Criminology - Julie Jensen

Episode Date: January 29, 2023

In December 1998, Julie Jensen was murdered in Pleasant Prairie, Wisconsin. After an investigation by police, Julie's husband, Mark Jensen, was identified as the prime suspect. He was charged with murdering Julie by poisoning her with antifreeze and then smothering her. He was convicted of the murder in 2008. Join Mike and Morf as they discuss Mark Jensen and the death of Julie Jensen. One of the biggest indicators of guilt, according to jurors, was something Julie had written and given to a neighbor before her death. It said that if anything happened to her, look at her husband, Mark. Mark's conviction was eventually overturned because it was ruled that he had the right to confront his accuser about this evidence. As this episode releases, Mark is back on trial for Julie's murder. But many years have passed, and her letter has been ruled inadmissible. Will this jury see things the same way as the jury did in 2008? You can help support the show at patreon.com/criminology An Emash Digital production Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Listener discretion is advised. Hello everyone and welcome to episode 242 of the criminology podcast. I'm Mike Ferguson. And this is Mike Morford. Hey, Morph, what's going on with you, man? Not a whole lot. Just celebrated my 26th anniversary. He had a nice day with my wife. So that was fun, a little bit of downtime to celebrate with her. What's new with you? No, man, that's really cool. I am coming up on number 27 this year.

So you and I have been married about the same amount of time. It makes you feel old when you think it's a quarter century plus. He starts saying, ooh. Now, it just means we got married pretty young. That's what that means. That's it. Now, everything's good on my end. Let's go ahead and give our Patreon shoutouts.

We had Fiona O'Sullivan, Jeannie Enzi, Dorothy and Backy. Kiyoki or Bakiochi and Jonice Eves Roberts. So it's a lot of great new support. We really appreciate it. Yeah, thank you so much to everyone that takes the time to support the show. We can't thank you enough. And for anyone else that would like to support criminology, you can do so by going to Patreon.com slash criminology.

All right, buddy, it's time to go ahead and jump into this week's case. And this is a case that investigators have considered solved for over two decades. the December 1998 murder of Julie Jensen in Pleasant Prairie, Wisconsin. But despite this thought by investigators, despite a trial, a conviction 15 years ago, this case is currently being heard in court at the time that we're releasing this episode. This time around, though, a crucial voice will be missing from the trial. And that voice is from Julie in the form of a letter that, she wrote before her death. The letter was allowed into trial in 2008, and in it, Julie voiced concerns

and fear that her husband, Mark Jensen, may try and harm her. With no way to confront his accuser who was dead, Mark's eventual conviction was overturned as a violation of his rights. The trial in 2003 will not include this letter. The jury will not hear Julie's own words about the fears she was having before she died. Sometimes Mark Jensen and Julie Griffin are described the news reports as high school sweethearts, and sometimes as college sweethearts. They both ended up taking classes at the same college, University of Wisconsin, Parkside, and Kenosha, Wisconsin in 1976. They also both worked at Sears. Julie wanted to take nursing classes, so she transferred to the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh, and Mark followed her. Mark and Julie painted houses together for extra money, calling the

themselves university student painters. During Julie's final college semester, she dropped out. According to Mark, it was due to a serious bout of depression. After graduation, Mark worked as a stockbroker. The two were married on April 14, 1984, and set their sights on starting a family. In 1991, they had their first son, David. In 1995, their second son, Doug, was born. Life was going as planned for the Jensen family. In April 1998, Mark was hired as the branch manager at the firm Stifle Nicholas at their Racine Wisconsin office. By then, Mark and Julie have been married for 14 years, and together with their young sons who were eight and three years old, they made their home in Pleasant Prairie, Wisconsin, a town of about 20,000 residents, 40 miles south of Milwaukee.

In early December 1998, Julie Jensen fell very ill. She was having trouble breathing, and she was very lethargent. On December 3rd, around 4.30 p.m., Mark found Julie deceased in their bed, and he called the authorities. When police arrived and surveyed the scene, they were suspicious of Julie's death almost immediately. There were no injuries to her body and no apparent reason that she should have died as a healthy 41-year-old woman. Because of their suspicions, investigators took precautions in case this was a homicide and nodded. an unforeseen natural death. They examined the scene and tried to capture and document it as best they could.

