Part 2: Bryan Callen + News (ACS September 20)

Transcript

On this episode of women behind bars, one woman claims she killed her mother while in a drug induced fog. The autopsy showed significant severe injuries. It was a pretty awful death. Prison is cold hard still. Another woman was convicted of murdering her mother and then dumping her on the side of a road. My sister tried to apparently burn the body in the trash can to get rid of the evidence. I I hid the fact that she was dead, and I'm deeply ashamed of that. And I feel horrible, but I didn't kill my mom. 2 women, 2 brutal crimes. These are the stories of Cindy Countess and Jennifer Blake. On Friday, May 3, 2002, 49 year old Cindy Countess was caring for her ailing mother, Edna Dooley. Countess was supposed to have been taking the antidepressant, Paxil, for depression. But according to court testimony, she had missed her normal dosage for a week when her mother hid her medication. On the day of the crime, Cindy started taking her meds again. Later in the evening, something went terribly wrong and her 82 year old mother ended up dead on the bathroom floor. The autopsy showed significant severe injuries to The autopsy showed significant severe injuries to Edna Dooley. It was a pretty awful death. There was no doubt that Cindy Countess had done that to her mother. The whole question was, why? Did Cindy countess kill her mother in a cold blooded rage? Or was it an accident? The result of an adverse side effect to an antidepressant. Cindy Countess was born in 1954 in Roanoke, Virginia, the second youngest of 5 children. I feel that I had very blessed and very loving and caring upbringing. I was taught responsibility, reliability, honesty, and all of these things in more or less a Christian home. But family members believe that throughout Cindy's childhood, her mother Edna Dooley struggled with undiagnosed mental illness. I feel like she'd had mental health issues for years and they were never diagnosed and no doubt that's why there was so much tension growing up is because mama didn't know how she dealt with the situation or her mental condition as well as she could. I think she was bipolar, and, you know, people her age, they weren't diagnosed with bipolar or schizophrenia or whatever her problem was. Despite the difficulties in her dysfunctional family, Cindy was full of life. She was very active. She used to roller skate and ice skate and she was very good at that. She won different trophies and stuff like that. She did modeling and she did some acting. Cindy loved life. She had a great love and zest for life. She loved doing things, different experiences. She played tennis and won trophies for that too. She was married twice, married right out of school. Her marriage did not work out, and, she had a number of different occupations, met a second man and got married. In 1988, Cindy married an entertainer. The couple moved to Las Vegas to pursue careers in show business. She was this aspiring singer, actress, model in Las Vegas. But life in show business was not always glamorous. Like her mother, Cindy began to show signs of mental illness. She was in and out of the mental health system several times. She had a personality disorder that was characterized by a great deal of emotional instability. And they had this life that had its highs and its lows. Then Cindy's life got interrupted. In 1997, Cindy received an emergency call from her sister Norma Jean asking her to help care for their ailing parents. Countess's father had suffered several strokes and her mother was diagnosed with heart disease and dementia. The 43 year old left her husband and returned to Virginia to assist with the care. My father had at least 4 major strokes and I would pick up the physical therapy for him. I cooked and cleaned for them. I I did everything for them to the very best. It's my perfect ability to do so. There are no words to truly convey the extent of difficulties that I and my older sister overcame. She totally was overwhelmed at the job that she was trying to do. Even though she loved my grandparents to death, she was not the right person for that job. Although their brothers lived in Roanoke, the 2 sisters say they were left to handle all the care. Nobody else ever offered. Even when we asked, nobody wanted to help. Cindy's father passed away in December 2001. Despite her precarious mental state, Countess still became her mother's primary caretaker. The living conditions were deplorable. My mother had the obsessive compulsive disorder. She collected everything. The house was in total chaos indicative of hoarding, which would be consistent with the mother's diagnosis of obsessive compulsive disorder. My mother, bless her heart, was a pack rat. And so, I, was the one that through the years did the majority of the cleaning even to the point of getting worms one time and that winding up at a emergency room