True Crime Campfire - The Boy Is Mine: The Murder of Jenna Nannetti

Episode Date: March 24, 2023

There’s a lot about high-school life that is retrospectively ridiculous. Miss, nobody noticed that microscopic zit on the side of your nose. Sir, that’s not a mustache yet and you should stop trying to pretend it is. But the truth is, when you’re that young you really do feel things deeply, and a lot of things matter far more than they really should. Especially where love is concerned. Looking back, you know perfectly well that that 17-year-old romance was never going anywhere, but when you’re right there and living it, it can be all that matters in the world. You might do anything to protect it. Join us for a story of teenage obsession gone horribly wrong.Sources:East Bay Express, "Little Miss Murder" by Susan Goldsmith: https://eastbayexpress.com/little-miss-murder-1/SF Gate: https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/LIVERMORE-Wife-killer-gets-life-sentence-2590335.phpCourt papers: https://caselaw.findlaw.com/ca-court-of-appeal/1180568.htmlInvestigation Discovery's "Wicked Attraction," episode "Deadly Rival"Oxygen's "Killer Couples," episode "Katie Belflower and Mike Simons"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. There's a lot about high school life that is retrospectively ridiculous. Miss, nobody noticed that microscopic Zid on the side of your. your nose. Sir, that's not a mustache yet, and you should stop trying to pretend it is. But the truth is, when you're that young, you really do feel things deeply, and a lot of things matter far more

than they really should, especially where love is concerned. Looking back, you know perfectly well that that 17-year-old romance was probably never going anywhere, but when you're right there and living it, it can be all that matters in the world. You might do anything to protect it. This is The Boy is Mine, the murder of Jenna Nenetti. So, campers, for this one, we're in the general area of Livermore, California, October 6, 2002. In the parking lot of the Mountain House Cafe, a back-roads bar in the hilly country between Livermore and Tracy, a car was on fire in the night. A passing motorist saw the flames and called police and firefighters. Once the firefighters got the blaze under control,

they were able to tell that, thankfully, there wasn't anybody inside the scorched out blue Mustang. There was no way for them to tell whether the fire had been started deliberately. Police called the Mountain House bartender, and they said it had been such a slow night that they'd closed early. The parking lot had been empty then. The license plate on the Mustang led police to the door of an elderly lady named Linda Nenetti, and the minute they laid eyes on her, the police realized that her vibe didn't exactly scream,

I drive a Mustang. And they were right. Although Linda was the registered owner of the car, she'd bought it as a gift for her 17-year-old granddaughter Jenna. Linda had raised Jenna from the time she was tiny, and she still lived with her. And Linda had already been worrying about her, even before the knock at the door. At about 9 o'clock the night before, Jenna had left her an upsetting voicemail. Another girl had just attacked her, she said. she was okay now with some friends but she said linda could call her if she wanted to but when linda called it went straight to jenna's voicemail she never came home now here was this bizarre news about the mustang burning to a husk in the parking lot of a country bar linda knew how much her granddaughter loved that car would she abandon it in the middle of bumfunk nowhere for any reason on earth hell no a mustang when you're seventeen years old sure it was twelve years old but still i was happy to to get my parents shitty old used Oldsmobile

when I was 17. If I had a sexy little blue Mustang, I would have lived in that thing. That car was Jenna's pride and joy, and it was the only thing of any real worth that she owned. Jenna's dad, Jim Nanetti, had also gotten a voicemail from Jenna the night before, and this one was a lot scarier.

This is one of those awful, heartbreaking what-if kind of moments. If Jenna had gotten through to her dad that night, so much could have been different in this case, but he didn't hear the message until later. The voicemail went like this. Dad, call me now. I've probably got a concussion. I just got hit upside the head with a baseball bat or whatever the fuck it was. I need your help. Call me. Ugh, poor kid. So obviously authorities and everyone who loved Jenna were afraid for her safety.

She'd obviously been attacked. Her car had been found abandoned and burning and nobody knew where she was. But it didn't take too much probing into the shape of Jenna and Nannetti's life to give investigators an idea of where they might want to start looking to figure out what happened to her. Jenna was married to and separated from a 20-year-old douchebag by the name of Mike Simons. Mike, and if you want to cast this in your head, just think Dollar Tree Matt Damon, okay? Mike had already been in trouble with the law for stealing cars and leading police on sprightly high-speed chases, and he already had some jail time on the old CV, so not exactly the kind of husband Lyndon Nettie would have wanted for her granddaughter. Since Jenna was still a juvenile, because remember this girl is seven, Linda had actually had to give her consent for the marriage to take place, and she did, which, I mean, look, good luck trying to keep teenagers in love from doing whatever the hell they want. I get that. If Linda had refused to go along, Jenna and Mike would have probably just run off together. Jenna had a stubborn streak a mile wide, and she was determined to find a way to stay with Mike. The two of them had known each other pretty much forever, but they'd only been actually dating for a few months before tying the knot.

