SO WHY DID HE KILL CARL JENKINS?

And . . . our winner is Bev Steelman of Pittsburg, Pennsylvania who figured out who the killer was. For those of you who didn't, here are the details:

If you recall, I gave you two clues that focuses on the dog:

CLUE NO. 1: Walking the dog in the park
CLUE NO. 2: Barking dog at baseball game



The morning before Mr. Jenkins' death, he found a book bag left in the gym. When he went through the bag to see who the owner was, he found much more than he bargained for--a journal that was written like a manifesto detailing how this student was planning to kill those he disliked. Concerned, he's now checking the student's locker for drugs or weapons just as the student approaches.

The boy wants to know why Mr. Jenkins is looking through his locker. He tells him he found his book bag and wants to discuss the contents. The boy is furious he went through his bag. Mr. Jenkins tells him he's concerned and wants him to seek help. This angers the student but when Jenkins threatens to turn him in, it seems to calm the boy down and he's begging the teacher not to . An agreement is reached by the two that the student will seek counseling and Jenkins will keep it quiet, but he's going to hold onto the notebook in case the student reneges on his part of the deal.

That evening two students are driving around to find a new home where they can play "The Creeper" game and it turns out to be the home of  Carl Jenkins. Once inside, they hear the dog bark and back off. The one kid goes home, the other wants to walk home from there. As soon as the one is gone, the other reenters the home and gestures for the dog to come to him. He plays with the dog for a few minutes, gives him a treat, the dog lays down and goes back to sleep.

HAVE YOU GUESSED YET?

It's Tom Peno and he wants to find his notebook. He hears the sexual moaning and figures they're so involved with what they're doing, he'll have more time to search and be out of the house before either becomes aware. Gingerly walking down the hall, he sees the spare bedroom used as a trophy room and makes his way inside only to find Mr. Jenkins who's sound asleep. Tiptoeing around, he begins his search but Jenkins wakes up and begins arguing with the boy. That's when the boy picks up the trophy and kills him. Shoving the bloody trophy into his bag, he returns home at two o'clock in the morning and his little sister sees him with the trophy and tells him she's going to squeal. That next day, Jessie and Gerard visit his family. His parents push him into telling what he knows, and he tells them it was Willis who killed the teacher. That night, he plants the trophy under Willis' bed and Willis is arrested the next day. It isn't until later when Jess is at that baseball game that she sees the dog barking his head off every time someone passes by and it triggers a thought about the Jenkins' dog.

Jessie and Zach go to the park with the Jenkins' dog and he runs right to Tom who's there with his dog.

WHO KILLED CARL JENKINS?

Okay, Mystery Sleuths, here’s your case. For purposes of clarity, I’ll be using Jessie Kensington and Zach Gerard as my detectives. Don’t forget to add your comments at the bottom by clicking on the pencil and tell me who you think the killer is and why you think that person did it. The winner will be the person who has the strongest case and will receive an autographed copy of Deadly Obsessions. I know who the killer is, but if your idea is better than reality, you might just turn out to be the winner.

A call to a 911 dispatcher by the wife of a popular teacher at 2:00 o’clock in the morning is received. The victim is Carl Jenkins, a unique English teacher from the local high school who is known for teaching his students grammatical rules by writing them into a song to help them remember them.

The wife is still in her nightgown and bathrobe when Gerard and Jessie arrive. Both garments are covered in blood, as is her face, arms and hands. Wife claims she was awakened when she heard yelling in the spare bedroom where her husband was sleeping off his inebriated state after being out at a karaoke bar.  Asked about the state of their marriage, she says they have a good marriage and love each other.

Wife doesn’t understand why anyone would do this to her husband when everyone loved him. When asked how she became so covered in blood, she said she held her husband in her arms when she found him.

Locked in the bedroom where the body is located is the owner’s large dog who is barking because of the commotion in the house. Jessie goes into the room and tries to calm the dog down, but he’s ready to attack her. She rushes out.

