Kenneka Jenkins // 434
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What is going on, true crime fans? I'm your host, Heath. And I'm your host, Daphne. And you're listening to Going West. Hello, everybody. Big thank you to Maddie, Gabby, Adam, and Lily for recommending today's case. I'm sure there have been others, but those are the ones that I can find in our email. I mean, this case

is quite well known. We've been wanting to cover it for a long time because there's a lot of controversy surrounding it, a lot of theories, a lot of opinions, but I think either way, a story that definitely deserves to be told. Yes, absolutely. And Kanika's mother is still looking for answers.

So if you're listening to this episode, please share it. And without further ado, this is episode 434 of Going West. So let's get into it. ♪♪♪

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That's N-O-O-M dot com. In September of 2017, a 19-year-old woman headed to a party at a Chicago hotel, only to be found dead in one of their unused hotel freezers under suspicious circumstances, just hours after being reported missing. This is the story of Kanika Jenkins.

Kanika Jenkins was born on May 27th, 1998 on the west side of Chicago. She grew up with her mom, Teresa Martin, and an older sister named Lenore Harris. Now, although very little has been made public about Kanika's personal life, her sister and her nieces absolutely adored her.

She's described by those who knew her as caring and outgoing, and while attending the Community Christian Alternative Academy, she enjoyed writing for the school's newspaper.

After graduating, she worked a few different jobs, but she had just secured a new position at a nursing home at the time today's story takes place. Which, by the way, started on the evening of Friday, September 8th, 2017, when Kanika and some friends had a plan to meet up at a birthday party of a friend named Irene. So Kanika told her mom that she was going bowling and asked to borrow her car, to which Teresa agreed.

Now, some sources also say that Kanika told her mom that she was going to the movies, but we know at least the plan was supposed to be to go bowling first, or at least so her mom thought.

Kanika and at least one friend of hers left her Westside home around 11.30 p.m., but they didn't go bowling. They actually headed to the Crowne Plaza Hotel in Rosemont, Illinois, which is a northwestern suburb near the Chicago O'Hare International Airport. Kanika and some friends convened for a bit and then headed up to the party in room 926 around 1 a.m.,

One of the older attendees booked the room, which had a minimum booking age of 21, and they also supplied the alcohol. But many of the attendees were underage, including Kanika. I'm sure most of them were at least 18, but Kanika was 19, so, you know, under the legal drinking age at least.

Well, inside the room, there were over 30 people just listening to music, drinking and smoking weed. And a few of her friends even went live on Facebook during the party. And many claim to have heard suspicious and possibly criminal activity involving Kenneka.

But the music and the kind of, you know, loud chatter was so loud that it seems to me unlikely that anybody could kind of pick up what was being said. And the party really just looked like normal teenagers having fun. A lot of the videos are available. I can post them if you guys want on our socials. But it's just like someone will be in front of the camera and there's some stuff going on in the back or you can't see anybody else and all you can hear is music.

It's like doesn't seem significant at all. Yeah, I mean, really, it's just a party. It's just a party. Yeah, exactly. So according to later reports, there were members of local gangs present that night, but almost everyone that was there knew each other and were friendly with each other. And there were no known altercations.

Now, as Daphne mentioned, the party was mostly unremarkable, though security did stop by the room a few times to ask them to keep the noise down. And according to some reports, to put a towel between the door and the outside because the smell of weed was leaking into the hallway. I mean, pretty, pretty cool security guards if they're not going to kick them out for smoking weed and just say, just put a towel down.

Yeah, and honestly, kind of strange that they would allow this party to take place in one of the rooms anyway. But I guess if you paid for it, then... It doesn't seem the hotel was excited. I mean, they weren't when they found out, but maybe security was a little bit more lax with them. Yeah. They wanted to relate. I don't know. Well, later the hotel did push back against this group a little bit, saying that the room had been booked using a stolen credit card.

But it has not been publicized who booked the room, and it certainly was not Kanika. The only thing that Kanika's friends mentioned was out of the ordinary about the party was that some of the male attendees were especially forward with them, which caused them to leave early. Kanika's sister last heard from her via text message around 1:30 a.m. on the morning of Saturday, September 9th, 2017.

