True Crime Campfire - Mastermind: The Story of Tonica Jenkins

Episode Date: September 9, 2022

People are always intrigued by intelligent criminals. We say stuff like “If she’d only put that genius and energy into something good, she’d have been a huge success.” And it’s true, it really is. But the thing is, some people just live for the con. It’s in their blood—they can’t imagine doing anything else. In every situation, they’re looking for the angle, the way to turn everything to their advantage and put one over on everybody else in the process. Join us for the story of a born con artist whose quest for thrills turned deadly—the only case we’ve ever heard of with both a fake kidnapping and a real one. Sources:Court paperwork: https://law.justia.com/cases/ohio/eighth-district-court-of-appeals/2004/2004-ohio-136.htmlScene Magazine, Andrew Putz: https://www.clevescene.com/news/mastermind-or-moron-1481119CNN/Court TV: http://www.cnn.com/2003/LAW/02/11/ctv.jenkins.trial/Cleveland Magazine, Eric Trickey: https://clevelandmagazine.com/in-the-cle/politics/articles/aaron-phillips'-deal-with-the-devilInvestigation Discovery's "Murder By the Book," episode "Faye Kellerman"Follow us, campers!Patreon (join to get all episodes ad-free, at least a day early, an extra episode a month, and a free sticker!): https://patreon.com/TrueCrimeCampfireFacebook: True Crime CampfireInstagram: https://gramha.net/profile/truecrimecampfire/19093397079Twitter: @TCCampfire https://twitter.com/TCCampfireEmail: [e-mail]! https://true-crime-campfire.myspreadshop.com/Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/true-crime-campfire--4251960/support.

Hello, campers. Grab your marshmallows and gather around the true crime campfire. We're your camp counselors. I'm Katie. And I'm Whitney. And we're here to tell you a true story that is way stranger than fiction. We're roasting murderers and marshmallows around the true crime campfire. People are always intrigued by intelligent criminals. We say stuff like, if she'd only put that genius and energy into something good. She'd have been a huge success. And it's true. It really is. But the thing is, some people just live for the con. It's in their blood. They can't imagine doing anything else. In every

situation, they're looking for the angle, the way to turn everything to their advantage and put one over on everybody else in the process. Join us for the story of a born con artist whose quest for thrills turn deadly. The only case we've ever heard of with both a fake kidnapping and a real one. This is Mastermind, the story of Tonica Jenkins. So, Campers, for this one, we're in Cleveland, Ohio, April 20, 2001. Police responded to a 911 call from Kentucky Fried Chicken, where a disheveled, stricken-looking woman had just come running through the door, bleeding from the head, and covered in bruises.

The poor thing had come stumbling in, run right behind the counter, and tried to hide underneath it. When the cops arrived, they found her lying on the floor with her head in a manager's lap. The lady was trying to calm her down, but you could tell she was absolutely petrified, and weirdly sweaty. It seemed like, in addition to the beating she'd obviously taken, she might be going through some kind of medical crisis, too. She told her responding officer her name was Melissa Latham, and she was 27 years old.

But before he could get anything else out of her, Melissa's eyes went wide and panicky, staring at something over the officer's shoulder. When he turned around to see what she was looking at, he saw an attractive, well-put-together-looking young woman come through the door and walk confidently onto the scene. As she introduced herself as Tonica Jenkins, the young woman had a look of pure, good-natured concern all over her face, but it was obvious to the officer that the woman on the floor was capital T terrified of her.

She looked like she was trying to find a way to crawl under the tile floor to get away from this lady, as if she were the devil herself. Well, maybe not the devil, but our girl Tonica Jenkins most definitely had a few skeletons in her closet. The drama unfolding in the KFC was just the latest and probably weirdest chapter. The story began a few years earlier in 1997, when a fresh-faced Tonica started her very first semester at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut. She'd gotten in as a scholarship student to Yale's prestigious graduate program in neurosciences, an exciting start to a whole new future.

