Jade Janks and the Secret Nude Photos

0:00This podcast features Tracy Smith.

0:30possibly killed her stepdad. I don't know if she really did this. What exactly are your current reports? It sounds like she killed this guy. It was the first day of a new year. The sheriff's department received a call from a guy that said she confessed to drugging him, suffocating him, and strangling him to death. Jade was very cool, very popular. I could not believe what they were saying that Jade did. Tom Merriman is Jade's stepdad. And 100 % she loved Tom. She took care of him. They lived next door to each other. She made him dinner. She was always there for him.

1:26Detectives knew they had a phone call from her good friend that she confessed to murdering Tom Merriman, so they got a search warrant. We don't have to prove motive, but we want to show a motive. The photos. The photos. She accidentally bumped his computer and the screensaver came out. The screensaver is a nude photograph of her in the shower. She was able to find a lot more nude photos of her. Hundreds. Hundreds. It was the most violating, just awful, gut-wrenching feeling ever. I felt sick. I couldn't even touch my own skin. She was beyond freaked out. She's sleeping with a knife. She is scared for her life.

2:18Yes. Did you love Tom? Tom, love you. Yes. I mean, did you want your stepfather dead? Did you stand over him with a plastic bag and pull tight to keep him from breathing? No. Did you wrap a cord around his neck? No. And did you strangle him? No.

2:41Tracy Smith:So you have this supposed confession of her saying she strangled him, but no evidence of strangulation. Your own strangulation expert said it's not strangulation. That's right. So your big bomb... Fizzled. It was gone.

3:16Tracy Smith:San Diego County, California. An idyllic place. Most of the time. I stewed on this all night. I barely slept and I'm scared to death. I don't want to be a part of this. I didn't have anything to do with her. That frightened phone call came in New Year's Day 2021. The caller said his one-time girlfriend may have committed a murder. The Sheriff's Department received a call from a guy that said, my friend confessed to me last night as she murdered her stepfather. San Diego County Deputy DA Jorge Del Portillo. He told deputies, hey, I don't know if what she's saying is true. I didn't see him, but this is something I had to tell the police.

4:04Tracy Smith:The alleged victim was a 64-year-old man named Tom Merriman. He lived here. I liked him. I thought he was very nice. Ramona Hamilton and her husband George were Tom's neighbors. Ramona knew him better, and she found out Tom also ran an unusual business. More milkweed, more milkweed, more milkweed. A butterfly farm. I'm a gardener, and I love butterflies. Pat Flanagan also likes butterflies. He was Tom Merriman's business partner out at the farm. He was my best friend. Did he become kind of a butterfly expert? Oh, he is a butterfly expert. You say he is. Yeah. You still talk about him in the present tense?

4:51Yeah. I do.

4:54Tracy Smith:It was right here on December 31, 2020, that Tom Merriman was last seen alive. Ramona and George saw him in his stepdaughter's SUV in the driveway. And he was sitting on this side, the passenger side, with his feet out and this walker out in front of him. And he looked like hell. Tom had just spent more than two weeks in the hospital and a rehab center after a bad fall. He also had heart and liver problems. He looked awful. I don't even know if he knew me. But at the time, it just seemed like maybe he got sent home from the hospital heavily drugged. Heavily drugged. That's all we knew. That's all we knew.

5:31Hi, sweetie.

5:32Tracy Smith:And then George saw Tom's stepdaughter, 37-year-old Jade Janks. Tom Merriman had come into Jade's life when she was 14, marrying her mom. Jade and Tom were apparently close. She lived right next door. On this day, Jade had just driven him home. And he called her his daughter. He called Jade his daughter? Yes. They seemed close. And they seemed very close. She was fixing dinner for him every night. She seemed to take care of him. What did you think of Jade? I thought she was a very pretty woman. Jade had done some work in Ramona's apartment. She was an interior decorator.

6:11That's Jade. She can be a tomboy and a girly girl on the same day. She can get herself dirty for work, carrying rocks and concrete in her pickup truck, and we're dressed up ready to go to like a nice fancy dinner.

6:26Tracy Smith:Heather Pierce grew up next door to Jade in San Diego County. Jade was very cool. I loved being around her. Jade was 13 years older. She's definitely a little more than a big sister and a little less than a mom. Her energy is just very strong. Loving and caring and genuine and so when you're around her like you feel good. She also knew Jade's stepdad Tom Merriman. I think she always just loved him and cared about him. Back at Tom's place in Solana Beach it was now January 1st, the day after he'd gotten back from the hospital. The day after George and Ramona had seen him looking so poorly in the driveway.

7:10Tracy Smith:This time, they only saw Jade in the driveway. She was standing by a pile of trash and boxes. I saw her out at the side here with the boxes and cartons. A little while later, there was a knock on the door, and she'd come to the door to tell me that she'd made a mess down here, but she cleaned it up later. Where was the pile? Right Right here. Let's see where that dirt is right there. Yeah, like right in this area here. It was a few hours later when law enforcement pulled into their driveway. I'm scared to death. I don't want to be a part of this. They came to investigate that strange phone call, the one that claimed Tom Merriman had been murdered.

