared to be just what Kiana needed.

And over the next year, she would crash on his couch more than once, staying a few weeks each time.

So when PJ's mother found him murdered in his bed, people would soon be wondering: did Kiana's troubles have something to do with his death?

Coming up, will finding Kiana provide the answers the police desperately need?

She couldn't have been involved anymore.

Maybe she was just scared and ran.

Or will they uncover a dark secret from her past?

He had been stabbed multiple times.

On March 27, 2003, the New Orleans police responded to a 911 call from the Algiers neighborhood across the river from the French quarter.

We got a call over the radio.

that

the 4th District had a death and they were requesting the assistance of a homicide investigator.

The victim was 30-year-old PJ Jennings.

His mother, brother, and father weren't able to reach him for an entire day.

That's something that PJ, you know, was not known for.

So PJ's mother wanted to check on him.

She went to his apartment and after there wasn't an answer at the door, PJ's mom went to the building manager to check and see if he could open the door for her.

And when the building manager let her in, they'd found PJ lying in bed with a single gunshot wound to the head.

It was an eerily peaceful scene.

He was tucked in.

It looked like he had just gone to lay down and someone had snuck up on him while he was sleeping.

None of the neighbors had heard a thing, though.

The theory that we had was that sometime during the night, the perpetrator had taken a pillow, used the pillow to muffle the sound of the gunshot.

But why had someone executed PJ in his sleep?

It didn't appear to be a robbery.

When you walked in, it was just his normal apartment.

Everything was neat and clean.

There was absolutely nothing out of place.

You know, it didn't look like the place had been burglarized.

In fact, the killer had left two things behind that thieves would almost always take.

When I spoke with the NOPD officer on the scene, his only response to me was, well, we found weapons and we found drugs.

But did the drugs have something to do with PJ's murder?

The police seemed to think so.

They brought up like maybe it was drug related or do you think he might have sold drugs?

And I was like, come on, man.

Like a $5 bag a week.

My brother's not a drug dealer.

He had a regular job.

You know, he worked for everything he had.

Instead of drugs, PJ's family and friends told the police that they suspected his death had something to do with a troubled young woman he knew, 23-year-old Kiana Barnes.

Through the interviews of the family members, I was able to ascertain that they were involved in a relationship together.

Not sure if it advanced to the point of being sexual in nature, but they were involved in a relationship.

According to family and friends, PJ had met Kiana after the breakup of her first marriage and briefly offered her a place to stay.

He was trying to help Kiana.

It seemed like she needed a friend and he wanted to be a friend to her.

I was like, you know,

she couldn't have been involved, you know, or maybe she was just scared and ran.

Or was it more than that?

When the police ran Kiana's name through their computers, they made a surprising discovery.

We did a name check and it came back that she was actually wanted for a second-degree murder.

The victim was a man named Jimmy Shepard.

41 years old when he died, Jimmy had lived in a trailer park on the eastern outskirts of New Orleans in a community called Irish Bayou.

If you leave New Orleans right before you get to Lake Ponch Train, going to Slidell, Irish Bayou is on this side of Lake Ponch Train.

At the foot of the long bridge that spans the lake, there's little to Irish Bayou but a trailer park and a truck stop, which is where Jimmy met Kiana in February of 2002, shortly after she'd moved off of PJ's couch.

Kiana came in late at night with a broke-down car.

And Jimmy, much like PJ had earlier, took sympathy on the pretty 22-year-old and made her what he thought was a generous offer.

Pull your car over here, stay the night on my couch, what kind of thing, and we'll try to work on your car and get it going.

With nowhere else to go, Kiana accepted the stranger's help.

Jimmy is a little cocky, but when you really get to know him, he's more like a teddy bear.

And true to his word, Jimmy did fix Kiana's car, but it took a little while.

And in the interim, she stayed on his couch before eventually moving into his bedroom.

Within a week, maybe two weeks, I'd have noted that they had intimate relations.

He was kind of a little bit rough around the edges.

It could have just been a rebound situation for her.

Whatever the attraction was for Kiana, there was no doubt about what Jimmy saw in her.