At some point after 2:00 a.m., Kanika and her friends headed downstairs to leave, but Kanika realized that she had left her phone in the room. And somehow, as she and her friends waited downstairs for her phone to resurface, nobody noticed that Kanika was wandering off by herself. And the longer she was gone, the more agitated her friends were growing. When they began to panic, they decided to call Kanika's mom to let her know that they couldn't find her.

And at 4.34 a.m., one of Kanika's friends called Teresa, telling her that they were growing concerned and that she was missing from inside the hotel. So this is two and a half hours after they left the party. You know, after they were trying to see where Kanika's phone was. It's pretty significant. They're hanging out for two and a half hours and they don't know where she is. Yeah, so this does seem like a lot of time and it's pretty understandable that they're growing a bit irritated here.

Well, Teresa was in complete shock by this, because she thought that her daughter had gone bowling. And here she is finding out that her daughter was at a party, at a hotel, and now she's missing. So this was a complete whirlwind. In the background, Teresa claims that she heard her daughter's friends, who at that point were drunk and tired, complaining that they were fed up with looking and waiting for Kanika, and that they wanted to leave.

And this was a point of much contention later, and it's absolutely true that her friends should have kept track of her, given the fact that they'd been drinking, but they were young, and a lot of people still don't understand the cardinal rule to never let your friends wander off alone or with a stranger.

and to never leave them either. So they're probably thinking, okay, we're in a hotel. We're just kind of waiting for her. And then suddenly she's gone. They know she doesn't have her phone. And by the way, we are going to talk a little bit more about the hotel and how many rooms there were and what it looks like. But there are 14 floors. So this is a big hotel. Looking for her would be a massive task.

So yeah, again, her friends still, either way, should have stayed to look for her at the hotel until she was found safely, but it's likely that they weren't thinking clearly and that they didn't think that Kanika was in any real danger.

Kanika's mom, Teresa, told her friends to stay calm and drive her car to her so that she could return to the hotel to look for her daughter. Because remember, Kanika borrowed her mom's car that night. So her mom is kind of stranded. She is at home getting this terrifying call in the middle of the night in the very early morning hours. And she has no way of immediately getting there. So she just wants them to bring her car back so that she can go look for her daughter herself.

But things instantly became a little bit nerve-wracking for Teresa when Kanika's friends told her that they had both her car keys and her phone by this point. But because of the commotion they caused, the hotel had also apparently asked the group to vacate the premises.

When Teresa arrived at the property and began to ask questions and look for her daughter, she alleged that the staff was of little help. So she called the Rosemont Public Safety Department herself at 7.14 a.m. to report her daughter missing. According to Teresa, police discouraged her from filing an official report downplaying Kanika's disappearance and assuming that she was just sleeping off her drinks in a room somewhere in the hotel.

But with none of her friends able to account for her whereabouts and all of her belongings now in Teresa's possession, she knew that this was not the case. Teresa pleaded with the hotel security to let her view the footage from earlier that morning to see if she could spot her daughter's movements, you know, to help pinpoint her exact location. But they refused to let her do this without a police report.

So at 12:46 p.m. on Saturday that same day, Kanika's sister Lenore filed another missing persons report. She was told by police that she would be unable to make the report from the hotel and that she would need to report to the Rosemont police station, which she did. Well, finally, about 12 hours after Kanika had last been seen, officers did a cursory search of the hotel and reviewed the surveillance video from that morning.

However, Teresa claims that when the officer watched it, he spent only about five minutes speeding through it and said that he did not see Kanika on the footage. And remember, this is a guy that doesn't know Kanika. He wouldn't know exactly what to look out for. I'm sure there are tons of people coming up on all these cameras throughout the entire hotel. There's probably so many cameras. And he just looked at it so quickly and said, I don't see her. Yeah, exactly. He's really not doing the due diligence here.

Well, Teresa also said that she was hearing conflicting stories about where Kanika's friends had last seen her. One was that they left her upstairs, and another was that they left her in the front lobby, which is what Teresa had reported on her 911 call. Finally, at 12:25 AM on Sunday, September 10th, 2017, about 21 hours since she was last seen, a hotel employee came upon 19-year-old Kanika's body.

Kanika Jenkins was discovered in an empty walk-in freezer in an unused kitchen on the lower level of the hotel. Which is so strange on its own that she was, one, in an unused fridge, two, in an unused kitchen on a lower level of this massive hotel when we know that her party that she was at was on the ninth floor.