as having done so. Mom had had open heart surgery the year before. Mentally, she just was in a bad state. And if she had to go to the bathroom, she'd just go. After 4 years of taking care of their parents' every need, Norma Jean and Cindy were worn out. Cindy and I both were just exhausted, mentally and physically exhausted. And it was just too much trying to take care of mom too. I wound up having a nervous breakdown. I was hospitalized for at least 8 days in 2,001. Cindy started taking the antidepressant, Paxil, After she was released from the psychiatric hospital, countess was still left to pick up the brunt of her mother's care. Over the next 6 months, Cindy's mother's dementia worsened and she became increasingly difficult to manage. Cindy was the primary caregiver, the at home caregiver. And many times her mother would, get very agitated, would scream, yell, take things, would not do what Cindy wanted her to do. We all loved our mother, but trying to take care of her was like a nightmare. Cindy struggled to meet her mother's unrelenting demands, but her own health was in jeopardy. In addition to the ongoing depression and then she's trying to deal with the depression and then she's trying to deal with breast cancer herself and she's trying to take care of my grandmother who is a full time job. And I really just feel like it was a recipe for disaster. You had a mentally ill woman who was taking care of a mentally ill mother and without any help except from her sister. And she had said herself, she was at her wits end. By the summer of 2001, the relationship between mother and daughter reached a breaking point. I had remained on the that entire year, and I had been taking my medicine, explicitly according to doctor's orders up until the point when my mother had hid both of our prescription medicines. My mother, she got to where she didn't wanna take her pills, so she started hiding the medicine, and she hid Cindy's too. So Cindy was forced into withdrawal off the Paxil. Her mother was hoarding drugs. And this is again very common with people who have dementia. But Cindy had not been on Paxil for at least a week, and it may have been 2 weeks. People who have been taking medicines like Paxil, intermittently or suddenly stopped, and they have a withdrawal. We know that the more inconsistent they take them, the more tragedy happened. I was pacing the floor. My skin was crawling. My hands felt like balloons. When women behind bars continues. We wind up, the 2 of us, taking turns grabbing things to kinda flog one another with, And that is pretty much the only memory that I have of that night. While dealing with her own mental illness, Cindy Countess cared for her obsessive obsessive compulsive ailing 82 year old mother. In April 2002, countess says her mother hid her antidepressants, allegedly forcing her into withdrawal. After a week with no medication, Cindy felt desperate. She finds a Paxil dose. I think they said it was 30 milligrams, which is a lot. And so she takes that one Paxil dose. And then, the the description is that she becomes confused. It was just a nightmare, it was real. Later in the evening, countess made her mother dinner and put her to bed. According to court testimony, Cindy then poured herself 2 mixed drinks to relax. I had been, sitting at the computer and I had to go to the restroom and, my mother had to go obviously about the same time, but somehow or another, while we were in the bathroom for some reason she slapped me. She remembers mama striking her, but she doesn't remember over what. She said possibly, mom got upset with her for putting the toilet paper in a certain place and not where she wanted it. Cindy had come in and had gotten frustrated because her mother was also yelling and agitated. She was a demented, agitated, scared human being who didn't know what she was doing. Cindy did, perhaps overreact when her mother slapped her, and then it just went worse from there. I believe she, in essence, did snap. We wind up the 2 of us are taking turns grabbing things kinda flog one another with. Her mom had fallen to the ground with her head by the sink and her feet towards the toilet. And, when her mother had gone down, Cindy did stomp on her, and the imprint of her, of her shoes is on her mother. While her mother lay unconscious from the beating, Cindy claims she then blacked out. My very next memory after the actual altercation is I'm in the living room talking on the phone with my older sister. It was right around 11 o'clock. The phone rang and she just seemed to be, not even sure of anything that was going on around her. In fact, they said she had a smear of blood on her leg. She has no idea how it got there. Norma pleaded with her sister to get help from a nearby relative. So I went and I got my older brother, and he came in and we both saw that my mother was on the floor behind the bathroom door. And so my