When I first met her, she was a sweet girl, intelligent girl.

He was proud of her because he was 41 and she was 20, so he thought he had a little trophy there.

But in less than a month, Jimmy was dead, and his trophy was gone.

It was around 6 a.m.

on the morning of April 2nd, 2002, when a co-worker stopped by Jimmy's trailer to give him a ride to work and made a horrifying discovery.

The house was tore up and all, and Jimmy was laying there in his blood.

He was dead.

Obviously, a murder victim.

He had been stabbed multiple times.

He was stabbed up on his arms, back, neck, all over.

Jimmy's coworker called the police and Jimmy's brothers, who told the investigators about Kiana.

The night before, me and Jimmy was out drinking together, and she called them.

She wanted to hang with him that night.

Whether Kiana had killed Jimmy, his brothers couldn't say.

I'm not real sure what happened that night because I wasn't there, but the way the house looked, it was a bad fight.

But they did have one more lead to give the investigators.

Jimmy's van was missing.

They didn't even notice the van gone to.

I went out there.

And while the police put out an APB on the missing van, his brothers essentially did the same.

I got on my cell phone, called around, called some friends of mine, and got everybody riding around looking for his van.

And by 8.30 a.m., the brothers' impromptu search had produced results.

Somebody said, oh, I see Jimmy's van over here at this car wash.

The car wash was in the town of Slidell, on the other side of the Lake Poncha Train Causeway from Irish Bayou.

And at a women's shelter a few blocks from the car, the police found Kiana.

She got caught at the battered women's shelter.

It was one of those things like, bam, boom, bang.

Questioned by New Orleans investigators at the Slidell police station, Kiana told the officers that she and Jimmy had been drinking beer in his trailer the night before, but they had gotten into an argument and that things had soon gotten out of hand.

During the confrontation, Kiana got really upset and she stabbed him.

She confessed to the murder.

Although according to Kiana, it wasn't murder.

She claimed that James tried to rape her and that her actions were completely in self-defense.

After she stabbed him, her adrenaline was probably up and she was shocked that she did it or surprised or even scared.

And so she just got in the car and fled.

Once across Lake Poncha train, she ditched Jimmy's van at the car wash and walked to the women's shelter.

Although it appeared that she'd made a pit stop along the way.

She used his credit card at a liquor store on the way to the battered women's shelter.

Since she had just confessed to stabbing Jimmy, the police placed Kiana under arrest and took her back to New Orleans, despite her claim that she'd killed him in self-defense.

They arrested her for second-degree murder.

But as Jimmy's brothers would be dismayed to learn, just two months after her arrest for murder, Kiana Barnes walked out of jail.

It was like a kick to the gut just when you think that the legal system is going to take care of this and there will be justice.

You're like, she released?

Like, oh my God,

how is she released?

The answer appeared to be a bureaucratic mix-up, one that just might have cost P.J.

Jennings his life.

Coming up, the search for Kiana becomes an all-out manhunt.

Everyone was like, wait, is she really that crazy?

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On March 27, 2003, New Orleans police found 30-year-old PJ Jennings dead in his apartment in the city's Algiers neighborhood.

There wasn't any signs of a struggle.

It appeared, initially from the crime scene, the victim was shot while he was asleep.

PJ's family and friends suspected that his friend, 23-year-old Kiana Barnes, may have had something to do with with the murder.

And the investigators were inclined to agree.

At the time of PJ's murder, she was actually wanted for another murder.

In fact, less than a year earlier, Kiana had confessed to stabbing her boyfriend, 41-year-old Jimmy Shepard.

They arrested her, and they brought her to New Orleans Parish Jail.

And they released her.

We was all upset.

You know, we've been to court several times on her, and then when they released her, we was all very angry.

It was all an unfortunate mix-up.

Once a person is booked into

the corrections system here in New Orleans, the district attorney's office says 60 days in order to file charges.

And somehow or another, the district attorney's office didn't do what they were supposed to do in time.

And by the time the district attorney's office caught their mistake, it was too late.