Back at the precinct, the pair learn they found fingerprints that match a teenager, whose prints have been found at other homes throughout the city where ‘the creeper’ was written on the wall. They learn ‘The Creeper’ is a game the kids play by sneaking into a house for the thrill of it and stealing a souvenir to prove they were there. The fingerprints lead them to Willie Gaffes. Also during their search, they learn that Tom Peno is Willie’s best friend and they want to talk to him too.

Gerard and Jessie leave to question Willie and find out he’s at a band party, where they head over to only to find out the party which was intended to be a celebration has turned into a grieving session after the students learn about the teacher’s death. Walking around, Jessie questions at random asking for Willie, but runs into Tom instead. Jessie asks if the victim was his teacher and he tells her he was not, but he knows him from the park where they used to walk their dogs. He confirms he and Willie are best friends. Jessie notices he’s nervous and calls him on it. He says he’s just upset about the teacher. He points them to where Willie is, but as they’re walking toward Willie, he happens to approach them first. He offers them information about being at the park near the teacher’s home the night he was killed and claims he saw a black van that took off like a shot causing him to jam on his breaks. He didn’t have a license plate number for them nor the name of who it might belong to, but claims the driver was Russian. When asked how he knows that, he says, he looked like a Russian. Willie then asks if he’ll get a reward for his information. Detectives tell him to write down his name and address and label it ‘reward’ because if it pans out, he will get money. They also ask about ‘The Creeper’ game and he denies knowing anything about it.

Zach thinks he’s guilty, but Jessie says Willie’s a ‘stoner’, not a killer, and wants to question Tom. They leave for Tom’s house and while Jessie and Zach are talking to the parents, Tom walks in. He tells them Willie was inside the teacher’s home that night and he really thinks Willie killed him.

The team does a search at Willie’s house and they find a trophy with blood on it under his bed. They head to the school to arrest him and he’s taken into custody.

Searching the wife’s financials, they come upon a check that was paid to a Nikolay Antiopiv, a Russian immigrant, and asks the wife about him. She claims he works at her job and they’ve become friends. Jessie picks up on her nervousness and asks her how long she’s been sleeping with him? The wife denies it at first, but ultimately tells them she and Nikolay were having sex while her husband was being killed. She reiterates that she really does love her husband.

Nikolay Antiopiv: When questioned, he tells the detectives they’ve been having an affair ever since he began working at the shop where she works, six months earlier.  He’s only in the US on a visa, although he’d love to remain in New York forever.

While Jess and Zach are at a baseball game, there’s a dog tied to the fence and he’s barking which has her thinking about the victim’s dog and how much he barked at her, but the wife told her she didn’t hear the dog barking that night.  

 

NOW, it’s your turn. Who killed Carl Jenkins? The wife who’s cheating on her husband; the Russian, who wants to remain in the United States; Willie, whose fingerprints are on the windowpane, or Tom? Or did someone else come into the home?

THE MAKINGS OF A MONSTER

In September 2005, Orlie and Dawn McCool were found dead in their home in the small town of Pineville, Missouri for no apparent reason. The crime scene indicated they’d just returned home from the supermarket because groceries were strewn all over the floor next to their bodies. The position of seventy year-old Orlie McCool’s body being close to the entry, investigators knew the killer had surprised him, and Dawn, whose body had been brutally chewed up from a complete round of bullets, was face down in the hallway.  The killings were so brutal, it was determined to be a crime of passion.

Investigations proved fruitless until the police received a call from Scott King, father of twenty-three year-old Levi who’d just escaped from a half-way house, returned home only to be told he was no longer welcome and was asked to leave. When Scott returned home later that morning, he discovered an Ak47 shotgun, a 9m handgun and a knife were missing from his gun collection, knew Levi had taken them and he thought the authorities should know. 

Thirteen hours later, the Pampa, Texas 911 dispatcher received a call from seven year-old Robin Doan that her entire family had been murdered. Her stepfather, her pregnant mother and her teenage brother. When asked if she’d been hurt she told the dispatcher she had not. She claimed that minutes before when she heard her mother's screams, she crouched down by the door and saw the killer, but got back into bed pretending to be sleeping, and when the killer stopped by her room he fired two shots into the room which she claims whizzed past her head. Now, pretending she was dead, she lay there until he was gone and she felt it was safe to get up, grabbed the phone and walked outside to report the massacre.