But before long, Tonica's professors could see that she wasn't grasping the material, like, at all. In fact, her coursework was so off the mark that they began to wonder how she'd managed to gain admission to such a competitive, tough program. At first, she offered what seemed like valid reasons for why her work was subpar, probably a fictional dead grandma or two, but after a while she just sort of stopped going to classes. It was strange. I mean, most people who get into a graduate program at Yale are, you know, pretty committed to being there. And it didn't take long for the university to get concerned. They did a little digging into Tonica's records, and a detailed inspection revealed some bombshell info. Her whole application was fake. And a damn sophisticated fake at that. She'd faked undergrad transcripts so detailed that they had official-looking raised seals and fine-print

info on the back of each sheet about the university's grading system and all that. They looked just like real transcripts. But they weren't. They were totally fabricated. As were Tonica's GRE scores, that's the graduate record exam, a standard test you have to take to apply to most graduate programs in the state. In reality, Tonica hadn't graduated with honors from a four-year college degree. She'd had like one semester of college before dropping out. But she'd taken great care with these forged documents using the real names and forged signatures of real people at the college where she was claiming to have gotten her undergrad degree.

And she'd managed to charm the socks off the admissions board at her interview. And Yale had given her $16,000 in scholarship money so far, a check she'd happily cashed. That, Friends, is fraud. and Yale wanted to prosecute. So now, Ms. Tonica was facing forgery and first-degree larceny charges. And the case was pretty much a slam dunk, which I could have told her in the first fucking place. If you're going to run a scam like this, for God's sake, don't run it on a master's program

at an Ivy League school. Right. I mean, Yale neuroscience, like, geez, Louise, I mean, I'd be lost like a toddler in a mega mall, so no judgment. But, like, what was she thinking? Right? Like a toddler and a mega mall, except more crying for me. Yeah. No, thank you.

Yeah, you don't go into a graduate level program in the sciences. If you're not going to come correct, that shit's hard. Tonica's smart. In fact, almost everybody in her life says she was kind of a child prodigy, but she wasn't anywhere near ready for a program like that. And she should have gone for something she could easily do, or at least easily fake. Right. That's what English degrees are for.

Sorry, that was a joke. Yeah, we both have English degrees. I know how hard they are. Everyone, everyone's like, yeah, you just have to say the curtains were blue and that represents sadness. And it's like, no, dude, shut the fuck up. But as you'll soon find out, that is not how Tonica rolls. She doesn't ever take the easy road. This chick is the arch high priestess of Go Big or Go Home. The police got their first taste of that when they arrested her.

on the larceny and fraud charges, and she tried to kick her way out of the squad car. It's like one minute she was fine, and the next she's just a flailing ball of feet and fists. Got a little rage in there, Tonica? Damn. Despite this little hissy fit slash escape attempt, though, Tonica managed to make bail, and as the investigation continued, she went back to her hometown of Cleveland to wait for her trial back in Connecticut. But when the day rolled around, Tonica didn't show up. Her attorney was there, probably wishing he could sink through the floor,

but Tonica was nowhere to be found. Not the greatest impression to make on the judge. And then, a few days later, up she popped with one hell of a story to tell. See, she didn't just decide not to show up at her trial because she didn't want to be prosecuted or anything ridiculous like that. She didn't show up because she'd been kidding. napped. Tonica said she'd been staying in a hotel in Connecticut, getting ready for her trial, and the day before she was due to appear in court, a man came up to her under the parking lot,

stuck a gun in the small of her back, and forced her into the trunk of the car. He'd driven her somewhere, she wasn't sure where, before taking her out of the trunk, roughing her up, and shoving her back in again. Eventually, the kidnapper had stopped for gas or supplies or something in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. And while he was away from the car, Tonica had kicked her way out of the trunk, that's her signature move by now, and into the driver's seat and escaped back home to her mom's house in Cleveland. A day or so later, Tonica's defense attorney received a mysterious letter, typed on Yale University letterhead.

