48 Hours - The Death of Tom Merriman

Episode Date: June 25, 2024

A woman discovers explicit photos of herself on her stepfather’s computer. Soon after, he’s found dead. Jade is a likely suspect, but did she do it? Tracy Smith reports.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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and even your overall well-being. And you can enjoy Audible anytime, while doing household chores, exercising, commuting, you name it. There's more to imagine when you listen. Sign up for a free 30-day Audible trial and your first audiobook is free. Visit audible.ca. In 2014, Laura Heavlin was in her home in Tennessee when she received a call from California. Her daughter, Erin Corwin, was missing. The young wife of a Marine had moved to the California desert

to a remote base near Joshua Tree National Park. They have to alert the military. And when they do, the NCIS gets involved. From CBS Studios and CBS News, this is 48 Hours NCIS. Listen to 48 Hours NCIS ad-free starting October 29th on Amazon Music. Sheriff's communication, dispatcher 5538. Well, I've got a situation. Last night, a friend of mine asked me to come over. Last night, a friend of mine asked me to come over. She said that she had possibly killed her stepdad.

I don't know if she really did this. What exactly are your reports? It sounds like she killed this guy. It was the first day of a new year. The Sheriff's Department received a call from a guy 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. Jade was very cool, very popular.

I could not believe what they were saying that Jade did. Tom Merriman is Jade's stepdad. 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. She was always there for him. Detectives knew they had a phone call from her good friend that she confessed to murdering Tom Merriman, so they got a search warrant.

We don't have to prove motive, but we want to show a motive. The photos. The photos. She accidentally bumped his computer, and the screensaver came out. The screensaver is a nude photograph of her in the shower. She was able to find a lot more nude photos of her. Hundreds. Hundreds.

It was the most violating, just awful, gut-wrenching feeling ever. I felt sick. I couldn't even touch my own skin. She was beyond freaked out. She's sleeping with a knife. She is scared for her life. Yes. Did you love Tom?

Yes. Tom love you? Yes. Did you want your stepfather dead? Did you stand over him with a plastic bag and pull tight to keep him from breathing? No. Did you wrap a cord around his neck? No.

And did you strangle him? No. 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. That's right. So your big bomb... Fizzled. It was gone. Tracy Smith reports. Jade Jenks and the Secret Photos. San Diego County, California.

An idyllic place. Most of the time. 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. That frightened phone call came in New Year's Day 2021.

The caller said his one-time girlfriend may have committed a murder. The sheriff's department received a call from a guy that said, my friend confessed to me last night that she murdered her stepfather. San Diego County Deputy D.A. Jorge Del Portillo. He told deputies, hey, I don't know if what she's saying is true. I didn't see him, but this is something I had to tell the police. The alleged victim was a 64-year-old man named Tom Merriman. He lived here.

I liked him. I thought he was very nice. 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, more milkweed, more milkweed. A butterfly farm. I'm a gardener and I love butterflies. Pat Flanagan also likes butterflies. He was Tom Merriman's business partner out at the farm. He was my best friend. Did he become kind of a butterfly expert? Oh, he is a butterfly expert. You say he is?

Yeah. You still talk about him in the present tense? Yeah. I do. It was right here on December 31, 2020, that Tom Merriman was last seen alive. Ramona and George saw him in his stepdaughter's SUV in the driveway. And he was sitting on this side, the passenger side, with his feet out,

and this walker out in front of him. And he looked like hell. 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. He looked awful. I don't even know if he knew me. But at the time, it just seemed like maybe he got sent home from the hospital heavily drugged. That's all we knew. That's all we knew. And then George saw Tom's stepdaughter, 37-year-old Jade Jenks. 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. On this day, Jade had just driven him home. And he called her his daughter. He called Jade his daughter? Yes. They seemed close. And they seemed very close. She was fixing dinner for him every night.

She seemed to take care of him. What did you think of Jade? I thought she was a very pretty woman. Jade had done some work in Ramona's apartment. She was an interior decorator. That's Jade. She can be a tomboy and a girly girl all in the same day. 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. Heather Pierce grew up next door to Jade in San Diego County. Jade was very cool. I loved being around her. Jade was 13 years older. She's definitely a little more than a big sister and a little less than a mom. Her energy is just very strong. Loving and caring and genuine, and so when you're around her, like, you feel good.