And as soon as that knot was tied, Mike moved in with Jenna and her grandparents. God, what a treat for everybody, right? Now, in any city of any size, you're going to find groups of, I guess you'd call it, disaffected young folks. And this was the crowd Mike and Jenna were part of. Kids who dropped out of high school were thinking about dropping out, all working, low-income jobs, you know, tough kids with tough lives, a lot of them. They hung out at an internet cafe. Remember this is 2002, so they were probably looking at Homestar Runner, you know, stuff like that. Or they'd go out into the hills to party around campfires, drinking and smoking and screwing around.

Jenna fit that tough kid with a tough life category pretty well. Her dad had a drinking problem her whole life and he'd been in prison multiple times for felony D.U.I. Jenna had a long history of picking him up from bars when he was wasted and driving him home so he wouldn't get in trouble again. Poor kid. We don't know much about Jenna's mom, except that she split soon after Jenna was born, leaving Jenna's grand. parents to raise her. I don't think you need a psych degree to see how this could create a kid who was a little bit hard-edged on the outside, but on the inside, just desperate for somebody to love and take care of her. Yeah. And she thought she'd found that in Mike Simons. It's easy to see why the two of them connected. Like Jenna's, Mike's mom was more or less out of his life entirely. His dad was

in prison, and he lived with his aunt. These kids had a lot in common. Mike had disappeared from Livermore for a few years after being sent to juvenile boot camp for troubled teens. And if you want to know how well those places work and knocking young people into shape, well, you'll see. Yeah. Paging Dr. Phil, right? Him and his whack-ass ranch. Yeah.

After that, Mike lived in a group home and got into some trouble for stealing cars up in Oakland before drifting back home to Livermore. He was homeless for a while, camping in a creek bed and shooting geese with a BB gun so he could cook them for dinner. But soon he started on a series of jobs, slinging burgers at Jack in the Box, stocking shelves at Walmart, and detailing cars at a dealership. One thing that Boot Camp did seem to do was make Mike completely obsessed with the military. He was almost always dressed in green camouflage army fatigues in a maroon beret. There's a picture of him and Jenna together, and it looks like one of those wholesome,

My man's finally back from deployment shots. But nope, dude was never in the military a day in his life. He just liked to play dress-up. Oh, Lord. And Maroon Barre, that's like special forces too, right? Like airborne special forces, I think. So he was really getting into some cosplay there. Or, you know, stolen valor, whatever you want to call it. Mike had actually started his enlistment process, but I'm guessing they hadn't gotten to the psych test yet. Or the background check. Although technically, a criminal record won't keep you out of the army. Just a significant criminal record. Whatever that means. Murder. That cracks me up. I don't know if stealing cars counts or not.

Right. And Mike wasn't exactly Mr. Popularity in his friend group. He had a habit of just randomly talking in AAVE sometimes or African American vernacular English. And everybody thought that was weird and kind of racist, obviously. I mean, we've all met people like that. It's toe curling. It's so awkward. And a couple times he acted like he was going to hit Jenna and he had to be held back by friends.

Real classy. dude. For what it's worth, those friends also said that their money would have been on Jenna in a fight. Yes, one guy was like, Jenna would have kicked his ass. So he was probably secretly glad that they held him back, but still, ew. Like, not great. Dudes that say, hold me back. Never actually want to get in fights. They're categorically cowards. But he was a good looking kid. And when your peer group is still mostly in high school, that can count for a lot. Jenna, who was really pretty but self-conscious about her looks, like most teenagers are, felt proud to have him as her husband. People said she sparkled when she was with him.

Now, I know what all you cynics are out there thinking. Teenage bride, bad boy husband, this marriage has about a snowman's chance in hell. But look, Jenna and Mike were happy. Their relationship was full of smiles and affection for like a couple weeks. So pat yourselves on the back cynics. here right again. And really, Mike had no business getting married to anybody. According to true crime author Greg Olson, Mike's friends said he had two great loves in his life, okay? One was booze, preferably paid for by somebody else, and the other it was 16-year-old girls. And he wanted as

much of both as he could get. Ew. How he fooled himself into thinking a life of domestic monogamy would be the right choice for him. I have no idea. Maybe he just wanted somewhere free to crash for a wow, but the long and short of it is, after six whole entire weeks of marriage, Mike told Jenna he wanted out. I'm surprised he lasted that long. And poor Jenna, bless her heart, was just devastated. And she had no idea this was coming. She was just 17. She's a high school girl. She loved this creepy little weasel. So she tried to talk Mike into staying, but he was gonzo. And this was three months before Jenna disappeared. By this time, Mike had well and truly moved on. He had a new girlfriend, another 17-year-old by the name of

