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[00:00:00] Meghan Sacks: This podcast contains sensitive topics and discussions. Listener discretion is advised when a woman suffers an awful betrayal by her stepfather, how far would she go to seek revenge?
[00:00:16] This is the Jade Jenks story.
[00:00:35] Hi listeners, Megan here today. We gave Amy the day off, but today’s episode is one that presented us with a wonderful. Opportunity to collaborate with a female heroine of mine in the criminal justice system. Someone whose work many of you will know, and someone who you’ve all been requesting us to work with.
[00:00:56] So our special co-host for [00:01:00] today’s episode is none other than. Candace DeLong from Killer Psyche. Hi Candace. Hey
[00:01:06] Candice Owens: Megan. Thanks for having me. This is great,
[00:01:09] Meghan Sacks: Candace. We have a very interesting case today. The female we are gonna discuss today is one of those interesting figures. She might be victim, she might be offender, maybe both.
[00:01:19] We’ll let the audience decide at the end of today’s episode. So I think before we get into the actual events, let’s turn to Candace to introduce us to the subject of today’s episode. Sure.
[00:01:31] Candice Owens: This is the truly fascinating case of Jade Jenks. Jade, Sasha Jenks was born October 14th, 1983 to Jeanette. Her father, Steve Jenks, her parents were together when she was born, but they divorced about 10 years later.
[00:01:54] Very conflictual marriage mom supposedly into drugs [00:02:00] and alcohol. They split up and. Jade lived pretty much with her dad after that, but it was only about a year after the divorce that her mom, Jenny, met and married a man named Tom Marryman and he became Jade’s new stepfather. Jade lived with her biological dad primarily, but spent time with her mother and Tom as well.
[00:02:25] Jade was pretty young then. I think she was about 11. She finished high school after Tom and Jeanette had a half brother, and his name was Cash, and so she was there for about five years, from age 18 to 23.
[00:02:41] Meghan Sacks: Candace, did she move in with him because she wanted to be closer with her brother and help take care of him?
[00:02:46] She moved
[00:02:47] Candice Owens: in with him because, well, this was her only sibling, her, her new little brother, half-brother, and she wanted to be involved in his life and, and help take care
[00:02:57] Meghan Sacks: of him. Yeah, that’s nice that she had such a close [00:03:00] relationship too with her stepfather, but I’m not sure how long it lasted though. How was the relationship between Tom and Jeanette?
[00:03:07] Candice Owens: Well, that didn’t last very long either. There was quite a bit of turmoil. Once again, you know, as there always is, when one person or especially both are using drugs and alcohol to excess. And her mom was claiming abuse by Tom, and Tom was claiming excessive substance abuse by her, and so they split up. I
[00:03:29] Meghan Sacks: guess that’s no surprise there, but it’s unfortunate.
[00:03:32] Candice Owens: Yeah. After that, Jade actually moved in with Tom and her half-brother Cash, and she lived with them for about five years. She went to college, San Diego Mesa College, and then she moved out on her own at about age of 23. After she finished college though, Jade worked for her bio dad, her father in the construction business.
[00:03:57] And that was okay for a [00:04:00] while. And then she kind of decided, you know, this isn’t what I want. I don’t wanna work for dad, I want my own thing. I want my own career. And so she. Did this 180 and went from helping her dad in the construction business to interior design, and it wasn’t long before she had her own firm and she wasn’t just successful, she was astoundingly successful.
[00:04:30] Reportedly she amassed. 15 million in personal wealth in 10 to 12 years time. Wow. That’s
[00:04:40] Meghan Sacks: quite an accomplishment. Yeah,
[00:04:41] Candice Owens: that’s a big wow. So while that was happening, she and her stepfather Tom, they kind of drifted apart and he was keeping busy. When Jade was in her late twenties, Tom started his own nonprofit, get a load of this butterfly farm.
[00:04:59] I [00:05:00] saw that. Yes. Pretty interesting. There must be a reason why somebody would breed butterflies. It probably has something to do with Walt Disney or the pharmaceutical industry. Not sure. But anyway, Jade and her stepdad reconnected, and they even became neighbors in Solana Beach, which is just north of San Diego.
[00:05:22] Then in 2020, Jade became Tom’s caregiver. He was suffering from many medical problems, including abusing alcohol and sleeping pills. And that eventually led him to be hospitalized. And
[00:05:40] when
[00:05:41] Meghan Sacks: Tom was in the hospital during this period, you know, he had fallen, he had Xanax withdrawal, alcohol withdrawal. Jade was being the good caretaker and she was cleaning his home to prepare for his return because, you know, she wanted him to come home to a nice, fresh place.