brother reaches around and and tries to take a pulse and everything. The police arrived soon after to find Edna Dooley dead on the bathroom floor. Cause of death, blunt force trauma. The autopsy showed significant severe injuries to Edna Dooley, to her ear, her head. The photos show that it was a pretty awful death. Several witnesses reported that Cindy appeared to be intoxicated, but countess denied she drank alcohol and says she never took a breathalyzer. I had mistakenly told a couple of detectives that I had made a mixed drink or so. I had poured those out. I never drank those drinks. Cindy Countess had been drinking, and so to this date, she doesn't remember what she did. A month after the incident, police charged 49 year old Cindy Countess with first degree murder of her 82 year old mother, Edna Dooley. During the trials, I remember watching Cindy and thinking that she seemed weak and a little bit out of sorts, I would say, and not really in touch with reality. Definitely depressed, kinda like she lost her way, like all this had happened in her life was pretty much over. During the 4 day trial, the defense argued that countess had worked hard to take care of her mother and that Cindy suffered from involuntary intoxication due to the Paxil. While involuntary intoxication in Virginia anyways, relies upon the fact that a person is being prescribed a medication by their physician. They take the medication as prescribed. And in the process of taking the medication as prescribed, the medication impairs them to a degree to where it causes them to do something they wouldn't normally do. So the doubt in this case was, yeah, this medicine can do things and cause a person to do things they wouldn't normally do. But the other doubt was she wasn't following her her physician's instructions. When Cindy took the stand, the prosecution asked if she had taken her medication in the manner that her physician prescribed. She was in tears and she would tell, the prosecute attorney that she didn't remember. She didn't know. She didn't remember when she would ask her all these questions, trying to pin her down to what time of day you gave medicine, what time you took medicine, things like that. Cindy, she couldn't remember all those things. Cindy had no business in her mental state. She had no business being called up to testify. She she damaged her own self by having to testify. It was hard for my attorney. It was hard for me to be able to find the right words to describe just exactly what did happen to me. Countess maintained she did not intentionally hurt her mother and believed she was innocent, but her tearful testimony did not resonate with the judge. The prosecution very strong case. I mean, the forensic evidence was very strong. Prosecution had a very strong case. I mean, the forensic evidence was very strong. DNA links and all that with the blood on Cindy matched to her mother. The markings on Edna Dooley's face, I think, were like the treads of the tennis shoes, and that's how they were able to match up. That is pretty, clear evidence, that Cindy Countess had stepped on her mother and brutally killed her. The trial left a family at odds and raised some doubts. By the end of the trial, it was clear that the family was divided. The 2 brothers were sitting with the prosecution. Miss Draper was sitting on miss Countess' side and both sides had other family members sitting with them. So clearly split family, which both sides confirmed was true. Neither of the boys had a great love for our mother. They had both been trying to get what little our parents owned long before my father died and I have never been totally convinced that they didn't play some role in my mother's death. I've always felt that there was there was more to it than what we would ever know. When women behind bars continues. It's easy to say, well, it's the drug's fault, but I'm sorry the person took the drugs, and you're responsible for your own behavior. In the fall of 2003, 49 year old Cindy Countess stood trial for the stomping death of her elderly mother, Edna Dooley. The prosecution maintained that Countess committed the crime in cold blood. The defense claimed Cindy suffered from involuntary intoxication, a rare side effect of the antidepressants that blurred Cindy's ability to tell right from wrong. So here we have a a person with a chaotic life, taking medicines not as prescribed, and in finding a dose, taking it in a in a large amount. No one starts with 30 milligrams of the epaxel. You start with much lower and build your way up. And mixing it with alcohol. So how much responsibility did this count as having this? The judge rejected the involuntary intoxication defense saying after testimony from a psychiatric expert, that, there was really not enough study done on the matter to show that this was a condition that could be applied to this case. We were totally shocked when we