Katie Bellflower, and he was living with her at her mom's house. And I'm just going to throw out some more patented TCC parenting advice from the child free here, okay? People, please don't let your teenage daughter's creepy boyfriend come and live with you, especially when he's 20 years old and a grown-ass adult. I mean, the clouds of X body spray alone are going to be suffocating. And that doesn't even scratch the surface, really, of the potential problems that could arise. Yeah, there's like a mile wide canyon between forbidding your kid from ever seeing their love interest again and like rolling out the welcome mat like happy mediums people happy mediums yeah i'm not i'm not a fan of like you can't see brandon ever again because then

you're just going to get murdered right you know she'll figure out brandon sucks on her own it's it's fine but just like inviting him to move in just maybe not mike's new squeeze katie was an odd little duckling with her glasses and her hair pulled back into a tight braid she looked like the kind of a sitcom cliche of a high-achieving nerd, though that wasn't anywhere close to the truth. She actually skipped a lot of school and had to go to the Del Valley Continuation High School, which was reserved for kids who were in danger of not graduating. Jenna had gone there, too, although the two of them hadn't really interacted much. Jenna was lively and open, and she never had any trouble making friends, but Katie was an outsider

and struck people as weird. And if you watch video of her police interrogation, you're going to see why in like two minutes. her face barely ever changed expression she's like grumpy cat she just literally makes the same face all the time and neither did her voice like everything came out in the same bored monotone like maybe she was trying for wednesday adams but she couldn't quite pull it off she wasn't off beat just off so unsurprisingly she wasn't popular in high school now nine times out of ten if a kid's unpopular in high school it means nothing whatsoever about them It's just high school being high school, but for Katie Bellflower, it was pretty much all her own fault. See, Miss Katie's favorite hobby was stealing your man.

She liked going after guys who were dating other girls. That alone is going to get you on a hell of a lot of shitless, and under Katie's flat affect, there was a busy little rage cauldron just bubbling away. She'd start fights with other girls at school, though as one girl in her class remembered later, when you got in her face, she'd back right off. So her and Hold Me Back Guy were a match made in Coward Heaven, I guess, or hell, depending on who you ask. Exactly. Now, we couldn't tell from the sources we saw whether Mike and Katie hooked up while he was still married to Jenna. But based on what we know about Katie, I think it's a pretty safe bet because that was the kind of guy she was specifically attracted to. And it's less clear why Mike moved on to Katie, who frankly seems like several steps down.

I mean, a guy like Mike probably wasn't going to stick around regardless, but why Katie? Of course, I guess if you're an insecure little manchild, a girl with all the charisma of a wet pile of laundry might actually be preferable to one who has, you know, a personality and opinions and stuff and won't always do what you want. Mike and Katie were definitely together now, though. She just found out she was pregnant with his baby when, you know, Jenna disappeared. I'm sure this fine, upstanding young gents going to stick with her through all her pregnancy and labor. all that good stuff, right? Mm-hmm. Yeah, we'll find out in a minute.

So the night Jenna disappeared, she'd gone over to Katie's house where Mike was living, and Jenna and Mike talked on the porch about the possibility of annulling their marriage. And also about the possibility of reconciling, which, like, make up your mind, God. Then all of a sudden, Mike said, Jenna told him she had to leave. He gave her $10 for gas, and that was it. She peeled away in her Mustang. 45 minutes later, according to Mike, Jenna called him and said she'd been assaulted and was going to go get drunk. So Mike and Katie went and hung out in a local park for a couple

hours. So obviously, police were suspicious as hell of Mike Simons. Any time a woman goes missing and the last person to see her alive is her estranged husband, that husband's going to be in the hot seat. Adding in a new girlfriend and a sketchy past isn't going to help his case either. But so far, there was no evidence connecting him to Jenna's disappearance. Katie's version of that evening matched Mike's, although in her version, Mike and Jenna had agreed to annulled their marriage. And as soon as that went through, Katie and Mike were going to get engaged. Search teams combed the land for miles around the Mountain House Cafe, where Jenna's car had been found on fire, but found nothing. But two weeks later, on October 19th, a fisherman

in a remote area called Whiskey Slew about 40 miles away from Livermore, caught a whiff of something awful on his way to the river. And in some bushes, he found a decomposing body of a woman. It was Jenna. They IDed her by her fingerprints on file with the DMV. The coroner cited the cause of death as too close-range gunshot blasts to the chest, but they couldn't be sure whether there had been more shots than that. The damp environment she'd been lying in had sped up decomposition,

and there had been a lot of animal activity, so her body was in bad shape. Nearby, investigators recovered a single shotgun shell casing. There were no drag marks or any indication that Jenna had been bound in any way. For now, investigators thought it was likely she'd been killed right here, and it looked like she'd come here voluntarily. Jenna was buried in Livermore at the end of October. Hundreds of people came. Her friends, her family, former teachers, this girl had mattered to a hell of a lot of people.