[00:05:57] But it was when she was straightening up the [00:06:00] area near his computer, and she made a really shocking discovery when she was straightening up the area near his computer. She kind of accidentally hit the mouse on his computer and you know when you hit the mouse all of a sudden the screensaver pops up.
[00:06:13] Mm-hmm. Well, Jade got quite a shock when Tom’s scream Saver popped up because it was a screensaver of a woman’s naked breasts. And even though that would be shocking in itself, Jade came to realize very quickly that it was her breasts in his screen saver. Yikes. Right? And according to her, she looked through the computer and she found hundreds of nude photos of herself on his computer dating back.
[00:06:38] To when she was just 16 years old. Oh my gosh. Going one step further, Tom reportedly had these pictures grouped into folders by her body parts. Oh, I, I mean, this just gets worse and worse, you know, Jade also realized that these photos were ones that came from her own phone, so Tom had to be accessing her phone, her devices.[00:07:00]
[00:07:00] I mean, I think it’s clear just by the photographic evidence here, digital evidence that Tom had broken in a lot of laws.
[00:07:06] Candice Owens: Oh yeah. Not to mention child pornography. She was only 16. That’s correct,
[00:07:11] Meghan Sacks: yes. And Jade was horrified.
[00:07:13] Candice Owens: I can understand that. His effing screen saver was her breasts screensaver. You hide those
[00:07:21] Meghan Sacks: in the folders, but have
[00:07:23] Candice Owens: rings here.
[00:07:24] I know. At first I laughed. I thought, how ridiculous. However, then I remembered, okay, what’s at the core of somebody that is a sex abuser? They constantly are feeding their paraphilia. Yeah. Which is a clinical term for perversion. And every time he sat down to his computer, maybe touched the mouse or whatever, he had his quick fix.
[00:07:50] His quick fix was being a voyeur. And then there’s also the, Ooh, I took this secretly, and she doesn’t know about it. [00:08:00] So every time he looked at that screensaver, it fed different needs that he had. One sexual one. Ooh, I’m a criminal. I did this in secret and I haven’t gotten caught. That kind of thing. And.
[00:08:13] Well, that’s how sex offenders are. And
[00:08:15] Meghan Sacks: she also realized that he had hidden cameras in the bathroom and the bedroom of the house that Jade once lived
[00:08:21] Candice Owens: in. Well, that’s a separate crime on its own. I mean, that’s an additional crime. It is against the law to put a hidden camera in someone’s bedroom or bathroom.
[00:08:32] Meghan Sacks: And Jade was horrified over the next few days. She contacted friends about what to do. She. Reported like she was feeling scared. She was afraid to shower. She vomited several times because she said she was sick to her stomach. Her skin was crawling. She eventually destroyed the hard drive with the photos because she didn’t want them to be in existence.
[00:08:52] Candice Owens: I can understand that.
[00:08:53] Meghan Sacks: Oh yeah, of course. She contacted a friend of hers who suggested that she might contact another friend of his. His [00:09:00] name was Alan Roach and he worked in private security. He was kind of the guy if you needed something fixed, and in this case they’d refer to him as the fixer as well.
[00:09:08] So what happened was he came over, Roach helped Jade get security cameras set up. She wanted to make sure that she could now see everything that was going on. He reportedly stood watch for her once or twice while she took showers because she felt really so unsafe. But beyond that, and this was right around Christmas, Jade was apparently making her own plans.
[00:09:29] And I think the question becomes, so what were these plans? You know, was Jade gonna confront her? Stepfather? Would she contact the police? Or would she take matters into her own hands? When Tom was released from the hospital, just a week later on New Year’s Eve, that’s when Jade goes to pick Tom
[00:09:46] Candice Owens: up from the hospital.
[00:09:47] And on that day, Jade picked him up and he began sending a flurry of, well, what turned out to be incriminating text [00:10:00] messages to her friends. And she was telling them, What she was doing and begging them for help. For example, one of them said, I just dosed the hell out of him, and another said, I can’t carry him alone and I can’t keep a kicking body in my trunk.
[00:10:21] Yeah. Well that’s not too incriminating, is it?
[00:10:23] Meghan Sacks: I was just gonna say, this is all via text. All know. All via text.