By the time they wanted her back,

they couldn't find her.

Once out of jail, Kiana had drifted, staying with friends and in women's shelters, until in March of 2003, she'd reconnected with her old friend, PJ.

He told me that she didn't have a place to live.

She was on the street.

And so he offered her to stay with him for a little while.

Kiana and PJ had become friends back in 2001, shortly after her marriage fell apart.

But they'd lost touch shortly before Kiana took up with Jimmy.

Despite that, when she called needing his help, PJ came right to her aid.

Of course, when he had the opportunity to help this beautiful woman, who wouldn't?

Although, according to PJ's friends, their relationship remained strictly platonic.

There was nothing romantic about that relationship that we knew of.

PJ may have had reason to keep his distance, too.

PJ was aware that she had this outstanding warrant for, you know, murder.

His father knew about it too, after his son told him that Kiana was staying with him and hinted that she was in some sort of legal trouble.

It's easy nowadays you just run someone's name.

And so then I contacted PJ and I said, PJ, do you realize who this young lady is?

And he said, what do you mean, dad?

And I said, I did a search on her and I found that she was involved in a murder incident, you know, not long ago.

And he said, oh, yes, she told about that.

According to PJ's father, Kiana had told his son the same story she'd told the police at the time of her arrest.

He said that the guy was attempting to rape her and that she had defended herself.

And in light of that, PJ had been encouraging Kiana to do the right thing.

He was attempting to get legal aid for her and try to get her to turn herself in.

However, Kiana's history may not have been the only reason PJ hesitated to get involved romantically with Kiana.

One of my good friends was dating PJ.

So Kiana kind of just was there and he enjoyed her company.

She was a very nice girl and they just had fun together.

Although there may have been trouble brewing, according to what Kiana told PJ's father one night when they came over for dinner.

She told me that she had feelings for my son.

She told me she loved him very much.

Later on, I pulled PJ to the side and I said, PJ, do you know how Kiana feels about you?

And he was like, what do you mean, dad?

PJ's father told him what he'd heard and then urged his son to clear things up with Kiana.

I told PJ, you might need to, you know, exhibit some caution as far as this young lady and be careful in how you deal with her.

He felt confident that he had everything under control.

But had his confidence been tragically misplaced?

That's what PJ's friends and family believed.

They were pretty sure that Kiana had some role in PJ's death.

It was just kind of one of those feelings that you get in your gut.

It was one of those things where you get goosebumps and you just don't know why.

It was just one of those feelings.

She killed my brother.

She killed my brother.

I just kept repeating.

I couldn't believe

that because I just

talked to him.

I just laughed with him.

I just, you know,

it was,

it just didn't, didn't seem real.

You know,

you go from, you know, seeing somebody

probably

every other day, every few days, and then

gone.

For nothing.

For no reason.

Kiana was gone too.

She'd fled just as she had done after killing Jimmy.

We noticed that the car was missing.

Could the police catch her before she killed again?

In a repeat of Jimmy's murder, Kiana had also taken PJ's wallet, cash, and credit cards, which, just like before, she didn't hesitate to use.

We were able to track down the places that PJ's credit card was used.

Everyone was like,

wait, is she really that crazy to where she would leave and use his credit cards?

However, unlike Jimmy's murder, this time, Kiana had a longer head start on the investigators.

And based on the credit card records, she'd fled much farther.

They actually monitored her activity from New Orleans to Baton Rouge to Lafayette to Houston.

And from Houston, she'd gone to Brownsville, Texas on the Rio Grande.

So it was pretty easy for them to pick up the trail that she was actually headed towards Mexico.

She didn't intend to get caught either, based on what she was buying with PJ's stolen credit card.

In Houston, she she bought three different color hair dyes.

She was obviously going to try and change her appearance, slip across the border, and disappear.

And a few days later, after Texas authorities found PJ's car abandoned near Brownsville, it appeared that she had done just that.

She actually did successfully get across the border.

But did that mean she'd gotten away?

We were able to get the United States Marshal Service involved.

And once the Marshals took the case, it didn't take them long to track Kiana down.