Her family played a video tribute to her with Guns and Roses, sweet child of mine playing in the background. Oh, man, that's so sweet. Among the mourners were Mike, Katie, and Katie's friend Jeff Hamilton. We are going to get to that guy in a minute. Now that they knew for sure she'd been murdered, detectives looked even more closely into her relationship with Mike. They learned that after he'd walked out on their marriage, he and Jenna would often argue, loudly and in public. One of these fights had ended with Mike yelling, I'm going to kill you.

Of course, people say that kind of stuff in arguments sometimes. Not usually great people, on average, but it doesn't necessarily mean they're actually going to kill somebody. But if your estranged wife turns up shot to death soon after you make that threat, you're probably not going to get the benefit of the doubt from the cops. No. Police interviewed Mike and Katie again. Mike stuck to his original story of the night of Jenna's disappearance.

mostly. Initially, he said that he and Katie had gone to the park together for hours after Jenna left. Now, he added a new detail, that Katie's friend Jeff went with them. But Katie stuck to the first draft of the script. It was just her and Mike at the park. No, Jeff. So what does this mean? Well, it means one of these two chuckleheads is lying their ass off, at least. So who was this Jeff Hamilton? Anyway, well, if we're sticking with fan casting this story. Picture Newman from Seinfeld as like a 20-year-old Zamboni driver

but without all the charm and joie de vivre. Jeff was really kind of a sad sack. He'd never had a girlfriend, barely had any friends at all outside of Katie. He described his relationship with Katie as older brother, younger sister, which apparently meant he followed her around like

a puppy and did whatever she told him. And as I'm sure, any of y'all out there with actual siblings know, that is not how that dynamic works. My brother can sure as hell tell you. Nah, that's what dudes who have crushes on girls and get friend zone describe themselves as. Katie, her? No, man.

She's like my sister. Like, meanwhile, he's holding back tears. Exactly. One thing they had in common, though, is that they both spoke like they were about three volumes deep, just flat and bored, like Aubrey Plaza on Xanax, but like more boring. Yeah, not funny. Not funny. And not funny, exactly.

just, God knows what they talked about, but if you happen to be in the same room, you'd either fall asleep or want to throw yourself out the window. Both Katie and Jeff, you could set their shoes on fire and they'd be like,

oh, my feet are burning. That is painful. Ow. Ow. In fact, Jeff had had a crush on Katie for years, but he'd never done anything about it and had pretty much deliberately self-friendzoned the situation.

You know, safe for me. that way. Girls are scary. What I say? What did I say? You called it. When detectives interviewed Jeff, he confirmed Mike's version of the night Jenna disappeared. He'd gone to the park with Mike and Katie, third wheeling it big time, while the two young lovers chatted and knoodled. Investigators were confident that these three were involved in Jenna's murder, but beyond Jenna's autopsy report in one solitary shotgun casing, the evidence in that case was close to zero. And while conspiracies with three young dipshits like these often fall apart when they run their mouths at a party or crack like an egg in the interrogation room, that didn't happen here. And the investigation pretty much slowed to a

crawl as police expanded their interviews and chased down leads. They thought they might be onto something in tracking down a stolen shotgun that could have been the murder weapon, but it was slow work. Months passed. But of course, time didn't stand still during those months. By the middle of February, Katie was five months pregnant, and the jealous rage bubbling under underneath that brain-dead exterior was reaching a boiling point. Mike, ever-classy, had dumped her like radioactive waste. I know, take a moment to grieve if you need to. We thought those two crazy kids were going to make it.

And he had a new girlfriend, a 16-year-old named Aspen Lum. Yeah, this guy is the worst. Aspen was perfect because she was cuter than Katie, plus she wasn't five months pregnant, and this was the best part for Mikey. She was younger than Katie. I mean, for God's sake, Katie was almost eight. whole years old now. She'd start getting an AARP mail any second.