7:47They were trying to find Tom. Where is Tom? They walked by this pile of trash in the driveway. They knocked on his door. They went inside. They didn't find Tom, but they did see his stepdaughter. When they saw Jade Jinx driving out of her driveway, they pulled her over, brought her in for questioning, and asked that very question, where is Tom?

8:11Tracy Smith:Jade said she was cold, so they gave her a blanket. We're trying to find Tom. Do you know where Tom is? No. His family hasn't seen him for over 48 hours, though. Jade, he just got released from the hospital yesterday. Okay. Did you see him yesterday? Yeah, I picked him up from the hospital. Okay. Do you know where he went? No. Well, can you tell me other than he's just missing? We don't know where he's at. We're trying to find him. Eventually, they let Jade go, but there was still no sign of Tom. Officers spent all night combing through his apartment, looking for clues. Then, just after the first morning light, one of the officers was walking down the driveway toward Tom's apartment when she saw that pile of trash.

8:56Tracy Smith:It was just about here. I have a picture of it here. There's a wheelbarrow there, some boxes, some bags. She moved a trash bag from that trash and immediately saw the silhouette of a man. And there he was, Tom Merriman. Tom Merriman laid dead and buried.

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10:38Never seen that. I've never seen a case where a body was buried under a pile of trash in the driveway.

10:46Tracy Smith:The apparent crime scene was smack in the middle of the driveway of this lush compound, just a mile from the beach. He was wearing the hospital bracelet that he was just in the hospital, the same t-shirt and the same pajamas that he was discharged. As soon as they found the body, they knew we have our suspect and they made the arrest. On the morning of January 2nd, 2021, Jade Janks was arrested and charged with Tom Merriman's murder. But things were about to get complicated. She lawyered up and didn't want to answer any more questions. So authorities continued to work the case, starting with that phone call.

11:28It sounds like she killed this guy.

11:31Tracy Smith:That call had come from that friend of Jade's, a man named Adam Siplak. He told police she'd called him to her apartment, and then she asked him for a favor. And asked me to move the body with her. Okay. I can't help you, and I never saw the body. Adam Siplak may not have seen the body that night, but eventually, he did tell police that Jade confessed to him. That she knocked Tom out with an overdose of medicine and then strangled him. It was a pretty dramatic story, and authorities were confident that the autopsy would confirm it, that there'd be physical evidence that Tom Merriman was strangled to death.

12:14Tracy Smith:But that's not what happened. I was actually there for the autopsy. Assistant DA Teresa Pham, who led the investigation, talked to the medical examiner. So what they found was, unfortunately, not a lot of physical evidence. Right. So you have this supposed confession of her saying she strangled him, but no evidence of strangulation. That's right. The final autopsy report created even more of a challenge for the prosecutors. It said that the cause of Tom Merriman's death was acute zolpidem intoxication. Zolpidem is the generic name for the sleeping pill Ambien. Is it possible that Tom Merriman died by accident?

12:56Tracy Smith:He was in poor health. It's not that many pills that he took. Certainly it's possible, but the evidence belied that notion. This was no accident. But even if the autopsy didn't point to strangulation, investigators say other evidence clearly pointed to murder. Jade's cell phone was a goldmine. It was a goldmine. Jade's phone was full of texts. How would you categorize those text messages? Suspicious. Incriminating. A plan. According to prosecutors, that plan was to get rid of Tom Merriman one way or another. Investigators say it all started on December 23rd. That's about a week before Tom's body was found.

13:41Tracy Smith:Tom was in the hospital after that bad fall. Jade says she was cleaning up his apartment when she found something. So she's at Tom's apartment and his laptop, I guess it must have been in sleep mode or something like that. But she knocked into it and it woke up and on the screensaver is a nude photograph of her in the shower. And there was more, much more. She must have had his password. So once she was able to get into his laptop was when she was able to find a lot more nude photos of her. Hundreds. Hundreds. These were photos that she took willingly with her partner at the time. Some were of her in the shower, naked.

14:28Tracy Smith:Authorities don't know how Merriman got those pictures, but Jade says she never gave them to him. And prosecutors say she panicked. In her words, she was beyond freaked out. That's what she wrote to a friend, that she couldn't shower alone. She was vomiting at just the idea of looking at a shower based on what she had discovered. She's sleeping with a knife on the nightstand just in case he comes early home from the hospital. According to prosecutors, that's when Jade launches her plan. How? One of her friends connects her with a guy, a guy the prosecutors called the Fixer. There's a text message where he tells Jade, if you have a problem, I can fix it for you.

15:13And that's how we came up with the label, the Fixer.