Well, let's talk a little bit about this massive place because the Crowne Plaza spans 55,000 square feet and boasts over 500 hotel rooms, 27 conference rooms, as well as an amphitheater. There were also multiple kitchens in this place. Yeah, so this is a huge place. It's like a hotel and conference center. Exactly, but what was she doing in that unused kitchen? That's one of the biggest questions of this case.

Well, after discovering her, 19-year-old Kanika was pronounced dead after finding her body. Teresa later claimed that she didn't even know exactly who found her daughter, and that she heard both that it was a police officer and that it had been an employee. Teresa asked to see her daughter's body, but was again given conflicting answers from detectives, some telling her that she could, and others telling her that she couldn't.

So she waited five hours for an answer, and investigators did eventually let her see her daughter's body in the body bag.

But even when they allowed this, they kind of made her feel like she was doing something wrong here. Yeah, they didn't make her feel like she was allowed to ask to see her daughter or any questions. It just felt very rushed. They found her body. They wanted to cart her off and do an autopsy. They didn't think anything suspicious was going on. Like as if she's overreacting to want to see her daughter and know what happened to her daughter.

Of course, and again, we have to remember that all of this came out of the blue for Teresa. You know, she had no idea that her daughter was going to this party. All of a sudden, her daughter's body is found in this random freezer in this unused kitchen.

She's like, I have questions here. Oh, absolutely. Well, they told the family, the police told the family that there were no signs of foul play or sexual assault, but that they would await the results of the autopsy to see if anything else came up.

Police offered to forensically search Kanika's phone for indications that maybe something had gone awry that night. But Teresa actually declined, saying that she felt fearful and skeptical of the police by that point. Because again, like me and Heath are saying, they're not taking her seriously. Yeah, they're just kind of being dicks about the whole situation. Right. So according to Teresa, she was originally told by police that her daughter was found locked inside the freezer. Right.

But she wasn't. There was a glow-in-the-dark release button that would have opened the doors from the inside, making it so anybody could get out if they found themselves in there with the door closed, which for anybody who's worked in a kitchen, you know that the freezer door doesn't just stay open. It closes behind you. Same with a walk-in refrigerator. And that's why there's a button inside so that you can get out whenever it inevitably closes behind you.

However, this doesn't necessarily mean that Kanika tried to open the door or knew how. Like maybe this glow-in-the-dark button, she didn't know what to do with it. She had no idea that it was a button. Like this doesn't mean that she knew how to get out, especially if she was in a drunken state.

Additionally, the hotel announced, quote, numerous media outlets have already disputed these erroneous claims of anyone locking Miss Jenkins in the freezer, referencing the video recorded by a motion activated camera inside the kitchen. In addition, the freezer did not lock from inside or outside and was functioning properly on the night in question.

Hoping for more answers as to how she wound up inside the freezer, investigators scoured the security footage that one detective originally claimed he had not seen Kanika on. And whether he had missed her or he just hadn't actually looked at enough of the footage is unknown because there were multiple instances of Kanika crossing paths with different security cameras.

According to the timestamps on the videos, Kanika was wandering the hotel for over an hour and no one stopped to help her. One camera captured her at 2.24 a.m., another at 3.25 a.m., 3.27 a.m., and then at 3.32 a.m. She could be seen walking through the kitchen where she was eventually found in the freezer.

However, unfortunately, there is no security camera pointing toward the freezer, so there was no video evidence of her actually entering the freezer, which has been the source of most of the speculation surrounding Kanika's case.

Well, let's discuss her behavior in the videos a little bit, because it's really clear that Kanika was heavily intoxicated. And there's actually a video of her walking in the hotel originally with her friends before consuming anything at the party, and she's walking steadily and pretty straight, like she doesn't appear to be...

intoxicated at all because obviously this is before the party. Yeah, so it's interesting to compare this video to the others and see how differently she is acting. Exactly, but at various points in the footage from later on in the early morning hours, she can be seen walking down the hallway and steadying herself along the wall.

as well as tripping on the railing of a staircase and catching herself on it before she falls. Yeah, she definitely looks like she's having trouble standing upright, and she looks like she's looking for something or for someone.

Like she does look like she's trying to walk within 10, at least to me. But not a single other person is in any of this footage, probably because it's so early in the morning or I guess so late at night. And we will post these on our socials so you guys can see.