[00:10:28] Candice Owens: And there’s more. Yeah. Another one said I’m about to club him on the head and he’s waking up, so she’s giving a blow by blow description of committing multiple felonies. Uh, to me that speaks of just being desperately upset.
[00:10:48] Yes. Desperately. It’s
[00:10:50] Meghan Sacks: definitely clear that Jade was desperate at this time. You know, I think also it’s the multiple messages and multiple people, it’s almost obsessive and desperate. You, you know what I mean? At the same
[00:10:59] Candice Owens: [00:11:00] time. Yeah. I have an expression and my listeners have heard it a lot, and now yours are gonna hear it from me, and, and it’s.
[00:11:06] C. The initial C c3, cool, calm, collected stone. Cold psychopaths can be C3 when they commit horrible crimes. That was not what was going on here with Jade. She was the opposite of c3, but there’s more. Her buddy Alan Roach, the security expert, she repeated messages that she could not. Quote weekend at Bernie’s, it overhear.
[00:11:34] For those of your listeners that don’t know the reference weekend at Bernie’s, it’s a, it’s a movie from the eighties. It’s hilarious, but it’s about two, as I recall, early 20 somethings that have a dead body to deal with, and that’s Bernie. So that’s what she was referring to. She also said, I’m not sure how much longer I can control my temper.
[00:11:56] And that is a crucial text. Oh yeah. [00:12:00] So at first, her friend, Mr. Roach, he did not respond, but when he finally did, he said he could not come over, but he would send his partner. Hmm. When his partner arrived and realized what was going on, he got out of there quickly. Can you blame him? Smart man. Yeah. She was also texting a guy named Adam spi, and he was an ex-boyfriend of hers that she had.
[00:12:28] Reconnected with now. He arrived at her place and she told him about the photos that she had found. She also told him this quote. I killed him. I drugged him. Suffocated him with a bag and choked him.
[00:12:47] Meghan Sacks: I don’t think it gets more incriminating or damning than
[00:12:49] Candice Owens: that. Right, right. My line of work, we call that a confession.
[00:12:54] Right. But she wanted him to help. She told him what she did and she wanted Adam to [00:13:00] help her, but instead, Well, it turns out she didn’t know Adam as well as she thought she did. Adam went right to the police and they brought in Jade for questioning. And by the way, just wanna point out to the listeners, had he done anything else, he could have been charged as an accessory to murder.
[00:13:19] So he did the right thing. You get a call from a friend, they want you to help them get rid of a body they just killed. Uh mm. Get the to the police right away. So Jay’s at the police station and she tells them she had no idea what happened to Tom and they had no evidence of a crime yet, so they had to let her go.
[00:13:44] But they also did something. It’s called a welfare check, and what that means is they are checking on the welfare and hopefully good health of an individual that lives at a particular place. They did a welfare check [00:14:00] that day at Tom’s house and no one answered the door. But there was also no evidence of a crime outside right now.
[00:14:10] For their reasons they didn’t go inside. It was Tom’s house. The report was, he’s dead. Not sure I understand why they didn’t go in. Nevertheless, they did not. But the next day, and that was the day after New Year’s, January 2nd, they came back and they had warrants for both Tom and Jade’s house. So they go inside Tom’s.
[00:14:35] They search around. They search inside. They search outside really thoroughly, and in the very early morning light of the day, they began to take apart a pile of trash that was in the driveway. It wasn’t even hidden behind the house in the driveway. That’s odd. Yeah, it is. Who puts their trash in the driveway?
[00:14:59] This particular [00:15:00] pile of trash contained. Cardboard boxes and some other things. They noticed something underneath the trash and it didn’t look like trash. I think you see where I’m going with this. When they removed the items from the pile, well shocking discovery. They found the deceased body of Tom Merriman.
[00:15:23] Now this is notable. There was blood pooling around his face, so that meant he’d clearly been there for at least several hours. And what did the trash on top of his body indicate to them? That it was a clear attempt for someone to cover up the crime and the police had an idea who that someone was. And they knew that thanks to Adam, the suspect, Tom’s stepdaughter, Jade Jenks.
[00:15:57] Meghan Sacks: Candace, they already had Jade in their [00:16:00] sights, but now they have Tom’s body, and as you point out, very odd attempt to cover this up. Very, almost sloppy. Nonetheless, they have Jade, and Jade was arrested for the murder of Tom Merriman this same day. After they found his body, she remains somewhat calm when police pulled her over cuz she was driving while she was arrested and there wasn’t a big freak out.