The letter, anonymous, of course, claimed that Tonica's kidnapping was a hate crime, and the author had included some Polaroid pictures to back up the story. Poor Tonica, bound and gagged in the trunk of the car. Yeah, this makes a lot of sense. Kidnobbers always send confession letters to their victim's defense attorneys, and they always make sure to write them on letterhead stationary. In this case, stationary, huge coincidence, I'm sure, of the Ivy League School that's currently prosecuting the kidnopee for larceny. So we have a young woman abducted at gunpoint and driven hundreds of miles from home, waiting for her chance and then bravely escaping. It was an unbelievable story. Unbelievable, as in not believable in any way, shape, or form.

I mean, the police looked into it, of course. At first, they took the story at face value and went to look for the kidnapper, but very quickly, the threads of Tonica's story began to unravel. She'd told them that from the trunk of the car, she'd kicked out the back seat to escape into the cam of the car and get behind the wheel. Right, but when the investigators checked out the car, they could see that the back seat was totally undamaged. and still firmly latched in place.

Now, if our story were true, those latches would have been broken all to hell. And when they traced the Polaroid film on those bound and gag pictures of Tonica, they quickly learned that it hadn't been bought in either Connecticut or Pennsylvania. It had been bought in Cleveland, Ohio, our girl, Tonica's hometown.

Now, hmm, what could this mean? It's a thinker. Those Polaroids are ridiculous, too, by the way. They supposedly show Tonica all bound and gagged in the trunk of a car, but they look like the most ridiculous, like, cartoon caricature of a kidnap victim. You could possibly imagine, like, big, wide eyes.

It's like you told a five-year-old, okay, now make a scared phase. Woo. It's just absurd. So here we have a woman who fakes her way into Yale, scoops up five figures' worth of scholarship cash before disappearing from classes, and then fakes her own kidnapping to avoid getting prosecuted for it.

And I guess tries to frame Yale for the kidnapping. I don't know. That part's a little hazy. Her whole thought process is a little hazy to me, to be honest. Like, girl, did you think they just be like, well, you've been through quite an ordeal, and it seems clear that Yale is somehow involved, so charge is dropped. Oh, and go ahead and keep that 16 grand, honey, least we can do. Best of luck to you.

No. No, Tonica. The funny thing is, she didn't need to pull any of this nonsense in the first place. She had no criminal record. This was her first offense, so the court was inclined to be lenient anyway. I just think she was the kind of person that liked shenanigans. Like if shenanigans were fraud in general chicanery. Yeah, definitely.

So she negotiated a plea deal, agreed to pay back the scholarship money, and the judge gave her a suspended five-year sentence, meaning zero days in jail. Easy-peasy. She's lucky she didn't get prosecuted for the fake kidnapping, too. Girl dodged a bullet, and, you know, it was just a wake-up call she needed to change gears and start making some solid life choices. I'm just kidding. She decided to become a drug dealer. Just a few months after she managed to slide out of real trouble on the fraud case,

Tonica and her mom, Tanika Clement, showed up in Florida and started putting the word out that they were looking to buy about 70K worth of cocaine. Now, I wish that we had more information about this part of the story, because, like, can you just, like, do that? Like, out of nowhere? Wouldn't you run the risk of, like, pissing off the local Heisenberg or whoever it is? I'm assuming you'd be buying it to sell, and surely you'd be stepping on somebody's toes at that point. Boss Bay behavior is starting a drug war on a whim. Like, step up your game. Tonica Jenkins, she-e-o.

She's the CEO of shenanigans. Also, where the hell did they get the 70K? Like, I didn't get the impression they were a wealthy family, which I would think you'd have to be to drop 70 grand on anything. So it's all very confusing to me. But what we know is that at some point an informant clued in the local Florida cops about Tonica and her mom. Of course. And they sent an undercover narcotics agent to make contact posing as a Colombian drug smuggler, like you do. Tonica said they were looking to buy 10 kilos or about 22 pounds of cocaine.

