Crime Weekly - S3 Ep290: Jennifer & Adrianna Wix: Lies Exposed (Part 2)
Episode Date: April 4, 2025On March 27, 2004, 21-year-old Jennifer Wix and her 2-year-old daughter, Adrianna, were reported missing. They hadn’t been seen or heard from since March 25, when Jennifer told multiple family membe...rs she was scared and unhappy living with her boyfriend, Joey Benton, and his parents in their rural Robertson County, Tennessee home. When asked where Jennifer and Adrianna were, Joey gave multiple conflicting stories before settling on one—claiming he had dropped them off at a gas station on the night of the 25th, where they got into a white four-door car with two people he didn’t know. But nothing about this story, or the others, made sense. As Jennifer’s family searched for answers, they uncovered contradictions, missing details, and a troubling history of control and isolation, all of which left them questioning…what really happened to Jennifer and Adrianna Wix? We're coming to CrimeCon Denver! Use our code CRIMEWEEKLY for 10% off your tickets! https://www.crimecon.com/CC25 Try our coffee!! - www.CriminalCoffeeCo.com Become a Patreon member -- > https://www.patreon.com/CrimeWeekly Shop for your Crime Weekly gear here --> https://crimeweeklypodcast.com/shop Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/c/CrimeWeeklyPodcast Website: CrimeWeeklyPodcast.com Instagram: @CrimeWeeklyPod Twitter: @CrimeWeeklyPod Facebook: @CrimeWeeklyPod ADS: 1. https://www.FastGrowingTrees.com - Use code CRIMEWEEKLY for an additional 15% off! 2. https://www.ZipRecruiter.com/CrimeWeekly - Try ZipRecruiter for FREE!
Transcript
Discussion (0)
So you've got a business, but what about a brand?
The difference? More of you.
Wix gives you the freedom to create your website, own your brand, and do it on your own.
Exactly how you envisioned it.
Experience limitless customization.
Boost your creativity and efficiency with AI tools for every part of your business journey.
Scale up with built-in SEO, e-com, and scheduling features.
Put more of you in your business.
Go to Wix.com and do it all yourself.
No offense, but your brain is a terrible place to keep your big idea.
It belongs in the world, but you know that already.
You have a calling, a voice that says, this is what I'm meant to do.
Create the website your big idea deserves with Wix.
Make it your own with top to
bottom customization, AI to help realize your vision, and built-in business tools to turn your
daydream into your dream job. Wix supports every stage of the business journey except one. Your
decision to begin. Ready? Go to Wix.com.
Hello, everybody.
Welcome back to Crime Weekly.
I'm Stephanie Harlow.
And I'm Derek Levasseur. So today we are talking about the disappearance of 21-year-old Jennifer Wicks and her two-year-old daughter,
Adriana. Very sad case. We kind of dug into the preamble, everything leading up to it. We even
talked about the actual, what we believe is the date of the disappearance. And I'll give everybody
a quick little update. March 25th, 2004 was the last day anyone outside of the Benton family heard from 21-year-old Jennifer Wicks and her two-year-old daughter, Adriana.
Over the next two days, Jennifer's boyfriend, Joey Benton, gave multiple conflicting accounts of where they had gone, first saying Jennifer was with a friend, then claiming he dropped Jennifer and Adriana off
at the gas station where they were picked up by someone in a white four-door car, but nothing
about his ever-evolving stories ever made sense. By March 27th, Jennifer's mother, Kathy, knew
something was terribly wrong, and desperate for answers, she reported Jennifer and Adriana missing
and begged the Robertson County Sheriff's Office to
conduct a welfare check at the Benton home. A deputy agreed and headed over to the property,
hoping to find the young mother and daughter, but what he found only deepened the mystery.
Yeah. And I ended last episode talking about one of the things that stood out to me. There's two
scenarios. Something happened to Jennifer and Adriana
while they were with the Bentons
or Joey's telling a partial truth
and he did drop them off with someone.
But I ended the episode by saying,
why would she leave without the 500 bucks?
If she really just wanted to start a new life
and wasn't going to tell her mom, her sisters, her friends,
was just going to get in the car and take off, why wouldn't she at least wait for the money? That would give her a
good jumpstart. So her not taking that money is extremely concerning. And then I always talk about
criminals from the perspective of the best predictor of future behavior is past behavior.
That also applies to victims as well. In the past, even though their relationship had its peaks and
valleys,
Jennifer did always follow up with her mom. She always talked to her mom and she even talked to her father at some points, although they weren't as close. So she was someone in the past who would
reach out to family members and friends if she wanted to discuss what was going on in her life,
including Adriana getting sick and going to the hospital. Who did she call? Her mother and her grandmother. And even when things were going wrong with her and Joey,
she called her mom. She called her mom. So we talked about that incident where
she has this knockdown fallout with her mom and Heather and Casey and Joey kicks down the door.
But even after all that, when Adriana got sick, she called her mom. So we know that even though they weren't on the best of terms, when shit hit the fan,
Jennifer still reached out to her loved ones.
So to think that she wouldn't have here, especially when she had on the previous two days,
doesn't make a lot of sense.
Yeah, she wouldn't just vanish without the money or without telling anybody anything,
even if she waited to get to her destination and then called and was like, hey, just so you know, I just, I need some time.
You know, me and Adriana are trying to do stuff our own way. I wanted to let you know I was alive
and okay. She would have done that. And we can all use common sense. We've been working with
you guys now for over four and a half years, five years. I think we're coming up on, I think we've
done over 300 episodes. You guys got the message by now. Common sense has to play a factor here.
Where's she going to go?
She's been living in an effing shed for the last however much time.
She doesn't have a lot of resources.
She has enough common sense to realize I got a two-year-old daughter that's sick.
There's nowhere for her to go.
And I also have family that are willing to help.
They're willing to help.
So where's she going?
She doesn't have anywhere that she can actually go and escape everything.
She's going to go home even if she doesn't want to, even if it makes her look bad because
she's going to get the, I told you so.
She has no other options.
Like I just said, she's sleeping out in a frigging shed with a two-year-old sick daughter,
not because she wants to.
So when you take that into consideration as well, the options are limited. And yet we haven't heard
from Jennifer in 20 years. So it's not good. It does not look good at all. It does not look
good at all. But let's talk a little bit about it. I don't believe at all that this 21-year-old girl and her two-year-old
daughter just vanished and started a new life. She doesn't have the know-how for that. She had
to get a fake ID. It's not possible. So what did happen? Now, some might say maybe she met somebody.
Maybe she met someone else, and she went and lived with this person, and that person did
something to her and Adriana. Fair enough.
But how did she meet them when she didn't have a phone, when she was living at the Benton home 24-7, when she basically had no recourse to leave or to do anything and she had somebody controlling
who was kind of monitoring everything that she did. So that's the question there. Let's get into
what happened when the sheriff's deputy arrived at the Benton home on the evening of March 27th.
So Joey was there and Joey told the cops that his parents weren't home and that they couldn't search the home or property without a warrant.
Now, the deputy did, however, take a statement from Joey.
And this time, Joey had yet another story to tell.
He claimed he hadn't seen Jennifer and Adriana
since she left with a friend on March 25th. When asked who the friend was, he said he didn't know.
Then he changed his story again. He now said that he had actually taken Jennifer and Adriana to an
Exxon station and dropped them off around 9.30 p.m. on the 25th, but he couldn't remember which
Exxon station.
And this was strange considering there was only one in the area,
not to mention that in his previous statements to Jennifer's mom, Kathy, and her aunt, Lisa,
Joey specifically said it was the Exxon off the interstate.
Joey then claimed he saw them get picked up by a white four-door Mustang,
but almost immediately he corrected himself again saying, no, it wasn't a Mustang. It was actually a white four-door Mustang. But almost immediately, he corrected himself again, saying, no, it wasn't a Mustang.
It was actually a white four-door Camaro.
Okay, so neither of these statements
could possibly be true.
Well, maybe you're about to say it, so I'll shut up.
Okay, so neither of these statements
could possibly be true.
Why is that?
As Mustangs and Camaros don't have four-door.
Camaros don't have four-door.
He picked another non-four-door car.
So Joey's not a rocket scientist is the
conclusion or a car expert. Not a car guy. No, it appears that he's not telling the truth.
Could you mix up the models of the car? Of course you could. But if you don't know,
don't say it because it only makes you look bad. Or just ask someone, man, what's a car
that could have four doors? And then most of them will well he actually
most of them and he even discredited my other potential out for him where i remember last
episode yeah you said maybe he maybe he knew the make but just got the model wrong well ford
mustang chevy camaro not even the same make so even if you saw the emblem you would be able to
tell the difference so he doesn't even get the make right. I also feel like Mustangs and Camaros don't look like each other.
To a layman, I think I could see some people like, I know people in my family who wouldn't
know the difference between a Mustang and a Camaro, specifically when you start considering
the older models, not the newer models, they look very different. The Camaro now
looks like a Lamborghini almost. But in 2004, yes, to most people, they're very different.
The backs are different on them.
It's very distinguishable which one's a Mustang,
which one's a Camaro.
You would think Joey would know the difference.
He could have just said sports car.
I mean, honestly, that's the way it feels like it's going,
you know, but most sports cars of that caliber
are just two-door cars.
Right, yeah, no, it just, Occam's razor, right? The simple explanation is usually the right one.
More than likely, he's telling, he's just not telling the truth.
And Joey also then claimed that he never saw the occupants of the vehicle. This is what he tells
the police, which was different from what he told Jennifer's Aunt Lisa just days earlier. And in
that conversation, he said that there were people inside the car, a white female and then a white male with a reddish complexion.
So the deputy conducting the welfare check put out a bolo and then he went to Kathy's house.
Kathy is Jennifer's mother.
And he told Kathy something's definitely wrong here.
He tried to get in touch with detectives, but they told him that they would deal with it on Monday, which was two days later.