Julie was in bed lying on her left side awkwardly. Her left arm was extended underneath her with her hand near her thigh. Her body weight squished her arm underneath her. It didn't look comfortable. It didn't look like a natural sleeping position. The left side of her face was buried in the pillow. Brigger Mortis had fixed her nose and mouth in an unlaw. awkward position pushed to the side. By the time of the autopsy, they had settled into a normal

position. So right away, morph, this kind of, you know, jumped out of me. Police show up. They find a 41-year-old woman dead, but they're suspicious. And so, you know, they treat this not as a natural death, but possibly a homicide, which means they're going to, you know, they're going to go about what they do very differently. They're going to be more precocious. I mean, you're talking about how you handle evidence and is it even evidence. This is something that you know, really kind of struck me as how do you make that determination or do you just play it safe? Yeah, I think most of the time investigators will treat a death that they feel suspicious about, you know, with care that it could be a homicide until something else proves that it's not.

So I think they err on the side of caution, and we have to remember this isn't somebody who is dying of cancer and hospice care or had someone coming to the home to help them through their last days and had known illness. This was a healthy 41-year-old wife and mother that, by all account, shouldn't have died suddenly like this. So I think they had a good reason to be suspicious right from the beginning and treat it as suspicious? Well, the one thing I will say is that if you handle the scene as though it possibly could be a homicide, if it turns out not to be, is there really a downside? And my thought is no.

But if you do it the other way, if you're not careful, if you don't collect evidence, if you treat it as though it's a natural death, and then later on, suspicion arises that it's a homicide. My thought is you can't really go back because the damage has already been done as it pertains to evidence and in the investigation. Mark Jensen agreed to a search of the home.

The Jensen's home computer was taken in for analysis. A glass of liquid and two bowls next to Julie's bed, one with crackers, and one with macaroni and cheese, food in the trash can, and the traps in the drains were collected for evidence. One drain wasn't tested because, because the drain was glued, meaning the technician would have had to damage the sink and pipes to test it, which with no clear evidence of a crime the technician wasn't comfortable with.

But it was clear that police were trying to obtain whatever evidence they could, should the death be deemed the homicide. Julie's cause of death was initially undetermined, officially marked pending. Dr. Chambliss, the forensic pathologist who conducted the autopsy, did not visit the crime scene and had not seen any of the photographs taken at the scene. He also did not have the toxicology results at the time. He deemed it undetermined. There was one abrasion shaped like a fingernail on the right side of Julie's neck.

There was hemorrhaging around some of her ribs and a bruise on her chest wall where her arm had been underneath her. Due to the undetermined and pending status, Mary Mainland, the Kenosha County Medical Examiner, took over the investigation. Some authorities had a hunch that they were missing something. But Julie's husband Mark Jensen voiced his theory that his wife had taken her own life. A neighbor of the Jensen's came forward with a piece of information that would only strengthen suspicion that Julie's death involved foul play.

On November 21, 1998, less than two weeks before her death, Julie had given neighbor Ted Wote a sealed letter and instructed him to give it to the police if anything happened to her. He and his wife Margaret had never opened the letter, but when Julie died, they gave it to the police, who did open it. Julie's letter was addressed to two police officers in the Pleasant Prairie Police Department, Ron Coosman, and Detective Ratsonberg. The letter read, If anything happens to me, he would be my first suspect. I pray I'm wrong and nothing happens, but I am suspicious of Mark's suspicious behaviors and fear for my early demise. Our relationship has deteriorated to the polite source. superficial. So we mentioned that this letter from Julie in advance of her death only fueled police

suspicion that the death wasn't natural. And it pointed the finger at her husband Mark. So there's a couple of things here, Morph, that I want to talk about. Number one is your neighbor coming over to you with a sealed letter and saying to you, if anything ever happens to me, make sure this gets to the police. Okay. So I'm just imagining this scenario playing out. First of all, I would be so curious as to what was inside this letter. I can just imagine it sitting wherever I would put it in the house, looking at it every day, thinking, I really want to know what's inside that letter.

Yeah, I'd be the same way. And I think I'd probably go right to my wife and say, you're not going to believe what the neighbor just did. He came over and handed this letter and, you know, said, if anything happens, because I think it's only going to arouse your curiosity and suspicion. And especially for us, because we do so much true crime stuff, that we'd be obviously thinking right away, this is something sinister going on. Yeah, no doubt.

I mean, we're curious by nature. I think people who are into true crime, you know, that's part of the fascination. They want to figure things out. They want to know what happened and why it happened and they're curious people. We're no different. So to me, that would just be a very strange situation. You know, would you ask the person questions? What if they don't want to answer questions?