[00:16:23] Mm-hmm. You know, murder is obviously the most serious charge, so we knew there was gonna be a high bail. In Jade’s case, the judge ordered bail in the amount of $1 million. I’ve seen higher and I’ve seen lower for murder cases, but because Jade was a woman of means, As you discussed in the beginning, she was able to bail herself out, but one of the conditions was that she had to stay with her mother, Jeannette.
[00:16:47] And I wish that we knew more about this, cuz I wonder what that relationship or dynamic was like given their past history. This was a two year period, which is pretty normal for trial time for a murder case. So her. [00:17:00] Trial began in December, 2022. During the time she was home, she was of course ordered to wear an electronic G P s monitoring, so an ankle bracelet as we commonly refer to them.
[00:17:11] But the real question is, you know, what would happen at trial? I think everyone wanted to know what her defense was going to be. And I have to tell you, I think it might surprise everyone a bit to hear with what her defense actually was. Jade was claiming that she was not guilty. She entered a not guilty plea.
[00:17:31] She said those texts that we, that you just reviewed on the weekend at Bernie’s, I’m, I just dos the hell out of him. She said, you have it all wrong. They were taken out of context. Yeah. I’m not really sure how you take that outta context. Right. She said, you know, she was sickened by what Tom did to her, but she would never hurt him.
[00:17:50] In fact, she said, you know, Tom was the one abusing alcohol. He was abusing drugs and he took his own lethal cocktail. What she said was that, I’m sorry, because I didn’t [00:18:00] act the way I should have. So what did that mean? What she meant was, well, I didn’t try to prevent him from taking this lethal dose. I just let him go ahead and I didn’t intervene and stop him.
[00:18:10] She said, I basically, he did this and he did this all in the car, by the way, on the way home from rehab. And so she said, I just let him sleep it off in the car. But what happened was, you know, I found him the next day he was dead, and so I panicked and tried to
[00:18:22] Candice Owens: cover it up. So here’s an interesting question.
[00:18:26] She picks him up at the hospital where he’s just finished rehab for drugs and alcohol. Yes. Okay. And she’s driving him home. Where did he get the drugs and alcohol to overdose on in
[00:18:37] Meghan Sacks: the car? If I recall correctly, she said he made me stop for alcohol. So at least that I’m not sure where the drugs came from, but the alcohol, at
[00:18:46] Candice Owens: least I can tell you people in rehab are frequently searched.
[00:18:52] Whenever they go out on a pass and come back, they’re searched right for drugs. If it’s an alcohol treatment program, then they have to take a [00:19:00] breathalyzer. Most programs are real serious about that because if one patient brings drugs into the program, it’s gonna be about three seconds before every other patient in the program knows about it and gonna want those drugs.
[00:19:12] So right here, this is suspect.
[00:19:15] Meghan Sacks: I agree. I, I mean, I think this is already crumbling, so, yeah. You know, she says that she found him, and so she used a wheelchair to move his body, but he fell out of the wheelchair, and that’s why she decided to just put those boxes over him because she panicked. She didn’t know what to do, she couldn’t lift him, and Jade said she had no plan beyond that.
[00:19:33] But she also explained because she took the stand at her trial, and she also explained how hurt she was by the photo that she found. So just for the listeners, we wanna play a very small clip from Jade, you know, detailing how she felt when she found those awful photos on Tom’s computer. It was the most violating, just
[00:19:57] Candice Owens: awful gut wrenching feeling [00:20:00] ever.
[00:20:00] I felt, I felt
[00:20:02] Meghan Sacks: sick. I, I felt I couldn’t,
[00:20:09] Candice Owens: I couldn’t
[00:20:09] Meghan Sacks: like, I couldn’t even touch my own skin.
[00:20:13] Um,
[00:20:18] Candice Owens: I, I don’t even know if there’s words. I mean, not even in a movie if I seen something. So just
[00:20:22] Meghan Sacks: sick. So we hear Jade describing what sound, I mean, this is horrible, right? This is a horrible violation and a betrayal. But this is also motive. It
[00:20:32] Candice Owens: certainly could be taken that way. I’ve had a lot of victims of criminal sexual assault and all kinds of things, child molestation, whatnot, describe how they felt about what happened to them, and I’ve never heard this.
[00:20:49] Anything like this. I mean, I can’t even touch my own skin if she’s not truly feeling tortured as she’s saying this. She’s, [00:21:00] she deserves an Oscar because that’s, she sounds tortured to me.