found out what the judge was doing to her. And you could tell, poor little thing she was literally begging the judge, to show some mercy to her. It's easy to say, well, it's not the person's fault. It's the drug's fault. But I'm sorry, the person took the drugs and you're responsible for your own behavior. I wasn't surprised she was found guilty, because the the defense had a very, very difficult case to deal with. After her conviction, Cindy was taken to Roanoke City Jail. 7 months later, she returned for sentencing. As a last ditch effort, the defense asked the judge for leniency and to consider that Cindy also suffered from caretaker burnout. Caregiving is tough work, satisfying as it can be on one level. Over time, it can cause people to become significantly depressed. And if they're depressed already, it can worsen the depression. The sick person taking care of the sick person, where neither had the resources to mediate a conflict. I think the constellation of events were such that Cindy did kill her mother and appropriately doesn't remember what happened because it was such an awful, awful event. He sentenced her to 30 years with 14 of those to serve. After the 14 years, she should be under 10 years of intensively supervised probation. It was the most pitiful thing I've ever seen in my life. I have a picture of her when she was convicted, and she was literally terrified. She was absolutely terrified. She had this look of utter astonishment that she could've actually done this and be committed for it. The judge gave her the minimum sentence he could under the guidelines. So judge Wechstein did what he felt and believed and thought was just for a woman who had caused her mother's death. 2nd degree murder is a serious crime. You can't really argue with the sentence that she got. Cindy was transferred to Fluvanna Correctional Center For Women, a medium security facility in Troy, Virginia. The 4 years she has since spent behind bars have taken a toll. Prison is cold hard still. That's pretty much what you're surrounded by, that's pretty much what you are subjected to. Cindy will never totally adapt to where she's at. She will never totally adapt. For one thing, her health is so bad. Her nerves are shocked. She's not a mean hardcore person, and so it's hard to deal with these hard people, street people that she has to deal with. This is a very painful existence to me. Very painful. Cindy now passes the long days by corresponding with her ex husband and her two sisters who visit occasionally. All of her letters are very sad. Sometimes I'll go for a day or 2 without reading them because I dread getting depressed over them. To this day, Cindy has mixed feelings about the incident. She mourns the loss of her mother, but also feels that she got a raw deal. She does know that she had a role in her mother's death, although with her personality disorder, she reinterprets this at this time. I take responsibility that the tragedy happened, but in all overall picture, I do not feel that I am capable of such a horrendous type of an act. With 10 years to go, Cindy has a long road ahead. I'm 53 years old now, so if I were to, serve, the 10 remaining years, of this 14 year sentence, then I would be about 63 years old. I hope the remaining years fly by. She's only been in prison now 5 years. I'm not sure she'll survive prison. Should that be the price for killing her mother? Some people say yes. I say no. But she's sentenced to serve less than half of the 30 years. Still a substantial amount of time with some heavy probation at the end of it. It's certainly not out of line with similar decisions and similar cases. Cindy Countess continues to grieve for her parents and is deeply remorseful. I would like to have been in a financial position to have paid for my parents to have had 24 a day private care in their own home. I love them to the point I wanted to give them a lot more than ever I was able to give them, and that's my biggest regret. Next, on Women Behind Bars. She was frozen. There were signs that she had been burned, and she was wrapped in a bedsheet from the home. For more information about women behind bars, go to w ww.we tv.com. On December 26, 2000, Kathy Krainick's burnt and frozen body was discovered on the side of a dirt road. She was frozen. There were signs that she had been burnt, and she was wrapped in a bad sheet from the home. According to authorities, the evidence pointed to Kathy's daughter, Jennifer Blake, and her boyfriend, Corey Jackson. She certainly wanted her mother out of the picture. She was gonna do something to, to get it done. Jennifer did a horrible act. She put the blame on everybody but her. Was Jennifer the innocent daughter framed by her boyfriend? Or was she the mastermind behind her mother's violent death? Jennifer Lynn Blake was born on April 4, 1975 in Puerto Rico. 4 years later, her mother Kathy gave birth to Jennifer's