I don't know. I can just see that scenario playing out a bunch of different ways. And then the second thing was kind of dissecting some of the words in the letter. I thought it was very formal. And the phrasing and the words that were used, demise, jumped out at me, you know, deteriorated to the polite superficial. Now, everybody writes differently. Those, to me, just kind of jumped out as kind of strange types of phrases to use. Yeah.

And I don't know that Julie had a background with writing, but it sounds like, someone that's very, has a way with words and is very expressive. And, you know, a lot of people, including myself, would probably just say, hey, if anything happened, you know, check out my husband. I think he did a check of my wife, whatever the situation may be, and just make it real, you know, plain. But this is expressed in a way that's very creative sounding almost. Yeah. Yeah, that's what I was thinking as well. It turns out that the letter from Julie wasn't the only thing that pointed to Mark, police learned that on November 25th, just four days after giving that letter to the neighbor, Julie was at Southport School, where David was in third grade.

Julie was a parent volunteer in the classroom. That day, Julie told Teresa DeFazio, David's teacher, that she was afraid that Mark Jensen was going to kill her. She explained to Teresa that she had found a handwritten list of items in Mark's private planner with syringes, razors, and drug names. It looked to Julie, like a shopping list of things Mark could use to kill her and things that they didn't normally buy. This made Teresa recall a time that Julie complained that Mark was hiding things on their computer. When she would enter the room, Mark would quickly switch to a different program or even turn it off,

claiming he was just done or finished work. So I brought up the scenario where, your neighbor comes over with the letter, I think we have to talk about this scenario as well. You're a teacher. And a parent comes up to you and says that they believe their spouse is planning to kill them. Okay. That's not going to happen in a normal day. I can tell you that. My wife's a teacher never once has she come home and over pizza told me a story that even remotely resembles that. And what do you even do morph with that information? Yeah, I don't know. Maybe your wife would know better, but in a teacher's position, if that's a real concern and there's a possibility of violence in the home, is that teacher supposed to contact the police and say, hey, you know, I fear for the safety of this

child. What do you do? I don't know what the protocol is. I'm sure we have a lot of teachers that listen, and they'd probably have a better idea, but it may have been a time when she could have done something about laying any blame at this teacher's feet, but I wonder if there had been some kind of police interaction here, if that could have prevented this from happening. Well, I think if Julie would have said that she feared for David's safety, then maybe the teacher would have some type of responsibility at that point. But that's not what happened. You know, the teacher is not responsible for Julie. So, I, I don't think there's any thing that the teacher did wrong.

Could you say, well, could she have gone to police? Well, sure. But would most in that situation? I don't know. I don't think so. Yeah, I don't know either. And again, I'm thinking more along the lines of if there's a threat of violence in the home, something like a murder, does that sort of encompass a possibility that the child's in danger?

So that was more my line of thinking. with that. But again, the teachers listening would probably have a better idea of what you do in that kind of situation. On December 2nd, Julie called her neighbor Margaret Wote and complained of feeling ill. Margaret later told CBS News her voice was shaky, like she was drunk. Joseph Mangy, who was principal of Kenosha Bradford High School at the time, called Julie on the second to tell her that he wanted to hire her for a part-time job that was open at the school. Instead of Julie answering, a man who was most likely Mark Jensen, answered. the phone. The man said that Julie couldn't talk. And Joseph Mandy told WISN.com that the man said,

She's asleep. She's going to be asleep for a long time, chuckling as he hung up. While Julie was sick, Mark was tending to her, or at least he claimed to be, but they didn't go to the hospital or to a doctor's office. Their two kids went to school the morning of the third as usual. The Jensen's son David was in third great at the time of Julie's death. His friend, Eric Shore, remember David being concerned about Julie the day she died. He said to WISN.com, he told me his mother is sick and that his dad will not take her to the hospital. Julie had been prescribed 10 Ambien pills and filled them at the pharmacy the day before she died. There were three pills missing. Mark told investigators that Julie had taken an Ambien that morning and was completely asleep, lying flat on her back, So he rolled her on to her side, which he remembered took a lot of effort.

He claimed that she was still asleep and completely out of it when he left to pick up a check at his office and get lunch. Though Julie had been having trouble breathing for over a day, Mark admitted that he didn't even check on Julie before he left. He claimed that when he returned, she was dead. Police were able to get search warrants, and Mark's personal and work computers were taken for analysis. There were 2,200 images of male genitalia on Mark Jensen's personal computer that he kept in his office. This will be important later, specifically that they were not on the home computer. While police were looking through the computers, Dr. Mainland focused on toxicology. A third lab tested evidence from Julie's autopsy.