She also knew Jade's stepdad, Tom Merriman. I think she always just loved him and cared about him. 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. This time, they only saw Jade in the driveway. She was standing by a pile of trash and boxes. I saw her out at the side here with the boxes and cartons. A little while later, there 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. Where was the pile? Right about here. See where that dirt is right there? Yeah, like right in this area here? Right here. It was a few hours later when law enforcement pulled into their driveway.

I'm scared to death. I don't want to be a part of this. They came to investigate that strange phone call, the one that claimed Tom Merriman had been murdered. 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. They didn't find Tom, but they did see his stepdaughter. When they saw Jade Jenks driving out of her driveway,

they pulled her over, brought her in for questioning, and asked that very question, where is Tom? Jade said she was cold, so they gave her a blanket. We're trying to find Tom. Do you know where Tom is? No. His family hasn't seen him for over 48 hours, so. He just got released from the hospital yesterday.

OK. Did you see him yesterday? Yeah, I picked him up 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? No. Well, can you tell me other than he's just missing? We don't know where he's at.

We're trying to find him. Eventually, they let Jade go, but there was still no sign of Tom. Officers spent all night combing through his apartment looking for clues. 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. There's a wheelbarrow there, some boxes, some bags. She removed a trash bag from that trash and immediately saw the silhouette of a man. And there he was, Tom Merriman. Tom Merriman laid dead and buried.

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Never seen that. I've never seen a case where a body was buried under a pile of trash in the driveway. The apparent crime scene was smack in the middle of the driveway of this lush compound, just a mile from the beach. 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. As soon as they found the body, they knew we have our suspect,

and they made the arrest. On the morning of January 2, 2021, Jade Jenks was arrested and charged with Tom Merriman's murder, but things were about to get complicated. She lawyered up and didn't want to answer any more questions. So authorities continued to work the case, starting with that phone call. It sounds like she killed this guy.

That call had come from that friend of Jade's, a man named Adam Siplak. He told police she'd called him to her apartment, and then she asked him for a favor. Adam Siplec may not have seen the body that night, but eventually, he did tell police that Jade confessed to him, that she knocked Tom out with an overdose of medicine and then strangled him. 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. But that's not what happened. I was actually there for the autopsy.

Assistant DA Teresa Pham, who led the investigation, talked to the medical examiner. So what they found was, unfortunately, not a lot of physical evidence. Right. So you have this supposed confession of her saying she strangled him, but no evidence of strangulation. That's right. 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. 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. Certainly it's possible, but the evidence belied that notion. This was no accident. But even if the autopsy didn't point to strangulation, investigators say other evidence clearly pointed to murder. Jade's cell phone was a goldmine. It was a goldmine. Jade's phone was full of texts. How would you categorize those text messages?

Suspicious. Incriminating. A plan. According to prosecutors, that plan was to get rid of Tom Merriman, one way or another. 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. Jade says she was cleaning up his apartment when she found something. 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 and it woke up and on the screensaver is a nude photograph of her in the shower. And there was more, much more. 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.

These were photos that she took willingly with her partner at the time. Some were of her in the shower, naked. These were photos that she took willingly with her partner at the time. Some were of her in the shower, naked. Authorities don't know how Merriman got those pictures, but Jade says she never gave them to him. And prosecutors say she panicked. In her words, she was beyond freaked out. That's what she wrote to a friend, that she couldn't shower alone, that she was vomiting at just the idea of looking at a shower

based on what she discovered. She's sleeping with a knife on the nightstand just in case he comes early home from the hospital. According to prosecutors, that's when Jade launches her plan. How? One of her friends connects her with a guy, a guy the prosecutors called the Fixer. 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. The so-called Fixer was a man named Alan Roach. Who is Alan Roach? 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.

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. He was the fixer. Is Alan a hitman? He is not a hitman. What's important is, what does Jade think Alan is? Prosecutors say Jade wanted her fixer to help her get rid of Tom. She had a plan that she stuck to. The plan was murder.

The plan was murder. It was December 2022, two years after Tom Merriman's body was found under that pile of garbage, and Jade Jenks was about to stand trial for his murder. And let me just ask you flat out, did Jade Jenks murder her stepfather, Tom Merriman? Jade has maintained her innocence throughout this entire incident. Tom Merriman. Jade has maintained her innocence throughout this entire incident. Jade's attorney, Mark Carlos, he insists this was not a murder and says Jade had no reason to kill her stepfather.