15:15Tracy Smith:The so-called Fixer was a man named Alan Roach. Who is Alan Roach? Alan Roach is a guy, he's a security guard. That's what he does. But I think he makes himself out to be someone else that he's not. We were thinking Jade views him as the character in Pulp Fiction. Someone that you reach out to when you want one of your problems fixed. And that's what he was. He was the fixer. He was the fixer. Is Alan a hitman? He is not a hitman. What's important is what does Jade think Allen is? Prosecutors say Jade wanted her fixer to help her get rid of Tom. She had a plan that she stuck to. The plan was murder.

16:05The plan was murder.

16:20Tracy Smith:It was December 2022, two years after Tom Merriman's body was found under that pile of garbage, and Jade Jenks was about to stand trial for his murder. Let me just ask you flat out, did Jade Jenks murder her stepfather, Tom Merriman? Jade has maintained her innocence throughout this entire incident. Jade's attorney, Mark Carlos. He insists this was not a murder and says Jade had no reason to kill her stepfather. Finding nude photos of yourself on a stepfather's computer would make you angry, you know, might make you break off relationships with him. But enough to kill somebody? I don't think so.

16:58Tracy Smith:He says Tom's death was an unfortunate accident brought on by his poor health and self-administered prescription drugs. I think he took the medication himself. He had multiple substances in his system. I think he made a cocktail of the drugs that he had with him and had a bad reaction to it and caused his death. At trial, Jade was supported by family and friends, including her biological father, Steve Jenks, and her longtime friend, Heather Pierce. Tom was a mess, an absolute mess for a long time. There's no way that she had like a plan and first degree and all of that. I was like, there's no way, because that's not Jade.

17:41Tracy Smith:Prosecutors Jorge Del Portillo and Teresa Pham were worried the jury might feel that Jade herself was the victim. She's a sympathetic defendant. She is. I mean, she found naked photos of herself on her stepdad's computer. Call Jade Jenks. Jade takes the stand to tell the jury what happened in her own words. My name's Jade Jenks. Jade says that ever since she met Tom when she was a teenager, they maintained a strong bond. It's hard to come by somebody you just feel that you can trust completely. And I did feel that way. I referred to him as my father and he could call me his daughter. Which is why, Jade tells the jury, it was so devastating to find those photos on December 23rd while Tom was in the hospital and she was cleaning his apartment.

18:32I bumped the mouse on his desktop computer, and it shook the screen awake. And I looked, and there's a picture of female breasts on the screen. And I looked, those are my breasts. I just, I couldn't believe it. I was in complete shock.

18:53Tracy Smith:Jade describes finding even more on Tom's computer after that. There was a rolling screen, like a slideshow of pictures of me taken over the years. What type of pictures were they? They were naked photos. Did you ever give naked photos to your stepfather? No. Did you ever show him naked photos of yourself? No. How did he get these photos? Jade doesn't know. These were photos that Jade had taken of herself. Jade and various boyfriends. Had you ever made any sexual overtures toward your stepfather? No. Did you tell him that you had nude photos of yourself? No. And you never showed him anything similar to those, correct?

19:39Tracy Smith:No, he was my dad. Tom was still in the hospital, but Jade says she didn't feel safe. And you were afraid that he was going to come back and find out that you had found the photos. Yes? Yes. And you were worried about how he might react toward you. Yes. And he lived next door to you? Yes. And that's why Jade says she got in touch with Alan Roach, who worked in security the day she found those photos. So why did you think that you needed somebody like Alan Roach? I was scared. I mean, when I first saw the photos, I couldn't even use the bathroom. I just felt so disgusting. I couldn't shower either.

20:26I was just scared of being nude and vulnerable. And I just wanted somebody to just look out for me and make sure that I was safe.

20:40Tracy Smith:Over the next few days, Tom was moved from the hospital to a rehab center, and Jade felt she had to act. I can't continue just living next door to him and not feeling safe or feeling like this. I mean, I have to do something. When you say I needed to do something, did you need to kill him? No. I wanted Tom to just go away and leave me alone. According to Jade, Alan was planning to come over after she brought Tom home to help her confront him. I wanted Alan to basically, you know, explain to him this is not okay or I could explain it, but Alan just be there just in case. Your plan was to... Jade says that on December 31st, in spite of her feelings, she was doing everything she could to help Tom, who she says seemed preoccupied with finding medication.

21:31He started calling at about 6.45 in the morning and he's asking me to get him codeine, which I don't really understand. He says that he hasn't, I think, slept and he wants to rest.

21:42Tracy Smith:Jade took Tom out of the rehab at a little after 11 a.m. He had a bag of medication with him, including Ambien. And remember, the autopsy says Ambien is what killed him. Jade says almost as soon as Tom got into her car, he also helped himself to her prescription medicines. He kept saying, like, did you get me to painkillers? Like, is this it? Oh, here. And then he just kind of took it. Jade says Tom seemed fine when she stopped at this shopping plaza and texted Alan Roach to come meet her. She went into a couple of stores while she waited to hear back. I was just getting started on a house project, so I just went to go get supplies and kind of shop around.