[00:21:05] Meghan Sacks: He does. Yeah, I would have to agree. You know, Jade was center stage at her trial, but there were a lot of other witnesses.
[00:21:12] Some had credibility issues of their own. But you know, they related. What you discussed earlier was that Jade confessed to the murder that one guy, remember Alan Rocha’s partner, he testified that he fled her home. But you know his problem, he had some credibility issues. He had a criminal history that included domestic violence.
[00:21:30] So, you know, you have testimony, but again, you have to value the credibility of the witnesses. Mm-hmm. But they had all those damning text messages sent by Jade herself. Yeah. So the text messages were the biggest problem. I think
[00:21:45] Candice Owens: they are. Definitely a very big problem. Probably insurmountable, and I know we’re gonna get into this, but as we were listening to what she was saying, one of the things that occurred to me was [00:22:00] possibly you.
[00:22:02] Okay. So she says she’s pled not guilty. Well, based on what? And. I’m, I’m thinking diminished capacity that she was like temporarily out of her mind used to be called temporary insanity, something I never used to believe in because I have a psychiatric background. However, I’ve, I’ve had to learn not to be so literal.
[00:22:23] Insanity can mean you’re just so off your own center. You’re not thinking right. You’re not acting right. Right. And that’s what it sounds. But that isn’t what happened here. Her defense was different than that. I mean, she sounds like a very tortured soul and that certainly should have been considered by
[00:22:43] Meghan Sacks: the jury, but you know, it was at Jade’s own choosing.
[00:22:46] Yeah. So we will get into that. Yes. Because I think her attorney would’ve preferred that. But I. That wasn’t the direction she went. The medical examiner helped her a bit because the medical examiner didn’t find strangulation. The Emmy said that Tom died of [00:23:00] Z liptum intoxication. So the sleeping pill, Ambien.
[00:23:03] Yeah. Exacerbated by underlying medical conditions, but not necessarily strangulation or suffocation. Though they were still possibilities. But there was other things. They had surveillance at a local Dixie line. It showed jade purchasing rope rags, plastic gloves, all the things you see on these, you know, videos.
[00:23:25] Mm-hmm. I’m always amazed at how many people I see shopping in Walmart for, oh, yeah. Shovels tape and other things. It, it, it
[00:23:32] Candice Owens: always blows my mind. I think they have an aisle there, aisle seven murder paraphernalia.
[00:23:36] Meghan Sacks: It literally must be because everyone goes to the Walmart for it. So you know, there was a fair amount of evidence against her at trial.
[00:23:43] And after closing arguments though, I will say this a point you just brought up, Candace, the defense requested and was granted the ability to include lesser charges for the jury to consider. So, Not just murder, but involuntary murder. Involuntary murder were [00:24:00] included in the jury instructions because I think the defense wanted them to consider an emotional response defense, even though mm-hmm.
[00:24:07] Jade did not officially want to take that route. In the end, the jury didn’t believe Jade and they found her guilty of the top charge, which was first degree murder. Mm-hmm. Did you see her reaction by this?
[00:24:21] Candice Owens: Yes. I recommend the, the listeners of this podcast go to YouTube and see it, but I think if we missed it, we need to point out to the listeners between the time Jade found the images of herself, And the murder was seven days, December 23rd to January 31st, actually eight days and.
[00:24:46] Therefore the cooling off period, what you would think, okay, heat of passion can be second degree murder or voluntary, uh, heat of passion. And it is well accepted in legal doctrine [00:25:00] that yes, sometimes people do things when they are initially hit with something that is so shocking and so horrifying, right?
[00:25:08] They respond immediately and do something that maybe is not in their character at all. Here’s an example. A few years ago, a man who lived on a ranch in Texas, he was the owner of the ranch. He walks out to the stable area and his 13 year old daughter is being raped by one of the ranch hands, and he gets his daughter away from him and kills the guy immediately.
[00:25:35] That is heat of passion. Somebody comes home early from work, they walk into their bedroom, they find their partner in bed with their best friend or their sister or their hu you know, whatever, uh, and they pick up a lamp and hit somebody over the head and kill them. That is heat of passion, right? There’s no way Jade can explain that.
[00:25:58] Right to this jury, [00:26:00] seven days. A reasonable person would say, wait a minute. I can understand. Going crazy for a while, but seven days later mm-hmm. You’re still, yeah. Haven’t figured out a better way to handle this. So I think that’s why she was convicted. The
[00:26:17] Meghan Sacks: time period is problematic. She appeared stunned though, so yeah, please do.
