Criminology - Jennair Gerardot

Episode Date: August 18, 2024

Jennair Gerardot had been married to her husband Mark for almost fifteen years when she discovered he was having an affair. Mark had taken a new job in a different state and fell in love very quickly with his boss Meredith Sullivan. Join Mike and Morf as they discuss Jennair Gerardot. Jennair began a spy surveillance campaign on her husband Mark. She discovered everything that he was doing and her world fell apart when she confronted him and he admitted the affair. She then made a plan to hurt Mark as much as she possibly could. You can help support the show at patreon.com/criminology   An Emash Digital production

Criminology is a true crime podcast that may contain discussion about violent or disturbing topics. Listener discretion is advised. Hello everyone and welcome to episode 321 of the criminology podcast. This is Mike Ferguson. And this is Mike Morford. Morf, how you doing, man? I'm doing good. I'm a little bit under the weather today, but I'm going to give it the old college try here and see if we can cover this episode.

Yeah, you sound a little bit different, but, you know, I know you'll make it through. Yeah, the kids are back in school, so I'm sure. they're bringing home some kind of germs and I catch them all. Yeah, I remember that when my kids were younger and it was just like, I think it's just a petri dish going on, right? You're getting into this new classroom and kids everywhere. But I always had the added element of my wife being a teacher. So, you know, all these kids, they want to come up and they want to hug her and, you know,

she teaches young kids. So they're always wanting to hug her and stuff. So she's, she's always fighting off stuff as well. Got to take the emergency and the vitamins. Yep, absolutely. Let's go ahead and give our Patreon shoutouts. We had Elizabeth Parker, Pamela Coburn, Crystal Schoder, jump down to our highest level, and Sandy Nielsen.

So a lot of great new support. We really appreciate it. Yeah, thank you so much to everyone that does support the show. It really helps us out. And for anyone on the fence that would like to, you can head over to patreon.com slash criminology to sign up. So let's go ahead and jump into this week's case. we're discussing a love triangle that turned violent, leading to a murder-suicide that made headlines.

We're talking about Janair Gerardo, a married woman who suspected her husband of having an affair. She was so hurt and despondent over the affair that she took matters into her own hands with deadly consequences. 33-year-old Meredith Sullivan had recently accepted a new position at Villanova University in Pennsylvania. According to CBS News, on April 23, 2018, she posted a selfie photo on campus, with a caption that read, couldn't be more excited, just a week on the job, and I'm already feeling the love from Nova Nation.

It was 5.42 p.m. and the new assistant vice president of marketing and creative services was feeling grateful and optimistic as she was getting ready to leave for the day. Her new place was just blocks away from the campus. She was still in the process of moving into the home that she had really, rented two weeks earlier and had only her furniture there for two days by that point. It was going to be a fresh new start. And so far it was going great. Meredith got home right around 6 p.m. Like she always did.

One of her new neighbors, Melissa de Joseph, saw her arrive home and go inside. She parked her outy, got her tote bag out of it and walked up to her front door. Melissa told ABC6.com as soon as she went in, probably less than five minutes. after she went in. I heard a noise that at the time I thought, is that a gunshot? Melissa thought to herself, no, it couldn't be, not in this affluent neighborhood of Radnor Township. Just after 7 p.m., a 911 call was made by Tim Mulvey, another one of Meredith's neighbors. He had found a man outside of her house, hysterical. According to Delawareonline.com, He said there were two people inside, possibly dead, and there was blood everywhere.

And I think this is something we've talked about at least a few times more. You know, someone hears something, let's say inside their home, a sound. And they're not exactly sure what it is. You know, in this case, Melissa thought, you know, could that be a gunshot? But then right away, she kind of dismissed it because of the type of neighborhood that she lived in. I guess gunshots were not common there. And, you know, I think that happens to a lot of people. Sometimes you think, okay, it's a car backfiring or it's some other type of noise, most likely not a gunshot. And I would say most of the time, that's probably true. Now, I've never been in the position where I've

heard a gunshot and debated whether it'll call police or not, but my thinking is the worst that would happen is it would come out, check it out. You know, if there's nothing there, then no harm's done. I'd like to think that if it happened to where I heard a shot, I would call just in case and it can't hurt to have them come and check out. No, I get what you're saying. It can't hurt. But I think the mindset that most people have is, well, I don't want to be that person who calls the police over nothing. And so if they're really not sure, I think by and large, most of the person, most of them, you know, Most people probably don't call just because they don't really think in their mind that there's anything wrong and they don't want to bother anyone.

When officers arrive, they found the hysterical man who said his name was Mark Gerardo. He pleaded to police that his wife might be inside. Mark was hysterical and hyperventilating so badly. He was put in an ambulance before being taken into custody while police sorted out what happened. Sergeant Christopher Ford told ABC News, we don't really receive those types of calls. When we arrived on the scene, it was kind of chaotic. Mark was discovered outside of the crime scene by a neighbor where there were two women inside dead

because he was too upset to get out any coherent sentences. He made a very obvious double homicide suspect, which is why he was taken into custody. And I think you can see why that would be, right? We described someone finding Mark outside. He's hysterical. and basically saying, you know, there's two people inside, they're possibly dead, there's blood everywhere, and he can't really even talk. He's hyperventilating. He's so hysterical that he probably can't give a lot of information. Now, police have to sort all of that out. Is this an act because he was

possibly involved, or is this someone who saw something so horrific that it's basically incapacitated him? I think police did the right thing erring on the side of caution until they could sort everything out and put Mark in an ambulance. And it sounds like in a police car until they could determine whether or not he was involved. Mark Gerardo was telling the truth, though. One of the women inside was his wife.