That's not a small amount. And again, this is just like out of nowhere, a total nob. And so she and the undercover made a date for July 10th to meet up in Tampa and finalize the deal. Y'all, this bitch showed up with a flipping rolling suitcase full of money, just like, trala, just confident as can be. I cannot get over this girl. You'd have thought this was nothing more stressful to her than like a visit to the bank. And her mom seemed pretty chill too.

And from what I've been able to determine, up to this point, Tanika Clement had worked as like a house cleaner with no hint of any kind of criminal activity whatsoever ever in her life. Just bizarre. So, of course, the cops had set up surveillance equipment at the meeting spot, caught the whole meeting, including the part where mom Tanika sampled some of the product by licking her pinky finger and sticking it in there and rubbing it on her gums, which nobody actually does, for God's sake. Like, they use chemical testing kits.

They don't want you slobbering all over the drugs. But I guess Tanika, like, saw that in Scarface or something and figured she'd try and look cool. What it actually did, of course, was out her as the total noob that she was. Now, y'all, I know about as much about drug dealing as, you know, somebody with zero experience deal in drugs, but my guess is, if this had been a real drug buy and not a sting operation, Tonica and her mom would have ended up with zero cocaine and zero dollars and possibly zero heartbeat too. But neither one of them seemed remotely worried about that.

That is, of course, until the narcotics agents burst through the door and arrested them. They charged Tonica and her mom with possession with intent to distribute. And given the amount they were trying to buy. They were facing major prison time, up to 25 years. A judge granted them $100,000 bail, and after posting that, they headed back home to Cleveland to wait for trial, which was scheduled to start in April of 2001. So here we are again, Tonica, back home, waiting for trial. This time, with your mom as your co-defendant. And this time, we're not talking about some piddly-ass little fraud charge. This is bad, capital B.

Tonica and her mom were put on house arrest, ankle monitors and all. And now, you'd think this might be a reality check moment for our girl that she'd hire herself the best lawyer she could find, sit tight, and hope for the best. But, again, arch-priestess of Go Big or Go Home.

The first thing she did was figure out how to dismantle her ankle monitor. That alone is a pretty impressive feat, if you ask me. Those things are sensitive. Next, she got in touch with her cousin, Kyle Martin. Kyle had a capital P passed. He'd done some time in prison, but lately he'd been trying to stay out of trouble. He was working a construction job, and he was trying to stay off drugs. When Tonica reached out to him and asked if he wanted to hang out, he was happy to come down to Cleveland to see her. As they rode around in Kyle's car, Tonica, minus her ankle monitor, of course, she suddenly piped up with an odd question.

I need you to find me a girl, she said. Can you do that? Somebody eat decent, about my height and weight, and she should smoke dope. Kyle glanced at her. What for? he asked. Don't you worry about it, Tonica said. Just find me somebody. Okay. Kyle was confused, but Tonica was family. So he was like, Okay, sure. We'll see if we can find some of the girls I used to kick it with around here. For a while, it looked like a no-go. Kyle couldn't get hold of anybody that fit Tonica's specs, but then, driving around East Cleveland in the wee hours of the morning on April 19th, they saw her. A woman, just about Tonica's size and build, around the same age, standing on the curb waiting to cross the street. Pull over, Tonica said.

She rolled down the car window and waved the lady over. Hey, would you be interested in making some money? Tonica asked her. I'm running a little insurance scam and need some help. I'll pay you $100 for every doctor and dentist appointment you'll go to for me. The woman's name was Melissa Latham. She was 27 years old, and in April of 2001, she was struggling with a crack addiction. Any drug addiction is probably going to get real expensive real fast,

and Melissa always needed money. This sounded like easy money, plus a chance to get some free medical and dental care. So she agreed and hopped in the back seat of Kyle Martin's car. They brought her back to Tonica's house, made her up a bed on the couch in the basement, and told her she could stay there for the duration of the scam. That night, Tonica turned on the charm.