So we've got the deputy here
conducting the welfare check. The deputy's like, something doesn't sit right about this.
He tries to get a hold of the detectives and he's like, we got to look at this like
ASAP, you know, missing people, first 48, most important. And they're like, we'll deal with it
on Monday, like after the weekend. So even law enforcement sometimes can't get other law
enforcement to do what they want to do and to take things seriously.
But the deputy who went and checked in on this,
which he's got instincts, he's got law enforcement know-how,
he's saying something's wrong here.
And the detectives are like, it's the weekend, man.
So yeah, it seemed like the detectives believed Jennifer and Joey
had gotten into an argument and she'd taken off for a while,
but she would eventually come back. As we know, that never happened. So the next day, March 28th, the deputy
went back to the Benton home and asked if he could do a walkthrough. The Bentons agreed, but only
under strict conditions. He could look around, but he wasn't allowed to open any doors or enter any
bedrooms. And I actually have to give this deputy a shout
out because he could have gone to the Benton home, felt something was wrong, contacted the
detectives. The detectives are like, all right, it's on our to-do list. We'll handle it Monday.
This deputy could have gone and enjoyed his weekend and not thought twice about it. But
something's nagging at him. Maybe he's got a two-year-old daughter or maybe he has a young
daughter in her 20s and he knows. Or maybe he's just doing his job. Maybe he's just doing his job. I know it's a crazy concept these days. It is.
But he went back and he asked if he could look around and they said, all right, you can't open
any bedrooms. You can't open any doors. And he followed their rules. He checked for any signs
of a struggle, but he didn't see anything unusual. However, in an exclusive
interview with the Missing in Hushtown podcast, he revealed that while walking through, he did
notice something ominous. Adriana's car seat sitting behind the front door. The deputy also
asked if he could search the shed where Jennifer and Adriana had once lived, and the Bentons said
yes, but when he got there, the shed was locked.
So, on Monday, March 29th, detectives arrived in the office and started conducting interviews
with Jennifer's family. They confirmed with Aunt Lisa that Joey had described the people in the
car to her, and she handed over the answering machine tape, which contained a recorded message
from Joey's father, Joseph, saying he was looking for Jennifer to give her her tax refund on March 26th,
one day after Jennifer's family last heard from her.
And remember, Joseph, Joey Benton's father, told Aunt Lisa,
hey, she was here looking for it.
So that means he has seen Jennifer since she's last been seen or heard from by her family.
So after meeting with Jennifer's family,
the detectives did go to the Benton home to speak with Joey again. since she's last been seen or heard from by her family. So after meeting with Jennifer's family,
the detectives did go to the Benton home to speak with Joey again.
He repeated that he and Jennifer had broken up on the 25th and that he had dropped her and Adriana off at the Exxon around 9.30 p.m.
He then said he drove away and parked across the street.
Five to ten minutes later, Jennifer and Adriana got into a white four-door car,
but he did not say a model this time.
Oh, that's better.
I mean, at this point, did he ask somebody, you know, or is he just trying not to?
Probably did a little research and was like, shit, those cars don't have four doors.
Can we not skip over the Adriana's car seat, though, before we continue?
Yeah, yeah.
Or maybe he told his parents, like, his parents came home after the deputy was there and he was like, I told them about the Camaro. Yeah, they were like, dummy. And they're like, idiot. Yeah. Yeah. Or maybe he told his parents like his parents came home after the deputy was there and he was like, I told him about the Camaro. And they're like, idiot. Yeah. Again, you gave a two door car case may be. What's one thing she might need to travel around?
A car seat.
Right, car seat.
That's a problem that she didn't take that either.
So she just really just had to get out of there in a hurry.
What was she running from?
Why wouldn't she tell anybody
that could actually help her about it?
It doesn't line up.
It just doesn't make sense.
And then the fact that the shed was locked,
that's a little concerning. I mean, that's not as concerning as the car seat, but
why lock the shed? I'm assuming they hadn't been locking it prior to that when Jennifer and Joey
were living in it. All of a sudden, now they have stuff they need to protect inside there.
It's interesting. Yeah. I mean, I would say that the deputy came on Friday.
They were aware that within a few days, somebody was going to be coming back to check in on it. Somebody was going to be snooping around.
The deputy comes back the next day.
They said, yep, you can go and look around because we're not suspicious.
We have nothing to hide.
You just can't open any doors and you can't open any closets.
So now he says, can I go see the shed?
They're like, yeah, sure, have at it because they already done locked it because they knew somebody or he was going to come back and that they knew they were going to tell him you can't open any doors.
So he would go to the shed.
They're cooperating, but he can't open it.
Yeah.
And when you do think about the worst case scenario, if you're going to do something, you probably don't want to do it inside your house.
You want to do it in a location that's off from the residence.
If it was planned, yeah.
If it was planned. Something also could have happened in the shed that wasn't planned,
where they were out there for that night for whatever reason. We talk about what we do know.
There was a pretty bad argument going on that night the last time we heard from Jennifer.
And is it reasonable to think that if Jennifer was arguing with Cindy, she may have said,
I'm going to spend the night in the shed tonight with my daughter. I don't want to be in this house,
even though up to that point, she was staying in the home. I think that's reasonable as well.
Well, yeah. Because according to Joey, remember, he said that she didn't even want to go inside
the house, that they had pulled up to the house the day that he dropped her off at the gas station.
And she was like, yeah, you go in. I'm not even going in. So how did she get her stuff?
Did she pack up beforehand? Did she have luggage with her? He doesn't say. Is her stuff still at
the Benton home? If so, why would she leave all her belongings and all of Adriana's belongings
behind? Yeah, not lining up. All right. So Joey actually goes on to share some new information,
which is going to, I think, be very suspicious.
So on the morning of the 26th, this is the day after Jennifer's family have heard from her or seen her.
This would also be the same day that Joey's father called and said, oh, Jennifer's looking for a tax return.
We saw her, right?
Joey said he'd gone to work that morning but since his friend jeffrey who was also jennifer's
cousin wasn't working that day joey rode with a male co-worker and the co-worker's girlfriend
he said the job finished early so he got back home in the late morning or early afternoon and
that's when according to joey jennifer showed up driving the same white four-door camaro
the same white four-door car that had supposedly picked her up the night
before. But this time she was alone. Her two-year-old daughter, Adriana, wasn't with her.
So Joey was obviously unable to describe the car in any detail beyond it being a white four-door
car. And he claimed he didn't ask where Jennifer had been. He said she only came by to ask for her $500 tax refund
and Joey told her his father wasn't home,
so she said she'd come back the following morning to get it.
He also claimed that Jennifer told him she was mad at her mom, Kathy.
She wasn't mad at him.
She was mad at Kathy and that Kathy had threatened to take Adriana away,
but Kathy later denied this,
saying that while she had talked to Jennifer about being in a bad situation,
she had never threatened to take her daughter from her.
Joey said that after their conversation, Jennifer went inside the house.
She grabbed a few things, including Adriana's car seat, diaper bag, and clothes, and then she left.
But there's at least one major problem with this story. We already know
he was lying about the car seat as the deputy had seen it sitting behind the front door when he did
his walkthrough on the 28th, two days after Joey claimed Jennifer allegedly took it with her.
So this is very suspicious. It keeps getting worse. Next, detectives spoke to Joey's friend,
Jeffrey, who's also Jennifer's cousin,
and what he had to say was very interesting. He told investigators that on the afternoon of March
25th, he and Joey were working on a construction site in Kentucky, which is what Joey said,
and then Joey received a call from someone at his house. He didn't say who. However, we know
that detectives later confirmed through phone records that Joey did receive a call from
the Benton home on the 25th. Since it came from their landline, they couldn't be sure who made
the call, but the timing was notable. It came in after Jennifer got off the phone with her dad
around 1 p.m. and before she called her Aunt Lisa. So someone else was in that house with her,
or she called him herself. We don't know which.
I was just going to say that as well.
It could have been Jennifer.
Now, Jeffrey told the detectives that after receiving the call from someone at his home,
Joey walked up to him and said, we got to go right now.
Jeffrey allegedly didn't remember asking why and didn't recall Joey explaining why they had to leave.
Joey then told his foreman that he had to go home immediately for a family
matter. And detectives were able to confirm with the foreman that Joey did receive the call
and left early. Now, this is interesting because it doesn't sound like Jennifer would be calling
and saying like anything that would make Joey leave work and run right over there.
So was it somebody else at the house and something happened and they called him
and they're like, we need help with this. Get over here. Yeah. I mean, it also could have still
been Jennifer saying, Hey, your mom's yelling at me. Your dad's threatening me. Well, the mom was
allegedly at work. I don't necessarily believe that we need to confirm that I need to know
something definitive before I say on this podcast. Yeah. she was home. We were able to confirm it.
Because remember, Jennifer's dad said he heard the voice of a female while he was talking to her.
Yeah.
I don't know who else that could be, but who else would have been allowed in their home?
And if somebody else was in their home, then Joey, Cindy, and Joseph, Joey's father, would know who that person was.
And they would gladly tell law
enforcement, hey, so-and-so was over visiting Jennifer. But they didn't. They've never said
someone else was in that residence. So it leads me to believe that it was Cindy. But to continue on,
it could have been Jennifer who called who said there was a bad fight going on,
or, which I know a lot of people are thinking, Joseph or Cindy calls Joey and says,
something happened. Things got out of hand. You need to come home right now. But you know what's
interesting about that scenario? Joey's not directly involved. With that scenario, yeah.
With that scenario, Joey's not directly involved. Now, one more scenario, just to add another
wrinkle. Jennifer or Cindy calls Joey and says, your mom's driving me nuts or Jennifer's driving me nuts
get home right now Joey gets home things escalate further and Joey is involved so that's what I was
thinking that if if it wasn't someone else besides Jennifer Jennifer called him she's like I'm
leaving you I'm packing the stuff up like if you want to talk one last time or whatever, because, you know, they're kids.
They're young.