Janair, Gerardo. She was dead, and so was Meredith Selvin. Once authorities tried to move the bodies, they realized that Janair was their suspect, not Mark. There was a gun underneath her body. She had fired just two times, once at Meredith and once at herself. In what police determined was a murder suicide, Mark hadn't killed them.

He had discovered their bodies and gone into shock. So the question became, How did Mark's wife, Janair, come to be dead alongside Meredith, to understand how this happened? We need to go back to the beginning. Janir Cox and Mark Gerardo met while they were both teenagers during the summer in 1986. At the time, Janir was working at a Taco Bell in Fort Wayne, Indiana, where Mark stopped in to eat. Mark later told ABC News of their meeting. She made a brown polyester uniform look really good.

I was kind of tongue-tied. I couldn't even speak. He described how she had big, beautiful blue eyes and a big smile. Mark was too nervous to ask her out on a date, and they said their goodbyes. Four years later, in 1990, they ran into each other again. This time, Janir was working at a mall. Mark began to visit her at work almost every day, but still didn't make any moves. According to ABC News, finally, one day Janir asked Mark,

are you going to ask me out or what? He was attracted to her confidence and assertiveness, describing Janir as the exact the opposite of who he was. One of Ginear's childhood friends, Melissa Murphy, remembers how happy she was when they started dating. She told ABC News. When she met Mark, I remember her talking, saying this is the one. She was very excited.

She would do anything for Mark. Mark and Janair began dating and they got serious. And on October 23rd, 1993, they got married, while 23-year-old Janair was attending Butler University. By this time, Mark was 25. He told ABC News of the Marriage, I couldn't imagine not being with her for the rest of my life. The couple had a seemingly ideal marriage for over a decade. Like many other American couples, the Gerardo's were hit hard in 2008 with the downturn of the economy.

And they struggled on some level. In 2011, Mark closed his company, Gerardo and company, after he, he accepted a job offer in South Carolina. He was now going to be creative director for up and up. Janair found a job with Sorkor Instrumentation in Spartanburg, South Carolina. And I do remember, you know, that time frame 2008. That was a bad time for a lot of people. The economy was terrible.

You think about how much money people lost, you know, investments, housing prices, jobs. It was rough. It seems despite that, they were able to stay together and stay strong and the relationship seemed to get through that just fine. Well, and I think that shows you what type of relationship they had. You know, a lot of times it's easy for people to sail along while times are good. It's really when, you know, times kind of are rough when a marriage is tested. I think for a lot of people.

Yeah, I think financial issues are like a very common thing that couples have problems with when they do have problems. The move to South Carolina was good for the couple. Mark told Delaware online that living in South Carolina was like a renaissance. They began to spend more time together and go on outings. Things seemed great for years. According to the Philadelphia Inquirer, in October 2015, Mark posted a photo of Janir on his Instagram with the caption my birthday present 24-7. I'm a lucky guy.

Mark applied for a job as a creative director at the University of Delaware in 2017, and that same year, Ginear lost her job at Sircor. Meredith Chapman was a supervisor at the University of Delaware and responded to Mark's email and an in-person interview scheduled. At first, Mark was nervous about reporting to someone who had less experience than he did, someone who was also 15 years younger. But all of his concerns quickly disappeared when he met Meredith. He told ABC News, when I sat across the desk from her within five minutes, I didn't say it out loud, but I said, I've got to work for this person.

33-year-old Meredith Chapman made quite an impression on him. He told ABC News, she was so articulate and so energetic and passionate about the job and accomplished at her age to be in the position that she was in. I was dumbfounded. When Meredith offered Mark the job, he gladly accepted. He was excited to be working with her. In November 2017, he moved to a new home in Wilmington, Delaware, leaving Janair behind in South Carolina to handle their affairs and find someone to take over the lease on their home. Mark found living alone to be refreshing and liberating, maybe a little too liberated. Yeah, this was the first time in their marriage.

that Jinnair and Mark were apart and not living together while they were, while Jeneer was settling everything in South Carolina, Mark is alone in Delaware, and it seems like he enjoyed that a little bit. I can understand that. You know, when you're married, you're with somebody day in,

day out. It's awesome, right? Married life is great, but there are some people who like, their space and maybe Mark didn't realize how much he liked a little bit of space. Now, I think we're going to find out that that scenario can also get a person in trouble. But I want to go back to, you know, working for someone who's a lot younger than you.

Yeah, I can remember when I was in my 20s. I was managing, you know, a lot of people in their 40s, 50s. And I don't know how hard that was for them. But as I got older, there were times where people started to become younger than me in positions higher than me. And sometimes that was a little tough. You know, they didn't have the experience. Some of those people were great. Some of them not so great.

Well, it sounds like Mark was excited to work with Meredith, even though she was younger. and he might have been a little bit of intimidated by that. Seems like he was willing to give that working relationship a try. Once Mark was working at his new job, he and Meredith, who was also married, quickly became close friends. One night when he told her that he was out to dinner by himself, he had a conversation about being alone, and Meredith playfully told him to invite her and that he wouldn't be eating alone. He took her up on the offer, and it was the first step in the two becoming romantically involved. Just one month after meeting Meredith, with his wife Janair still back in South Carolina,

Mark kissed Meredith. Mark told ABC, while he knew it was wrong, I felt enthralled. It was such a connection. To shut it down just didn't feel right. I had to at least find out what it was that drew us together. Meeting Meredith made Mark realize that his life with Janir was just a routine. He told Delaware online, it was just doing the same stuff over and over again, with nothing new. Meredith also fell for Mark as quickly as he fell for her. Mark told Delo online that Meredith said to him, I felt more joy, more excitement than I ever had before this fall. So Mark crossed the line and it's something that happens every day, unfortunately.