She was still using PJ's credit cards at this point, and she was using those credit cards to wire money to herself, and that money went to the location where she was hiding out in Mexico.

The trail ended in Zita Cuaro, a remote mountain town two hours west of Mexico City.

She was hiding out in one of these little roach motels down there.

And early on the morning of April 30th, 2003, while Kiana was asleep, A team of U.S.

marshals and local police gathered outside her motel room.

They kicked in in the door right before dawn, caught her by surprise.

Placed under arrest for the murders of Jimmy Shepard and P.J.

Jennings, the 23-year-old fugitive was extradited back to the U.S.

They had flown her via a conair airplane to New Orleans.

The aircraft came to a stop.

And it was completely surrounded with U.S.

Marshals and other law enforcement with rifles, shotguns.

The back of the plane opened up and she was let off the plane and handcuffed and shackled.

It was almost like a scene from a movie.

They had U.S.

Marshals lining the runway with rifles as she came in.

Not that the dramatic reception made much of an impression on Kiana.

She came off the airplane like there was nothing wrong.

She came off with an attitude like, hey, you know, what's going on?

Why am I here?

You know, I haven't done anything.

Even when she got in the car, you know, I advised Kiana of her rights, and Kiana did say she wouldn't be in jail long.

At the time, the detectives dismissed it as bluster, a captured fugitive putting on a brave face.

You hear stuff from people all the time, you know, that I'll beat this charge or, hey, they don't have anything on me.

So we all laughed it off.

But would Kiana have the last laugh?

Coming up, the prosecution uncovers another violent secret from Kiana's past.

She fired like six shots at the guy.

But will it be enough to keep Kiana in jail?

They had a person missing.

At the end of April 2003, U.S.

Marshals arrested Kiana Barnes in Mexico for the murders of Jimmy Shepard and Perry P.J.

Jennings.

Once the U.S.

Marshals got involved, it was pretty easy to extradite her from Mexico so that she could be indicted.

Once she was released into our custody from the Marshals, she was brought back to police headquarters to the homicide division, and I explained her rights to her as per Miranda.

And she

basically sat back in a chair and said,

I have nothing to say.

Not that her silence did much to help her.

Once back in New Orleans, she was indicted on second-degree murder charges stemming from the death of Jimmy Shepard.

My brother's murder, I think it was a snap at the moment.

Today, I think they was drinking.

Probably got to arguing.

This relationship had issues.

It was very tumultuous.

And its end had been unspeakably violent.

It was very gruesome and very bad.

I mean, she stabbed him in the face, she stabbed him in the neck, she stabbed him in a torso.

The knife went straight through his body, go in one side and out the other side, 27 times.

And while Kiana claimed that she had killed Jimmy in self-defense, she couldn't say the same about PJ Jennings' death.

With PJ's case, this was a well-thought-out murder.

She used the pillow as a silencer.

He was sleeping.

But why would Kiana want to kill PJ in the first place?

The police and prosecutors figured there were two possibilities.

The first was the fact that PJ had been urging Kiana to turn herself in for Jimmy's murder.

PJ was trying to, you know, get money together, say, hey, let's do this legally.

Let's get you an attorney.

Let's fight this charge.

Was it possible that Kiana hadn't been willing to take the risk?

The police couldn't rule it out.

I think she just said, there's no way I'm going back to jail.

Or was there another motive behind the murder?

His friends wondered if it might be the fact that Kiana had feelings for PJ, but he was seeing someone else.

One of my good friends was dating PJ.

I know that he and my friend were together that particular evening.

If, you know, it was a case where she was jealous and she wanted to be with him in that way, that would make sense as to why she would have done what she did.

It appears as if Kiana had this attitude as if, I can't have you, nobody can have you.

And the prosecutors may have had a witness willing to back that up.

One who also casts considerable doubt on Kiana's claim that Jimmy had attacked her first.

Her ex-husband, the New Orleans cop, he was on TV talking about how they fought.

If she didn't get her way, there was,

for lack of a better term, there was temper tantrums.

There was threats.