Could happen.
Yep.
If you want to talk one last time or say goodbye to Adriana, say goodbye to me.
I'm leaving.
I'm taking off.
And then he drives home because he's like, that can't happen.
They get into a fight.
He realizes she's serious.
Something happens to Adriana.
And they realize, like like Jennifer is never going to
let this go. She'll never be okay with this. We will be destroyed. Like it didn't happen to both
Jennifer and Adriana. Something happened to one or the other. And I have to believe that it was
Adriana, that possibly Joey used Adriana as an almost like way of getting Jennifer
to do what he wanted.
And in the process,
because remember he pulled a gun
on Jennifer and Adriana before.
So maybe he does it again.
And this time, because he's so upset or whatever,
he accidentally shoots.
And now he knows I've got to kill Jennifer too.
Obviously I can't do this
and have her ever cover for me because I don't see something
happening to Jennifer.
And then you mean you kill Adriana, too?
No, I mean, I think something initially happened to Adriana because you do think so.
Yeah, she was being used as kind of like this way to keep Jennifer in line in that fight.
Something happened to her and they had to kill Jennifer because of what happened to
Adriana, because if something had just happened to Jennifer, why would they have done anything to that two
year old? That's what keeps running through my mind. They would have just said, oh, Adriana took
off and left her daughter. She left it without her. So, you know, here she is because it's a baby.
You know, I think something happened to the two year old and Jennifer as a result had to have been
taken care of because she would never have defended them, protected them.
He couldn't manipulate her to that level.
Not if he heard her child in front of her.
It's a good theory.
Yeah, I can't leave the witness behind.
Not one that you can't control.
But a two-year-old, you could, right?
If something happened to Jennifer, especially if Adriana wasn't present for it, you could
just say, yeah, Jennifer, what a scumbag.
She left her kid.
And here's Adriana. Obviously, we didn't do anything to Jennifer. Here's the child.
We protected her. Well, either scenario sucks. But there is also a scenario where
if something did happen to Jennifer first, they want Adriana to be found with Jennifer so they
can say she left with someone with her daughter and whatever happened to Jennifer happened to
Adriana.
It takes a certain level of evilness.
Sick motherfucker, you know what?
It takes a certain level of evilness that I even find hard.
I just don't like any of the scenarios
because they all result in the same thing,
but all in play, all in play.
But I do think your theory of,
even though they're bad people, right?
If they're involved, they're bad people,
but it's a different level of bad
to kill an innocent baby when you don't have to.
So I get your rationale
and I think that's why your scenario holds a lot of weight.
If the Bentons are involved.
Or even Joey alone.
Even Joey alone, no matter who it is,
if this family is somehow involved
with the disappearance and possible deaths of Jennifer and Adriana, those are the things you have to consider.
I'm not ruling out the other scenario.
Joey could just be a moron and be making his situation a lot worse by not telling the whole truth.
But there was something there with Joseph saying, oh, Jennifer came by.
Now, that could have easily just
been done by Joey and Joseph talking to each other and comparing notes. But there was at least some
corroboration there where if Jennifer came by looking for the check, Joey doesn't have it.
Joseph has it. So Joseph calls back later saying, hey, Jennifer came by earlier today. Joey told me
about it. I have her check.
If they're telling the truth.
And I think we both sort of have already agreed
based on how long Jennifer and her daughter have been gone,
they are not alive out there somewhere.
It is highly unlikely that they're still with us,
unfortunately.
Unfortunately.
All right, let's take a quick break on that note,
which I think I need a quick reprieve.
Quick breather. Let's take a quick break on that note, which I think I need a quick reprieve. Quick breather.
Let's take a quick break and we'll be right back.
Running a business can be exhausting.
Building your website shouldn't be.
With Wix, you can express your ideas, give direction, then leave the heavy lifting to AI.
From site creation to branded content and images.
Have fun with the details.
Customize what you want the way you want.
And manage your whole business from a centralized dashboard with expert AI tools.
Build, scale, and enjoy the incredible results.
You can do it all yourself on Wix.
It's time to turn your daydream into your dream job.
Wix gives you the power to turn your daydream into your dream job. Wix gives you the power to turn your
passion into a moneymaker with a website that fits your unique vision and drives you towards
your goals. Let your ideas flow with AI tools that guide you but give you full control and
flexibility. Manage your business from one dashboard and keep it growing with built-in
marketing features. Get everything
you need to turn your part-time passion into a full-time business. Go to Wix.com.
We know that Joey left work early on the 25th. We know that he left work early because he got
an urgent phone call from his house and he had to go. He said he had a family matter he had to
take care of. However, it's unclear who exactly gave Joey a ride home from the construction site as multiple people have provided contradictory statements.
All we know for sure is that someone drove him back and if I had to guess, that person was
Jeffrey. But again, we just don't know because multiple people were elusive during their
interviews. Jeffrey also told detectives that on March 26th,
he didn't work, meaning if Joey needed a ride that day, it was not from Jeffrey. But what he
shared next was even more unsettling. That night, just one day after Jennifer and Adriana were last
heard from, Joey held a bonfire on his family's property. Now, I know what you're thinking,
that this bonfire had actually been
planned before Jennifer and Adriana vanished. It was supposed to be a couple's bonfire,
with Joey and Jennifer hosting two other couples, including Jeffrey and his girlfriend.
But when the two couples arrived, Jennifer wasn't there. Jeffrey asked where she was,
and Joey said he had driven her to the home of Jerry and Helga Jackson. And if we
remember, Helga Jackson was a previous coworker of Jennifer's. Helga Jackson already came forward
to talk to Jennifer's mom and was like, nah, me and my husband were on vacation or we were out of
town. Yeah, we didn't see her. And if Joey says that she was with us, something's wrong here.
That's the problem, right? Is he's telling so many different versions to different people. That's what takes away all credibility and highly
suggests that he's involved. And here's the thing. This would have been probably the first
story he would have told, right? Because it's on March 26th and Jennifer's family doesn't start
asking him for answers until I believe the following day.
And that's when he gives his first story has to do with Jerry and Helga Jackson as well.
And then his story kind of changes from there.
So it seems this was the first thing he settled on.
That was probably what he originally decided to do.
Yeah.
I think we can all agree Joey's not the sharpest tool in the shed.
So that right there, he's thinking, oh, it's going to be simple.
I'm just going to say that I dropped her off at helga's house not considering the fact that
maybe law enforcement would go ask helga maybe they might follow up yeah maybe maybe jennifer's
family might drop a line to helga and say hey did jennifer come by there so when his mom and dad get
a hold of him and slap him upside the head and say idiot they're
gonna go talk to her so then he quickly switches up his story to this camaro slash mustang the
grocery store and then the exxon mobil and the mustang the camaro yeah again not considering
surveillance footage cameras anything that could discredit his story he's just kind of in quicksand
at this point not not considering car logistics that would
quickly discredit his story either. And listen, I don't know if he's responsible, but if he is an
innocent man, he's doing a lot of guilty shit. Definitely has a weird relationship with the
truth. Yeah, he's allergic to it. A strained one. Yeah, I think they're no contact. So obviously
this story is similar to what he told Heather, Jennifer's sister, but it's not even close to what he told the police. So detectives then went to speak with the Jacksons, Helga and her husband,
Jerry. They confirmed that they hadn't seen Jennifer since November of 2003. So weird that
Joey would pick these people, of all people. And this obviously means Joey had been caught now by
law enforcement in a major lie.
So detectives decided to check out Joey's other claim that he had taken Jennifer and Adriana to the food value so Jennifer could use the phone inside.
They spoke to the cashier who had been working around the time Joey claimed Jennifer went in to use the phone, and she said she had not seen Jennifer or Adriana that evening. Unfortunately, there was no surveillance footage for detectives to pull to confirm this, but the cashier was certain she would have noticed someone
coming in that late, especially so close to closing time, especially with like a two-year-old
kid, right? Okay, so food value, as I'm writing that down, luckily no surveillance, but you have
a cashier, reasonable amount of time. They probably
showed her a picture and she's saying, nope, didn't see anybody here and I was working that day.
So that's strike number one as far as this alibi. So detectives then moved on to the Exxon gas
station. But by the time they got there, the clerk who had been working the night of the 25th
wasn't available. Now, Jennifer's family did eventually speak with her, and she told
them that she and Jennifer had gone to school together. So if Jennifer and Adriana had shown
up at the gas station that night, she absolutely would have noticed and remembered. Now, listen to
this. This pisses me off. There were cameras at the Exxon, but by the time detectives requested
the footage, it had already been recorded over. And I wonder if they'd listened to that deputy
on Friday and gone there on Friday, it probably would have still been there. So once again,
detectives weren't able to corroborate Joey's statements, but they weren't able to disprove
them with hard evidence either. Yeah, they're not looking good though. As far as the Exxon,
it's possible if Jennifer did show up there, she didn't go inside.
Maybe it's a quick, you know, one car to the other easily.
No, because remember, he said he pulled across the street, waited five to 10 minutes, and then Jennifer and Adriana got into that car.
But what if they were waiting outside?
Yeah.
I'm just playing devil's advocate.
Yeah, for sure.
I would think that the cashier would have seen them.
I don't know the layout of this gas station either.
Yeah, like is there a big glass window that looks outside like some gas stations have?
So as the clerk, you would have seen this girl you went to high school with and her daughter.
I mean, it's March.
It's Tennessee.
So I don't know how cold it is.
Would she have stood outside with her daughter?
I don't know.
But back to your camera footage thing.
Well, first off,
it's 2004. Now footage and the duration that you can store is a lot more abundant. You can't even
buy a DVR without one gig, which is at least 20 days, 30 days of footage. I agree with you
completely. If they had acted immediately, maybe they get the footage. Maybe we're not sitting here
right now covering this case. It's an unfortunate decision.
There's not too much I can harp on.
If they had acted sooner, they might have had the footage they needed.