Finding nude photos of yourself on a stepfather's computer would make you angry, you know, might make you break off relationships with him. But enough to kill somebody? I don't think so. He says Tom's death was an unfortunate accident brought on by his poor health and self-administered prescription drugs. 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 his death. At trial, Jade was supported by family and friends, including her biological father, Steve Jenks, and her longtime friend, Heather Pierce. Tom was a mess, an absolute mess, for a long time. There's no way 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. Prosecutors Jorge Del Portillo and Teresa Pham were worried the jury might feel that Jade herself was the victim. She's a sympathetic defendant. She is. I mean, she found naked photos of herself on her stepdad's computer. Call Jade James. Jade takes the stand to tell the jury what happened in her own words.

My name's Jade Jenks. Jade says that ever since she met Tom when she was a teenager, they maintained a strong bond. It's hard to come by somebody you just feel that you can trust completely, and I did feel that way. I referred to him as my father, and he could call me his daughter. And I did feel that way. I referred to him as my father, and he could call me his daughter. Which is why, Jade tells the jury, it was so devastating to find those photos on December 23, while Tom was in the hospital and she was cleaning his apartment. I bumped the mouse on his desktop computer, and it shook the screen awake.

And I looked, and there's a picture of female breasts on the screen. And I looked, and I thought, those are my breasts. I just, I couldn't believe it. I was in complete shock. Jade describes finding even more on Tom's computer after that. There was a rolling screen, like a slideshow of pictures of me taken over the years. What type of pictures were they? They were naked photos. Did you ever give naked photos to your stepfather? No. Did you ever show him naked photos of yourself? No. How did he get these photos? Jade doesn't know.

These were photos that Jade had taken of herself. Jade and various boyfriends. Had you ever made any sexual overtures toward your stepfather? No. Did you tell him that you had nude photos of yourself? No. And you never showed him anything similar to those, correct? No, he was my dad.

Tom was still in the hospital, but Jade says she didn't feel safe. And you were afraid that he was going to come back and find out that you had found the photos, yes? Yes. And you were worried about how he might react toward you. Yes. And he lived next door to you. Yes. And he lived next door to you. Yes. And that's why Jade says she got in touch with Alan Roach, who worked in security, the day she found those photos. So why did you think that you needed somebody like Alan Roach? I was scared. I mean, when I first saw the photos, I couldn't even use the bathroom. I just felt so disgusting.

I couldn't shower either. I was just scared. I was scared of being nude and vulnerable. And I just wanted somebody to just look out for me and make sure that I was safe. Over the next few days, Tom was moved from the hospital to a rehab center, and Jade felt she had to act. I can't continue just living next door to him and not feeling safe or feeling like this. I mean, I have to do something.

When you say, I needed to do something, did you need to kill him? No. I wanted Tom to just go away and leave me alone. According to Jade, Alan was planning to come over after she brought Tom home to help her confront him. I wanted Alan to basically, you know, explain to him this is not okay, or I could explain it, but Alan just be there just in case. Your plan was to... 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. He started calling at about 6.45 in the morning,

and he was asking me to get him codeine, which I don't really understand. He says that he hasn't, I think, slept, and he wants to rest. Jade took Tom out of the rehab at a little after 11 a.m. He had a bag of medication with him, including Ambien. And remember, the autopsy says Ambien is what killed him. Jade says almost as soon as Tom got into her car, he also helped himself to her prescription medicines. He kept saying, like, did you get me a painkiller?

I was like, is this it? Oh, here. And then he just kind of took it. Jade says Tom 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. I was just getting started on a house project, so I just went to go get supplies and kind of shop around. Jade bought gloves, towels, and a nylon cord, and some spray paint.

She says these items were for a painting project. Typically, I lay plastic down and kind of enclose it so that I'm not getting paint on all the foliage. 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. I parked in the parking lot. She says she was worried about him and drove him back to the rehab for help. I just explained, you know, my dad's just been released and something's wrong. You need to bring him back. They wouldn't let me

inside, though. They're pretty adamant with COVID. I couldn't go inside. Jade returned home with Tom, but says she was still not able to get him out of her car. 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. Have you ever met Brian Solomon before? No. Jade says Brian wouldn't help her with Tom and left right away. So Jade reached out to her friend Adam Siplak and asked him to come over. Adam arrived later that evening.

I just said, I was just in tears. I had said that, you know, I want to get him into my house or into his house. Jade says Adam quickly got upset and left without helping her. I had said that, you know, I want to get him into my house or into his house. Jade says Adam quickly got upset and left without helping her. 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 said that she had possibly killed her stepdad. 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. 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. I made sure he was comfortable. He had pillows, and I'm trying to remember. Yeah, I mean, he had a blanket. 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 Ms. Merriman?