This time, ethylene glycol, or antifreeze, was found in her stomach contents. Ethylene glycol, usually in the form of antifreeze, is deadly because it makes your kidney shut down. which makes everything else shut down. It's the metabolites of ethylene glycol as it breaks down in your body that begins this dangerous process. So immediately upon ingestion, nothing happens. It has a very sweet taste to it, meaning that unlike other poisons, when you drink it, you wouldn't necessarily realize it was poison, since it wasn't bitter.

A person with antifreeze poisoning would start to feel drunk, drowsy, nauseous, and eventually lose consciousness. If untreated, they would die. anaphrease would be a good choice for someone looking to sneak poison into their spouse's drink, as investigators believe Mark Jensen did. This also makes it a common choice for self-ingestion, like the defense would later claim was the case. There were only 57 micrograms per deciliter of ethylene glycol found in Julie's system,

which for many labs at the time was not enough to trigger a positive on their standard tests, In a twist that no one expected, some of the evidence in the case was lost. But it wasn't due to careless police work, it turns out. The Pleasant Prairie Police Department's evidence room was unfortunately the victim of mice. The macaroni and cheese and the crackers that were on the nightstand at the crime scene were eaten by mice. The evidence was destroyed and could not be retested. There was no macaroni and cheese found in Julie's stomach, just potato and pepper. oxalic acid crystals were found in Julie's kidneys.

This was a sign of previous exposure to ethylene glycol. In most cases, seen when people take their life using ethylene glycol, they ingest one large dose and get so sick they end up in the hospital or they quickly die. The previous exposure was a red flag, a sign of poisoning. Investigators believed that Julie had been given two doses of the poison prior to the final dose that was still in her. her stomach when she died. They also believed that Mark administered the final dose himself because she would have been too weak to drink it on the day she died. So in talking about antifreeze, more if I've seen a lot of cases of antifree's poisoning with spouses that's happened a lot, you know, throughout the years, I know it's also been a real issue with animals, licking antifree's

freeze off the driveway or in a garage or something like that and getting sick, even dying, I think to the point where eventually the antifreeze makers started putting something in there so that it didn't taste so sweet. I'm not 100% sure about that, but I believe I remember reading something. Yeah, because you could also see children finding it and drinking it accidentally young children if it looks like colorful, maybe like some kind of juice, it smells sweet. So you could also see some cases where there would be accidental intake of it. In March 2002, more than three years after Julie died, police finally felt that they had enough of a case against Mark Jensen, and he was

arrested in charge with poisoning and killing Julie. He was released on bail pending trial, but he lost his job as an office manager, and he started a construction company to make ends meet. In the time since Julie's death, Mark had remarried and wound up having a son with his new wife Kelly. It's worth talking about here that murders a very serious crime after all, so it's a bit surprising that he would be able to get bail for it and get out. But then it came to light that an inmate that had been in jail with Mark before he was bailed out, had some powerful information, which in August 2007 led to Mark Jensen's bail being revoked and raised to over $1 million, and Mark was sent back to jail. That inmate, Aaron Dillard, claimed that while they were

were incarcerated together, Jensen told him that he put antifreeze in Julie's drink, gave her pills that would make her drowsy, rolled her on her stomach, and eventually pushed her head into her pillow to make sure she couldn't breathe. He also backed up the prosecution's suspicion of premeditation, claiming that Mark Jensen admitted to putting things on Julie's shopping list that he could use later on, like different medications that could interact or that someone could use to take their own life. This could explain the list that Julie photographed and gave to the wotes.

along with her letter. And the list that Julie explained to Dorese DeFazio, razors, the blood thinner aspirin, syringes, and Librium, which is a medication for alcohol withdrawal. Perhaps this was a master list of things to pepper into weekly shopping list to make it seem that Julie had been contemplating taking her own life for a long time, in different ways before settling on the poison. In the suburbs of D.C., a woman fails to show up for work

and is found brutally murdered. I wonder what's emergency. 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 what had once been impossible. A new series from ABC Audio in 2020, Blood and Water. Listen now, wherever you get your podcasts. So this claim by this inmate about what Mark Jensen supposedly said is one thing. But Edward Klug, a co-worker of Mark Jensen's, claims that at a work conference, when they had been drinking, Mark started talking about his affair, wanting to get rid of his wife, undetectable poisons, and mixing Benadryl with antifreeze to ensure death. It turns out that traces of Benadryl and Librium were also found in Julie's stomach.