People cheat. But for me, it was the, you know, description that he gave up. I think all of us can remember back to new relationships and how, how exciting they are. He's talking about, you know, his marriage being routine and yeah, obviously when you're with somebody for a very long time, is it as exciting as it was in the beginning? No, not always. It's pretty tough to make that happen.

And I think it's one of the reasons why, you know, people do cheat. You know, they just get caught up in something new. something different. Obviously, we know it's wrong, but like I said, it happens all the time. And it seems like it's a common thing that it's often a co-worker because you're spending a lot of time with them, you're around them, so you're interacting with them and the sparks, whatever might be going on, it could be hard to shut those off or ignore them. Yeah, I would agree with that.

You know, when you're with someone day in, day out, you know, eight, nine, ten hours a day, at work, I think that's where the sparks can fly. While Mark and Meredith had begun an affair, things were about to get more complicated. In December 2017, after 45 days of living the bachelor life, Mark was finally joined by Janair in Wilmington. By this time, Mark and Meredith had already professed their love for one another. The changes in Mark were obvious to Janair. He seemed distant and cold toward her, despite having spent over a month away from his wife. She sensed that there was something going on between Mark and Meredith.

Mark told ABC News that Janair confronted him, asking, what is up with you? You're acting different. It's Meredith, isn't it? Mark denied anything was wrong and denied having an affair or even an interest in Meredith. Mark's denials didn't satisfy Janair. And she knew deep down something was all. Despite Mark telling Janir everything was okay, and that he wasn't interested in Meredith, on New Year's Eve, 2017, Mark told Janir he wanted them to take a break in their marriage.

She didn't take his proclamation well. Soon, Mark noticed changes in Janir. She suddenly seemed to know everything about what he and Meredith were doing and saying. It bothered him, but he had no explanation for how she could possibly know any of this. Just before Valentine's Day in 2018, Janir confronted Mark. she told him she knew about the affair and admitted that she had paid to clone his entire cell phone. She would be able to read every text the two had ever exchanged and see how many times they called each other, as well as all of the photos and web history on his phone.

Mark decided to confess, knowing there was no use in lying anymore. So there's a couple of things more that really kind of jump out at me about this whole thing. you know, first of all is how quickly the attraction and affair began between Mark and Meredith. I mean, it seems like it was almost instant. He was only up there alone for 45 days. And then, you know, this cloning of his cell phone. I mean, that's some really sly stuff. And obviously, if you think as Janair did, that your spouse is cheating on, you,

you that ability to read every text, to see every phone call, to see every picture, it's going to prove things out pretty quickly. And if it comes to a head in that way to where you don't trust your spouse or your partner and you have to clone their phone, you know, you have to wonder, is there any hope for that relationship? Can there be any trust there? Well, it sounds like it was going downhill pretty quickly, right? Mark says, hey, I think we should take a break.

That's rough to hear when you've been married for quite a long time. And I want to go back to this 45 day period. You know, if you haven't seen your wife in 45 days, normally you would think that reunion once the two are back in the same place would be amazing. Because you haven't seen that person in such a long time. But Janair experienced the exact opposite. And I think that's what, you know, led her to believe that something was up. And I think she spotted the signs, even though he probably tried to cover his tracks up and not be obvious that he was in an affair.

It seems like she was able to spot the subtle differences in him and knew something was going on. In the suburbs of D.C., a woman fails to show up for work and is found brutally murdered. I wonder which emergency. We just walked in the door and there's blood in the foyer. For the next two decades, the case remained unsolved until new technology allowed investigators to do but had once been impossible. A new series from ABC Audio in 2020, blood and water. Listen now, wherever you get your podcasts. After Janair confronted Mark, they each felt betrayed.

Janair by the infidelity and Mark by the intrusion into a cell phone, they both shared some blame. They agreed they would go to couples counseling to try and work through whatever it was they were going through. They had over 15 years invested in a marriage and if it could be safe, they wanted to try. After the first session, they both agreed they would continue to go. But when Mark was getting ready for the second session, he felt something odd in the jacket he was putting on. It was bumpy and hard, but it was in the lining of the jacket. So Mark cut it open. He pulled out, a tiny electronic device. It was flashing.

He had found a recording device placed there by Gennier in the lapel of his coat. This along with the cell phone cloning is how Gennier knew all the details of their conversations. She had heard them all. And I talked about, you know, the cloning of the cell phone. Now we've got hidden spy recording gadgets. I mean, this woman had a little Jason Bourne. in her. I don't know where she figured out how to do all this, probably the internet like most people do. And it sort of puts perspective. And if this happened back in the 50s or 60s, what might

someone in generic shoes find a love letter or something like that? Lipstick on a collar, the things that might be giveaways to an affair would be quite different than today. But today with the technology, she'd be able to spy on them and do all kinds of stuff to try and see what was going on. When Mark confronted Janair over the spying, she didn't deny it. Mark told ABC that Jennifer said to him, maybe if you were truthful with me from the very beginning, I wouldn't have had to dig around like this. She told me she wanted to understand the degree to which Meredith and I were in the relationship, and she was determined there was a plan between Meredith and I, and she was trying to listen to what that plan was. Hurt and feeling betrayed, Janair wrote an email to the university about their affair.