[00:26:21] Go look. Sentencing just took place recently in, in April, 2023, but what would the punishment be? Well, it wasn’t much of a surprise, was
[00:26:29] Candice Owens: it? No. There I believe is no option. In some states, and this was California, there is only one thing the judge can do. Well, two things, 25 to life or life without parole, and then finally the death penalty.
[00:26:45] But let’s be real, people rarely get the death penalty anymore. So yeah, it was no surprise, but he looked like. She just hit a wall that she didn’t know was there.
[00:26:58] Meghan Sacks: Yeah, I think at the [00:27:00] time of her conviction, but her sentencing, you know, things were a little bit different at the sentencing. You know, she found out about this 25 years to life.
[00:27:07] And then there were a lot of emotional statements. Oh, yes. Because it
[00:27:11] Candice Owens: was pretty heated. Yeah. When I said she looked like she hit a wallet, didn’t know sh No, she was there. I was referring to when the verdict was read. You’re right. Yeah. But at the sentencing, there were victim impact statements, and of course the victim couldn’t speak for himself, but a lot of his relatives that knew her and that she knew for a long time were speaking on his behalf, in particular, his brother.
[00:27:38] And he was so poignant and emotional that Jade broke down. Oh, yeah. You know, crying. I mean, she’d probably known this man for what, 15 years. It’s pretty horrible. So of course, Jade Side got to speak on her behalf and her father, her bio dad, he spoke on behalf of her. And [00:28:00] of course, Like any loving father would describing to the jury and to the judge.
[00:28:05] It was beautiful, loving, accomplished young woman. She was never violent against another human being that he was aware of. He was very proud to be her father. And then there was the other side of the aisle, in particular, Tom’s brother, who very much stood up for him saying that the possession of the photos was wrong.
[00:28:28] Well, yeah, there’s no argument there. But it did not warrant murder. And that his brother was always a very loving brother and father and family man. And then he got real. I can’t even think of the word, but what he said was it, he looked at Jade and he referred to her as the killer. Mm-hmm. And he said that she did not have or seemed to have any ethical or moral [00:29:00] dilemmas with disseminating nude pictures of herself.
[00:29:04] Sexting, I believe is the term. Yes. Boyfriend, girlfriend, send pictures to each other’s phones. Yet here she is flying into a rage and killing his brother because. Of nude photos of her on his computer. Well, come on. These are vastly different situations. First of all, one is voluntary and the other is not only involuntary, but in the privacy of a bathroom and what she was 16 years old and stealing her own nude photos off her phone.
[00:29:37] Come on, right? That’s not the same. Nevertheless, I can understand he was angry, hurt. Trying to make a point. And then here’s the exclamation point to all he had to say. He looks at her and he says, did my brother suffer when he had a plastic bag over his head? Did he struggle? What kind of sounds did he make?
[00:29:58] Why did the killer [00:30:00] have to treat him like crash? What does the killer feel like when she looks at her hands knowing they took my brother’s life? Well, needless to say, Jade was crying through much of the sentencing hearing. Especially when his brother described the pain that he was going through and the pain knowing his brother was murdered and that he could not help him.
[00:30:29] So perhaps at that, that moment, the jury saw a different side of of Jade. She’s crying maybe. Maybe she was feeling guilt.
[00:30:39] Meghan Sacks: I wonder what she was feeling, Candace, because she got to make a statement too, and she just, you know, she made a very brief statement, but what she said was, She also looked back, I think at Tom’s brother and said, I understand you hate me for what you believe I did.
[00:30:54] Oh, yes, but there’s more to this than you understand. Yes,
[00:30:58] Candice Owens: she did. And what [00:31:00] that skating away from responsibility. It’s like, oh, you don’t understand. You found me guilty, but you don’t really understand. Okay Jade, we don’t understand what, show us, tell us what we don’t understand. And of course, she did not.
[00:31:16] Meghan Sacks: Well, in the end, she has been sentenced to 25 years to life, as you said, and she still maintains her innocence and plans to appeal this verdict. But what do we make of this? You know, this is one of the things that we talk about with our listeners when Amy and I are on our show, is why did this happen?
[00:31:34] Like, how can we explain the psychology or the criminology behind this? So how do we explain Jade’s actions, especially because they’re so outside the norm of how people might react in that timeframe that you had discussed, right, that seven days?
[00:31:51] Candice Owens: Yeah. When I read this story, I really tried to put myself in her shoes.