Threats that Kiana was more than willing to follow up with action, according to her ex-husband.

She lashed out many times and slapped you know at me or hit me or threw things.

And he claims that during one fight she'd even hold a gun.

She put it in my face and I lunged at her and when I pushed the gun up it shot right over my head.

That was the first shot and then we kind of struggled back and forth with the weapon.

Pow, pow.

He's lucky.

You know, she fired like six shots at the guy and didn't hit him.

He.J.

Jennings hadn't been so lucky, though.

She fired one shot into his brain.

So, if there's any consolation to me, then he didn't suffer.

That fact did little to mitigate the charges Kiana faced, though.

This was something that had been previously planned out.

This was first-degree murder.

And if she was convicted, the consequences could be dire.

She had committed a capital crime.

However, based on her behavior at a preliminary hearing, the fact that she faced a possible death sentence didn't seem to have much impact on Kiana.

There was no remorse.

There was nothing.

It was

carefree.

At one point, she actually looked me square in the eye and laughed.

Kiana may have had one reason to be confident.

Her family.

Despite Kiana kind of living a floater lifestyle and kind of being out on the streets, her family was actually very affluent.

And while she had been semi-estranged from them since high school, when the family found out that she had been arrested on murder charges, they rallied to her support.

They hired the most expensive defense attorney in the area.

Still, considering that Kiana confessed to stabbing Jimmy Shepard and fled to Mexico with PJ Jennings' stolen credit cards, an acquittal appeared out of the question.

At some point,

he sat down and said, hey, look, my client's willing to plead.

The deal was worked out in secret.

Neither of the families of the victims seemed to be notified that there was a plea deal in place.

Although PJ's family did make it to court on March 10th when Kiana entered her plea.

The family friend found out about it and informed us of what was going on.

And when they heard the terms of the deal, it appeared that Kiana's high-priced defense attorney had been worth every penny.

What the district attorney and

her attorney had come up with is that she had pled guilty to a lesser charge of manslaughter on both murders.

PJ's family was outraged.

How do you give someone like that a plea deal with a history of violence?

And it only escalated.

You know what I mean?

Every time got worse.

You know, she tried to hurt her husband.

She did kill Mr.

Shepard.

brutally, even more cold and calculated with my brother.

I don't understand how there was even an option of

a plea deal, you know.

And if the manslaughter plea wasn't shocking enough, they said the sentence that the prosecutors agreed to was a slap on the wrist for Kiana and a slap in the face for the victims' families.

She would be given seven to 25 years, which means that she would be eligible for parole after three and a half years.

Three years for killing someone.

You know, what type of of deal would that be?

That's like giving people permission to go around and shoot people in the head and say, hey, no big deal.

PJ's family and friends weren't the only ones who felt that way either.

The judge was not happy with

the deal that had been brokered by the district attorney office.

And once we told him that we had not consented to the deal, the judge said he would not accept the deal.

The guilty pleas to manslaughter would stand, but the judge imposed the maximum penalty that the law allowed.

The judge changed the plea deal on the spot to 25 years with no parole.

Her family

really came unglued.

They screamed and yelled and boo-hooed.

But there was little they could do.

After entering her plea, Kiana was transferred to the Louisiana Women's Correctional Facility.

Kiana was sentenced to St.

Gabriel's Prison outside of New Orleans.

Perhaps bitter about her plea bargain's unexpected outcome, life in prison was initially tough for Kiana.

She had nothing but trouble when she first got to prison, you know,

fight after fight.

But eventually she managed to fit in.

She cut off all her hair.

I think she got like a tattoo on her face.

She even became popular.

She could be very charismatic.

and know how to work the system, know how to work her term and get the things that she wants.

But was she adapting to life behind bars?

I heard she had girlfriends and stuff in prison or was kiana merely biting her time

it was new year's day 2013 nine years into kiana's 25-year sentence when the guards at louisiana st.

gabriel prison made a shocking discovery during their morning rounds they went to go count

and they had a person missing.

It was Kiana.

The housing unit that she was in was maybe three to four women per pod.