But I'm glad to see now with technology, the amount of footage that these, because the
security cameras, they're expensive.
And so Exxon might have said, what's the minimum we can get?
Might have only stored it for 10, seven days, 10 days, maybe.
I don't know.
I mean, honestly, it could be a moot point at that time. They could have just been
rewriting every 24 hours.
And honestly, that's what a lot of them do. If there's not a bank robbery, they're not
doing those cameras for law enforcement to investigate a case 30 days later.
They're doing it for their loss prevention.
They're doing it for the robbery or the theft that happens in the store,
and they immediately report it.
Yeah. Honestly, I think with stores like that, for their insurance, they have to have certain
loss prevention measures in place. But at that time, they were probably doing the bare minimum.
Yeah. Absolute minimum. Because again, it's expensive. But now,
I mean, even my home surveillance, I mean, I think it records for like 30 days before it
overwrites it. So if you haven't figured out what you need to find then, and you know, and now it's even cloud-based where you can get stuff from a year
ago. So it's unfortunate. And we don't even know if these cameras would have been facing the
direction where Adrian, cause that would have been the next thing, right? I thought you were
going to tell me they did have a camera, but it was facing the opposite direction towards the
cashier. So you couldn't see outside. Or it. Or it was facing outside, but then Joey's like, yeah, I didn't pull up front.
Didn't I tell you?
I pulled in the back.
Something would have been in the way.
Moral of the story.
Something would have still caused reasonable doubt.
Exactly.
Moral of the story, I don't know if Jennifer was actually there.
I don't think she was, but moral of the story, even if they had that footage,
it wouldn't have made or broke this to the point where Joey would be in prison right now. There could still be reasonable doubt.
That's fair. It wouldn't be enough to, yeah, you need no body either. That poses some problems.
You need more than that. So the investigation continued, but unfortunately, Jennifer didn't
have a car. She didn't have a cell phone. She didn't have a bank account. All these things
where you would usually track somebody, see their movements, nothing. So detectives didn't have a cell phone. She didn't have a bank account. All these things where you would usually track somebody, see their movements.
Nothing.
So detectives didn't have those leads to follow, which made the investigation even more difficult.
At some point, Joey did take a polygraph.
Some reports state that he passed.
But when detectives asked him to take a specialized voice analysis polygraph, he agreed, only to walk out as soon as questioning began
according to the wicks family joey's parents joseph and cindy benton were never asked to
take a polygraph and on top of that detectives never ran any data on phone pings well stupid
stupid uh this is frustrating i mean i listen i don't put a lot of weight in polygraphs anyways.
We know this. We've talked about this. Yeah, you don't love them. I think it's just a tool.
Like, you know, investigation, interrogation, we're going to intimidate you, et cetera, et cetera.
But I wouldn't – if you said Joey passed or failed, I'd be like, that doesn't tell me anything.
Phone pings, though, would have told us, was Cindy at the house that day when she said she was supposed to be at work?
That would have told us that. Yeah. Could have also told us, well, if have told us, was Cindy at the house that day when she said she was supposed to be at work?
That would have told us that.
Yeah.
Could have also told us, well, if Cindy wasn't, who was?
Regardless, that's what happened.
It frustrates me when they don't do the cell phone ping thing.
But on April 14th, a local newspaper reported that authorities had used cadaver dogs to search parts of the Benton property.
But this actually wasn't accurate. The only search that took place was a
private effort conducted by Jennifer's family in areas granted by Joey's grandfather. So if you
remember from part one, Joey and his parents lived on a six-acre lot surrounded by 50 additional
acres, all owned by the Benton family. Nothing of note was found during the search. So I guarantee
you that the Bentons didn't let
Jennifer's family with any dogs or anything get anywhere close to their actual property,
but the grandfather was probably like, yeah, you can go through the 50 acres and
see if you can find anything, but apparently they didn't. So Joey and his parents never
participated in any searches or spoke much to the media. In fact, they continued living as if
Jennifer and Adriana had never gone missing. They installed a new septic tank, built a cabin on the
property, and even moved the shed where Jennifer, Adriana, and Joey had once lived. As part of these
projects, they also hand poured a concrete slab that was three feet deep, far deeper than was necessary. And this raised many
an eyebrow in the area. We've also heard of these concrete slabs before. That's always suspicious.
Yeah, there's a lot going on here that's convenient considering what we're covering.
Whenever you have these rural areas and small departments and a lot of acreage and a lot of
handy people, I will say it's extremely difficult
to catch someone, especially if they want to dispose of a body. There's so many places,
bodies of water, woods, burial sites, concrete slabs. What about the septic tank?
If you told me they replaced the septic tank, but the old septic tank has never been found.
Yeah. Where's the old septic tank at? Where's the old one? If they return that or if they had a construction company
or someone remove that and dispose of it,
that would make me feel a little better about it not being,
more of it being just a coincidence.
But there's just, saying a needle in a haystack doesn't do it justice.
It would be extremely difficult for cops to find a body
if the people responsible like this know the land,
know the topography,
they have such an advantage. So there's actually, because of what a septic tank holds, there's a certain procedure that you have to go through when you're decommissioning an old septic tank.
And usually you're going to have to contact a professional. It requires specialized equipment and knowledge.
So you should hire somebody who's licensed to dispose of liquid waste.
The contractor will then use specialized vacuum trucks or pumping equipment to extract the contents of the septic tank, including sludge and liquid.
And the contractor will carefully remove the sludge, ensuring thorough
waste removal. And then basically it either gets crushed. So steel tanks are often crushed in place
and filled with sand, gravel, or rubble. Concrete tanks may be broken apart to allow water to drain.
And they're often, the soil above the tank is then often compacted to prevent shifting or
sinking.
So if this was a steel tank and it was disposed of in a way, you would never really get inside of it.
You would just pump stuff out and then crush it and fill it with sand or gravel.
So I would like to know what happened to that septic tank because that would be a great
way to hide a body or two bodies and then act like it never happened. And maybe I'm thinking too high level here for these people, but I personally wouldn't want to
put my freedom at risk by placing myself in a situation where if someone went above and beyond
their job, it could expose what I did. So to me, it'd be much more likely to have the body on your land, which you have
an expectation of privacy over and either bury it, put it in a concrete slab, body of water,
whatever it might be, but something I can control. When you involve other people, other companies,
you run the risk of being found out. Unless they did it themselves.
If you told me, yep, they ripped it out,
dispose of it themselves, broke it down themselves, I would say, yeah, that's odd.
So I found a Reddit post that says, if you have to bury a body, don't. Instead,
drop it in a septic tank. I learned this from my friend who works for CSI. Apparently,
septic tanks eat away the body really fast and they wouldn't check there or have any way to
find their way there. Even if they did find the body, there would be almost nothing left and DNA would be contaminated with others.
Yeah. Cause isn't there like a chemical that breaks down whatever's in there as well? I don't
know how it works. I don't have a septic tank, but no, like I said, there's so many angles here.
When you talk about how vast of an area they're covering and all the options available,
that's why I'm saying it'd be very difficult for law enforcement. The only way they're covering and all the options available. That's why I'm saying it'd be very difficult for
law enforcement. The only way they're going to find Adriana and Jennifer is if someone from the
inside exposes them, if they're involved. Yeah, it's crazy. I just, you know, I would like to
know more about the septic tank for sure. Yeah. So around two or three weeks after Jennifer and Adriana disappeared,
Joey brought their belongings to Kathy and handed them over in six black trash bags. So six trash
bags full of belongings, clothings, personal items that Jennifer took off with her daughter with no
money and nothing and left everything behind. Because she has so much money to buy new stuff.
Yeah, she can just start over with it.
Yeah, exactly.
And now inside one of the bags was Adriana's purple winter coat
and her beloved stuffed Elmo, which she called Melmo.
Now, these two items alone proved to Kathy that Jennifer never planned on leaving.
March nights in Tennessee can be cold.
Adriana would have needed her coat,
and there was no way Jennifer would have left behind Melmo,
because that was the one thing besides Jennifer herself that Adriana could not sleep without.
Now, by this point, Kathy was beyond desperate to find her daughter and granddaughter,
and she tried to get people to help search, but she didn't get much support,
and in some cases, she faced roadblocks,
like how one day she attempted to hang a flyer at a gas station,
only to be told it was against
policy. The media wasn't much help either and a search through digital newspaper archives show
that in 2004 fewer than 10 articles were written about Jennifer and Adriana. Just a mere handful
of articles about a 21 year old mother and her two-year-old daughter who vanished without a trace,
without car, without money, without a phone. So Kathy believes these issues stem from the fact that the investigation was
never handled properly. And from the beginning, law enforcement treated Jennifer's disappearance
as if she'd simply run away and taken Adriana with her. For years, they didn't truly consider
her a missing person. And Kathy later said, quote, everyone thought she was a scorned lover and just mad.
They all thought that she would be back, end quote. And that mindset severely hindered the
investigation in ways that can never be repaired. Now, here's my question to you as a former law
enforcement officer. You are on this case, 21-year-old mother, two-year-old daughter missing,
and you know that she was living with her boyfriend and his parents.
And then you find out from the family of Jennifer, oh, hey, they actually broke up once because he
pulled a gun on her and her two-year-old daughter. And the mom had to drive them away because he just
couldn't help himself. He was so angry and emotionally unregulated. Are you thinking like,
yeah, she probably just was a scorned lover who took off? Or are you going to actually take that context in and maybe think he did something to her?
You answered your own question.
So why didn't these cops do that?
I know I always sound like a cop apologist.
And I think everyone here at this point understands my perspective.