You know, she's used up. Aspen was kind of a troubled kid who'd run away from home in the past and who, according to her mom, doesn't pick nice people to hang out with. Yeah, you're right on the money there, mom. Aspen thought Katie was her friend, bless her heart. In fact, some of the sources on this case

indicate that the way Mike and Aspen met was that Katie invited her to have a three-way with her and Mike. I guess to spice things up or maybe in a desperate attempt to keep Mikey around and then Katie got edged out of the situation entirely. But I'm not sure if that's true. It's only in a couple of the sources and not necessarily the most in-depth ones. Like that story does not pop up in the article Little Miss Murder by Susan Goldsmith, which is one of our better sources for this case. So who knows? But what we do know is that one night Aspen got a late night call from Katie inviting her to

sneak out of her house and go out drinking and drive in with Katie and Jeff. And Aspen, poor kid, was all for it. So at 12.30 a.m. on March 1st, Aspen snuck out, met up with Katie and Jeff, and they all drove in Jeff's car to this place called the Altamont Pass. Now, this is a road that runs up through the hills outside of Livermore and gives these really spectacular views of the valley, especially at night with city lights and everything. So kids are always going up there after dark to talk or smoke weed or make out or whatever. They hung out for a while, drinking some Jack Daniels that Katie had stolen from her mom. Aspen couldn't take it neat. So she mixed it with Dr. Pepper.

Katie made sure Aspen drank quite a bit more than she did, which, okay, Katie, let's add drinking while pregnant to your long list of shining qualities. Oh, yeah. Anyway, after a while. I miss that. I miss that. I miss that. That's a good catch. I missed that that she was five months pregnant at this point.

Yeah, she's knocked up and she's taking Jack Daniels. Jack Daniels. Yeah. Gosh, I hate her so bad. and I hate that I share a name with her. Fuck her so hard. I hate her. Anyway, after a while at about 3 a.m.,

Jeff went back to his car and put on a pair of blue surgical gloves. He stashed a length of rope in his pocket, some hockey netting from the ice rink where he drove the Zamboni. He went back to join the girls, moving up behind Aspen. He started to massage Aspen's neck and shoulders, which I guess she was fine with at first. As Jeff rubbed Aspen's back, Katie quietly slipped on her own pair of surgical gloves. And then she gave Jeff a subtle hand signal.

Jeff whipped out the rope and wrapped it around Aspen's throat, pulling hard. As Aspins struggled, clawing at Jeff's hands, Katie leaned into her face and said, I killed Jenna, and now I'm going to kill you. Oh, my God. She put one hand over Aspen's mouth and held her nostrils closed with the other. Aspen fell back onto the ground, and Katie, pounced on her, holding her down while Jeff kept the rope tight around her neck. Aspen managed to choke out, Katie, please, stop, you can have him. But Katie didn't seem to care. They kept right on

trying to kill her. This went on for long minutes. Contrary to how it looks on TV, it's not easy to strangle somebody to death. Aspen's vision blurred. She blacked out briefly. It felt like her eyeballs were going to pop. And then, like a miracle, on this dark and lonely road, just seconds before Aspen Lum fell into unconsciousness, a pair of headlights appeared and lit up the creepy little scene. Katie and Jeff let go of Aspen. When the approaching vehicle stopped, headlights still lighting them up, Jeff quickly shoved the rope into his pocket.

Katie hugged Aspen, saying, I'm sorry, don't tell anyone. Oh, the fucking nerve of hugging her. I'm sorry, don't tell anyone. Yeah, Aspen, just keep this between you and I. I definitely won't try it again. again. It wasn't just any driver who'd happened upon this scene. It was Tim Phillips, a park's police officer on morning patrol. He hadn't seen Katie and Jeff trying to kill Aspen,

but the scene was weird and one of the girls was clearly in some kind of distress. Phillips got out of his cruiser like, okay, what's going on here? Having been nearly strangled to death, Aspen couldn't talk, and she was lightheaded and confused from shock and oxygen deprivation. So she said nothing as Katie started bullshitting, telling Officer Phillips that Aspen had just gotten sick. and she and Jeff were helping her. She pretended to listen to something Aspen said and said, oh, is it that time of the month?

Oh, my God. Yeah. When Phillips asked them about the surgical gloves they were wearing, Katie and Jeff said they'd put them on because they were worried Aspen was going to throw up. You know, because we all carry latex gloves around in case a buddy has to barf. Nothing weird about that. Oh, my God. Katie noticed the rope hanging out of Jeff's pocket and said,

do you still have that string? Yeah, Jeff said. I forgot to take it out after work. It's definitely not a rope I was using to strangle anybody with. I'll tell you that. How ridiculous. Ha ha ha. Now, this was obviously fake as hell and super suspicious.