Yeah, definitely go check those out. And some have claimed to see someone on the elevator with her in one clip, but according to her family, this is just untrue. She actually didn't appear to be with anyone, nor was she being coaxed or followed throughout any of the footage. However, multiple staff members recalled seeing an impaired teenage girl stumble around the hotel without offering to help her. So it seems like in some areas, employees saw her and just didn't really do anything.

The attorney retained by Teresa, whose name is Larry Rogers Jr., said matter-of-factly, "By this time, Jenkins had wandered out into the hotel and left her cell phone upstairs." Hotel surveillance videos reveal that she had walked downstairs in an obviously disoriented state and was seen by multiple staff members as she walked toward the freezer, though nobody stopped her.

But unfortunately, no one, including security, had been patrolling the kitchen in which she was found. Representatives for the Crowne Plaza claim that the hotel and conference center are large, and not every area is monitored at night.

Many people support the claim that the footage was doctored to edit out an attack or possibly a sexual assault. So it's absolutely possible that there is footage that hasn't been released. Especially considering the fact that she was wandering around for over an hour. But there's only a few clips of her walking.

Footage was also somehow released from another part of the hotel where a nighttime maintenance employee is moving a bag of trash on a janitor's cart. And the speculation is that the bag contains Kanika's body, but this was never found to be true.

While there is no footage again of Kanika entering the freezer, there was footage of her entering into the kitchen like Heath told us. And there is no footage showing her leaving in a trash bag or otherwise, hinting that she probably never left the kitchen at all. The footage has been analyzed by experts and it doesn't support having been altered in any way, just doesn't show the whole story.

The freezer door was determined to be unlocked and again, could have been open from inside, but if she was hiding or wanted to rest, perhaps she laid down inside and fell asleep until it was too late?

But I guess what I think of this is, is the middle of the night, all she had on was a denim jacket. I mean, she had jeans on and a bra on. We're going to talk about that in a bit. So it's hard to know why she would willingly go into a freezer. Because even if she was hot, like you would imagine she would have at least removed her jacket beforehand. Like this whole thing is just so strange. I mean, why she went into that freezer still is unknown. If she did indeed go in there willingly. Yeah.

Well, it's possible if she did get sick from the alcohol, maybe she wanted to find a cool place to lie down and rest. But let's talk about temperature for a second. So the temperature of the freezer was checked and it was hovering around 34 degrees Fahrenheit or one degree Celsius. But this was after the doors had been open for two hours in order to conduct the investigation. Why it wasn't checked as soon as somebody found her, I do not know because it feels suspicious.

silly to record it after two hours. Imagine, I mean, I'll open the fridge for 10 minutes while I'm putting groceries away and it will go up like six degrees. Oh yeah, exactly. Yeah, so this doesn't help us at all almost. But the freezer did have the capacity to go down to eight degrees Fahrenheit

or negative 13 degrees Celsius. So I looked yesterday, our freezer at home is set at four degrees and our fridge is 36. So that is about the same temperature that they recorded, meaning the temperature that they recorded is a normal temperature for a refrigerator, not for a freezer. Again, though, it does seem like it was much colder when Kanika was inside.

So obviously, even if it was 34 degrees when she was in there, that is still very cold, especially since hypothermia deaths can begin as high as 50 degrees Fahrenheit or 10 degrees Celsius in the right situation, like if the person is wet or whatever, but usually more so around 30 degrees Fahrenheit or negative one Celsius for hypothermia.

And some reports state that Kanika was found naked, which is also not true. But her right shoe and sock were off of her foot. Though this could have slipped off of her foot while she was stumbling, or perhaps she could have been trying to open the door with her foot. Yeah, we saw pictures. Her right shoe was a couple feet away from her foot, just lying on its side,

There's no evidence or information about where her right sock is or if she was wearing socks at all. But her right shoe is off of her foot. Right. And we have talked about this quite a bit on Going West. But this could have also been a symptom of hypothermia called paradoxical undressing, where people suffering from hypothermia actually feel hot and will try to shed their clothing.

But none of her other clothes were off at this point, so it doesn't really seem like that's the case. It was just like one shoe and one sock off.

But she was also not wearing a shirt, but that had been a fashion choice because that night she was sporting a white bra under a denim jacket with ripped jeans and tennis shoes. And maybe this was the reason there was that rumor about her being found naked because she didn't have a shirt under her jacket. Right. People kind of just jumped to that conclusion and said, oh, she was naked because she was in her bra. No, that's how she showed up to the party. Exactly. Exactly.