She bought Melissa some dinner and had Kyle go get her some crack. Kyle smoked weed with Melissa while Tonica explain the first part of the insurance scam. Tomorrow, she'd take Melissa to the dentist, she said, where she'd pose as Tonica and get a basic exam and a cleaning. It sounded fine to Melissa. She was happy to be off the street for the night. The next morning, Tonica had some more instructions for Melissa, and they seemed a little weird. Yeah, she wanted Melissa to tell the receptionist that she'd hurt her wrists so she couldn't fill out the new patient paperwork herself.

Tell him, your friend is going to do it for you, and I'll fill it out. And then Tonica handed her a pair of black gloves and told her to put them on. It was a warm spring day, so this was pretty bizarre, but Melissa did what she asked. If it occurred to her at any point that this might have been an attempt to avoid her leaving fingerprints, or that the fictional wrist injury might be a way to make sure the dentist had Tonica's handwriting on file, not Melissa's, she didn't say anything about it. Last but not least, Tonica had her put on a Yale sweatshirt, still proud of that one semester alma mater, I see. And then they headed to the dentist, where Tonica had booked an appointment in her own name.

Later, the receptionist at the dentist office would tell a jury that she remembered the two women very well, the winter gloves especially. Way to be inconspicuous there, Tonica. Well-played. Now, if you're starting to get suspicious that this might not be about an insurance scam, you're right. Tonica wasn't after a co-conspirator in another fraud. She was looking for a body double. Somebody about her hide-and-weight whose dental records, if she were to mysteriously turn up dead for some reason, would be a perfect match for a Tonica Jenkins of Cleveland, Ohio. Did anybody else just get chills?

Yeah, me too. So Melissa got her dental exam, x-rays, cleaning, all under Tonica's name and social security number. When they left, Tonica seemed to be feeling great. She was telling Melissa, you know, you don't have to live on the streets anymore. You can just help me with these scams and Kyle and I'll take care of you. On the way back to the house, Tonica stopped at an ATM and took out $100 in cash for Melissa. Then she took her out and bought her some new clothes, took her to KFC. Bless Melissa's heart, this was seeming like the best day she'd had in a while.

One more example of the old, if it seems too good to be true, it probably is thing. What Melissa didn't know, of course, was that Tonica's trial date was coming up in two days. And she didn't think much of the fact that at their last stop, a grocery store, Tonica bought some strange supplies, latex clothes, bleach. That night, Tonica and Kyle made sure Melissa had plenty of cocaine to keep her busy. They told her they had another appointment scheduled for her in the morning, a doctor visit this time, and then they'd pay her another hundred bucks. They all drank and smoked some weed, and Melissa had her cocaine, and after a while, she fell asleep on the couch. In the middle of the night, Melissa woke up in the dark basement, wanting to splash some water on her face and have a drink.

So she felt her way to the bathroom. And right as she came out, she felt a huge blooming pain in the back of her head, the kind that makes she see stars. and then they were on top of her. Through the dark, she could barely make out the faces of Tonica and Kyle, brutally hitting, biting, kicking, and stomping her. At one point, Kyle hit her in the side of the face with a brick. The fact that Melissa was fighting back seemed to make Tonica furious. Die, she screamed, just die!

And then it got worse. As Kyle Martin held Melissa down, Tonica took out a syringe and a vial of some kind of clear liquid. Over and over again, she stabbed the needle to Melissa's body, more than a dozen separate injections. Doctors would later determine that the liquid was insulin, in deadly amounts. Melissa knew that if this went on much longer, she'd never make it out alive. So she did a smart thing.

She played dead. And as Melissa went limp, Tonica and Kyle seemed to buy it. Tonica motioned to Kyle to follow her upstairs. She had more preparations to make. Later, Kyle would say that Tonica told him she wanted to wrap Melissa in an old rug, Put her ankle monitor on her, take her out to the field behind the house, and set her on fire. When the police get there, they'll only be able to identify her by her dental records, she said. I don't have a choice, Tonica said, I can't do this time on this drug charge.