Yes. What did you feel? I tried to pull his leg, and his pajama pant lifted, and his leg was cold. Shanks, did you think Tom Merriman was dead at that point? I knew he was. How do you think Tom died? Chat now on Facebook and X. Introducing the best idea yet, a brand new podcast from Wondery and T-Boy about the surprising origin stories of the products you're obsessed with and the bold risk-takers who brought them to life.

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After Jade told the jury how she found Tom's body, her own attorney challenged her. Did you think about calling 911? I was scared too. Why were you scared? I didn't want to get blamed. I mean, I just... I was the one that picked him up. I didn't want to get blamed for killing him. And she tried to explain what she did with his body.

I continued to follow him around. I still wanted to get him into his house. I mean, I didn't know what else to do. I panicked, so I put the blanket over him. I got empty boxes and just kind of stacked it, made it look like just like a pile of debris. Jade may have left Tom's body in the driveway, but she says she never meant him harm. I mean, did you want your stepfather dead?

Oh, shanks. Did you grab him with your own two hands? No, I never. And did you prosecutors told their version of the story. We lied to the police about where Tom was. I didn't. I just asked for an attorney, and I kept asking for one. You didn't want the police to know that Tom died in your car. I wasn't trying to hide it, but I didn't want to go alone and tell them that. Prosecutors said Jade was lying to cover up her plan. The plan was to drug him, suffocate him, and stage it to look like an overdose. 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. The package of zolpidem, which is the Ambien sleeping pills,

that had the defendant's DNA on it, but not Tom's. And I think it's important that the jury heard that, that it was Jade Jenks' DNA on that zolpidem pack. 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? Turns out it was packed with texts, messages that they say outlined her plan to kill. 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. When someone says, I dosed the hell out of him, you would agree with me that that means someone gave another person a whole lot of drugs, right? I guess it's a poor phrasing. 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. Stopping at Dixieland to stall. So she was stalling for the drugs to really kick in and make him asleep and unaware of what she was about to do. She's stalling to see if this guy, Alan Roach, can come by and help her commit the murder. And remember those supplies Jade said she picked up

for a painting project? According to the prosecutors, they were actually Jade's murder kit. She goes to the store and buys this murder kit. Zip ties, gloves, rope, and towels. Prosecutors say up to that point, Jade's plan was on track. But by a little afternoon,

things started to go wrong. You could see from the text messages that she was in a panic. 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. This plot was a total mess, and it fell apart right away.

Finally, the fixer texts her back. He says he can't come, but he's sending someone he knows, that guy named Brian Solomon. Okay, so the plan is Brian will bring Tom into the house. Yeah. 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. Brian Solomon quickly left the house without doing anything.

And soon, Jade is back texting the missing fixer again. At 3 p.m., you texted Alan, he's waking up, and I'm not sure how much longer I can control my time. Is that right? Yes, we lost you, Alan. You texted Alan, he's waking up, and I'm not sure how much longer I can control my tongue. Is that right? Yes, we lost to Alan. You texted Alan, he's waking up and getting way more aggressive, so it's way more real. True?

True. I think, again, I was just panicking and trying to urge Alan to come over. You would agree with me that this looks very suspicious, this text message? Oh, yeah. Jade texts Alan again. I can't keep a kicking body in my truck. Now that we know Tom was found dead in his driveway under a pile of trash that you put together,

that this text message looks very suspicious. You'd agree with me, right? I mean, I would. Yes. It's now around 4 p.m. Alan has disappeared. At 4.08 p.m., you texted Alan, he's up, I guess I'm on my own. True?

True. How do you think she killed Tom? 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. She has no other choice. It's too late to back out now. Investigators even found a plastic bag in Jade's car. It had her DNA on the outside and Tom's on the inside. 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? How could Jade possibly have strangled him to death? That presented a big difficulty for us strategically of going forward in trial. Right. So you have this supposed confession

of her saying she strangled him, but no evidence of strangulation. Right. 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. 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. 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. It would not leave physical evidence. 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. So it's less than a handshake to kill. 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. 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. 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. How'd you get the wheelchair in your car if Tom was still in there? It's big. The trunk was up. Tom was kind of, you know, his legs were akimbo when he was laying down. And I kind of hoisted it up into the back window of the 4Runner and rolled down.

When you were doing this, at this point, did you know Tom was dead? I did, but I didn't want to know it yet. 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. Correct. 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. 4.30, when she was pulling out of her driveway, 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. The very last text message on her cell phone was to Alan Roach saying, lose my number.