So here you have two different people claiming that Mark Jensen talked to them about poisoning. his wife. On January 3rd, 2008, Mark went on trial for Julie's murder. This trial lasted six weeks. At trial, the prosecution laid out their case and pointed out that Julie's final cause of death was ruled smothering with ethylene glycol ingestion as a factor. Prosecutors believe that Julie lost consciousness after the boys left for school the day she died, Mark rolled her from her back onto her stomach, not bothering to arrange her arm in a more comfortable position. With her face in the pillow and her already labored breathing, he then left her run errands, planning to find her dead when she got home.

According to the prosecution, it was their belief that when he did get back, though, Julie wasn't dead. She was alive and even seemed to be improving, recovering from the poison. Her breathing was normal again, not as ragged and gasping. according to them. Mark knew he had to kill her before the kids got home from school because they were worried about her and would want him to take her to the hospital. The prosecution theory that Mark sat on Julie's back and pushed her head into the pillow until he was sure she was dead. This theory was developed because inmate Aaron Dillard's

claim of Jensen's story matched up with the evidence, particularly the bruise on her chest from her arm, just laying on her arm, shouldn't have caused that deep of a bruise. The prosecution also pointed out that the Jensen's home computer had been used for many searches that investigators believed Mark was plotting to kill Julie for a long time before her death. In mid-October 1998, there was a search for botulism in low-acid canned foods, and someone was reading about mercury fulminate and explosive. In early November, physician-assisted suicide was searched for, and someone read about toxicology.

In the early morning hours of November 29th before 6 a.m., someone visited Sierra antifreeze.com. On December 2nd, at 623 a.m. Someone read about ethylene glycol poisoning at 1047 p.m. that same day. Someone was reading a website about antifree's poisoning. The prosecution told the jury that the person who was doing all of these troubling searches was Mark Jensen. Now, you never know how a jury is going to view stuff like this, but, you know, on the surface, you would look at it as pretty damning, I think. If you believe that it was Mark Jensen who made these searches as the prosecution closed, claims, then it's not looking good for Mark Jensen. Now, of course, the defense is going to say,

well, it was Julie because they're going on the theory that she poisoned herself. She took her own life. Yeah, those browser histories always come back to haunt someone in a case like this. You know, it's kind of hard to explain. If you're looking up something, for example, of natural gas explosions, kill family or something like that, and all of a sudden your house blows up in some kind of natural gas explosion that day, then, you know, that's kind of too much to be a coincidence. And I think something like that is something that jumped out to the investigators here. Well, you and I have talked before about what would be on our search histories, you know, because of the research we do.

Now, obviously, if police came to us and said, why are you searching that? We could go back to our podcast and say, well, here's why. But without that context, it wouldn't look good at all. During the trial, Dr. Mainland tasted Ethylene Glein glaucl while in the stand to demonstrate to the jury just how easy it would be to mask its taste. With Julie desperate to treat her depression, she had to drink something to take her newly prescribed Paxil. Julie had been refusing food and drink from Mark because she was suspicious of him, but something must have changed. Maybe she just thought that Mark was being a doating and supportive husband, trying to help her.

And she was getting treatment from a doctor who thought she was in need of medication. So all of this may have made her more trusting or reliant on Mark's help. So we talked about it. The prosecution laid out how they believed Mark killed Julie. but what motive did he have? It was revealed that Julie had once had an affair with a co-worker named Perry Tarika after her first son was born.

Perry had met Julie when they were both working for the same financial firm, Dean Whitter, in the early 1990s. Perry stayed over at the Jensen home on a long weekend when Mark was away. Things were apparently serious between Julie and Perry because she had filed for divorce from Mark

before quickly changing her mind. After that, Julie called off her relationship with Perry and even quit working at the firm. Though he respected her decision and honored it, he would not have ended the relationship if it had been up to him. Perry told Kenosian News that he remembers Julie fondly, saying she was the kindest woman I had ever met in my life. He described her as a simple, sweet, kind, and passive person. According to the prosecution, Julie regretted the brief affair, but Mark never got over it,

and he began to take his revenge by scaring and embarrassing Julie, slowly making her more and more paranoid. In 1992, the Jensen's began to receive harassing phone calls and notice weird things around the home. At first, they were small things, innocent enough. The first entry in a log of suspicious incidents was on January 1, 1992. someone had moved Julie's Tupperware delivery. Some of the events were more suspicious. The same day as the packages were moved, there were two hang-up phone calls to the Jensen residents.

There were many, many more hang-up calls at all hours, even past midnight until January 28, 1993. On November 4, 1993, Julie finally made a report to Officer Cozman, but the harassment continued. In March 1994, their mailbox door was broken off several times. In spring and summer, there were multiple times that Mark had to repair flat tires on his truck and on his bicycle.