Weird how these selfish motherfuckers never have a choice, right? Right. Like, you're taking somebody else's choices away from them. But sure, you don't have a choice. Shut up. Mm-hmm. As soon as they were out of sight, Melissa took her chance. She stumbled to the door and immediately realized she had a problem.

The door was missing a knob. Frantically, Melissa looked around for something to force it open. She found a spoon which she managed to twist into a shape she could maneuver into the door mechanism and get it open. Damn. Yeah. An angry-looking dog was growling at her from the other side, but Melissa didn't care. She burst through the door, ran right past the dog, and made for the KFC across the street. She ran in and ducked behind the counter, where a manager cradled her head in her lap as another employee called the police.

About this time, Tonica came back downstairs with her fire-setting materials, only to discover two things. One, her victim had fled. And two, so had cousin Kyle. Kyle later said that until Tonica filled him in on her murder plot right there at the end, he had no idea she was planning on killing anybody. He thought they were beating Melissa because Tonica had caught her stealing money from the house. So when he realized what Tonica was actually up to, he was terrified. Figuring, he was probably next in line to die, and after about a 10-second assessment of the situation, Kyle waited till Tonica was busy rolling up that rug, and he noped the fuck out.

But Tonica, as we've seen several times before, is not the type to admit defeat. She saw the spoon on the floor by the door, then walked out. to see a couple of squad cars pulling up to the KFC across the street, and she figured that's where her prey had gone. Now, what happened next varies a little, depending on the reporting. One source has Tonica walking in, cool as a cucumber, pretending to be a concerned friend, trying to sweet-talk the cops into handing Melissa over to her. Another has her blazing into the KFC going, you fucking bitch, that's the bitch that stole my thousand dollars. I'm not sure which is true. Based on Tonica's previous MO, her general deviousness,

I'm kind of more inclined to believe the first story that she came in all sweetness and light and tried to talk the cops into letting her handle her poor sick friend. Fortunately, the cops could see how terrified Melissa was and didn't buy it. Paramedics rushed her to the hospital, and investigators stayed behind to talk to Tonica and figure out what the hell had just happened. At the hospital, Melissa was in bad shape, but she had just enough energy left to tell the doctors that she'd been hit in the head and given insulin.

She'd overheard that part of Tonica and Kyle's conversation right before she'd escaped. And when they tested her blood, they found an incredible amount of the stuff in her system. As one of the prosecutors later said, it's nothing short of a miracle that she survived. Tonica, of course, immediately threw Kyle under the bus. She told the police that Melissa had still won $1,000 from Kyle, and Kyle had flown into a rage and beaten her up. It didn't take the cops long to find Kyle, who was covered in scratches and still had blood all over his hands,

which he initially said was from his nephew scratching him. Yeah, his two-year-old nephew, apparently he's some kind of werewolf child or something. Now, Kyle denied everything at first, but when the police searched the basement of Tonica's house and found all kinds of suspicious stuff, like a bloody brick and vials of insulin, a flipping Russian assault rifle. He cracked. And took the fall for everything.

This is how scared he was of this bitch. He told him, let Tonica go. This was all me. I'm responsible. Look, she stole my money and I just snapped. Kyle, what the hell, man? That's just the power of fear for you, I guess. And I mean, I guess I can kind of understand it.

He'd just been clued into the fact that his cousin was ruthless beyond his wildest nightmares. It's absolutely chilling, terrifying, that decades in prison sounded better to him than turning on his cousin. I can't imagine what he thought she'd do or what he knew she'd do. Yeah, and it wasn't just Tonica. Mama Tanika was in this thing up to her eyeballs, too. According to court documents, when officers first went to search the house, they headed down those basement stairs to find Tanika on her hands and knees frantically scrubbing the floor. And the room reeked of bleach And they're like, ma'am, what's you doing?