Well, let's get into the autopsy because it confirmed what investigators had suspected all along. That Kanika's cause of death was hypothermia, likely hastened by the alcohol and medication in her system. That night, Kanika had taken, or was given, Topiramate, also known as Topamax, which is a prescription-only medication used to treat migraines and seizures.

Well, Kanika's mom has confirmed that her daughter did not have a prescription for this medication. And the most likely explanation for this is that she and maybe some of her other friends took it recreationally at the party to magnify the effects of being drunk, or that it was slipped into one of her drinks as some sort of date rape drug. The latter is definitely possible, but it's not usually used for this, and of course, the autopsy confirmed that she had not been sexually assaulted.

So even if somebody had slipped it into her drink, the desired effect is unknown. In the autopsy, they also found that her blood alcohol content was 0.112, which is over the legal driving limit.

Now, on Going West, we like to explain what blood alcohol levels mean, and for the average person, .112 is the level above being legally impaired, and the level below being nauseous or blacked out. With effects like poor coordination, balance disoriented, and impaired judgment. Which all basically makes sense here. And this is not a dangerous level, as long as you're not operating a vehicle or equipment.

Only the alcohol, pills, and caffeine were found in her system at the time, and her only injuries were minor. A small cut on her right ankle, a bruise on her right thigh, and her brain was swollen slightly. The medical examiner also found mucosal erosions, which is a type of small lesion inside her gastrointestinal tract, which is a sign of hypothermia.

So her official cause of death was hypothermia due to cold exposure with ethanol and topiramate intoxication as significant contributory conditions. And her manner of death was ruled an accident.

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Over a thousand mourners turned out for her funeral and Teresa made a point of announcing to the public that everybody was welcome as long as they came to celebrate peacefully. Kanika was buried in a purple casket, which was a nod to her favorite color. And her mom, Teresa, wrote to the mourners, quote, there is a special angel in heaven that is a part of me. It is not where I want her to be, but where God wanted her to be.

She was here for just a moment. It was like a nightmare to lose you. And though she is in heaven, she isn't very far. She touched the hearts of many like only an angel can do. I would have held her every minute if the end I only knew.

The hotel actually offered to pay for her funeral, putting out a statement that read, quote,

So Teresa did not take the Crown Plaza up on this because she felt like they were just doing this to cover for themselves and kind of make themselves look better, not because they felt bad about what happened and were regretful about what happened, which, I mean, their statement is kind of... I mean, to say, our hearts go out to you. We hope that covering the funeral will give you a little relief. It's like, we're doing this, you know? It comes across that way. Yeah, look, we're good people. Yeah, so...

she just thought that was super phony and she didn't want their money. But Kanika's loved ones showed up decked out in purple and sporting shirts that read, Justice for Kanika. Still feeling like there were so many answers regarding her death that they didn't have.

One of her nieces recited a very sweet speech about the impact that her aunt had on her life, reading, quote, Every time I feel upset, she makes me feel like a princess. Nika was so funny, she would make me cry. The pastor conducting the service asked that the attendees refrain from talking about theories or pointing fingers and that they use the day to simply commemorate a life tragically taken too soon, no matter the cause.

After Kanika was laid to rest, Teresa made it her mission to search for more answers regarding her daughter.

Both Teresa and Kanika's sister Lenore found it exceedingly strange that she was able to open the metal double doors of the freezer while she was so impaired. And then that she would choose, you know, no matter her mental state to sit down in an empty freezer and not get out. You know, especially since she had been walking around for an hour. Like on one hand, you can say, well, maybe after walking around that long, she was tired and she just passed out.

But on the other, why choose the cold, dirty, empty freezer to lay down in instead of a staircase or the hallway outside of someone's room? And I know a lot of you are thinking that, you know, she was intoxicated. So our brains are not thinking the same. And I totally get that. But it really is the question of this case. Why there? Why the freezer? And did she even go in there herself?

Well, Lenore said, quote, Teresa secured legal counsel and moved forward with a wrongful death lawsuit, which quickly became headline news in the area. Her attorney, Larry Rogers Jr., maintained that there was criminal negligence involved, saying, quote,

She's trying to find her way, and no one from the Crowne Plaza Hotel responds to her? And this is an important argument, but also the only one they have, because of course, her mother and sister are incredibly suspicious, just totally unable to wrap their heads around the fact that she died in that freezer. But without proof of foul play or proof that someone else was in the freezer with her, they at least want to move forward with whatever they have.