Meredith was his boss, and the relationship between them was against their ethics policy. You can't enter into intimate relationships with swardenance in most professional settings, and that was the case here. In March, Meredith lost her position at the school, and in April, Mark began to look for a new job, too. Getting Meredith fired may have provided Janair with a short-lived satisfaction, but it didn't do anything to help her marriage. And I think at this point in the story, you have to feel for Janair. We talked about how great their marriage was. And then it seems like all of a sudden, this move to Delaware, you know, Mark meeting

Meredith, the very quick start to the affair. It must have been extremely devastating for her. And I think Mark was definitely troubled by all these things she did. all these electronic gadgets that she was using to spy on him. And that's obviously that's not cool. But he doesn't have the leg to stand on because he's the one having an affair. So how can he realistically blame Janir for doing what he's doing? He's the one that was lying to her.

Yeah. I mean, I think if your wife is secretly recording you and you're not doing anything, okay. You might have a right to be a little mift, but it's tough when you're the one having the affair to throw up your hands and say, oh, I can't believe you're doing this to me. So Janair, you know, she wrote this email, which eventually led to Meredith being fired, but Janair wasn't done yet.

She also emailed Newark City Councilman Luke Chapman, Meredith's husband about the affair. Some of her emails to Luke were shocking. In one, she urged him to act quickly. to grab her underwear when she changed so that he could DNA test them for semen. He never responded to Janair, but did act on the information she sent him. He filed for divorce days after her first email. This was all too much for Mark. He told Janair he wanted to divorce.

Unfortunately, since they had just moved, they didn't meet the legal requirements to file in Delaware until May. So he would have to wait until then he agreed to keep working on the marriage. Now, both the Chapmans and the Gerardoes were on their way to a divorce. Meredith was looking for new employment and a new home on her own. She started using her maiden name Sullivan again. And I think this just shows you more, you know, how costly an affair can be. I mean, this thing between Mark and Merritt. Meredith wrecked two marriages and essentially changed the lives of four people.

And obviously we know it's going to have even greater consequences down the road. In March 2018, Mark found another listening device. He was furious. Ginear had agreed to stop spying on him while they went to counseling together. But obviously, she had lied. Mark remembers being so angry he knocked their coffee table over. Mark told ABC, she took all my jackets and had a multitude of devices that she was cycling in and out. As outrageous as any listening devices, Janir had multiple secret devices.

She had to take them out of the clothing to download the audio and recharge the device before getting it back into his clothing undetected. Mark explained every day she would take it back out and then sew it back in, download it, and back and forth. She had done that for weeks. And it's clear that there's outrage, right, on the part of Mark, but I go back to what we said earlier, which is, you know, he's the one that caused the distrust that started this whole spying thing. But, you know, I will say more of it. It was pretty elaborate. You know, all these different devices sewed into clothing. You have to take them out, download, recharge, put them back in. it's a lot of work. It probably took a lot of time doing that work too. And the one thing that I take away with this too is they're still going to counseling during this time.

And to me, it seems like there's no way to save this relationship at this point because they're, you know, once you've gone this far down monitoring, you know, your spouse, how could you ever trust him? And if you're Mark, he's probably, you know, he can't trust her because she thinks he's spying on him. Well, one thing is clear, right? Giener was taking all of this very seriously, and the fight over the surveillance gear was apparently too much for her. She recorded the video of herself crying, saying, my life is such a waste. I don't deserve it anymore. Then she went upstairs to the roof of the building and threatened to jump.

A neighbor coming up on the elevator interrupted her and she went back inside. Once in the apartment, she said, I'm going to do it and started to run toward the window. Mark grabbed her and pulled her away from the window. Mark promised not to do anything that would get her hospitalized if she would see a psychiatrist. She told him she would. Ginear's former coworker, Naila, recalls a strange photo sent to her on March 15, 2018. It was taken from the roof of Janair's apartment building. The caption was, please tell Mark to come home to me.

Nila didn't see the text that night, but in the morning she was sure that Janir hadn't been in her right mind. when she sent it. Naila called Janair, and she said she had been feeling suicidal the night before, but was okay now, and she also said that she and Mark had a great conversation that night. Pretty quickly, Janir seemed to have calmed down about the situation and accepted what was going to happen. Their marriage was going to end, but in the meantime, she had some demands. Her and Mark were going to spend time together, go hiking, go out to dinner, and just be a family again until the divorce. While he admitted this was odd, Mark told ABC he was trying to land this thing, so she's in a good place when it's over. If this was what she needed, then I was going to do that.

And I'll be honest with you, you know, it did seem pretty odd to me. You know, like you said more, if it seems like the relationship was essentially over. And the only reason they weren't divorced by this point was because they didn't meet the requirements in Delaware. So you have Janair kind of coming to the conclusion, apparently, that the relationship is over, but she's demanding that they spend time together. They go out and do stuff. They go to dinner until the divorce is finalized. It does seem a little strange.