And Mama Tanika said, I'm just cleaning up a mess the dog's made. Problem was, though, the officers couldn't see or smell any dog poop, but they found hastily wiped up blood stains all over the place. Yeah, the apple didn't fall far from the tree, apparently. So Kyle might have figured if he didn't take the wrap for Tonica, he'd be toast. I'm so curious about Tonica's mom, by the way. According to people who knew her,

she was a stand-up citizen until all this stuff went down. So I'm wondering, did Tanika Clement just do a good job hiding her criminal side, like all her life until her fuck-up daughter decided to join in and got them both, like, immediately caught? Or was Tonica just a terrible influence on her mom? Did she just coax her into crime for the first time in, like, an otherwise law-abiding life? Did Tanika know about her daughter's murder plot before the fact? It's hard to say.

But clearly, she knew about it afterwards and was like, like actively trying to help cover it up. Tonica's dad was on her team too, by the way. During her trial, he told the media that his daughter was a near genius, which I'm not sure what that even is, but okay. And the whole case against her was bullshit. Right, good luck with that, dad. So they stuck Kyle in a jail cell and let Tonica go on about her business.

But of course, there was a great big loose end still dangling in the breeze, namely one Melissa Latham, who by now was coming around enough to tell her story in full, coherent detail. And she filled the investigators in on what really happened and Tonica's starring role in it. Womp, wamp, so they got a warrant

to put the habeas grab us on our girl for kidnapping, attempted aggravated murder, tampering with evidence, all kinds of early stuff. But when they went to grab her, she was nowhere to be found. Rett Row. Nobody could have predicted

where they found her just a few days into the search. She'd actually shown that up down in Florida for her drug trial. She and her mom both, and her dad was there too to show moral support or whatever. And this is classic Tonica. In the middle of the trial, Tonica told one of the bailiffs. She was going to go downstairs with her parents to get a soda.

I guess she was on her own recognizance still during the trial, still out on her 100K bail. Right. So she and Tanika and her dad left the courtroom and then just didn't come back. Luckily, for everybody, one of the officers had gotten a little suspicious when he overheard Tonica say that she and the fam were all going downstairs for a soda, so he'd followed him. And was now witnessing in real time, Tonica's brother pulling the getaway car up to the back door of the courthouse. I called gun in the engine, like, come on, let's go. Ready to spirit everybody away before the end of the trial. The officer, of course, hauled them all back to the courtroom.

Tonica and her mom were both swiftly convicted on the cocaine charges. Tonica got 24 years and her mom got 12. Yikes. Although I guess maybe the judge did think she looked cool, putting the coke on her gums. That's why her face move. That's why she got half the time. But, you know, then it was back to Cleveland to face what they'd done to Melissa Latham. Tonica for the abduction and attempted murder and Tonica for the obstruction of justice.

Yeah, she was so vexed about the. the audacity of the whole thing that Tonica actually bit a guard at the jail. There's that anger again. Flaring up, Lord, have mercy. Who bites a guy? Just who does that? Despite the mountain of evidence against her, like so overwhelming that her own lawyer tried desperately to get her to plead out, Tonica seemed supremely confident going

into her trial. In fact, I think my favorite thing about this story is how confident Tonica was that all they were going to need to do was hammer at Melissa Latham about her history as a drug addict and the fact that she'd been in trouble for theft, and Tonica would just be home free. Just make the victim look like a piece of shit in the eyes of the jury, and that's all you'll need to do. The freaking defense attorney called her a woman of ill repute. I'm sorry? What was that? Did we just time travel? Is it 1892? What in the fuck? Are you talking about? Yeah, I thought we'd left that terminology in like Queen Victoria.

The notorious day, but whatever. A lady of the evening. And then Melissa Latham got up on that stand, just clear-eyed and confident and brave as a damn Amazon warrior and told her whole story. And while Tonica looked daggers at her, just blew that bullshit right out of the water. Was she a perfect person? Nope. Neither am I. Neither are you.