brother, Michael. We pretty much had a good life, you know, had everything we needed. We weren't rich, but we weren't poor. Went to good schools, you know, had good good upbringing, I would say. There was no evidence of any kind of family trouble. They all seemed happy. Kathy was very well loved by everybody. She had a servant's heart. She was very kind. But Michael says there was an undercurrent of tension between the two siblings. She always had something about her where we just were never real close. Felt like she always held something against me. Her father, Michael Krainick senior, was a navy man and moved the family from state to state as he was assigned to different bases. When Jennifer was 11, the Krainicks settled in Virginia. We moved a lot, always having to get news to new places, people, you know, things, schools, lots of schools. For Jennifer, the most painful adjustment was her father's absence when he was out to sea for months at a time. When I was growing up, I had two lives. 1 when my father was home and one when he wasn't, which was more often than not. When my dad was gone, it was rough. My mother was physically abusive to me, emotionally and verbally abusive to me. Jennifer claims her mother Kathy tried to choke her until she passed out. She also says when her dad was away, Kathy would loan Jennifer out to men for cash. She allowed some of the men that she cheated on my father with to molest me. Her brother Michael adamantly denies Jennifer was molested. I don't think there was any truth there at all, and it was never no proof or anything to back it up. She lied a lot. I've never heard any complaint from anybody about, Kathy being abusive or being involved in anything immoral or improper. If there's abuse that's long standing and significant, it typically can be documented. People know about it. Other family members know about it. By the age of 12, Jennifer and her mother were constantly fighting about the rules of the house. My mother wasn't strong enough to really put her in her place. She basically would say what she wanted, and then Jennifer would do what she wanted. And my mother couldn't do nothing about it. Sometimes my sister would even put her hands on my mother. The problem only escalated when Jennifer became a teenager. I started acting out, being more rebellious. Once I got to be about 12, 13, I avoid being home as much as possible. I started running away a lot, about every year, at least 2, 3 times a year. Things were tough, but things are tough for every family. Everybody goes through trials and tribulations. It was nothing to to to explain why she acted the way she did towards us. I would say she was a pathological liar. She would lie about stuff that didn't even need to be lied about. She would say whatever it took to get what she did or what she wanted you to believe. The situation reached a crisis in the winter of 1990. When Jennifer's father was away on duty, the troubled teen attempted suicide. I believe at the time that my mother was setting me up to be molested again. I ended up being committed in a psychiatric hospital. After Jennifer was released from the hospital, she became more violent towards her mother. 3 days before my 16th birthday in 1991, I was arrested and charged with assault and battle against my mother. My mother wasn't real strong, so my sister overpowered her, and she took advantage of that. I was placed on probation. I violated my probation that summer for running away. Individuals have a pattern of acting out. They may, as children and adolescents, be diagnosed as having conduct disorder, which means a failure to really respect the rights of others. That may become a lifelong pattern of disregarding the rights of others. Jennifer spent 3 weeks in a detention facility. In 1993, the 17 year old dropped out of high school, got married, and had her first child named Jasmine. But 3 years later, the marriage ended in divorce. Jennifer's mother took her daughter and her granddaughter in. A young girl with a child that was my mother's granddaughter. She loved her, so yeah. They she let her move back in to help her out. But the Kranick household was in turmoil, and Jennifer's parents divorced. The 25 year old single mother began dating another man and became pregnant. 