[00:31:58] How do I think I [00:32:00] would’ve felt and thought had that been me? Well, I can’t relate at all other than I believe she was shocked, traumatized, embarrassed, angry, all those things. Totally get it. And if she, he had been there and she’d have killed him right then. I would understand. I’m not saying I condone it, I would understand it.
[00:32:23] Right. But seven days. Seven days. There’s so many things she did Megan, over that seven days. We touched on it that, that indicate she was unraveling, telling the whole my expression. The whole world. Yeah. You know what she was doing and what was she out of her mind? Well, yeah, if she was out of her mind.
[00:32:45] Maybe that could have been used in her defense. There’s just
[00:32:48] Meghan Sacks: so many other things that people will wanna know. Why? Why she didn’t confront Tom? Call the police, talk to her mother. There’s so many other routes Jade could
[00:32:56] Candice Owens: have taken. Yes, perhaps. I know [00:33:00] she said she destroyed the hard drive. Mm-hmm. Because she didn’t want a chance of anyone else seeing those.
[00:33:08] Okay. Okay, I understand, but, and I’m sure she wasn’t thinking at the time, I’m destroying evidence that could put this man away for the rest of his life. I doubt that went through her head, but I take her at her word. She says, I didn’t want anyone else to see those pictures. I, I could see myself taking a big rock and smashing the hard drive.
[00:33:34] Were that the case? But that’s one thing that doesn’t explain telling people staying in the house. She could have called him and said, I just found your hard drive, including. You’ve apparently wired up the bathroom with surveillance footage. I’m outta here. Take care of yourself. I never wanna speak to you again.
[00:33:56] In fact, I’m going to the police. That didn’t happen though, did it? No. Which is why we’re [00:34:00] having this discussion
[00:34:01] Meghan Sacks: and all the, all the steps you talked about that she took all of these steps in our field, we call that rational choice theory, and I mean, it’s not necessarily rational. Could be bounded rationality, but the fact of the matter is that Jade made a series of choices over time.
[00:34:15] There were multiple steps. There were things that she did. That involved planning, whether it’s rational or not at the time. You know, this wasn’t a reflex as you pointed out. I think a
[00:34:27] Candice Owens: reflex would’ve been screaming, yelling, maybe going to the hospital and slapping him upside the head. Smashing the computer.
[00:34:37] Yeah. But. The subsequent behavior on days you just described to me, that speaks to her motivation and the motivation became punishment and revenge. Yeah, I think her anger peaked. It subsided, and then she hatched a plan to make herself feel better, and that was to [00:35:00] destroy this man.
[00:35:00] Meghan Sacks: Do you think that Jade was suffering from some type of emotional dysregulation because you know her response?
[00:35:07] Even to this type of provocation almost seems like disproportionate. And I know that people with this type of dysregulation sometimes have trouble controlling their emotions, have a harder time coping with stress, so, Just, I hear a little bit of that, or I see a little bit of that with Jade’s case, although I do agree with you that it became a plan about revenge and punishment.
[00:35:28] Candice Owens: Well, the emotional dysregulation, certainly in that moment, she was not able to control her emotions. I think. Anybody could see that to actually say she suffers from emotional dysregulation. We would have to know her, what her life was before that and how she responded to stress and anger before this.
[00:35:48] But it certainly was present on, on that day. Yeah. Who wouldn’t overreact, by
[00:35:55] Meghan Sacks: the way? I just wanted to ask, you know, strangulation, that’s not. Strangulation [00:36:00] is most commonly used by males we know. Yes. Often in domestic situations it’s often the escalation of violence. Yes. Do you think there’s any significance to the fact that Jade said she strangled him and she, one of the people that she had confronted or mm-hmm.
[00:36:13] You know, wanted to help her? Mm-hmm. I want you to strangle him. Mm-hmm. Is there anything to the strangulation you think, is that just about the ultimate punishment or control?
[00:36:22] Candice Owens: I. Well, it’s the hands-on. We’ve talked about hands-on versus a gun is a distancing weapon. You don’t have to be near the person you’re killing, right, right.
[00:36:31] Stabbing his hands on. Beating his hands on. But strangulation is literally, you’re not, there’s no club in your hand. There’s no knife in your hand, right? It’s your hands around someone’s trachea and carotid arteries. There is a logistical reason or physical reason why this is not a popular way women kill another adult, right?