On Christmas Eve, 1994, during the four hours they were away from their home, their Christmas lights were vandalized. In the summer of 1995, their boat battery was tampered with. There were more hang-up calls in October 1995. During November and December of 1995 and January of 1996, Mark received many hang-up calls at his office and found pornographic photos in and around the house as if someone had been breaking in and leaving them, but taking nothing. These pornographic photos were of women engaged in oral sex on men and on women and of male genitalia. There were even pornographic photos left on Mark's truck. Something made the Jensen's change their locks twice, once in 1991 and once in 1996.

on February 13th, 1996, Julie made her 96th report to Ron Cozman. This is why Julie knew the names of officers and detectives at the police department, the name she included in her letter that she gave her neighbor. Julie had the officers on speed-dow. Investigators suspected Mark Jensen had been responsible for this reign of terror. But Mark claimed it was Perry Tarika, who was angry with Julie. for ending their relationship.

We mentioned earlier that police found photos on Mark's computer of male genitalia. 2,200 photos in all sorted in folders by size. Police felt Jensen was certainly capable of supplying the photos used in the harassment. At one point, Julie had an envelope of photocopied pictures. She said that they were pictures of her engaged in intimate acts. It seems as if she thought someone had taken pictures of her and Perry Tarika while they were having sex. Officer Kosman viewed the pictures and confirmed that they were not of Julie. There were multiple different women, though they did somewhat resemble her.

Mark was skilled with computers. He was able to build his own computer from scratch, something many people can't do. So Mark was tech-savvy, and Julie once told Perry Tarika that Mark had placed cameras in the home to record her and recorded her phone calls. This may be why she thought those photos of women performing sex acts could have been her. She wasn't sure where the cameras might be in her home and couldn't be sure what they had caught her and Perry doing. So I think we need to dissect some of this stuff more. It was theorized by the prosecution that it was Mark who was responsible for what they called this reign of terror, you know, the pictures, the hang-up phone calls saying that he got a bunch of them, maybe making them to Julie. I mean,

you can go down the line. But these 2,200 photographs of male genitalia found on his computer. And I thought it was very strange when they said that he sorted them by size. I don't even know if strange is the right word. There's really only a couple of explanations, right? either he enjoyed looking at male genitalia or he was collecting them for what he was doing to Julie. Yeah, and all this harassment is very reminiscent of a case we covered a long time back, which was the Cindy James case, a Canadian woman who was the victim of a lot of harassment. And the authorities came to believe that she was the source of the harassment. against herself. So anytime you have a possibility that there's this reign of terror and it's coming

from the people, in this case, multiple people, this couple that's coming from within their home, that's an interesting dynamic. It's not something we see a lot. So while we're talking about this, that definitely came to mind. Well, the other thing that jumped out at me is that, you know, this spanned a good number of years. Like, you know, three or four years. And some of the stuff I thought, okay, Tupperware being moved, right? Could somebody have done that? It wasn't really what you would consider part of a reign of terror.

Could kids have repeatedly broken their mailbox door off? Yeah, absolutely. Flat tires, I get them. So some of the stuff, when you think about the pictures and all that, absolutely, someone's doing that. Some of the other stuff could have just been things that we all kind of experienced. But when it's all kind of happening with the hang up phone calls, you tend to maybe roll it all into or lump it in together. The Jensen's got a caller ID box, which would allow them to see who was calling if the person on the other end had it enabled on their phone.

Many of the calls, especially the hangups, were out of the area with no name or number available. Julie began to meticulously log every call and many other daily occurrences as well. In 1996 and 1997, the calls, the pornographic photos, and the Christmas light trashing continued. Some of the calls to the Jensen home weren't hangups. Some were a woman asking if Mark could come play. Julie always answered that she had the wrong number. The calls to Mark's office increased, and both Julie and Mark began to notice people watching them. Julie began to write down information on vehicles in the neighborhood that she saw driving strangely, and people she saw walking.

So the call from a woman asking if Mark come out and play, if Mark is somehow involved in this, then that means he has an accomplice that's willing to call him at his home and say these things. but if he's not involved, then who's doing this? And if you're the defense, then maybe you have some valid points in asking, was there some kind of stocking going on? Because you have this continued level of harassment. And I think it would be a valid question to ask if this was really going on and Mark didn't have involvement in it. Yeah, absolutely, right?