Yeah, those are the type of things that happy married couples do, spend time together, do different things, go on adventures together. And in a marriage, it's ending, it seems odd that she wanted to keep doing that, but he was willing to try that if it helped her get through this. Despite all the counseling and all the years they spent together, everything that happened in Delaware was just too much to overcome. A quiet dinner was scheduled for April 23, 2018, so that Mark and Janair could civilly discuss Mark's upcoming divorce filing.

which he had scheduled on May 6th, the first possible day to do it. Mark arrived at the restaurant first and grabbed a table on the outdoor patio. It was one of the first nice spring days, and he thought the fresh air would be a nice touch to their discussion. After a while, Janair texted him that she would be late because she made a wrong term. She then texted Mark that he should just go home because she wasn't coming. That text was followed by a photo that Mark would never forget. He recognized it as a used condom from Meredith's trash, the contents of which had been dumped

on to the ground outside in front of Meredith's home. According to ABC, the photo was quickly followed by more messages from Janair. You ruin my life. I hope you never find happiness. And finally, by Mark. Mark's heart sank. He knew from the photos, Janir was at Meredith's home, and he knew that there would be some kind of ugly situation,

and that things had come to a head. He immediately tried to call Meredith. All of his calls rang until they went to voicemail. She didn't respond to his frantic text either. Mark left the restaurant and headed to Meredith's house. Everything was quiet when he arrived. Mark thought that maybe Janair had confronted Meredith and left, and Meredith was just too upset to tell him.

text him back. He knocked on the front door, but no one answered. So he went around to the back, wondering if she just couldn't hear him at the front door. Looking through the window, he saw Meredith lying on the floor in her kitchen. He made his way inside and shook her, trying to wake her up. His first thought was that she had somehow passed out, but she was completely lifeless as he tried to get her to come to. Then he noticed Janair on the floor a few feet away. Mark told ABC, I just said, baby, oh baby, what have you done? Mark made his way outside. He was. He noticed. He noticed. And he where he ran into neighbor Tim Mulvey, who called 911.

So we've kind of come full circle, right? We started out with this scene. Mark out in front of the house with neighbor Tim Mulvey. Now we know what Mark saw inside the home. But I want to go back to him sitting at the restaurant waiting for Janair. He gets a text with a picture of a used condom. He realizes that the picture has been. taken by Janair out in front of Meredith's home, you know, in the trash.

What sort of thoughts, you know, start to race through a person's mind in a situation like that? I don't know all of them, but they can't be good. Yeah, I think as he frantically tried to get over there, he had no idea that he was going to find them dead. He probably just expected to find them having a heated argument or, something along those lines, he probably wasn't prepared at all that he would find them both dead in the house.

Yeah, I'm with you. My thought is he knew whatever it was wasn't going to be good, but he probably didn't think it would rise to the level that it ultimately did. Once authorities realized that Mark was not their murderer, the investigators worked to put the pieces together. At first, it was believed that Janair had taken the train from Wilmington to Radnor. About an hour and a half ride. However, Keyes found at the scene.

Belonged to a car she had rented on April 13th. The Cadillac SUV was parked on a side street near Meredith's home. Mark recall seeing the same car parked outside of their home in Wilmington two weeks before the murder. A neighbor recalled seeing a woman outside of Meredith's home. Just two days prior to the murder, she thought she had been looking for a lost pet. because as she described to the Philadelphia Inquirer, she had a grim, concerned, or worried look. The neighbor also remembered that the woman was using binoculars to look towards Meredith's house.

She was wearing a trench coat, sunglasses, and her hair was very dark and looked fake like it was a wig. The woman got into a black SUV with New Jersey license plates and then drove off. And we've spent quite a bit of time. talking about, you know, the spy devices, the electronic stuff. But here we have, you know, Janaird doing a little bit of old-fashioned spying, you know, in person, dressed in a disguise, she's got some binoculars and she's spying on Meredith's house. Yeah, we talked earlier that the neighbor didn't call after hearing a gunshot. Well, here's another opportunity to call the police.

When you see somebody dressed in a costume with binoculars spying on someone, you know, that to me warrants calling the police and letting them check it out and see what's going on. And who knows, maybe that, if that had happened, maybe this could have been prevented. Yeah, I get what you're saying, but I don't blame this woman at all. I mean, she even said it. I thought this lady was looking for a lost dog. Who's going to call the police on someone who they believe is looking for a lost dog? After examining the crime scene inside Meredith's home, police found a bag containing a wig and items of clothing that didn't belong to Meredith. In the Cadillac SUV, authorities found a pair of binoculars, earplugs, rubber or latex gloves, and more ammunition.

A receipt for gas found inside placed Janir in the neighborhood by 2.40 that afternoon. It was clear that Janir had been planning this for quite some time. Janir had worn all black, maybe to symbolize her dark mood and her mourning over their own. relationship, maybe because it felt appropriate to dress for a funeral when you plan to end your life. Police learned that Janair drove to Radnor and parked near Meredith's house. To get into the home, she broke a single pane of glass in the front door, which allowed her to reach the doornaub and unlock it from the inside. She then took the time to clean up all the glass so that nothing looked out of place. There could be nothing that would put Meredith on guard. As she arrived home,

if this plan was going to work. She waited in Meredith's home possibly for hours. As soon as Meredith was inside, where she would have been safe, Janair shot her once in the face. Meredith still had her keys in one hand and her cell phone in the other. She only had to shoot once.

She had been practicing her aim at the shooting range. She actually visited the range for the last time, just before heading to Radnor. After killing Meredith, she turned the gun on herself and took her own life. She had come prepared to fire more shots, though. When officers recovered the weapon, there were still more bullets in the chamber of the 357 caliber revolver.

