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Introducing Anatomy of a Massacre. Anatomy of a Massacre is Rockefeller Audio's newest podcast series. Anatomy of a Massacre is a true crime podcast investigating the most notorious massacres in human history. From serial killers to mass shooters to genocides, there lies a new horrid reason to expose in each episode.
Join me, your host, Courtney Fretwell, a forensic psychologist, as I dive deep into the psychology, criminal theories, and policy implications behind each massacre. Anatomy of a Massacre begins Monday, October 3rd, 2022.
Follow Anatomy of a Massacre on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, or wherever you get your favorite shows so you don't miss an episode. You know what happened? Now, let's uncover why. Forensic Tales discusses topics that some listeners may find disturbing. The contents of this episode may not be suitable for everyone. Listener discretion is advised.
In a small town in England, the Jenkins family, with four girls of their own, decided to adopt another young girl. After a difficult upbringing, Billy Joe Jenkins finally had a stable family. But all of that was about to change. On Saturday, February 15, 1997, the Jenkins family left to run errands. But Billy Joe stayed back.
She stayed home to paint the patio doors for a little extra allowance that week. When the family returns home, they're faced with tragedy. Billy Joe Jenkins has been murdered inside the family's backyard. This is Forensic Tales, episode number 141, The Murder of Billy Joe Jenkins. ♪♪
Welcome to Forensic Tales. I'm your host, Courtney Fretwell-Ariola.
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February 15, 1997 was like any other day for the Jenkins family. In the mid-1990s, the Jenkins were a British family from Hastings in East Sussex, England. Hastings is a town on England's southeast coast and gains its name from the 1066 Battle of Hastings.
Over the years, it's become a popular English seaside resort town known for its sporting and cultural events, weekend getaways, and day trips. Sean Jenkins and his wife, Lois Jenkins, had four biological daughters and one foster daughter. Their biological children were 12-year-old Annie, 10-year-old Lodi, 9-year-old Esther, and 7-year-old Maya.
They were also foster parents to 13-year-old Billy Joe Jenkins. The Jenkins began fostering Billy Joe four years earlier in 1993 when Billy Joe was nine years old. Coincidentally, Billy Joe's birth name was Billy Joe Jenkins, which meant that she had the same last name as her foster parents.
By 1997, Sean and Lois became her legal guardians, which was a tremendous step towards legal adoption. Billie Jo was born on March 29th, 1983, and was originally brought up in East London. But when she was only a few years old, her father was sent to prison, and her mother couldn't care for Billie Jo alone. So when Billie Jo turned nine, she was placed in England's foster care system.
She was introduced to Sean and Lois Jenkins in the foster system and began living with them and their four daughters. After moving in with the Jenkins, Billy Joe settled into her new foster family. The Jenkins provided Billy Joe with a stability and structure she didn't get with her biological parents. And because the Jenkins already had four daughters around the same age as Billy Joe, she fit right in.
She attended school at the Helenswood School, a secondary school for girls. Those that spent time with Billie Joe described her as a fun-loving girl with dreams of becoming an actor. On Saturday, February 15, 1997, Lois and two of her daughters, 9-year-old Esther and 7-year-old Maya, left the house to go shopping for the day.
Sean left to shop at a different store with his two older daughters, 12-year-old Annie and 10-year-old Lodi. The only person who decided to stay home that afternoon was Billy Joe. She didn't go shopping with the rest of her foster family because she opted to stay home and paint the patio doors. She agreed to paint the doors for a little extra money from her foster parents.
The first people to return home later that afternoon was Sean and the two older girls. When they got inside the house, they immediately went back to the back patio to look for Billy Joe. But when they got to the back garden, they made a horrific discovery. 13-year-old Billy Joe was laying face down in the pool of her own blood.
Police and paramedics were immediately called to the house. They found Billy Joe's lifeless body in the back garden. She was surrounded by a pool of blood with a paint bucket and paintbrush to her side. It was immediately apparent to the first responders that whoever did this had beaten her to death. An 18-inch iron tent peg was found near her body, and her body was riddled with injuries.
She had suffered several significant injuries to her head and face. Based on her injuries, first responders theorized that Billy Joe had likely been killed within minutes of being attacked. It also appeared that whoever did this had snuck up on Billy Joe while she was painting the patio door. Billy Joe didn't have any defensive wounds.
The police didn't think she had an opportunity to fight back. She was dying before she even knew what was happening to her. The motive for the murder didn't seem to make much sense. She hadn't been sexually assaulted, so the murder didn't appear to be sexually motivated. Then there was the murder weapon, an 18-inch iron tent peg.
According to the Jenkins, this tent peg was left in the back garden the day before. So whoever used it to kill Billy Joe must have found it when they got into the backyard. And after they beat her to death with it, they left it behind. The bloody peg was found in the grass next to her body.