Yeah, I mean, I completely agree with them doing this. Well, police interviewed over 44 people in connection to Kanika's death, including 36 party attendees, which was almost all of the people in the hotel room that night. Videos posted on social media from inside the hotel room fanned the flames of online speculation, with one rumor claiming that Kanika could be heard on footage saying, quote, "...help me."

but this was determined to be a line from a Chief Keef song playing in the background, and not Kanika's voice. Another rumor determined that Kanika had been killed over a dispute about $200, but Kanika's friends told police that this was just the fine for parking at the hotel without a valid ticket.

Police also had to investigate the fact that the hotel room was secured by illegal means and were searching for two people who reportedly used a stolen credit card to book the room for that night.

As speculation and online discourse began to grow, police begged citizens and curious online speculators to stop clouding the integrity of the investigation with unfounded theories that they were pulling out of thin air. The mayor of Rosemont, whose name is Bradley Stevens, announced, "...it's unfortunate that some of that stuff's convoluting the investigation, because all of those leads have got to be followed up on."

As I'm sure you've seen, there's a lot of different, conflicting speculation out there. So police are doing their best to come to a quick resolution, obviously. I think everybody wants to know what happened.

But from the jump, people felt like there was just not enough of an investigation even happening, and that that was an indication of the bigger issue of how the cases of young women of color who go missing are treated less urgently than others. Protesters began popping up at the hotel, even resulting in some arrests, until eventually, Kanika's mother kindly asked that they stop for the safety of the people involved.

She announced on a Facebook Live that it was never her intention for people to, quote, get hurt in order to get justice for her daughter. One month after her death on October 20th, 2017, Kanika's case was closed with the police confident that Kanika's death had been an accident and that foul play was not involved.

Teresa, not convinced by their conclusion, requested that the FBI get involved, but the FBI declined.

Mayor Bradley Stevens maintained, quote, The majority of people at the party included close friends and even relatives of Ms. Jenkins.

At this time, the Rosemont Public Safety Department has closed the death investigation of Kanika Jenkins and has classified this as an accidental death. There is no evidence that indicates any other conclusion.

But still, the internet continued to swirl conspiracy theories to confront the conclusion of the investigation. Because I think we can all agree, this case is weird. The details are bizarre and unexplainable.

And I'm not going to go into all of the insane theories in this case because I think it's just honestly a waste of time. They are very, very stupid. But I'll give you kind of like a rundown. One of them, somebody claimed that she was a victim of an organ trafficking ring. Organ, not organ. Organ.

That these two locals were apparently involved in because they were father and son who owned a crematorium nearby. And they were caught to be selling organs illegally. So there was a whole thing about that, but there was never any connection found to Kanika. Some people bring Selena Gomez and Bill Murray into the equation and blame them. I mean, it's really insane.

Yeah, there's like some weird stuff about how apparently Selena Gomez had like kidney failure when she was in Chicago in 2017 and that somebody killed Kanika and stole her kidney and gave it to Selena Gomez. It's like just the dumbest shit you've ever fucking heard. Yeah, a lot of us know that Selena had health problems and she got some kind of transplant. I don't remember what it was, but...

It's not... It was not from Kanika. Kanika was found to have all of her organs. Yeah. This is not the case. I mean, there are some...

unreal things that people have spread about this case. I also think it's part of one of the reasons that this story became so widely known because there are so many strange ideas swirling around people's heads. But yeah, I'm all for theories and speculation, but a lot of these are, I mean, some of the craziest things I've ever read.

Well, and you know, I think it's definitely important to talk about what could have happened. Yes. As long as you're kind of staying in the realms of reality here. Like it's, there's a couple different theories that I think are probably the most likely, but I will let Daphne read what those are. Yeah, there's only, I mean, it's,

there's not a lot of information. So it's kind of hard to feel like we can speculate without falling into the traps of outlandish theories. But yeah, some of those less outlandish ones are, for example, that her friends were in on this and they set her up and her friends were

are responsible and to blame for Kanika's death. Why? Who knows? Well, I think some people thought it was suspicious that one of her friends moved away after Kanika was found dead, like moved away from Chicago. But that doesn't really indicate anything.