The Chapman's divorce degree was mailed on April 25th, two days after Meredith's death. Mark wasn't invited to either funeral service. He was left on his own to try and figure out where everything went wrong. He told ABC, I had to know myself how she pulled this off, why she did what she did. He looked through Gineer's computer and bank statements and learned that she was living a double life. In February 2018, Gineer voiced her frustrations on the next door app.

According to Philly.com, she wrote on the app, I just transferred to Delaware in December for my husband's new job, and he's telling me he wants a divorce. She laid out their situation writing, I don't know anyone and am completely clueless to the area. Can someone please recommend a reputable and successful and driven divorce attorney? So it seems that early on Janair was focused on ending the marriage and wanted an attorney to help her do that.

And my thought is that Mark was pretty adamant, right? He said he wanted the divorce. He was going to file as soon as he could legally do that. And we know he did right after their fight near Valentine's Day where Janair admitted to cloning Mark's phone. and he admitted to what Janair already knew. She opened a bank account and started a new line of credit without telling him. The purchases made with these new accounts were astounding.

She used her secret account to buy the audio recording equipment that she would sew into his clothes, a kit for picking locks, two GPS trackers, software to hack computers, and even DNA testing kits. she would use on his clothing. Janair had purchased two GPS trackers, one for Mark's vehicle and one for Meredith's, and managed to place them without being detected, even without the listening devices.

She would know when the two were together, or even near each other. In the tracking software on her computer, Meredith's car was nicknamed whore, and Mark's was labeled lying jerk. There were even audio recording, devices in Mark's office at work. The lock picking set she bought was to break into his office without leaving a trace.

So we already knew that, you know, Janair was doing some things to spy on Mark because she thought he was having an affair. And at a certain point, he admitted to the affair. But when you find out kind of the scope of the spy, it becomes even more astounding. You know, you've got DNA testing kids, these GPS trackers on their vehicles, a lock picking set. She had put a lot of thought into all of these ways that, you know, she was going to gather evidence or keep an eye on them or whatever it was. And I think the level at what she was doing here maybe could speak to her, her,

her mental health at that point, she got to that point where she needed help, perhaps, and just didn't have anybody to give her that help. Yeah, I don't doubt that her mental state was not good. You know, I think she was crushed by what Mark had done, what he was still doing. And all of that is evidenced by, you know, this very intricate spying, whether it was in person, electronic, it was just so involved. By March, Janir's post on Nextdoor were more detailed and angry. She wrote, please recommend an excellent marriage counselor for a couple on brink of divorce. She added, we will need someone who is very educated and experienced dealing with couples' issues,

including infidelity, depression, traumatic experience, traumatic experiences, child parent dynamics, being accountable for actions, etc. also found 12 notebooks full of written conversations. Janair didn't just listen to the recording she made. She wrote them all down. There were hundreds of hours of recordings. And Janir had transcribed every single word by hand. And that seems to me to speak to Janair's mindset as well.

She already has the recordings. But that's not enough. You know, she's going to sit and listen to them. And as she's doing that, transcribe. every word by hand. I think what you can see is the obsessive nature of what she's doing kind of unfolding. Yeah, I think it was clear that this affair had taken over Janair's life. It was her main focus. Also on Janair's computer were more than 400 screenshots from private Snapchat conversations between Mark and Meredith. His best guess as to how she was able to get

these since most Snapchat messages disappear in 24 hours was that Janair was using his thumbprint to unlock his phone when he was asleep at night. She also used the secret credit card to purchase a gun, a tourist tracker 357 caliber revolver on March 20th. While this was over a month before she killed Meredith, it was just five days after Mark found another listening device and Janair threatened to jump off the roof of the building. This was a large amount of work for Janair to do and she likely only had the time to do it because she still hadn't found a job after moving to Delaware. Janair's divorce counselor Sheila Brennan told the Philadelphia Inquirer, it became her full-time job just to track him. I just kept thinking it would be

better if she could just go to work so she wouldn't be so obsessed with it. It wasn't healthy to track him. It was killing her. An email Ginerre sent to some of her family members around the time of the murder was started weeks beforehand and consisted of a series of dated entries. She lays out her feelings and reasoning quite clearly. According to Mark in his ABC interview, he said, It's as simple as yes. This is payback for what you've done to me. One of Gineer's entries read, They cannot get away with destroying my life for their gain. It was clear that Janir wanted Mark to feel her pain. Janir also wrote,

My life and soul were irrevocably broken. I'm not even a shell of the person I once was. Janir once told Mark in a conversation that was captured by her own hidden recording device. Speaking of Meredith, she's living my fucking life. And I think these emails really provide a great glimpse into Janair's. state of mind. She wants Mark to feel the same type of pain that she's feeling. She is basically saying that she's destroyed. And she is not going to let these people get away with destroying her life. Mark also learned that Janair had a backup plan. If he happened to be with

Meredith when it was time to attack, she was prepared to kill him too. But that wasn't her goal. She wanted Mark to live with his pain, which is why she only targeted Meredith. But if it came down to it, she would have had no problem, making sure they all die. Her final wish was for someone to euthanize her pet cat gypsy, who she had for more than a decade. All of the things Mark found painted a bleak picture of Janair suffering through something she felt there was no returning from. She had documented documented a lot. Perhaps hoping Mark would find it all. Psychotherapist, Dr. Robbie Ludwig, thinks the recordings Jeneer listened to of Mark and Meredith were key to her plan. Dr. Ludwig told ABC, in my opinion, there was something about listening in on the tapes that

triggered rage and wound her up. It gave her the courage to know that she was right and that he was bad. Janir's divorce counselor, Sheila Brennan, explained. She already knew he was having an fair and she was rubbing salt in her wounds with all the tracking and recording. According to Sheila Brendan in a Delaware online article, Janir was concerned about her being tossed away and Mark turning her in for a newer model. And I actually do think there's a lot to what these people are saying. It's one thing to know that your spouse is having an affair. You know, Mark had admitted the affair.