And certainly neither was our girl Tonica. But she was telling the truth. And it took a set of solid brass wabos to do it. And the jury knew it was the truth when they heard it. Tonica chose Melissa because she was vulnerable. Just like so many predators before her, she went after what she perceived as the weakest member of the herd. In Campers, she fucked with the wrong girl.

Because not only did Melissa Latham managed to fight through a vicious beating and a near-fatal dose of insulin and lived to tell the tale, but she had a strength in her that went all the way down to the core. And she was not about to let this evil stand. She might have been vulnerable, but weak she was not. and everybody in that courtroom could see it. Tonica was convicted on all counts. The judge could have given her 38 years,

but she opted for 20 years instead. But she ordered that they be served consecutively with the sentence for the drug charge. When you add all that together, Tonica will be getting pretty elderly before she ever sets foot outside of prison again. At the sentencing, badass survivor Melissa Latham said, no time you guys can give Tonica today can make up for what she did to me.

Absolutely true. As for Melissa, the nightmare she went through with Tonica and Kyle seemed to galvanize her to start healing her addiction and figuring out where she wanted to go in her life. I saw her in an interview years ago and she seemed to be doing great. She got sober, got a whole new lease on life. Looking death in the face can do that sometimes, as traumatic as it is. For some people, it's like, I've got a second chance here, and they work hard to make it mean something. She said if she hadn't managed to escape that night, her family would have just been left to wonder for the rest of their lives, what happened to their daughter, sister, friend.

So much pain and worry for so many people. All so one self-entitled little shit could avoid accountability for her crimes. Mm-hmm. Melissa still has diabetes from the insulin overdose tonica gave her. but she says she feels blessed to be here. Melissa, if you're listening, we're rooting for you. You are one brave lady. Damn right.

As for Kyle Martin, who was still so petrified of his cousin that he refused to testify against Tonica at her trial, he ended up with a 10-year sentence for kidnapping. In an interview with investigation discovery years after his conviction, he said he was convinced that if Melissa Latham hadn't escaped from the basement that night, he'd have been the next to die. I think this might actually be true. If you think about it, you could fairly easily stage a murder suicide by killing both Melissa and Kyle. Oh, absolutely. Yeah, that may have been Tonica's plan all along.

I mean, she doesn't seem like the type to balk at killing a family member. And she definitely doesn't seem like the type to want loose ends, witnesses and all that kind of stuff. Right. By the way, there's a wild little PS to this story. one of the prosecutors who convicted Tonica, a guy named Aaron Phillips, who was also an ordained minister, by the way, later got into some hot water for fixing cases for money. That's always great to hear, isn't it? Just what we all want from our folks in the criminal justice system. And it's especially ironic in this case, given that Phillips' favorite name for

Tonica during the trial was deceiver. Yes, Mr. Phillips. Lying is bad. I agree. Yeah, the dude was cricketer than a left turn. A judge. Dalehouse informant had ratted Phillips out for offering to fix his case for $20,000. Nobody believed it at first, but when fact after fact after fact corroborated this inmate's story, they set up a sting and caught the dipshit red-handed, trying to solicit five grand from another inmate for making sure the guy would get a lenient sentence. This is a prosecutor, remember. Apparently, people had been complaining about the guy's performance for years,

and his superiors had always liked him so much that they ignored the red flags. Until this happened, obviously, it didn't have any bearing on Tonica's case. We just thought it was interesting. Yeah, and as for Tonica herself, she may very well get out of prison one day, which is a scary thought. But Melissa Latham isn't scared. She told investigation discovery, I'm not scared anymore. She's probably scared of herself. She needs to be.

Amen to that. So that was a wild one, right, campers? You know, we'll have another one for you next week. But for now, lock your doors, light your lights, and stay safe. until we get together again around the True Crime Campfire. And as always, we want to send a grateful shout out to a few of our lovely patrons. Thank you so much to Nicole, Megan, Lynn, Kimberly, Kelly, Luna, Lady of Light, awesome name, and Kimmy. We appreciate y'all to the moon and back.

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