Yeah, I completely agree. And I also think it is very just and fair for people to call out the investigation and say, were her friends looked into enough? Were the party attendees looked into enough? We know that some of the girls left early because some of the guys were coming on way too strong and not respecting boundaries. And so was there somebody at the party that had it out for Kanika for whatever reason?

Yeah, what was going on with the stolen credit card that was used to book the room? Yeah. The fact that there were different gang members that were known to be at that party, not saying that they did anything nefarious, but is it possible? Yes. Yeah, so we have these questions, but there are really no answers at all surrounding this other than police interviewed anybody and nothing strange surfaced. But still...

Kanika's family is still very suspicious of foul play in her case and believe that someone outside the freezer could have locked the door, you know, maybe without knowing that she was trapped inside. Or again, someone at that party had ill intentions and followed her and they just dodged the cameras. But let's discuss a little bit more of our thoughts here. Again, it is very tough to do that without a clearer picture, but again,

knowing she wasn't in that blackout drunk stage, at least according to her blood alcohol level, because we have to remember she also took a drug. She took a pill. Right. So, or she was given a pill. So could that have elevated her symptoms? And even, you know, looking at how drunk she was on a chart like we were doing earlier, maybe that's not really relevant because she was feeling more intoxicated due to this pill. Right.

But still, we have to remember she was walking around for an hour, seemingly looking for something or someone. So it's hard to kind of follow her throughout the hotel. Know that she went to a lower level, went into the kitchen, was looking around the kitchen, went off camera, and then got to the freezer, allegedly, because obviously that's where she was found, and just decided to open it up and lay down there.

And again, I know it's hard to reason when you're not in that mental state. So maybe it can't be looked at logistically, but it's just really weird that that's where she would have decided to lay down. Yeah, I find it extremely strange. Like you mentioned earlier, there's so many different places that she could have fallen asleep in the hotel room.

I don't know why the freezer was the place that she ended up. Like, it's just, it blows my mind. Well, because also we have to wonder why she was walking around for so long. Did she wander off and then she couldn't find her friends and she's going floor by floor looking for them? That's very possible. Why didn't she just go to the lobby? Like, there's so many questions of why go down into this kitchen when you're by yourself and the kitchen is empty. The freezer had a bunch of debris in it. Like...

I can't figure it out. I mean, there's kind of one small theory that I have. It's that possibly she found the kitchen and she was so intoxicated that she was trying to find some food to eat to put in her system so that she could feel less intoxicated.

but I don't know. I mean, maybe, maybe. Yeah. I mean, that's definitely possible. Maybe at least motive to go into the kitchen and at least look in the freezer, but we're going to post the available photos of the freezer. So you guys can see, I mean, when you open it is literally just an empty box. By the time you're inside, it's an empty box. There's no shelves. There's no old tubs of ice cream. There's nothing in there. Yeah. She would have known, you

you know, from the minute that she opened that door that there just wasn't anything in there for her. So then why walk inside? Right. And again, I know that it

it's hard to kind of get in that mindset when you're sober and you're not, we're not feeling what she was feeling. We're not thinking what she was thinking. And I will say something that kind of came to mind when, when we were looking into this case was he, then I had a Halloween party a couple of years ago and one of our friends, friends, remember how he was found like on the road outside our house? Yeah. We had this really, we had this really long driveway and it was

pitch black at night. Yeah, because it's, like, in the hill, so you had to walk down to get to the street where the cars are, and he was found just laying on the side of that small, dark road, right? Yeah, yeah. He was asleep on the ground, on the concrete, and, like, one of our friends found him, and they were like, hey, like, get up, like, go sleep on the couch, you know, in the house. Yeah, because they were leaving, and they just... He probably...

wandered off and just went to go leave or maybe to call an Uber. But then he did end up sleeping on our couch and he was fine. But yeah, sometimes people who are intoxicated just do really strange things. Absolutely. I actually think he was trying to call an Uber that night and he made it to the bottom of that super long driveway and then just was like, I'm tired. And then just boop. So then you could look at that and say, well, why would he sleep on the side of a road against...

amongst leaves and dirt and, you know, grass. And it's like, sometimes it's not, sometimes it's not like a choice. You just, your body is just like, I'm done. Yeah. I can't say I've never done that because I definitely have. You have. I have. Yeah. I fell asleep on a sidewalk one time, literally outside of a bar that was closed. Yeah. So that's important to acknowledge that people often when intoxicated will do things that don't make any logistical sense. So,