But when Phillips asked Aspen if she was okay, she whispered that she was. She was terrified. She could barely talk and she still wasn't thinking straight. And she was worried that if she caused a stir, Katie and Jeff would kill her and Officer Phillips. sure so phillips got her home phone number and had a dispatcher call but there was no answer probably because it was the middle of the night katie promised they take aspen straight back home which was just a couple miles away officer phillips okayed that and the three of them drove off into the night and i'm just gonna soft pedal things a little here i'm not too sure this was the greatest piece of police work we've seen yeah definitely not no this whole situation was shady as shit katie and jeff were being super weird and even even looking at things in the best possible light, you've got a clearly underage girl who's intoxicated and not doing great. Her house is a couple miles away. He should have just driven her home. It's not like he had anything else going on at 3 a.m. in the middle of nowhere, for God's sake,

but whatever, you know, he didn't ask me about it. But just two minutes after Jeff and Katie had driven off, Officer Phillips got another call from dispatch. They'd gotten in touch with Aspen's dad, who was frantic and said his daughter wasn't in her room and he thought she'd run away again. though, right? So Phillips swung his cruiser around and hauled ass in the direction that the kids had driven off. And luckily for both Aspen and Officer Phillips, Katie and Jeff had been freaked out enough

by this close encounter of the cop kind that they had actually taken Aspen straight home just like they said they would and dropped her off. By the time Phillips caught up with them and pulled them over, it was just Katie and Jeff in the car. So he detained them in his cruiser until he could untangle just what had been going on. And it was as they all sat in the cruiser

that dispatch came back with another alarm. call. Aspen had just told her parents that Katie and Jeff had tried to kill her. So probably while watching his law enforcement career flashed before his eyes, Phillips waited in his cruiser for Alameda County deputies to arrive and arrest this pair of dipshits. In her interview room, Katie stuck to the story she'd spun for Officer Phillips. Aspen had gotten sick and she and Jeff were just, you know, helping. She'd been wearing gloves in case Aspen threw up. And why was Jeff wearing gloves? Because Katie said he doesn't know Aspen that well and he doesn't know if she has any diseases or anything. Uh, girl what? What? Jeff puts on surgical gloves whenever he's around

somebody he doesn't know that well. Hmm. Well played Katie. Way to hold it together, girl. When a detective flat out asked Katie, did you guys just try to kill her? She denied it. No, I'm sorry. I wouldn't try to kill her. I love her too much. I care about her way too much. This is how she talks. I swear to God, I'm not making it up. It is. It is how she talks. Her tone was just flat and like super casual, like she was telling somebody why she liked Burger King better than McDonald's or something. Bish, you're in a police interrogation room and you've just been asked if you tried to murder somebody. What is it going to take to raise your heart rate? Electroshock? It's just unbelievable. Of course, Katie wasn't the weak link in this little not-so-dynamic duo. In his own interview

room, Jeff Hamilton, in the same kind of casual tone, was cracking like Humpty Dumpty. Yes, he tried to strangle Aspen. It had been Katie's idea. She wanted Aspen out of the picture. Surely then, Mike would run back into her arms and be the stand-up husband and father she knew he could be.

Katie, honey, no, he's a creep. He's running nowhere except to the bleachers to watch the 10th grade soccer tryouts. According to Jeff, when Katie first asked him to help kill Aspen, he'd refused, but she kept badger in him and badger him about it until finally he just caved. Dude, if you really had a big brother

little sister relationship with this girl, you'd have told her she was fucking nuts, because that's what my brother would tell me. But of course, Jeff's real role in this relationship was gutless follower, not big brother. Simp Supreme. Mm-hmm. Katie had initially wanted to cut Aspen's throat,

Jeff said, but they eventually settled on strangulation instead. Then they were going to hang her body on a fence post so people would think Aspen had taken her own life. Because, you know, People often hang themselves on fence posts with ice hockey netting, miles from anywhere when they don't have a car. Absolutely no one would have been suspicious, obviously. Yeah, that was ironclad.

I'm shocked it didn't work out. When faced with Jeff's confession, Katie kind of sort of came clean herself. But in her version of events, the attempted murder had been Jeff's idea because he, her big brother, wanted to take care of Katie and, and eliminate her rival. Now the detectives knew that Katie Bellflower and Jeff Hamilton weren't just connected to the attempted murder of Aspen Lum. They were also up to their eyebrows and the murder of Jenna Nannetti. They weren't Mike Simon's alibi for the night of Jenna's death.

So, of course, the detectives asked them both about Jenna. Jeff, who seems to have enjoyed the attention these very important police detectives were giving him, kept right on chatting. And when Katie found out Jeff was still talking, Katie kept talking too. Was that the prisoner's dilemma? Yeah, that's what they call it.

Mike had told Katie and Jeff that Jenna was making his life miserable. She was holding up the divorce, and he wanted her gone. He had important teenage girls to hit on, and he had another motive, too. Jenna's grandparents had taken out a $100,000 life insurance policy on Jenna. It was supposed to help Jenna pay for college if she chose to go. Mike, who was still Jenna's husband, assumed he'd get the money. if she died. Of course, being the massive doofus that he was, he hadn't bothered to check. If he had, he'd have found out that Jenna's grandparents were the beneficiaries of the policy.