2 months into her pregnancy, Jennifer met 21 year old dishwasher, Corey Jackson, and began a torrid affair. He liked me from the moment we met. I was engaged and about 2 months pregnant, we ended up having sex. And it was so good that I couldn't leave it alone. In April 2000, Jennifer gave birth to her second daughter. She then broke up with the baby's father, but continued to date Jackson while living at home. My sister was she wasn't working and, she she was using marijuana, alcohol, and just really not doing nothing with her life. To make matters worse, Jennifer started sneaking her boyfriend, Cori Jackson, into her mother's home. The garage door doesn't block. The room over the garage is empty. I said, if you need, you know, a place to crash, you can sleep up there. There's a bathroom in the garage. Just get the hell out before she gets up for work in the morning. She became it for him. He relied on her for housing. I mean, he snuck in that house, I'm told, every night to to sleep there. When Jennifer's mother found out, she was furious. She, I guess, I went out of town and I let Corey stay for like 2 days. And, she came home early and and caught him in the house, and she was livid. And she just told him, you you just you're not welcome in my house. Mom, what are you doing? My mother was like, look, Jenny, if you if you keep bringing him in, you gotta leave. Jennifer refused to obey her mother's rules. Pushed to the breaking point, Kathy gave her daughter an eviction notice. Kathy expressed that she and Jennifer weren't getting along well. And finally, one day, she asked me whether or not she could have Jennifer evicted. Within a few days, she asked Jennifer to move out. Kathy had expressed some fear for her own safety. She was distressed that she had to give her 30 days advance notice and was concerned how those 30 days would go, especially once she gave notice to Jennifer. On Sunday night, according to Cory Jackson's testimony, Cory snuck into the house and found Jennifer distraught. He finds her crying, and she begins to tell him about, the so called abuse that she said she endured, by her mother's boyfriend years ago and how she had had enough with, her mother. And she goes on to sit with him on the bed and plan how to kill her mother. When women behind bars continues. My sister tried to apparently burn the body in the trash can and get rid of the evidence. In 2 1,025 year old Jennifer Blake, a single mom of 2 had moved in with her mother Kathy Krainick. Alarmed that Jennifer was sneaking her boyfriend in on a nightly basis, Krainick gave her daughter a month's notice to leave. She had nowhere to go with her children and she felt like she was gonna she was gonna end up in a shelter. According to court testimony, Jennifer and her boyfriend Corey Jackson, then took matters into their own hands. They allegedly devised a plan to kill her mother at dawn while her two children were asleep. Early one morning, my mom had got up her at work. She went to get, showered and dressed. My sister's daughter, Jasmine, she stayed in my mother's bed. They were real close. They were sleeping in the same bed. The youngest child, Kiani, was asleep in another bedroom when authorities say Jennifer confronted her mother. Somehow my sister started an argument with my mother and got her into the, the bathroom. She started to, get her on the ground and then she called for help. Jennifer approached her and said, I I hate you, and they struggled, in the bathroom area. So Corey come into the bathroom and had to hold my mother's feet now and my sister choked her. This whole time, my mom was, apparently screaming, you know, saying, Jenny, stop. Jenny, stop. And, Jasmine actually woke up and heard it. They suffocated and strangled her. And to make sure that she was dead, they took her head, and they put it in a tub of water to see if there were were any bubbles. Jennifer tells a very different story and denies any role in the murder. She claims her mother was already dead when she woke up. There's Corey sitting on the counter next to the bathroom sink and my mom was laying on the floor. She was dead. And Corey claimed to me that my dad had come to the house, got in an argument with my mother, and ended up choking her in the kitchen, and that Corey moved her to the bathroom. Jennifer admits that instead of calling police, she helped Corey dispose of the body to allegedly protect her father. Corey told me to go get a trash can and I did. It was a 17 gallon. Corey claimed that it was to burn her body. My sister tried to apparently burn the body in the trash can't get rid of the evidence. He set my mother's body on fire in the garage. There was smoke pouring out of the garage. It was disgusting. It was horrible. It was it was that thick, black, acrid smoke. It was disgusting. The garbage can is too small. They can't burn it in the house, so they figured that they'd rather wrap it up in a sheet, put it in the trunk, and drive it somewhere where they can dump it. According to the police report, the couple was unable to find a place nearby to dump the body. They picked up Jennifer's 7 year old daughter, Jasmine, from school and drove across the Virginia border at nightfall. After picking up the child, mother's in the back of the trunk. They take the mother to rural North Carolina and they dump, Kathy's body on the side of a rural road there. My sister's child, Jasmine, she testified that she remembers stopping. She remembers, my sister and, and Corey getting out of the car. After allegedly