Twenty-nine hours later, psychopath, Levi King was apprehended at the Juarez, Mexican border by Border Patrol where he immediately plead guilty. Extradited back to Texas to stand trial in the Lubbock County Courthouse where he was charged with capital murder, he stood stone-faced, showing no emotions whatsoever even as Robin Doan looked directly at him when she testified.  He offered no reason for the killings.

In 2004, Levi agreed to do an interview on The First 48, a CBS television show, where he breaks his silence and tells the viewers why he went on a killing spree.

Levi grew up in the small town of Pineville, Missouri with five siblings. Raised by his father, Scott King, in a house with no amenities, and a father who took out his anger on his family. 

Remembering his past, he admits his psychopathic tendencies began at at age four when he set his sister's bedroom on fire because he was angry with her. These tendencies would continue in a downward spiral.

Growing up with a father who ruled his family with an iron fist, Levi recounts his first encounter with a gun was at age seven when his father told him to get into the truck while he carried a box full of puppies and a shotgun. He said they drove out to an open field where the father dumped the puppies out onto the ground and used them for target practice. Levi said he was so angry, he couldn't even look at his father and there was no way he was going to ride home with him so he ran the two miles back home. 

Three years later, at age ten, he began smoking and drinking, and by age thirteen he was already into taking pills. His behavior continued to worsen abusing the rights of others that soon lead to a jail sentence for burglary and arson for which he received a sentence of fourteen months.

 After his release he was sent to a half-way house where he would later escape and return home. That was when his father rejected him. Angry, he vandalized his father’s house and stole the arsenal that he would use during his killing spree on people he had never seen or knew anything about.

His father's rejection made him so angry, he needed to kill someone to get back at him. He hadn’t planned to kill, despite his mind telling him to do so, and it wasn’t until he saw the McCool’s house that he knew they’d be his target.

During the interview he maintained a smug expression on his face as he recounted the peacefulness he felt after he'd killed the McCool's. And when he was finished, he stole the truck and headed southwest enjoying the calm and peacefulness he felt afterward. That peacefulness would only last for thirteen hours before the anger returned, and that was when he knew he’d never find peace again unless he killed.

Seeing the lone farmhouse on a deserted street void of any surrounding houses, he slated that family to be his next victims. Breaking into the house in the early morning hours while the Conrad family slept, the five months pregnant mother awoke and began screaming and he emptied six bullets into her body. Next would come the husband whom he shot through the temple emptying four bullets into him. Slowly walking down the hall to the other bedrooms, he stopped at Robin’s room, walked inside and fired two bullets into the room. 

Robin would later explain that minutes before, her mother's screaming had woken her and she crouched down by her door and saw him, then quickly got back into bed and pretended to be sleeping.He did fire two shots into her room, but they whizzed past her. His last stop would be her fourteen year-old brother's room who he shot multiple times.

Satisfied he’d killed everyone, he walked out of the house glancing at himself in the mirror along the way and remembered feeling empty, but not remorseful. He got back into his truck and continued his journey knowing if he drove to Mexico,  they would not extradite him. Stopping at the border stop, when asked if he had anything to declare, he informed them he had guns and was given permission to drive through. Thinking he was home free, he found that he'd made a wrong turn and realized he was headed back to Texas where he was apprehended by the Border Patrol.

At the conclusion of the interview, the reporter asked if he was so angry at his father, had he ever thought of killing him? His reply was that he'd thought about it many times, but he did not want his brothers and sister to see their father killed by their brother. When asked if he felt any remorse for his crimes, he smugly replied he did not.

Although the death penalty was on the table, all but one juror agreed and the state was forced to give him life in prison without parole. 

Now, I ask you, do you think the punishment fit the crime? How would you have voted?