But that said as well, something just feels really off about this case. And maybe it's because, you know, I was telling my brother about it yesterday and I said this young woman was found dead in a freezer and he just automatically was like, oh, my God, that's so creepy. Yeah, you automatically kind of have that reaction where you're just like, oh, that

It just feels so eerie. Right. So maybe that's all it is. Maybe the reason that so many true crime folks look into this is because the details are weird. And maybe, unfortunately, it's nothing more than a tragic accident. But it is hard to say that for me in some regard because of...

the really strange details involved in this case. Yeah, absolutely. And also the fact that her mother is still searching for some sort of answers because she still doesn't have them. Well, also I want to, I did not try to look at photos like crime scene photos at all. I never searched for those. And honestly, they're almost never on the internet anyway. Yeah. Those type of photos are,

rarely released for good reason, of course. But I looked up Kanika Jenkins' freezer because I was trying to find pictures of the freezer to see if I could see inside. And there are a bunch of photos online of her laying in this freezer. So I'm not going to post them, but I think if you guys want to have a better idea, you'll be able to see the debris, see how small this, you know, square freezer is and how there's nothing in it other than some debris that

But it is really weird to see her. She's laying on her side, kind of curled up slightly in a partial fetal position. And like we said as well, her right shoe is off and there's no sock on her foot. And I think something that is another strange detail is that cut that's on her foot. She has kind of like it looks like a...

It's hard to describe. I guess I'll say a rug burn. I guess it looks like one kind of near her football. I call it the football. What do you call this? I don't know. The ball on the side of your foot. On the side of your foot. The football. Yes. It's right under that. And it looks like kind of like a scrape, but it's...

There's blood. And then there's another cut below it on the side of her foot that is also bleeding. So some people say, was she laying down and trying to kick the door and her shoe came off and she scraped it, but there was never any information released about blood being found on the door or shoe prints being found on the door to prove that she was trying to kick her way out. So that is also weird to me, the shoe being off and her foot being cut. True. And is it possible that, you know, maybe earlier in the night, um,

She had scraped her foot. And so she had when she laid down, she took off her shoe and sock to kind of inspect it. Possible. Yeah, maybe, you know, good point. So, yeah, that could definitely not be a weird thing or it could be. But I think either way, a reason we wanted to cover this case is because it is so widely discussed as her mother and her sister are still really looking for answers that they don't have.

They are pushing to figure out what happened and hold somebody responsible because even if this is an accident, which I'm sure they're willing to accept if that's the truth, they still feel like she shouldn't have been able to roam around with nobody asking her if she needed help. The fridge and freezer should not have been accessible to hotel guests. Neither should the kitchen have. So they just want answers no matter what it means.

Well, in 2018, Teresa Martin filed a wrongful death lawsuit against the hotel, requesting $50 million in damages. The family received $10 million, and after legal fees, Kanika's family took home about $6 million. Teresa maintains that if the security footage had been reviewed earlier, if that area of the hotel had been patrolled, and if police had taken her concerns seriously, this never would have happened to her daughter.

She also says that she hopes their new precautions will keep others safe moving forward. Teresa said when she filed the lawsuit, quote: "My life will never be the same. It hurts. It's a pain that I can't even explain. I don't even understand."

If you have any information about the death of Kanika Jenkins, please call the Rosemont Public Safety Department at 847-823-1134.

Thank you so much, everybody, for listening to this episode of Going West. Yes, thank you guys so much for listening to this episode. Don't forget to share and don't forget to head on over to our socials. Give us a follow and check out the photos from this case and all the other cases that we've covered. Yes, and the videos, because I think it is good to see those. It's so frustrating because the freezer is just out of frame in the kitchen. Like you see her walking towards it.

And then afterwards, she is caught on camera again. I meant to mention this. She is caught on camera again in a different part of the kitchen after that. And after that, she's not seen again. So it is possible that she went back where she came from to go to the freezer, which again is if the camera had been tilted up slightly, we would have seen everything. It is so just off camera. Yeah, we would have been able to see everything clearly.

And probably all of our questions would have been answered. Exactly. Well, thank you again to Maddie, Gabby, Adam, and Lily for recommending this case. And anybody else who has recommended it, maybe on socials that we missed. We appreciate you guys so much for tuning into this one. And we will see you again next week. All right, guys. So for everybody out there in the world, don't be a stranger.

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