You know, I know there's more to the story than what we usually convey here on a
podcast, right? I'm not, that's not lost on me. I don't have the, as I sit here right now, I don't
have those answers because just like you, it doesn't make much sense to me. The only thing I
can offer is there have been times where as the detective, I think most people who watch our
podcast think that I was probably a pretty thorough detective, especially if I'm out here being critical of others. But I can tell you,
there have been many times when I was working a case where outside entities, the media, et cetera,
were questioning our practices and our approach to a case. And it would frustrate me because I
wasn't able to come out there and be
like, hey, morons, this is what you don't know. This is why we're doing it this way. So I don't
know if that's the case here. The simple answer is they just didn't do their job. But in my heart
and in my mind, I'd like to think there's more that we just don't know, which would explain why
they did things the way they did. And if they were here sitting next to us, they could explain that. But unfortunately, that's not always the case.
And in some instances, we get proof that it's as simple as just not doing your job.
Yeah, but I wouldn't like if I was the cops here, I wouldn't be like, yeah,
is she really a missing person? You know, I'd still think.
Well, they didn't take the case seriously. We know that already. They thought, you know,
she's an adult.
She's probably, she's.
But Adriana's not an adult.
Adriana's not an adult, but she's with her mother.
And so they're thinking, hey, if she wants to get away.
And we also don't know the dynamics.
This is a small community.
They probably know Joey's a moron.
I'm going to go out on a limb and I hope everyone takes this with as much respect as I can give.
Jennifer wasn't making all the right decisions either. I feel like law enforcement was aware of these families and their dynamics for a while. This probably wasn't the first call they received. And it may have been
of like boy who cried wolf type thing where they're constantly getting called to mediate these
situations and they get this call and think, yeah, this, she probably just ran away. Cause
everyone in, in this whole story is a moron. Now I'm not saying that to be disrespectful to anyone.
I'm saying it to be as honest as I can. It doesn't mean that they kind of made snap judgments here.
They made snap judgments and they shouldn't have, but it happens a lot, even with young children
who run away seven times. And on the eighth time, something actually happened.
But law enforcement doesn't look into it for four days.
So I only say it to show you that side of it, not condoning it, but just pointing out the reality of the situation.
Well, it's still it's hard, you know, knowing how young Adriana was and just knowing that they kind of wrote it off
as just she took off and without having any –
like not considering all of these little things that we've already talked about,
how it just doesn't make any sense that she would do that,
not using logic and critical thinking.
Nope.
So in 2005, on the first year mark of Jennifer and Adriana's disappearances,
the Robertson County Sheriff's
Office said they had received 104 reported sightings due to alerts sent out by the National
Center for Missing and Exploited Children. They stated, quote, in the process of running down
those leads, thousands of man hours have been spent on this case. These types of leads give us
hope, end quote. But as time passed, the investigation slowed to a near standstill.
In 2005, there were no major updates and very little media coverage. The Wicks family did
everything they could to keep Jennifer and Adriana's case in the public eye. They organized
motorcycle rides, held balloon releases, and kept a billboard up on the interstate. During that time,
there was no activity on Jennifer or Adriana's social security numbers.
No bank accounts were opened in their names,
and there was no credible sightings of them anywhere.
So I want to take our last break, and then we will come back and finish up the episode.
We still have about halfway to go, so there's still more to talk about. Thank you. Building your website shouldn't be. With Wix, you can express your ideas, give direction, then leave the heavy lifting to AI. From site creation to branded content and images. Have fun with the details. Customize what you want the way you want. And manage your whole business from a centralized dashboard with expert AI tools. Build, scale, and enjoy the incredible results. You can do it all yourself on Wix.
Right, so the next big update came in 2007 when the Sheriff's Office publicly announced for the
first time that they were now leaning towards Jennifer and Adriana's case being a homicide.
There we go, progress.
Three years later.
Progress.
A lieutenant explained their reasoning to the media, stating that detectives had worked nearly 1,000 different leads, including multiple reported sightings, but had found nothing concrete.
And because of that, they had to presume that Jennifer and Adriana were dead.
After hearing this announcement, Jennifer's grandmother, Peggy, said that the last three years had been devastating.
She told
reporters, quote, this has destroyed our family. Our life is kind of on hold. We never know what
we'll hear tomorrow, end quote. Kathy added that keeping Jennifer and Adriana's case in the public
eye was her top priority, and one of her biggest fears was that people would forget about them.
The investigation continued over the next few years, but there were few media updates,
and at some point detectives searched the concrete pillars
that had been poured on the Benton property
shortly after Jennifer and Adriana went missing.
Nothing significant was found.
Detectives seemed to be focusing their attention on the Benton family,
which made sense since they were the last people to see Jennifer and Adriana alive,
but for years no one directly addressed what many had quietly suspected, that it was possible
the Bentons were somehow involved in Jennifer and her daughter's suspected deaths. Then, in 2009,
Jennifer's mother Kathy publicly stated what many had been thinking. She told the Knoxville
New Sentinel that she strongly believed
Joey and possibly his father knew something about what had happened. She didn't elaborate further,
but it was the first time someone had openly said what had long been whispered. Kathy made it clear
that she wanted whoever was responsible to be held accountable, but that wasn't her focus.
She said, quote, at this point in my life, I really couldn't care less if anyone ever goes to prison.
What I most want is to just find my daughter and granddaughter so I can bury them properly and respectfully in the Christian way.
And there can be a place where I can take them flowers at Christmas and on Mother's Day, end quote.
By that point, it was clear that Kathy was in complete despair.
And Jennifer and Adriana's disappearance had changed everything about her life.
She described how in the early days, she couldn't even bring herself to go to the store,
and instead, she slept on the sofa with the porch light on, just in case Jennifer came back,
running scared from something in the night, banging on the door, trying to get in.
She followed leads across multiple states, often living in her car as she searched at one point
a psychic told her that jennifer and adriana were in missouri a town with two words one of which was
white desperate for answers kathy bought a map of missouri circled every two-word city with the word
white in the name and drove to each one herself but j. But Jennifer and Adriana were nowhere to be found.
Kathy didn't stop her frantic searching until one day when her two teenage daughters, Casey and
Heather, confronted her and said, Mom, we've lost our sisters and we've lost our niece, and we miss
them so much, but now we've lost you too. And that's when she finally slowed down, but she never
actually stopped searching for answers.
It's very sad because you know that Kathy did everything she could.
You know, she saw that there was danger with Joey and the Bentons even.
She saw that Jennifer wasn't being treated properly and that there was some sort of almost like brainwashing going on.
And that Jennifer was acting out of character because of this relationship with this person. And she tried everything.
And she always offered Jennifer a safe place to return to, but it just wasn't enough.
And now even in the aftermath, and I think you and I can attest to this as parents, you
say all the time, and you said in the last part, like, you're not looking forward to
these teenage and, you know, young adult years with your daughters because there's only so
much you can do to protect them.
And even if you do everything you possibly can
and run the entire gambit of things that you can do
to keep them safe and keep them educated
on how to keep themselves safe,
something could still happen.
And whether or not you had anything to do with it,
you'd feel guilty your entire life
because that was your job to protect them, even if you did everything you could to do with it, you'd feel guilty your entire life because that was your job to
protect them, even if you did everything you could to do just that. And this is the ripple effect
that we always talk about, the butterfly effect that these horrendous crimes have, not just on
the victims, but on everybody they love, everybody who loved them, their friends, their family,
their community. It changes people, not just one person, but everyone around them. So it's very sad.
Yeah. I also think there's some regret. I think it's simple to say they didn't always have the
best relationship and they probably said some things that they regretted afterwards. And you
think you're going to have time down the road to apologize or mend things. And eventually it'll
get to a point where you're good and you'll laugh at the you know
the things that happened before and how they could have been handled differently but when you don't
get that opportunity and you're left with that lack of resolution to be able to tell your daughter
I'm sorry or I wish I would have handled this part differently it can drive you insane and I'm and
then for a while there it seems like it did where she just was fixated on finding her daughter and her granddaughter.
And it took her other daughters coming forward to say,
hey, listen, we don't want to lose our mom too.
And she probably realized at that point,
I need to take care of my other children as well.
They deserve my attention.
Yeah, because then you feel guilty about that.
Of course, you made one mistake.
Let's not compound that.
But I can only imagine as a father, the position you're in at that point, not wanting to do anything other than look for your daughter.
And I do have some things I want to say about the possibility of Jennifer still being out there somewhere.
But I'll wait till we're at the end.
All right.
Well, in 2011, Kathy shared more details about her theories with the media.
She stated, quote, I think they were deceased from the very beginning, probably as soon
as I reported them missing.
She added, quote, even though I know in my heart they are dead, in my heart they are
still alive.
A lot of people say you need closure.
I hate that word.
There is no such thing as closure in a case like this.
With missing children, you are not likely to ever have closure, end quote. In 2013, nearly 10 years after Jennifer
and Adriana disappeared, Robertson County Sheriff Bill Holt, who had campaigned on the promise to
solve the Wicks case, held a press conference to announce that the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation
or the TBI was joining the investigation and it was officially being reclassified as a homicide.
During the press conference, Holt said they had developed new information in the past several weeks that led
them to conclude foul play was involved, but he wouldn't reveal what that new evidence was,
and he made it clear that no one, including Joey Benton, had been eliminated as a suspect.
Holt went on to share that the authorities had searched the Benton property
four different times, but they still hadn't found Jennifer or her daughter. He also stated that
authorities believed someone in the community knew what happened, and he announced a $27,000 reward,
which might entice them to finally come forward. At the press conference, Kathy spoke about the
toll the last decade had taken on her and her family. She said, quote,
We get up every morning and it's the first thing on our mind.
We go to bed every night and it's the last thing on our mind.
We've been constantly searching, always talking to people, just looking and trying to find resources all the time.
And it just never stops.
End quote.
She then made a direct plea, saying, quote,
There is someone out there who does know exactly what happened to Jennifer and Adriana, and I am pleading and begging as a mom and a grandmom for whoever that person is to please search your conscience and do the right thing.
Help me find my girls and lay them to rest with respect and dignity, end quote.
Following this press conference, Joey's grandmother, Carol Benton, spoke to the Tennessean and made it clear that she believed her grandson was innocent.