But then think about on top of having. that knowledge, also having all of these hundreds of hours of recording and intently listening to them. You know, you're going to hear intimate conversations between your husband and another woman. How could that not enrage a person even more than they already were? And I think the more that someone would listen, the more enraged they would get. And this is a little bit different than somebody that finds out their spouse is having an affair and decides I'm going to get a divorce attorney and take them for everything they've got. They shouldn't have done this to me.

And it seems like Janair was more focused on hurting Mark the way that he had hurt her. Yeah, I agree with you. She simply was not going to just walk away from the mayor. And I use the word simply, even though we all know how hard that would be to do. But she's taking it way further. You did this to me. Now, here's what I'm going to do to you. It's not hard to see why Janair felt so threatened by Meredith.

We've already discussed how quickly Mark fell for her and just how extraordinary he felt their connection was. But he wasn't alone in that feeling. Her former co-worker Katie O'Connell told 6abc.com, most people who met Meredith were instantly dazzled by her. According to wh-h-Y-Y.org, Meredith has been described as a beacon of life to anyone who was fortunate enough to meet her.

And she was said to be among the most talented and innovative professionals in her field. A spokesperson for Meredith's family said her death was sudden and tragic, but will not define who she was to the thousands of people who loved her. Meredith had run for state Senate in 2016 and lost by just 747 votes. Even her opponent, eight-term Democrat incumbent Dave Sokola said to WHYY.Y.org, she was bound for great things. Meredith's family does not participate in.

coverage of her murder because according to the Philadelphia Inquirer, TV shows about the case do not and cannot capture the essence of her life. And I think that's absolutely correct. You know, no matter how well a podcast is done or how well a TV show is done, there is no possible way to really capture the essence of someone's life. You just can't do it in the short amount of time that you have to cover a case. And I can also see that the family might choose to not participate in those shows and stuff because it's going to open old wounds for them as well. Yeah, I don't know what the upside would be, you know, honestly, for the family to participate.

You know, I understand if you have an unsolved case or, you know, or some type of missing person's case. Well, then the family might be a little more apt to participate because, you know, they want to get information out there. They want to keep the story a lot. That's not what we're talking about here. After the murder, Mark told ABC he felt like public enemy number one. There's a lot of pretty passionate discussion about this case online.

And it's clear that many people don't see Mark or Meredith as blameless in the story. Many comments from posters say that Meredith's death was justified. They weren't necessarily calling her a homewrecker or blaming her for breaking up the Gerardo's marriage, but these comments did blame Meredith for initiating a relationship with someone working under her. Some posters wrote that when Meredith learned of what Janir was doing, she could have walked away instead of latching onto Mark even more. Janir's recording devices captured Meredith calling Mark crying multiple times, once because she needed help moving and her car was too small.

Another time when she was upset about how nasty her divorce proceedings might get because Janera wouldn't stop calling her husband Luke. And this is a case more where, you know, when you look at comments online, they kind of run the gamut, which is normal for most cases. But in this one, you have two people involved in an affair. one of those individuals ends up dead. Okay, well, the affair was not right. There's no doubt about that, but it doesn't mean that Meredith deserved to die. And I read more than a couple of posts that kind of said that that she did. And I was taken aback by that because a lot of people do things that

are not socially acceptable. They're not right. They are, I'm trying to think of the right word for it, but it certainly doesn't mean that they deserve to be killed. There are multiple comments on Janair's obituary from people who admit they never met her, but feel for her. Some of them commented that they wish they could have been a friend to her in a time of need. Many people believe that Gennar was driven to do what she did because of Mark's actions, they think that while Gennar is ultimately the murderer, if Mark hadn't continued to lie to her, drag things out, gaslight her, and give her false hope. None of this would have ever happened. In these recordings, Mark tells Gennar, he doesn't know what he wants. In that he loves her, she urges him to make a choice,

to leave if he wants to, but he didn't right away. Many people see Mark as the victim of an abusive relationship, saying that if the genders were reversed here, no one would have any sympathy for the killer. Friends of Mark weren't happy when the two got married and felt that Janair pushed them away. When Mark had any guest over, Janir refused to socialize, preferring to mope in the bedroom. Eventually, it was easier just to stop having people over. You also couldn't really argue with Janir. According to Mark in a People magazine interview, she was always going to have the last. last word. Ginear struggled to keep a long-term job. Clients and employees in the past had specifically

requested not to work with Gennar when dealing with Mark's company. He never asked her to change her behavior or made any adjustments to the company. It was easier just to close the entire company and find separate jobs. And I could see why there are some people who would feel for Gennar. I do think, you know, Mark's actions put her in a very dark place. Now, I don't agree with what she did, obviously. You know, the things that Mark did weren't right, but at the same time, I don't think you can say that he caused her to kill. I don't think that would be correct. She had a number of different paths that she could have taken.