Leaving the murder weapon behind immediately stuck out to the investigators. In these types of attacks, the perpetrator will usually bring a weapon with them. It's very rare for someone who intends to commit an assault or commit a murder and not bring a murder weapon. It's also rare for them to leave the murder weapon behind. Typically, they want to take the weapon with them because they don't want the weapon to be tested for fingerprints or DNA.
So to have the murder weapon belong to the Jenkins and have it left behind after the attack was extremely unusual. When detectives searched the Jenkins house for evidence left behind by the killer, they didn't find anything. In fact, after turning the house upside down looking for evidence, they didn't find anything to suggest there was a forced entry. There was no evidence that anyone had broken inside the Jenkins home that day.
Everything pointed towards a crime of opportunity, a random act of violence perpetrated by a random stranger. But this type of murder is exceptionally rare. Not only did this person attack Billy Joe inside her own backyard, but they also did so without bringing a weapon and without a clear indication of whether they knew anyone else was home.
All the evidence suggests that whoever this random stranger was didn't seem to care if they got caught. Early on, the police were alerted about a suspicious man seen in the neighborhood where the Jenkins lived. He was described as a white man standing around 5 feet 10 inches tall. He has wispy hair and a noticeable scar across the front of his face.
He was also seen carrying a Safeway plastic bag with a large loaf of bread inside. Neighbors told the police they saw this man walking around the neighborhood shortly before the murder. Sean Jenkins told the police that his family had recently been bothered by a prowler around their house.
Around two weeks before the murder, he caught a man in their backyard. And a couple weeks before that, Sean said he spotted a man staring into one of his neighbor's houses. It was the house directly across from the Jenkins.
This information didn't seem to surprise the police. About one year earlier, over 1,000 people who lived in the same neighborhood with the Jenkins had signed a petition calling for better security in the neighborhood. Neighbors complained that there was an increase in drug deals throughout the community. Other complaints came in about strange men exposing themselves.
Sean told the police that his concerns about the safety of his neighborhood had grown so much that he decided to install security lighting around his house. He also added extra locks. He hoped that the new security lights and additional locks would scare off prowlers.
According to Sean and Lois, Billy Joe was concerned about the neighborhood as well. Around two years earlier, Billy Joe told the police that she thought someone was stalking her. In her police report, she said she had received many strange phone calls where the person hung up just seconds after she answered. She also said that she spotted a man who appeared to be following her on several occasions.
She described the stalker as a white man in his 40s or 50s. When she saw him, he was always wearing a leather jacket. This description is close to the description of the man Sean said he saw creeping around in the family's backyard one day. But when the police looked into the claim that someone might have been stalking Billy Joe, they didn't find anything.
Another theory early on was that Billy Joe was murdered by someone staying in the house next door. At the time, the house next door to the Jenkins was empty and boarded up. No one was officially living there. So the police wondered if someone might have been hiding inside the abandoned house. And when they saw that Billy Joe was a home alone, he made his attack.
But like with the other theories, when the police investigated, they didn't find any evidence of someone hiding in the abandoned house next door. When the police found themselves stalled in their investigation, they asked Sean and Lois to make a public cry for help. They asked them to go on British national television to appeal for the public's help in identifying Billy Joe's killer.
As Sean made a prepared statement, Lois could barely control herself. She was so overwhelmed by grief. The family's statement read, quote,
Billy Joe was loving and supportive of her four sisters. She was also buoyant, articulate, quick to learn, loud and fun-loving. As parents, our sadness drives us to work closely with the police to find her killer. We, therefore, appeal to anyone who thinks they have any information about this crime to contact the police."
Just days after the family's public cry for help, the police made their first arrest. They arrested a 44-year-old man who resembled the suspicious man seen in the neighborhood around the time of the murder. He was the white male who neighbors said was carrying a plastic grocery bag and had a large scar across the front of his face. But the man wasn't in police custody for long.
Shortly after he was arrested, he was released and sent to a psychiatric hospital. He was found to have no connection to Billy Joe's murder. A few days later, the police made a second arrest. But like the first suspect, this man was also released and found to have no connection to the murder.
Nine days after Billy Joe's murder on February 24th, the police made their third and final arrest. But it wasn't on any prowler or any other suspicious person seen hanging around the neighborhood. This time, the police arrested Billy Joe's foster father, Sean Jenkins.
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From the beginning of the investigation, the police suspected Sean of the murder. He was the first person to discover Billie Joe's body, and he was the last person to see her alive. When the police dug into Sean's background, they discovered that he lied about his qualifications at work. At the time of the murder, Sean worked as a deputy headmaster at a local all-boys secondary school.
The police learned that he had lied about his qualifications to get the job. He even went as far as lying about the university he attended. On his resume, he claimed to have attended the University of London when he actually went to the University of East London. When they dug deeper into his personal life, they learned about accusations of physical abuse.
Allegations were made that Sean had physically abused his wife Lois and their daughters. He used a stick to beat his wife and daughters on several occasions, including Billy Joe. He was described as a man with a terrible, violent temper that he oftenly verbally and physically lashed out at his family.