The prosecution is going to say, this is all Mark. Mark is orchestrating all of the hangups, the woman calling the photos, and the defense is going to say, so who's this woman? If Mark put her up to it, who is it? Again, it's all stuff for the jury to digest. And at the end of the day, they're the ones who have to weed through all of it. So if Mark Jensen was somehow behind all of this harassment, because we've was upset with Julie for having an affair, he needed to look in a mirror because he too had an affair

of his own with a co-worker named Kelly. Mark and Kelly's correspondence began to really get flirty and frequent in October 1998. They even started talking about the future, with Kelly emailing Mark, I think it would be a piece of cake and a joy taking on all three of you, referring to Mark and his sons, David, and Doug, if Julie was out of the picture. We do have to point out that Kelly sent that email in response to an email from Mark discussing that topic. It wasn't her suggesting that Mark should bump Julie off. But as Julie had ended her affair with Perry, Kelly wanted to cut hers off with Mark Jensen. She wanted to try and work things out with her husband, who was also named Mark, Mark Grimann. And he had noticed a change in his wife Kelly since the affair started

with Mark Jensen. Mark Grimman and his wife Kelly spent Christmas of 1998 together, but in January January 1999, they had a huge argument that ended with Kelly leaving for good. Kelly visited Mark Jensen in Pleasant Prairie soon after. Less than one month after Julie's death, Julie's son, David's friend, Eric, recalls meeting a woman named Kelly and seeing her lying on the bed in Mark's bedroom. He could see Mark standing near the bed with no shirt on. It was clear that Mark Jensen and Kelly were still involved at the time of or very soon after Julie's death. In March 1999, Kelly rented an apartment in Kenosha, Wisconsin,

and moved there. Mark and Kelly got engaged in February of 2002. They were married in 2004. As their relationship progressed, Mark asked Kelly about her prior sexual relationships. This was more than the normal, how many people have you slept with question. He asked Kelly to describe in great detail. Their genitalia and the acts that they had performed, Mark even took notes on these conversations, unbeknownst to Kelly. At trial, defense attorney Craig Alby put forth the theory that Julie had accidentally taken her own life. He theorized that Julie meant to frame Mark for her attempted murder because like he had been upset with her for her affair, she was upset with Mark for his. Julie wanted to separate and guarantee that she would have sole custody of the children.

According to defense attorney Craig Alby, Mark would have been able to argue for custody because of Julie's long history of depression. She had been seen by a doctor for depression multiple times, and her doctor had prescribed her an antidepressant just two days before her death, and she had a history of treatment for depression since college. The defense attorney pointed out that one of her brothers had tried to take his own life when he was just 17. And according to him, him, Julie's mother apparently kicked her own five-year-old son Richie hard enough to kill him and blamed it on roughhousing with his four other brothers. At Mark and Julie's wedding rehearsal, Julie's mom started suffering acute alcohol withdrawal from her attempt to stay sober for the event.

An ambulance was called and she missed the wedding. She later died after falling into a pool while drunk. All of this was presented by the defense to paint Julie in a bad light and lay down some reasonable doubt that Mark would have killed her. So I mentioned it earlier, right? The jurors have to wade through all of the evidence and the statements in a trial. It's a tough job. And this case was no different. The jurors had a very tough job.

According to the defense's opening statement, there was only half a teaspoon of ethylene glycol and Julie's stomach, just 3,940 micrograms. The prosecution had almost made it sound that Julie would have been completely incapacitated and that the amount found in her stomach would have had to have been forced down her throat by someone else. But half a teaspoon sounds like an amount someone weak would drink. When you experience nausea and vomiting, it's not uncommon to try small sips of liquid or even hold ice in your mouth to help your dry mouth and throat but not upset your stomach any further. There was no vomit found in any trash can or on any fabric in the home, so it does not

appear, as though Julie drank a large dose that would have made her vomit. It's been reported that no antifreeze was found in the Jensen home, not even in the garage. Instead of this detail clearing Mark Jensen in the minds of many, it only makes him look more guilty to some. And they look at it as evidence that Mark killed Julie, because there was no way Julie could have gotten rid of any antifree she had in her weakened state. Paper-disposable Dixie cups on the bathroom counter were not taken for evidence. Nothing in the fridge, none of the liquids inside, were tested for antifreeze. Investigators collected Playboy magazines from a shelf in the garage, but did not inventory or collect the contents of the bottles on the shelves near them. A post-it-note