[00:36:55] It’s not easy to strangle someone. No. Even for a man, we don’t have [00:37:00] the muscle strength in our hands. The actual pressure on the carotids and the trachea has to be at least four minutes. That’s a long time. But what, to me, what it speaks to is the ultimate punishment. I am strangling the life out of you because you deserve it.
[00:37:21] Meghan Sacks: Wow. Yeah, I think that’s exactly what it was in the end. I guess we have to ask, you know, finally was, was justice served in, in this case, some people thought that Jade deserved leniency because of the ordeal that she had been through, or what Tom had done to her. Mm-hmm. And you know, I spoke with an attorney who sat in the trial and had some thoughts about the defense strategy as well, which did not seem to be one that, you know, anyone was quite in favor of, except it was Jade’s.
[00:37:49] Here’s the thing Jade could have done with, she actually could have gone with a different strategy. According to a defense attorney I spoke with, she said she could have tried. For the voluntary manslaughter, and [00:38:00] that would’ve been heat of passion. And as you said it, it would be harder to prevail upon because of that time period.
[00:38:05] Mm-hmm. But she felt like there was still an argument to make here, and in that case, Jade would’ve been eligible, just so you know, of a sentence of three, six or 11 years. And while that seems a little weird, let me just explain. Six is kind of the standard, but if there’s mitigating factors, you know, if there’s trauma or something, it could be dropped to three.
[00:38:23] And then if there’s aggravating factors, you know, like torture, something like that. It could be up to 11. But I think there’s a distinct possibility that Jade might have prevailed on this and gotten maybe six years or 11 years even. I’m not sure.
[00:38:40] Candice Owens: Well, if I were on the jury, I would certainly be listening to that argument.
[00:38:47] With every neuron in my brain, I would want to give this woman or anybody that did something like this, man, woman, doesn’t matter. I would want to [00:39:00] give them a break. Even with the seven days. Yeah. And she chose not to do that. Well, here’s the thing about juries, not all of ’em, but juries don’t wanna let somebody that killed another person.
[00:39:15] That is not remorseful. Mm-hmm. That is lying about it. They don’t want them out on the streets because there’s the fear like, well, how do we know you won’t do this again? What about maybe you get mad at your boyfriend because Hess late. What about this? What about that? And that is a reasonable thing for us to think about someone who has killed someone sitting at the defendant’s table, but she didn’t give them the option.
[00:39:43] Meghan Sacks: Right. I think they, they didn’t wanna be lied to, and I really think if she told them the truth, it’s possible this could have worked out differently. Regardless. The jury has spoken.
[00:39:53] Candice Owens: Yeah. I’m sure you’ve heard about the dry cry and we’ve all seen it. You, you’re a criminologist. It’s the Yes. [00:40:00] I feel so bad.
[00:40:01] And the, there’s no tears. Right. You know, they’re whimpering. They’re sobbing, but there’s no tears. That’s the dry cry. And obviously the interpretation of that is this is, this is acting when she was sentenced and she’s listening to Tom’s brother, she was crying. Yes. So, There’s a heart in there somewhere.
[00:40:21] I think you’re right. If she had let the jury see that she might be in and out of prison in less than 10 years, probably with luck, might have had a lot of psychotherapy in prison. Right. And come out a, a better person than the 39 year old woman that went in. Well said Candace. Thank you and definitely we’ll keep an eye on this.
[00:40:43] Of course, she’s appealing. It’ll be interesting to see what happens. It is California, California. Appellate courts are more, uh, open-minded than appellate courts in other states. So who knows what could
[00:40:57] Meghan Sacks: happen. You never know with our criminal justice system,
[00:40:59] Candice Owens: but, [00:41:00] right. Well, Megan, this has been a lot of fun.
[00:41:02] Really enjoyed talking with you about this. I look forward to doing more collaborations in the future. I know
[00:41:08] Meghan Sacks: our audience is going to be thrilled. Thank you so much, Candace. Well, thank you everyone for listening and we’ll see you next time on Women in Crime or Killer Psyche, women in Crime is hosted by Megan Sachs and Amy Schlossberg.
[00:41:22] Our producer and editor is James Varga. Music composition is by Dessert Media. If you enjoy the show, please remember to subscribe and leave a review. You can also support the show through Patreon where you can get access to additional ad-free content, such as virtual happy hours, and an extra full length episode each month.
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[00:42:01] Sources for today’s episode include the Coast News, alita law.org, law and crime.com, original.news break.com, California Penal Law 1 92 Section A and the Guardian.