dumping the body in a ditch, Corey, Jennifer, and the kids checked into a motel. After that, they were like, we'll we'll come back later when Jasmine's sleeping, you know, and actually bury the body, just put her in a ditch at this time. Corey woke her up in the middle of the night about 3, 4 o'clock in the middle of the night, and apparently my sister said she couldn't. I don't know what was going on her ahead of that time, but she didn't wanna go back and and do anything about it. So they just left her the way she was. Later that week, Jennifer filed a missing person's report and the police began their investigation. My sister's final story was my mother was last seen getting in a red car with a front of hers that she didn't know who it was and, was never seen again. I remember them asking me was I responsible for her disappearance, to which I answered no. Did I know where she was at that moment, to which I answered no. 2 weeks after the murder, police found Kathy Krainick's body on the side of the road. Cause of death, strangulation and suffocation. She was frozen. You know, there were signs that she had been burned and she was wrapped in a bedsheet from the home. The police quickly zeroed in on Jennifer and Corey. Initially, when she talked to detectives, she tried to pin this on the father. Authorities eliminated Michael Kranick as a suspect and followed the evidence back to Corey and Jennifer. They tried to burn the body in the garage, and they left evidence behind. They left evidence on the body. I believe a hair from Corey was found on a sock that he stuffed in the mother's mouth. So it didn't take long once they found the body to connect, Jennifer and Corey to this. Almost a month after Krainick's body was found, police arrested Jennifer and Corey and charged them with first degree murder. I would never kill my mom. I would never help anybody kill my mom. I hid the fact that she was dead, and I'm deeply ashamed of that. And I feel horrible, but I didn't kill my mom. In exchange for testimony against Jennifer, Cory Jackson entered into a plea agreement and plead guilty to second degree murder. Cory flipped on her immediately for a plea that reduced what could have been life for him to second degree murder. Corey Jackson took the stand and claimed Jennifer coerced him into murdering Kathy Kranick. The defense argued that Jackson's testimony was not credible. Cory is the case against me. Corey Jackson's self serving lies was the case against me. The prosecution countered that Jennifer had motive to kill her mother, But Jennifer maintained that she did not kill her mother and she was only an accomplice after the fact. When she took the stand and when she testified, she was a family person. She loved her family. She felt sorry. She apologized to him, but she never admitted killing her mother. Oh, my sister never admitted it. She spit the blame on everybody butting her. The prosecution then presented powerful evidence that linked Jennifer and Corey to the scene of the crime. They found the motel records. So they they had her being in the area. But the most damning evidence of all was the testimony of Jennifer's daughter, Jasmine, who spoke of overhearing her grandmother cry for help during the killing. The biggest indicator was her daughter's testimony, Her hearing specifically, Jenny stopped, you know, Jenny stopped, my mom yelling. But I believe it was her her daughter's testimony that that really sealed the case. At the end of the 4 day trial, the jury returned the verdict within an hour. They found me guilty of 1 count of first degree murder in the death of my mother. I didn't think it was real. I didn't think it could be happening. I honestly believe that I was going home that day. The judge sentenced Jennifer to life in prison. Her, accomplice who went for the plea agreement received 35 years. s**t. Jennifer was transferred to a medium security prison. She's serving a life sentence without the possibility of parole. She has had no contact with her daughter, Jasmine, who lives in Florida. Her younger daughter, Kianni, lives with her grandparents, who bring her up to see Jennifer several times a year. Despite the conviction, Jennifer still maintains her innocence. An individual who killed a parent for what we would consider really selfish, antisocial reasons might hold on to that sense that they were a victim because they don't wanna really deal with what they did. They believe that by maintaining their innocence, that at some point they'll be vindicated. Even though they're completely aware that they did in fact commit the act. I still don't know who killed my mom. It wasn't me. The person that took my mom from me took away any chance that I ever had of resolving any issues we had. Yeah. We had issues. It was tough. But it's my mom. No matter what she did, I would always love her, always want to be there for her, always care for her.