What does that say to you? Get rid of the evidence. What do you make of Jade's text messages? See more evidence from the case at 48hours.com. Hot shot Australian attorney Nicola Gaba was born into legal royalty. Her specialty? Representing some of the city's most infamous gangland criminals. However, while Nicola held the underworld's darkest secrets, the most dangerous secret was her own. She's going to all the major groups within Melbourne's underworld, and she's informing on them all. I'm Marsha Clark, host of the new podcast, Informants Lawyer X. In my long career

in criminal justice as a prosecutor and defense attorney, I've seen some crazy cases, and this one belongs right at the top of the list. She was addicted to the game she had created. She just didn't know how to stop. Now, through dramatic interviews and access, I'll reveal the truth behind one of the world's most shocking legal scandals. Listen to Informant's Lawyer X exclusively on Wondery Plus. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts or Spotify. And listen to more Exhibit C true crime shows early and ad-free right now. As a kid growing up in Chicago, there was one horror movie I was too scared to watch. It was called Candyman.

But did you know that the movie Candyman was partly inspired by an actual murder? Listen to Candyman, the true story behind the bathroom mirror murder, wherever you get your podcasts. That was the biggest hurdle in our case, we feel, was the jury might dislike Tom Merriman so much that they would vote to either acquit or reduce the murder to something else. 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 Jenks has done and not on Tom. 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. Mr. Carlos, you wish to make a closing argument. In his closing argument to the jury, Mark Carlos emphasizes what he says are the weaknesses of the prosecution's case. What type of evidence do we have? We have a lot of speculation. It's speculation upon speculation upon speculation. He argues Adam Siplak's story that Jade confessed is a lie. Mr. Siplak, no credibility.

He wants to get out of something that he thinks might have happened. And he says Brian Solomon, who also claimed Jade confessed to him that day, can't be telling the truth. He claims that immediately, and this was his testimony, immediately upon entering, she says, he's in the car, go strangle him. This is somebody that Jensen never met before. Neither Adam Siplak, 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. And the truth is they have zero, zero evidence to support a murder. Her DNA was on the blister path.

But Jorge Del Portillo gets to make the last argument the jury will hear. It starts with, I just dosed the hell out of him. The plan is starting. And with Alan, it ends with, lose my number. I'm getting pulled over. And buried in between all of those text messages is a murder plot. Finder guilty of murder. Because the evidence proves it, the law requires it,

and justice demands it. The jury went out that afternoon and was back the next morning to continue their deliberations. Jury comes in at 9 a.m. We get the call at 9.30 a.m. We have a verdict. We were shocked. We were a little bit nervous. 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. Tom's business partner Pat Flanagan got a text about it. I was very anxious. My hands were sweating. I was nervous. We have your honor. 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 section number 87. Guilty of first degree murder. A felony

as charged. Jade appears stunned. That's right. Number one. Yes. Number two. Yes. Number three. Yes. Number four. Yes. Number Two. Yes. Number Three. Yes. Number Four. Yes.

Number Five. Yes. Number Six. Yes. Number Seven. Yes. Number Eight. Yes.

It was a huge relief. It was an absolute relief. And when you heard that word, guilty? Um, it felt right. Pat Flanagan says he saw Jade's reaction to the verdict later, online. I still go back and watch that sometimes. Why? 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. 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? I can't disprove it. I find it... I...

I don't want to believe it. It's interesting you say you don't want to believe it. Yeah. 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. Did you have any doubt that these photos actually existed? We talked about that, but we had no doubt. 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. 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. I still remember Tom and wish I could drop by for a smile to ask a question about plants or butterflies or just to recharge those batteries that keep seeming to wear down as I get older. I believe my life is richer because I knew Tom. Jade's biological father, who had not spoken publicly since she was charged, put the focus back on Tom's betrayal. 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. All I can say is this fight is not over. I truly believe

that an injustice has taken place. Jade Jenks spoke that day, too. 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. Unfortunately, that influence manifested itself into appropriate touch, coercion, reckless behavior, and complete violation of what I now realize is years of psychological manipulation. All of this came crashing down on me when I found hundreds of naked photos of myself and his computer. It felt shattered. 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. I'm still picking up the pieces, and I think there's 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. I think about it every day then. She will be committed to the Department of Corrections. The judge sentenced Jade to serve 25 years to life. And as the prosecution looks back on a difficult and emotional case, they say it could have easily turned out very differently. She could have gone 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.

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