She said, quote, I don't think they ever had another suspect other than Joey.
I'm sorry she went missing. Don't get me wrong.
We loved that little girl. She would come up to the house and eat supper with us.
So when they asked us, we let them search. We never refused.
But she's not on our property. We don't know nothing about it, end quote. However, in that same interview, Carol contradicted herself, saying that the last time police asked to search the property was several years ago, and the family had said no.
So the search for Jennifer and Adriana continued, but there were a few updates.
By 2020, 16 years had passed since they went missing, and Kathy reflected on the years,
saying, quote, it's messed with my mind as far as the passage of time. It seems like it was
yesterday in a lot of ways. When you actually do the math or something kind of forces you to
realize how long it's been, it's kind of shocking, end quote. That's a sign, by the way, that
somebody's nervous system is wrecked. You're just fried you're overloaded, you're burnt out, you're in fight or flight, basically a freeze.
Most likely she's in freeze. But the passage of time is such a weird thing when you're struggling with PTSD or CPTSD or you have this huge trauma that just completely shuts your nervous system down.
And that's why I'm saying it clearly did severely affect Kathy.
I mean, just as a parent losing a child, I think I've said it before, even just the unknown is
almost worse than losing a child. Not knowing if they're still out there somewhere. The only
solace I would find in that would be if they're still out there and they haven't contacted me,
maybe there's a reason. Maybe they found peace. But it's hard to get there when you know all the
circumstances and you know the facts of the case. And you're like she said, she said it best. You
know, her mind is telling her one thing while her heart is telling her another. So for me, it's like
even if you know all the details, like, you you know your daughter and granddaughter are dead and you know every single detail about what happened to them, even if it's horrible, even
if it's the worst thing you could possibly imagine.
You know.
At least it's there, you know, and now you can process through it.
And it will take a lot of time and it will be hard, but you'll be able to process through
it because you know, and it could take years, but this, this, not knowing
all the scenarios running through your head as you lay down to sleep at night, that is torture.
Yeah. I mean, on detective perspective, that's all we covered. All the parents say the same thing.
I just want to know. I just want to bring my son or my daughter home. I know they're no longer with
me. I just want to bring them home. I just want to know
that they're back with me in some capacity. And that's the point you get to after many years.
Most of the cases we do are 20, 30 years old. That's the point they're at.
And I don't wish that on anybody.
No, God, no.
That's awful. So Kathy did point out that in 2020, when she's giving this interview, her two-year-old granddaughter would have been graduating from high school and her daughter Jennifer would have been turning 38 years old.
And that has to be so weird because in Kathy's head, Adriana's two forever, you know?
And yeah, like the passage of time and she would have been a teenager, but Kathy never knew Adriana as a teenager, and the optimism to see the possibilities ahead.
Founded on a belief that the wise heart seeks knowledge.
An Emory education combines experiential learning in Atlanta and beyond with unrivaled collaboration and discovery.
All to prepare you for a world that needs your leadership.
Learn more at emory.edu.
Bettering your business takes working with the best. With the James Hardy Alliance,
you gain access to leads, training, networking, and support from the number one brand of siding in North America. Achieve new levels of success by joining the James Hardy Alliance today.
At Emory University, we believe in those with the
ambition to achieve, the passion to learn, and the optimism to see the possibilities ahead.
Founded on a belief that the wise heart seeks knowledge, an Emory education combines experiential
learning in Atlanta and beyond with unrivaled collaboration and discovery, all to prepare you for a world
that needs your leadership. Learn more at emory.edu. We all know that owning a small business means you
wear many hats, but sometimes you really need an extra pair of hands. Upwork is how good companies
find great and trusted freelance talent. With more than two decades of experience, with the simple
and ambitious goal
of pioneering a better way of working. Companies at every stage turn to Upwork to get things done
and find more flexibility in staffing key projects and initiatives. They access a global marketplace
filled with top talent in IT, web dev, marketing, and more. Posting a job on Upwork is easy. With no
cost to join, you can register, browse freelancer
profiles, and get help drafting a job post or even book a consultation. From there, you connect with
freelancers that get you and can easily hire them and take your business to the next level. Visit
Upwork.com right now and post your job for free. That's Upwork.com to post your job for free and connect with top talent ready to help
your business grow. That's U-P-W-O-R-K.com, Upwork.com. So in 2021, Jennifer's sister Casey,
who had just been 16 when Jennifer disappeared, she kept pushing for detectives to stay active
on the case. For years, she faced challenges in getting any real progress, but that began to change when she reconnected with some of Joey's relatives, people the family hadn't been in contact with for years.
Those conversations ultimately led authorities to search the property where Jennifer was last seen yet again.
And while it was a significant step forward, It was also bittersweet. Casey shared her family's painful reality with the media, saying, quote,
It's not top of mind for a lot of people anymore, but it's top of mind for us.
I can't stop thinking about it because they're gone.
Someone took them.
Someone did something to them.
After 17 years, these types of cases, they seem to get forgotten.
And I understand that there are more time-sensitive cases right now.
I understand.
But what I'm asking is that you don't forget them because something did happen to them
in that town, at that home, with that family.
It has ruined that family's life.
I mean, I wish I had it in my heart to feel bad about it, but I don't.
That's what happens to people that are guilty.
End quote.
Damn, Casey over here saying it with her chest.
Yeah.
And I love what she's saying here. And I would say to her that there's truth in what
she's saying, but also I wouldn't necessarily say law enforcement is giving up, but the case
does get to a point where in order to move forward, you need someone to come out of the woodwork.
There's nothing else to do. There's no other lead to follow. Or you could have investigated the case properly initially.
But that's not even relevant. And probably the same cops who were on it initially aren't even
there anymore. They're not even on it. So yeah, that's what I'm saying. So when she's addressing
the department that's currently working the case, trust me, I've been there. I've come out and spoke
publicly about it. There have been cases
that should have been solved in the 1980s that now are on our desks or in our case file that
there's nothing else we can do. We followed up on every lead. We've redigitized all the paperwork.
We've talked to all the living witnesses. We need someone to come forward with new information
so that we can unpack it.
And probably those cops are, if the family's still alive, they're getting the pressure
of being the ones to solve it when they didn't screw it up to begin with.
It's like giving them a Lego puzzle and saying, hey, here's a box with half the pieces,
put it together. So you need someone to come forward and fill in those blanks.
That's just where it's at. Yeah, absolutely. Well, and I like how she's kind of saying like, even she believes the Benton
family, that their lives have been ruined because of it, because people are, you know,
side eyeing them. And it's kind of like, hey, something happened here. We all know something
happened here. And she's like, I can't even feel bad. I can't feel bad for them. I would normally
feel bad if this was anyone else, but I don't feel bad. This is what happens to people that are guilty. So unfortunately,
Jennifer and Adriana were not found in the 2021 search. And before the end of the year,
the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children created an age-enhanced image of Adriana.
While Casey firmly believes that Jennifer and Adriana were murdered, she said, quote, if Adriana happens to see this and recognizes herself, or if her friends recognize
her, it would be a Christmas miracle. We are not giving up on finding answers, end quote.
And I think that's important because even if something had happened to Jennifer,
let's say that Adriana was left alive and maybe whoever did what they did to Jennifer gave her
to a family. This has actually happened where this child will be raised since childhood
to not know that they were kidnapped or abducted from their biological parents
until technology catches up and the parents are able to find the child.
Is there a possibility that Adriana is out there someplace still alive?
And yes, that is more possible than Jennifer being alive at this point.
Yeah, and that's kind of different from what you said, which I thought was plausible, which is that Adriana, whatever happened,
happened to her first. And then they took out Jennifer because of it. Cause she wouldn't have
kept her mouth shut. This is a more, I guess I would say silver lining scenario. A rosier picture
where Adriana is still alive, where they did take out jennifer first something happens
with jennifer whether it's between her and cindy her and joseph her and joey a combination of all
three something happens to jennifer and they say wow we can't leave adriana here because nobody's
going to believe that jennifer would have left adriana behind so adriana's got to go too and
maybe they're not to the extreme that we were discussing as far as killing a baby
as well.
And they sent her off to some somewhere else with someone else.
And I would love for that to be the case.
And you know what?
It would be great if it was because two minutes ago we were just talking about new leads.
Imagine someone finally comes forward and says, hey, many years ago, this was brought
to me.
There was a child.
I knew something was up.
I love the child.
I raised it as my own.
She's fine.
But here, let's do a DNA test.
Now they can reverse engineer it from there.
Hey, so-and-so, who gave you the baby?
It was John Doe.
Who does John Doe know?
Oh, they know the Bentons.
Now they go to John Doe and John Doe rats out the Bentons.
Now you can build a case.
Or like Casey said, Adriana at this time would be 18, 19, 20 years old, a young adult, the
perfect age for a true crime fan.
She's watching a Crime Weekly episode.
She sees a picture of the age progressed picture.
And she's like, that kind of looks like me.
Maybe she's had some questions.
And in fact, I don't look anything like my parents.
And there's so many differences.
And maybe I have a different blood type.
And I've always thought that was weird.
And now I have questions.
Yeah, anything could happen.
I'm going to say something else that I was going to talk to you about bringing up in
a future episode.
But now is honestly the perfect time.
We're working on a case right now for criminal coffee.
There's going to be updates soon.
I know I keep saying it, but let's just say it's out of our control. It's in law enforcement's hands now.
But this is a great segue to bring up the fact, and we've talked about it briefly before.
I know some people have some concerns, but if you trust the system, and I would upload my data,
I would have no issue with it, consider uploading your data to GEDmatch. GEDmatch is a great organization.
It may help you or it may help someone in a case like this. Because if you upload your data,
maybe Adriana is out there somewhere and doesn't even know who she is. Or someone like her.
Someone like her, a relative uploads their data. They could be matched because of this. That's how
simple it could be. If everyone was uploaded,
it would be very difficult not to find a person. Now, I understand there's complications and there's
risks with that because that's your personal identity marker. It's almost more secure than
your social security number these days. But more times than not, it could really help solve a case.