was found in Mark's day planner. It was a list of things Mark had made. written down that he found out Julie was hiding from him. So more if we talked about the police kind of treating this as a possible homicide, collecting evidence, then you find out that they collected Playboy magazine, but didn't collect liquids on the shelf for testing. Okay. What evidentiary value are these Playboy magazines going to have versus all of the liquids in the garage when there's the possibility that someone could have been poisoned. That just doesn't make any

sense to me. Now, perhaps those playboy magazines, if they somehow were connected to the pornographic images that were found were sent to the Jensen's, that might be of evidentiary value, but you're right, the bottles nearby should have also been checked out to see if there's any traces of antifraiser or any other poison than them. I think there's a big nagging. question that we have to ask here. And it's why would Julie tell select people? We mentioned it. Neighbors, teachers, that she was in danger, but not members of her own family, who would

have certainly tried to help her. Did she not want to worry them? Maybe she thought she was overreacting. Her brother, Patrick Griffin, told CNN, if she would have come to any one of us for support, we would have helped her. Ted Wode, her neighbor owned a vacation home and offered to let Julie stay there with the children, but she said no. She instead stayed with Mark. Another question that comes up is, if Mark had been trying to poison his wife, how long had it been going on? Ted Wote told TMJ4 News that Julie once told him

that Mark was chasing her with a glass of wine and asked her to drink it. She didn't drink much because her mother had alcoholism, but it's also possible she feared that Mark had slipped something in it. Mark Jensen talked with his new wife, Kelly, from behind bars, about writing a book about his experience, getting rich and moving somewhere together. Though he wrote a manuscript, the book never happened. On February 21, 2008, 48-year-old Mark Jensen was found guilty of Julie's murder. He was sentenced to life in prison with no possibility of parole. Julie's letter to police was key in the case. the jury's decision. One of the jurors, Sandra Schott, told CNN, she left the road map to her murder and her murder. In March 2009, Kelly filed for divorce from Mark. In 2010, Mark Jensen's

conviction was upheld on appeal. In 2012, Kelly moved out of Wisconsin, and she's since remarried. On December 19, 2013, Mark Jensen's conviction was overturned because Julie's letter was ruled to be testimonial, and this meant that Mark would have had the right to confront Julie about what she wrote in that letter. But since she was dead, he couldn't do that. This is kind of a strange legal issue that went back and forth. Julie's letter was written before the crime in question took place. Because of that December 2013 ruling, Mark Jensen had to be released from prison or retried within 90 days. The prosecution appealed the ruling and were clear that they were going to retry, Mark,

if the appeal did not go through. Because they did this within 90 days. They didn't have to release him, even though a second court upheld the reversal of conviction. In 2015, this ruling, this overturning of his conviction was upheld. His conviction was officially vacated in April, 2021. But Mark was still required to make his $1 million bail pending trial, which he couldn't do. So he remained in prison. Finally, in 2003, the case went to trial again. And at the time of this recording, 63-year-old Mark Jensen is still on trial. The trial is expected to last five weeks.

Mark Jensen has a new defense team, but the same prosecutor who helped put Mark behind bars the first time is once again arguing for the state of Wisconsin, as he has done since he got this case decades ago. This time, Julie's voice, or at least her words, won't be heard. Her letter is not admissible at this trial. How that plays a role in the outcome remains to be seen. So morph as we wrap up this case, obviously there's a lot going on, has gone on over the years. You know, one thing I want to point out is that Mark Jensen's conviction was overturned in 2013. It took 10 years for him to be retried. I thought that was a very long time.

And then, you know, you had the fact that his bail was so high that he had to remain in prison. I know the kind of the wheels turned slowly. We did have the pandemic. I'm sure that factored in. but 10 years, that's a long time. Yeah, and we don't know all the legal wranglings and maneuvers that went on behind the scenes. And whether Mark Jensen is guilty or innocent, whatever the determination is, I think it's pretty clear that people do deserve a quick and speedy trial. Then again, since we don't know all the details, maybe it was his defense team that delayed this so long.

Well, I think it might have been a little bit of both, right? Obviously, the state was trying to get this overturned conviction appealed. That didn't work. So I'm sure there was delay because of that. But I think, you know, this trial is going to be interesting, the result of it. One of the things that I look at is we're so many years later. And normally, that makes it tougher for the prosecution. in most cases that we've done or cases that we've seen,

it's hard for the prosecution to get another conviction 20, 30 years later because evidence gets lost, evidence degrades, can't be retested. You know, there's all kinds of different reasons for that. But in this case, you have Julie's letter. And it was such a big factor in the first. And now it's been ruled inadmissible. So we're going to have to wait and see. Is there enough evidence without that letter to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Mark Jensen killed his wife, Julie?

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