Mike exaggerated the value of the policy to Katie and Jeff. He said that if Jenna were dead, he'd get $600,000 and buy a new house for him and Katie to live in, and Jeff could come stay in the spare room. This, by the way, was the entirety of what Jeff Hamilton's took to gain from Jenna's death. The chance to move out of his parents' house. That was enough for him. Mike and Katie wanted Jeff in on the plan because he had a little Dodge Neon, and they needed somebody to drive them around. Jeff had never even met Jenna. Just, wow. Wow. The plan was for Mike to lure Jenna over to Katie's house by telling her he wanted to talk about their marriage, and maybe getting back together. When Jenna and Mike were talking on the porch, Katie would come up behind and hit Jenna in the head with a

baseball bat knocking her out. Then they'd take her out to some field in the middle of nowhere, shoot her dead, and hide the body. Jeff suggested shaving off her hair to make the body harder to recognize, but they never got around to that. Then they'd set Jenna's car on fire and burn away, any fingerprints or blood evidence, and Jeff would drive them all home in his neon. Of course, real life isn't like the movies, and although Katie hit Jenna pretty damn hard, tearing loose some of her scalp and making blood rushed down her face. It didn't knock her out. Jenna ran out into the street and Katie bolted.

Mike went back in the house and got Jenna a towel and held it up to Jenna's head like, oh, honey, are you okay? Gross. Jenna wanted to go to a hospital, but Mike had another idea. He said he knew where Katie'd run off to and the two of them should go after her and get revenge. Mike would hold her down while Jenna beat her up. Jenna still wanted to go to the hospital, but Mike kept out.

after her. She clearly wasn't thinking very clearly after the blow to the head, and finally she agreed they'd go after Katie. Jenna got into her Mustang with Mike and the passenger seat and started driving, following his directions. On the way, she called her grandmother and her dad, but got voicemail both times. Whiskey Slew was 40 minutes away, a wide agricultural plain of fields and creeks. Mike had been up there shooting a few times, and he'd taken Katie with him once or twice. Of course, Jenna had no idea that Mike, Katie, and Jeff had planned all this. Agreed to meet there, off a dirt road. Jeff and Katie got there first in his dodged neon and pulled off, waiting for Mike and Jenna.

When they got there, Jenna got out to wait for Katie. Mike walked over to where the neon sat hidden, and Katie handed him a shotgun through the window. She'd stolen the gun from a neighbor months ago. We don't know whether she was planning Jenna's death way back then, or whether she just thought having a shotgun might be useful, some time. Both possibilities are creepy as hell. Mike walked back toward Jenna, shown his flashlight on her, then put the flashlight down. Jenna had her back to him. Mike called her name. Hey, Jenna! And she turned around to see him, aiming the shotgun right at her. Mike shot her in

the chest. Then a moment later, shot her again. Jenna fell, but amazingly, she was a long way from dead. Mike, please don't, I still love you, she cried out, trying to push herself back. backwards along the ground. Mike said, if I let you go, you're going to tell, aren't you? Jenna swore she wouldn't tell. All right, Mike said, if you beg for your life, I might let you live. Oh, this piece of shit. Jenna begged, bless her sweetheart. But of course, Mike was lying. He scrambled back to Jeff's car to reload the shotgun. She's not dead yet, he told Katie and Jeff. Later, Katie told the detectives that this touched whatever little shriveled shred of gristle she tried to pass off a heart. I don't like when people suffer. Even if it's over a boyfriend, it bothers me,

she said. Wow, give her a Nobel fucking prize. She's bothered. But not bothered enough. Jeff and Katie followed Mike as he walked back to where Jenna lay bleeding on the ground. He shot her three more times than one last time at point-blank range right over her heart. Jeff crouched down to take Jenna's pulse and see if she was dead yet, but she suddenly drew in a breath and he jumped back. The three of them all started laughing at that because apparently it was funny that Jenna was still fighting for her life after being shot so many times. For a little while, they all just stood around and waited for Jenna to die.

Then Mike and Katie dragged her body into some bushes, cracking hilarious jokes about how heavy she was. Mike took Jenna's keys out of her pocket, then he and Katie drove Jenna's Mustang to the Mountain House Cafe with Jeff following in his car. And there, after Katie wiped down the door, handles to get rid of any prints, they torched Jenna's Mustang with a road flare. On the way back to Livermore in Jeff's car, they tossed the shotgun and baseball bat into a field. They put their unused ammunition down a drain near Katie's house. Jeff dropped Mike and

Katie at her house, then went home to his place and went to sleep. A week later, Mike and Katie borrowed Jeff's car and picked up the shotgun from the field. They waded it down with a bag of rocks and threw it into a canal. So that was the story from both. Katie and Jeff. Mike was arrested later that same day, and at first he played dumb, repeating back questions he was asked, and in general just acting totally baffled by the whole situation. At first, he stuck to his original story that Jenna had just driven off that night, he had no idea what happened to her after that.