So

she had evidently crushed up some type of drug, placed it in food, and then fed her roommates.

And once they were out asleep, she had broken the window, was able to climb onto a catwalk.

And then from that catwalk, she was able to hop over the razor wire fence.

And none of the guards realized that the 33-year-old inmate was missing until head count the following morning.

She left

a little dummy in the bed, you know, fake body.

She did get tangled up in the fence because

there was blood and piece of the sweatshirt that she was wearing on the

fence.

The guards immediately brought in bloodhounds.

They were able to track her some way and lost a trail.

Less than halfway through her prison sentence, Kiana had escaped.

Coming up, Kiana flees justice again.

I'm like, are you kidding me?

Really?

Can the police find her before it's too late?

It was only a matter of time that she would kill someone else.

On New Year's Day, 2013, 33-year-old Kiana Barnes escaped from Louisiana's St.

Gabriel prison.

Everybody was like, oh my God, this girl has escaped.

And what are we going to do?

This woman has been convicted of killing two people already.

The fear was that it was only a matter of time that she would kill someone else.

Arrested in 2003 for killing PJ Jennings and Jimmy Shepard, she had pled guilty to manslaughter in 2004 and received a 25-year sentence.

Nine years into her sentence, Kiana decided that she had had enough.

When I found out about it, I'm like, are you kidding me?

Really?

Here we go again.

It wasn't Kiana's first time on the run.

Previously, after killing PJ Jennings, she had fled to Mexico.

They immediately thought she was going to head to Mexico again and just disappear into that country.

The Louisiana authorities were doing everything they could to catch Kiana.

There was national media coverage as well as local media coverage.

Her face was posted everywhere.

And law enforcement agencies across the country were on the lookout, including the U.S.

Marshal Service.

The Marshals put every resource they had, distributing flyers, news media, and took control over that investigation.

But would the exhaustive effort be enough to catch Kiana before she claimed another victim?

It was Monday, March 25th, 2013, not quite three months after Kiana's escape.

Two LAPD officers were patrolling the section of the city known as Skid Row.

The Skid Row area in downtown Los Angeles is kind of where a lot of transients hang out.

And when the officers spotted a homeless woman outside a store, they stopped to issue a routine ticket for loitering.

The cops pull up and ask people for IDs.

She didn't have her ID.

And they said, well, you don't have an ID and put you back in the police car.

At that time, she just kind of broke down.

She's like, you know, you got me.

It was Kiana Barnes.

When they called her, it was a relief to the whole family.

But it was very bad news for Kiana.

She had already been serving a 25-year sentence, and she was given additional time on top of this for her escape.

Although, that's still not enough for her victim's friends and families.

Someone who could walk up to a sleeping person and shoot them the way that she did deserves to be in jail for the rest of her life.

I don't think she should be released from jail because

she done murdered twice.

I think she's a risk against society.

And at least one of the former police officers that put her in prison to begin with agrees.

I really think she's a sociopath.

It was like two different people.

How can this mild-mannered,

very well-spoken young lady commit such heinous acts.

It just still, even when I think about it, it just doesn't go together.

So I felt like this must be someone who changes and becomes a different personality.

It's like whenever she's rejected, she just snaps.

Kiana Barnes is scheduled for release in 2026.

She will be 47 years old.

After Kiana's escape, one prison official was fired and a second resigned.

It's all a light-hearted nightmare on our podcast, Morbid.

We're your hosts, I'm Alina Urquhart, and I'm Ash Kelly.

And our show is part true crime, part spooky, and part comedy.

The stories we cover are well researched.

Of the 880 men who survived the attack, around 400 would eventually find their way to one another and merge into one larger group.

With a touch of humor.

Shout out to her.

Shout out to all my therapists out there.

There's been like eight of them.

A dash of sarcasm and just garnished a bit with a little bit of cursing.

That motherfucker is not real.

And if you're a weirdo like us and love to cozy up to a creepy tale of the paranormal, or you love to hop in the Way Back Machine and dissect the details of some of history's most notorious crimes, you should tune in to our podcast, Morbid.

Follow Morbid on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts.

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