You may be a relative of a criminal from three,
four generations ago, and because of your DNA match, it helps solve a case.
We're currently working that case that I just mentioned for Criminal Coffee,
and I can tell you that if we are on the right path, it's because of DNA. That's all I'll say.
Yeah, I agree. I mean, like you said, it's like anything, anything technology. I always feel like
humans are handed these amazing things that can make their life better. And then they utilize
them and abuse them to a point that makes their life worse, like social media. But with DNA,
as far as a crime fighting tool and a crime solving. Obviously, people are scared of the implications.
Technology has increased in advance to a place where, you know,
you don't want to just hand your DNA out willy-nilly.
But in this capacity, I do agree.
I think it is a positive thing that can help a lot of people.
Would you, as someone who is a skeptic and very cautious about that stuff,
would you put your personal stamp on that? Would
you upload your data to GEDmatch? Yes, I would. Okay. I'm going to-
Even though I feel very weird about it and there's always good, because I'm very anxious-
They might find out that those bodies you buried many years ago.
I don't think they'll find out about that. I was very careful, but I'm anxiously geared in my head.
And so every decision I make, there's'm anxiously geared in my head. And so every
decision I make, there's always a million thoughts about, you know, my brain's an apocalypse machine.
What could go wrong with this? They could set me up. They could put my DNA at a crime scene. They
could AI me to look like I was there and put my voice, you know, it's just crazy when you see
these stories, like what technology has done and you just kind of want to separate yourself from
it and not put yourself in any position. However, I will say my brain does things
that are out of the realm of possibility a lot of times.
Well, I mean, it's not a bad thing to be cautious,
but I do think that you and I should do it
to show people how simple the process is at some point,
because I do think if we do it,
a lot more people would follow.
Oh man, you're putting me on the spot then, huh?
Can we do that at CrimeCon this year?
Can I prick your finger myself? That's what I want.
Absolutely. I would only actually let you do that. I don't know if you know,
I'm terrified of needles. Oops, sorry. I went a little too deep.
Oh, now no. Now no. It's a no now.
Remember that time you said something on the episode?
No, no. see that i'm already
traumatized by needles you can't do that i'm gonna let you prick me have you ever noticed i have no
tattoos nothing like i'm terrified so can we do it at crime con they have a booth don't they do i
don't know if they're there this year but jet match i work with them all the time with break
investigative group jeremy and ryan are both investigators that work for me work for jed
match as well it's all kind of one community so I'm sure we could set something up.
But at minimum, you can go online and go to their website.
They can send you a secure packet.
It takes about 15 minutes.
It may help solve a case that you're not even aware of.
That's what I would say.
And just like a case like this with a service like GEDmatch, if Adriana or someone related to her uploaded their data,
it could potentially match and find her
without her even knowing who she is.
Look at the Bear Brook murders.
Yeah, I think people are also scared of like,
oh, I didn't do anything wrong,
but now my dad's being walked away.
Well, I mean, if he's a serial killer.
I know, I know.
Maybe he deserves to be.
Like if your dad was Joseph D'Angelo,
would you feel bad about it?
It depends.
What was my relationship with him growing up? I think these things matter
psychologically when deciding to do this. Like there might be a thing at the back of your head,
like, yeah, my dad's kind of sketchy. We could bring Kerry Rawson on for that one.
Yeah, exactly. I mean, her dad was BTK. Exactly.
So I think she's pretty confident in her actions going forward and how she's handled things. So
like I said, it's something we can talk about more down the road,
but these are one of those cases where if somehow Adrienne is still out there,
this would be one of the ways where a new lead could pop in and drum up,
not only finding Adrienne, but also finding out what happened to Jennifer and who's responsible.
Yeah, absolutely.
Just from a DNA upload.
Bettering your business takes working with the best.
With the James Hardy Alliance,
you gain access to leads, training, networking,
and support from the number one brand
of siding in North America.
Achieve new levels of success
by joining the James Hardy Alliance today.
Now listen, there's something interesting, okay?
Something interesting we're about to talk about in relation to this case,
very directly related to this case,
because we're talking about Jennifer's family going into 2020, 2022.
They're trying to keep her name alive.
They're trying to keep her daughter's name alive.
There's been search warrants executed.
Nothing's been found.
But there was a pretty major update on March 27, 2024,
20 years to the day since Jennifer and her daughter, Adriana, were reported missing.
On that day, the TBI arrived at the Benton home with a warrant to search the property again.
And when the news broke, many wondered if the authorities were finally going to find Jennifer and her daughter.
But unfortunately, that's not even why they were there.
As it turns out, Joey's mother, Cindy, filed a police report stating that her husband, Joseph, had attacked her on their property.
And since Joseph was out on probation for an aggravated assault charge from years earlier, he was arrested and a search warrant was issued.
During the search, authorities located numerous weapons, which as a convicted felon,
Joseph was not allowed to own. Based on what they found, Joseph was now facing 40 unlawful carrying or possession of a weapon charges and one prohibited weapons charge. But it was about
to get even worse because someone in the Benton family provided law enforcement with a computer that had been owned by Joseph Benton.
And what was found on the computer led to Joseph being charged with sexual exploitation of a minor.
All of the details have not been released.
However, we know that investigators found at least one explicit photo of a minor taken 20 years prior.
20 years prior.
Yep.
Okay, that's crazy timing.
Now, the victim in the photo.
His mind was back then.
Yep, right around the time that two-year-old Adriana goes missing.
Now, we know that the victim in the photo was not Adriana.
And obviously, that victim's name has not been released.
They were a minor at the time.
But we do know that the child was a family member.
So clearly, Joseph Benton is one sick motherfucker.
And this led to many people to now look back at Jennifer's concerns over her daughter's
vaginitis diagnosis and the fact that it could possibly have stemmed from sexual abuse.
And they wondered if Jennifer was onto something there, right? Yeah, totally. I mean, clearly. And
you had said it earlier. She was in the home. She knew the conversations that were happening in the
house. She had a direct line of communication with Joseph senior, just her instincts as a,
as a, as a mother. Her instincts would have said,
something's up with this dude.
Like something that you and I can't articulate from a script without being there.
There might've been some comments
that he made about women.
We don't know.
And she could have even felt something was off.
And then like,
cause I've done this where I've been like,
oh, there's something off about this person.
And then I'm like, oh, you're being judgmental.
Like they've opened their home to you.
Don't be like that.
Like ignore your instincts.
Ignoring your instincts never leads anywhere good, by the way.
No, it's true.
You got to trust your gut.
So the next big update in the case came in August of 2024 when the Missing in Hush Town podcast was released.
Casey had worked on the podcast for 18 months with producer Jules Thorpe, and the long-form series featured exclusive interviews with family and
friends. Also, the deputy who conducted the welfare check and the walkthrough of the Benton
home, the only guy that did his job, honestly, and the last person anyone expected, Joey Benton
himself. So after 20 years of lies told straight to the Wicks family, Joey finally told the truth,
or at least part of the truth, for the first time to this podcast.
During a call with Casey and later in an interview with police, he admitted that he, Jennifer, and Adriana never went on a drive on the evening of March 25, 2004.
He never took Jennifer and Adriana to any friend's house.
He didn't drive them to Food Value, and he didn't drop them off at the Exxon.
Joey,
we already knew that. We already knew that, my friend. Wait, so you're saying that he was lying
about the Mustang slash Camaro? Yes, he was lying. Wow. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Yeah. We didn't need
surveillance footage. So food value, cashier saying he wasn't there. All of it. Exxon cashier
not seeing Adriana. Makes sense. Mm-hmm. Now, what is the truth? Well, according to Joey, the truth was that Jennifer
and Adriana were not alive when he returned home from work on March 25th. He didn't explain what
happened to them, but this information confirmed what the Wicks family had believed since the
beginning. Obviously, Jennifer didn't leave willingly with her daughter and never contact
anybody from her family again. Now, despite these shocking revelations, which, like I said, Joey shared directly with the
police, no arrests have been made, no charges have been filed.
And as of the time of this recording, Jennifer and Adriana have not been located.
Their family remains desperate to bring them home and give them a proper burial.
So let's look at the timing of
this. Okay. It's August of 2024 is when this kind of all comes out. And Joey's like, hey, actually,
I didn't do all the things that I said I did with Jennifer and her daughter on that March 25th.
It's all a lie. When I got home, because remember, he received a call on March 25th,
and he was like, I got to go home. He's like, when I got home, they were dead. Do you see how like when you tell the truth,
it starts to line up or when you find the truth, for example, him being at work, which was confirmed
and then having outside parties say, yeah, he did leave work early. He was in a rush.
There was a sense of urgency. He said it was a family matter. Now hearing him tell this version
makes a lot of sense, doesn't it? Well, it's not really
a version because there's nothing here, really. He's saying I lied about everything. I lied about
everything, but here's what actually happened. But we don't know what actually happened. I'll
tell you what, I'll let you finish, but this version seems a lot more accurate to me. Oh,
it's definitely a lot more accurate, but where's the details, right? Because we're going to look
at this and we're going to say, August 2024. Joey's talking to police and saying they were dead when I got there. He's saying they were dead. Right. Yep. And no arrests have been made yet. Well, it's still technically could be that the police are now trying to build a case against the true perpetrators who I would say are Joey's parents. Yes, I'm with you 100%.
I don't know who's responsible,
but relatively speaking,
I know it's been way too long,
but you're right.
If he came in in August,
they got to go through.
This guy has been proven to be a liar
for the last 20 years.
So you can't put him on the stand
and have him be your key witness.
And it's been 20 years.
Yes.
So now piecing everything together.
Correct.
And trying to get alibis for these people that Joey may not be pointing a finger at.
It's going to be very difficult.
It's going to be difficult.
And we don't know how cooperative he's being, but he's the guy.