And every time he was caught in a lie, he'd change a story just a little to fit the new facts in front of him. He was a practiced liar and manipulator, but it turns out that experienced homicide detectives are a scosh harder to sweet talk than high school girls. They weren't buying this shit for a hot second, and eventually, Mike cracked and mostly confessed. Yes, he helped plan Jenna's murder. Yes, he had been there when she died. But it had been Jeff who had pulled the trigger, and Katie was the one who set everything in motion. The cops weren't buying that either. They were certain Mike was both the shooter and the instigator of the murder.

He was the one who had, or at least believed he had. had the most to gain. Not that you'd know it from his interview. When the detectives brought up the life insurance, he was like, insurance money. What? Just incredulous. You get the impression he was like a hair away from saying, what is insurance? Mike at least seemed aware of the mountain of shit that was about to fall in his head,

which wasn't necessarily true for Katie and Jeff. Toward the end of his interview, I shit you not. Jeff says, um, I work tomorrow. I don't know if it's still okay if I go to work. Yeah, that's a no, Jeffrey. You're not seeing daylight for decades, doll baby. God. Iceland are just going to have to find some other fine young fellow to drive the Zamboni over there.

And Katie, after spending her first night in juvie after her arrest, told the state prosecutor, you know what? After spending one night in juvenile hall, I learned my lesson. Did y'all just feel the temperature rise a few degrees, or am I suddenly filled with a boiling fucking rage? Oh, you learned your lesson, Ms. Bellflower? Well, that's just super. Seeing as you're completely rehabilitated now, we'll just go ahead and let you go to home.

That's definitely something that's going to happen, you boy crazy, delusional fucking harpy. Go to hell, Katie. Eventually, Mike would agree to. take investigators to the canal where he'd tossed the stolen shotgun. Forensic firearms experts were able to match the weapon to the shell casing they'd recovered from the scene of Jenna's death. Mike, Katie, and Jeff were all charged with murder with the aggravating circumstance of lying

in weight, which covers ambush killings and luring someone into danger. And that made Mike and Jeff eligible for the death penalty. Katie skated by that possible outcome by being a juvenile at the time of Jenna's murder. Jeff Hamilton agreed to plead guilty to second-degree murder in exchange for his testimony and was sentenced to 15 years to life, with seven years on top of that for the attempted murder of Aspen Lum. While awaiting trial, Katie gave birth to her and Mike's daughter, who was immediately put up for adoption.

Eventually, Katie would also plead guilty, getting 25 years to life. So Mike Simons was the only one of the three stooges to actually go to trial, which went about as you'd expect a case built on. on three solid confessions to go. He was found guilty of first-degree murder, assault with a deadly weapon, and arson, and was sentenced to life in prison without any chance of parole.

No teenage girls to hit on in there, Mike. Have fun, bud. So, poor Jenna, you know, she had the kind of unfortunate taste in men that bagillions of high school girls before her, including myself, have had, and thankfully had the chance to grow out of. Sadly, these three little gremlins

decided that she'd never get that chance. I wonder if the murder would have happened at all if it hadn't been for the life insurance money. Part of me says no, because without that there's not much motive for Mike to take a drastic step like murder, but part of me says, wait a second. There wasn't any money involved in Aspen's case, right?

And Katie still tried to have her killed, so I guess it comes down to a question of who the driving force really was in Jenna's murder. Was it Mike, or was it Katie Bellflower? Did Mike start this awful ball rolling by getting greedy and killing his wife and sort of putting murder on the table as a viable option in inspiring

Katie to strike out on her own the next time some girl got in the way of her happiness or was Katie in the driver's seat from the start? It's hard to say but I can tell you this. It scares me that Ms. Bellflower will get out of prison when she's still young enough to raise hell. If she serves every second of her sentence

which most people don't, she'll be 45 when she gets out, which is my age. And I can still raise hill, okay? I wouldn't born yesterday. I can still raise hell though. If Jenna were still alive today, who knows who she may have become, what her hobbies and passions might be, whether she'd have married, become a mother, run a marathon, started her own business, who knows? Katie Bellflower will have plenty of time to make a life for herself when she gets out of prison. So let's hope

she comes out of there very different person than she went in. 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, a grateful shout out to a few of our lovely patrons. Thank you so much to Schwartzfold. I hope I said that right, if I didn't let me know. Megan, Catherine, soggy pockets. Awesome.

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