And she chose to take one that ended in the murder of a woman and then ultimately the end of her life as well. Yeah, I think this case is just a lesson that if you embark on an affair, you have no way of knowing where that's going to lead. Is that going to break up a relationship? Is it going to cause problems, potentially violent issues? things like that, you have no way of where things will go when you start an affair so it can be dangerous, you know, even starting one. And whether that person winds up hurt physically or emotionally, it seems like it's a good way to set up a situation where somebody is going to be hurt one way or another. Yeah, it's never going to be a good thing, right? I think we all know that. One of the things that

drew Mark to Meredith is that she told him things that he had never heard from his wife. He told the telegraph, here comes Meredith. She's just telling me such a different story, that I'm good at what I do. I'd never heard this from Janair's lips ever, that I'm such a wonderful man. That just made an impression on me. Here's this woman who I think is amazing saying that she thinks I'm a wonderful man. Some people point out that if Janair was so miserable with Mark's indecision, she could have walked away too. She had already posted on Next Door about finding a divorce.

divorce attorney. According to People magazine, Gineer secretly recorded herself telling Mark, you don't find me attracted. You don't want me anymore. You don't even like me. You're miserable. She told Mark to leave if he was miserable, but she stayed even though she was miserable too. In this case, there is a lot of finger pointing from the public about who's to blame and how things could have been different. Mark does seem to blame himself, at least a little bit, telling ABC, I could have stopped a relationship, handled it completely differently. In the end, two marriages were destroyed and two people are dead. Affairs happen.

Consenting adults sometimes make choices to have affairs. Sometimes there are no repercussions. Sometimes it may lead to divorce. Sometimes couples can work through affairs, but sometimes those affairs can lead to deadly consequences. And I think that goes back to what you said more. You don't know what's going to happen when you start down that road. As for Janir's final wish for Gypsy, her beloved cat, Mark ignored it. He refused to euthanize a perfectly healthy cat, and he didn't let Janir's family take Gypsy

in case they would follow her request. Gypsy lived a full two years after Janir. She traveled with Mark from Delaware to Southern California, where he relocated to. When Gypsy passed, Mark had her cremated and then sent the crimp mains to Gineere's childhood friend, Shelley. She took Gypsy to Gineer's headstone in their hometown of Fort Wayne, read a letter to Gineer from Mark and spread the ashes around. Mark Gerardo published a book about these events called Irreparable Three Lives, Two Des, One Story that has to be told. He told the Philadelphia Inquirer that he hoped to help others in similar situations. Mark said, I always tell people to shut it down.

Don't follow what happened to me. It's not my mission per se, but it's out there. And I want to change people's minds before it happens again. But Mark also wrote the book so that people had the full story, saying, if you're going to judge me, you're going to do it based on all the facts, not the little bit that had been presented. This is an ugly case all around. It's hard not to feel for Jenair in this case. but there's no way to justify what she did either.

She was clearly someone who needed help. Was there a failure to get her that help? It seems like she was depressed, not only because of the affair, but because she wasn't able to keep her find a job easily. Maybe she was heartbroken and terrified of the future. She had been married to Mark for years and was now relying on him,

not just emotionally, but financially. Maybe she could have found herself again and reset her life with professional help. Maybe one day she would have moved on, healed and found another partner, but we'll never know because she didn't get the help she needed. If anyone listening is in crisis and is considering self-harm or has a loved one who is, there is help. You can contact the National Suicide Prevention Hotline, 24 hours a day, seven days a week by texting or calling 988.

So as we wrap this case up, Morve, it is a pretty ugly case all around. You know, you have two individuals who make the decision to have an affair. They're not the first individuals to do so. But like we said, when you go down that path, there are a lot of things that can go wrong. You know, in this instance, two marriages were wrecked, which is probably not all that uncommon when people have affairs. but you also have Janair who took it so badly that, you know, I think it put her in such a dark place.

She started secretly recording Mark transcribing those recordings, spying in other ways. It just seemed to completely take over her life. And then it's like it became about, you know, I'm not. I can't let them get away with doing this to me. They have to be punished. And this idea that I think Janair had of killing Meredith and then killing herself. I have to believe in her mind that she thought this would be the ultimate pain for Mark to have to live with. Because she could have killed him too.

But I don't think she wanted to. I think she wanted him to have to live with what she thought were the repercussions of his actions. Yeah, and this is a case where, you know, there's no justifying what Janair did. But you, as we talked about earlier, you have to feel for her what happened to her and what she went through and how this affected her. I think that's why a lot of people sympathize with her situation, even though they admit what she'd done. what she did was wrong. Yeah, you can sympathize with her up to a point. She obviously should have done things differently.

To deal with the place she was in, the things that she was going through, murder is never the answer. But in her mind, it was. I don't think there's any doubt about that. Yeah, what's interesting about this case is, you know, the route she chose to go, you know, there's, I think there's a lot of marriages that come to an end because of affairs. I think statistically, most of them aren't probably going to have this kind of outcome, but

for whatever reason, the circumstances here and the people involved, that was the outcome here. And I do think as so many cases do, this does come down to, at least in some part, mental health. you know, Janair's mental state, her mental health during this period of time, obviously had a big influence on what she ultimately did. And I think you said it, you know, if she had gotten help, how different could things have gone? But those are the questions that you ask in these types of cases. The problem is there's no way to know because that's not the route that was taken. A very tragic case all the way around. Yeah, absolutely. So that's it for our episode on Janair Gerardo. If you love the show, but haven't done so yet, take a minute. Go out,

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But Morph and I will be back with all of you next Saturday night with a brand new episode. So until then for Mike and Morph. We'll talk to you next week. Take care of you.