He's your main lead now.
Remember I said you need someone to come forward.
Don't forget about him.
Unfortunately, the person who came forward is now a proven liar at the same time.
So a defense team is going to eat him alive.
A defense team is going to eat him alive and a defense team is going to say, hey, maybe you did it.
But then all this shit happened with your dad, making him look suspicious.
And you were like, this is the perfect time to shift the blame and get all eyes off of me.
And I wonder how old they are or if they're even still alive, his parents.
Yeah, they're still alive because remember it was 2024 that Cindy called the police and was like, hey, my
husband Joseph is like attacking me. So I mean, a year ago they were alive. Yeah. They could have
passed since then, but yeah, you're right. More than likely they're old, but they're still alive.
But yeah, no, it's definitely something that there's a lot of work to do once someone like this comes forward.
And it's not going to be easy.
So I wouldn't jump.
If you told me that was three years ago and it was still not an arrest, I would be more perplexed.
But we're talking less than a year since this new revelation has come forward.
I mean, they're definitely alive because think about it.
I think Joey was 23 when Jennifer was 21.
So if Jennifer's parents are still alive, the Bentons are probably around the same age.
Well, you don't know that for sure.
But yeah, the better thing is you said 2024, they were still alive.
As of 2024, they're still kicking and moving. They're out there. And so they were still alive as of 2024 they're still you know kicking and moving
they're out there and you know so they're still around somewhere are they older than i'd like
them to be if they're responsible for this of course of course but better late than never so
i'm interested to see where this one goes because now we have a whole new dimension to this case
i mean it completely changes everything changes, although it confirms what a lot of people have probably speculated and what
we've even speculated over these last two episodes. So now we're getting somewhere,
but it does align more with what we had alluded to earlier in this episode and in the previous
episode. He's at work. There's dissension
in the house. He knows the dissension in the house. It's over a lot of things, including the
fact that Cindy really doesn't want Jennifer at the house anymore. Adrienne is not her son's child.
They're a nuisance. They don't need to be there. She wants him to go. She's treating them like dogs.
Something happens while he's gone. They call him and say, hey, you got to
get home. That's definitely one scenario or another. As I also said earlier, he comes home.
It's in the middle of the fight. He said they were dead. He said they were dead when he got
that's his version. Yeah, that, yeah. with 100% certainty now. Do I believe that he went home and something could have happened?
Yeah, I think it's more likely than the first scenario he gave, but it's also possible that
he is responsible and he's trying to put the blame on someone else. Bottom line, I don't think
Jennifer ever left that house again alive. I agree. And according to Casey, who's Jennifer's
sister and worked with Jules Thorpe on the Missing in Hushtown podcast. She said that
they do have more details, but they don't want to release them, obviously fearing it could
compromise the investigation. Yeah, they're working on it. She said information was about
what happened the day Jennifer and Adriana went missing. And she said other information was also
given. Casey said, quote, that their remains could be somewhere local. That was the first time in 20 years that Jennifer and Adriana were referred to by the Benton
family as remains, end quote.
And Casey said her family, along with investigators, have dug in multiple wooded areas in Robertson
County over the past month.
There you go.
Nothing has surfaced yet, but Casey thinks that they're getting close.
And she said while they're doing the podcast, she and Jules Thorpe
began re-interviewing everyone possible in the case. And this has opened up new information.
And Casey said they're coming forward because they know how close we are.
Oh, yeah. Yeah, the heads are going to roll. But it's what we said earlier, the needle in the
haystack. Law enforcement is starting to narrow down what happened here, but then now they got to go find
them. The unfortunate thing is what you said there, which is that, and this is what Joey said
when he came home, Jennifer and Adriana were already gone, Jennifer and Adriana.
So as much as we wanted it to be a scenario where Adriana could still be out there
from Joey's own mouth mouth that's not the case
which goes back to what you said that if something had happened to Adriana they took out Jennifer
because they knew she wasn't going to go down without a fight or we're really dealing with
some sadistic motherfuckers here and Jennifer was taken out first and they didn't want them to be
separated and they looked at want them to be separated
and they looked at Adrienne as a piece of evidence that could treat trace back to them
so they got rid of her as well it's very difficult to wrap your head around that anybody
yeah could could do that to amazing what people will do to save their own ass save themselves yeah
but I'm glad what you just brought up as far as they're out there searching now there There's definitely somebody working this case right now. I bet my life on it. They're
working it now because it's a cold case. There's really not a rush. They got a lot of time to
figure this one out. They're going to make sure they dot their I's cross their T's because it's
probably going to be an arrest and they're only going to get one shot at it because if they charge
them and they, and they come off, they get acquitted, they're never going to get charged again. There might not ever be an arrest. But the public and
Casey and the family could see and know what's happening. But like I said, 20 years, it's going
to be very difficult to get an alibi for Joseph and Cindy. They'd be like, I was at work. Well,
it's been 20 years. You know,
you have no DNA evidence. You have no physical forensic evidence left at this point. At this
point, it is Joey's word against his parents. And Joey, violent himself, pulled a gun on his
girlfriend and her daughter, drug addict, lied about everything. Who's going to believe him?
He's not the best witness if that's all you got. But if you can start to discredit alibis,
and it wouldn't be easy,
but if you can go back and find the people,
let's say Cindy was working at this location.
She's a nurse apparently, yeah.
There's a supervisor working that day.
They tracked down that supervisor.
Hey, everyone was talking about this in the community.
Was Cindy in work that day?
Did she come up to work?
Did she show up?
Or was this something that nobody ever came and asked you about?
Or maybe they had already discredited her alibi.
I don't know.
But there's stuff that they're aware of that we're not.
And I think they're so quiet about it right now is because based on what Joey told them,
their bodies were buried somewhere in that area.
They weren't dropped in a septic tank.
They were left somewhere that law enforcement is hoping they can find.
Because obviously to charge someone with homicide, it's a much stronger case with a body than without.
You can still do it, but it's a harder crime to have go all the way through and get a conviction. I mean, I think at this point, even with bodies,
there's not, it would be a heavily circumstantial case.
It would, it would.
But at this point, what do you have to lose?
I know, no, I completely agree.
It's just-
Put it together.
Don't waste too much time.
You wish that Joey maybe would have had a crisis of conscience 20 years ago,
not in his 40s,, yeah, but whatever.
It would make sense why he was kind of caught off guard
and gave this bullshit story
because I'm not trying to paint Joey as a victim here.
I don't necessarily think Joey's a good person.
No.
There could be some truth to what he's saying,
but on the other hand, let's not just, you know,
give him an award yet for being this guy
who finally comes forward
because even if he is telling the truth, it's too late.
There's also a version where he's giving us enough to show us what happened without disclosing that
he's the person responsible. There's also a version where if his mother, Cindy, was not fully
implicated in what happened that day, now her husband has you know been physically attacking her
and now that she knows what he was up to 20 years ago that guy yeah cindy needs to be protected at
all costs at that point because now the police can talk to her and be like you know what do you got
she can turn witness against him that's possible that also happens with these cases too and it
unfortunately takes a while but when you have a family dynamic like this father son mother
they're all in
cahoots together. But then as time progresses and they go back to being who they are, which is
scumbags, their relationships fall apart. And then all of a sudden they're, they're diming each other
out. Especially if pressure is being put, like, I'm sure a lot of pressure was put on Joey Jr.
Oh yeah. For a long time. Everyone thinks he's a killer. Everyone thinks it's him. And he's over
here like, what the hell? It's going to make him resentful of his parents or his father for making him keep
this secret and hold this in and look like this suspicious scumbag forever. You know,
so he might, you know, very possible Cindy and Jennifer were fighting that day. And Joseph
senior comes into the picture and shoots Adriana or Joey's Joey juniors at work.
Joseph comes is home.
And Jennifer's just talking to him because she thinks he's the nice one.
And she's like, yeah, I'm really concerned.
I brought my daughter to the doctor.
And there's signs of maybe sexual assault on her.
And he's like, oh, no.
Well, now I've got to do something about this. I've got to take you out.
Yeah, both of you.
There's one final note here.
The Wicks family would love for people to follow their road to justice on Facebook at
Justice for Jennifer and Adriana Wicks.
And you can share their story everywhere.
They would greatly appreciate it if you go check that out and make sure you do.
Yeah.
Join the Facebook.
They put updates and stuff there so that you can be apprised as things happen.
Go let them know that we sent you.
We'd greatly appreciate that as well.
We want to show their support.
They're going to need it more now than ever ever because if we're lucky enough, the truth will
come out and we will finally hear what happened to Jennifer and Adriana.
But we have to remember the family because as much as we want answers, it's probably
going to be very difficult for Jennifer and Adriana's family to hear the truth, even though
they've been waiting for it all these years.
So we want to be there to support them, whether there's an arrest or not. And that's one way you
can do it. Any final words, Stephanie Harlow? No, but I do have hope that, you know, at least
if this doesn't legally get handled, we'll know pretty much what happened. Even if this doesn't
go to a legal arena, even if nobody serves time, we will get answers to what happened here.
And that's at least hopeful for Jennifer's family because her mother said that.
I really don't care if anybody serves a day in prison at this point.
I just want to know.
And I think we all want to know.
And I think in a way we all kind of do have an idea of what happened here.
Those are great final words.
You know what I love that you always do?
I'll always go, any final words, Stephanie Harlow?
And you'll go, no.
And then you'll give a bunch of final words.
Yeah.
No, it's great.
It's great.
Guys, we appreciate you being here.
Please let us know in the comments down below, what do you think about this case?
And definitely go show your support on the Justice for Jennifer and Adriana Wicks Facebook page.
We will be back next week with a new case.
Until then, everyone stay safe out there.
We'll see you soon.
Bye. Bettering your business takes working with the best.
With the James Hardy Alliance, you gain access to leads, training, networking,
and support from the number one brand of siding in North America.
Achieve new levels of success by joining the James Hardy Alliance today.