Several of Billy Joe's classmates said that on more than one occasion, Billy Joe came to school with bruises on her arms and legs. According to the classmates, Billy Joe said the bruises came from her foster father. Another incident occurred when the family was on vacation in France in August of 1996.
Family friends of the Jenkins said that while they were on vacation, Sean kicked Billy Joe in the ankle despite her ankle already being spranged. Not long after these allegations emerged and the police dug into Sean's past, they asked him to turn over the clothes he wore on the day of the murder.
He was the one who discovered Billy Joe's body, so naturally, the police wanted to examine them. They also wanted to confirm that he was shopping with his two daughters at the time of the murder. When Sean's clothes were examined, investigators found over 100 small drops of blood on them. The microscopic drops of blood were found on his shoes, pants, and jacket.
72 spots were found on his fleece jacket, 76 on his pants, and 10 were found on his left shoe. Except for a couple of the droplets, all of them were microscopic. They weren't visible to the naked eye. When the blood spatter expert hired by the police examined the droplets, they determined that they all belonged to Billy Joe.
The expert believed that the pattern of blood on Sean's clothing resulted from impact spatter. An impact spatter is created when a force is applied to a liquid blood source. This expert further believed that this impact spatter could have only come from Sean hitting Billy Joe with the iron tent peg.
According to the police and their blood spatter expert, this proved that Sean killed Billy Joe, and this was all the evidence they needed to arrest him. On March 14, 1997, Sean Jenkins was formally charged with Billy Joe's murder. The prosecution alleged that on the day of her murder, Sean had become angry with Billy Joe, as he had on many previous occasions.
He had driven his two older daughters to music lessons while Billy Joe stayed behind to paint the patio doors. Sean and Lois agreed to give Billy Joe some extra allowance money if she did it. According to the prosecution, Sean either became enraged because the paint had gotten on the window or because she was playing the radio too loud, or even a combination of both.
While his two other daughters stayed in the car parked outside the front of the house, he grabbed the iron tent peg lying on the ground and began beating her with it. After he bludgeoned her to death, he went back to the car and took the girls to a nearby DIY store.
He also took his time getting home. Instead of driving straight home from the DIY store to his house, he took an indirect route and circled a local park twice before going home. Later on, he told the police he left the house because he wanted to pick up a bottle of white wine. However, when the police searched the house, there was already a half-full bottle in the house.
According to the prosecution, this was all done by Sean to create an alibi for himself. He didn't need to buy the white wine because they already had a bottle inside the house. He had no intention of buying anything at the DIY store because he didn't bring his wallet. And he took his time getting home by taking the long way and stopping to circle the park twice before going home.
The prosecution argued this was all done to set up an alibi for himself by creating a window of time that would allow someone to enter the house and murder Billy Joe. From when Sean came home the first time, leaving his two daughters inside the car, and from the time he came home from the DIY store, it was only 10 minutes.
According to the prosecution, the idea that a stranger broke into the backyard, found a weapon, and then killed Billy Joe during this same 10-minute window is nearly impossible.
But what was possible, according to the prosecution, was that when Sean went inside the first time, he murdered Billy Joe. Then he returned to the car where his two daughters were to continue the original errand, which was to stop at the DIY store. When he came home the second time, he pretended to discover Billy Joe's body along with the two other daughters.
Immediately following Billy Joe's murder, the police were suspicious of Sean. At trial, several of the first responding police officers testified that Sean's behavior that day wasn't normal. According to the police officers, it appeared that Sean already knew Billy Joe was dead even before the paramedics started working on her.
In the two phone calls he made to the police, he was vague and misleading about what happened. In one of the phone calls, he said Billy Joe had fallen. According to the police officer's testimony, Sean seemed unusually calm when they arrived. He didn't appear to be the grieving foster father that he would later claim to be. The officers also challenged Sean's original story about prowlers around the house.
Early in the investigation, Sean told investigators that he had seen strange men lurking around his home in the weeks and months leading up to the murder. He said he was so scared about these men that he installed extra security lights and additional locks throughout the house. But according to the police, they didn't have any record of Sean complaining about Prowlers.
If he was so worried, why did he never call the police to report anything? The most significant piece of evidence for the prosecution was the forensic evidence. The 158 tiny droplets of Billy Joe's blood found on Sean's clothes.
Adrian Wayne, a forensic scientist hired by the state, testified that the blood found on Sean's clothes could have only gotten there if Sean had been the one beating Billy Joe. He said Sean must have stood very close to his foster daughter as he swung the tent peg. Each time he swung the peg, mist of blood traveled off the peg and landed on his clothing.
The repeated swinging of the peg caused the 158 droplets of impact spatter to appear on his jacket, pants, and left shoe. A similar conclusion was reached by a second blood spatter expert hired by the prosecution.
Russell Stockdale also testified that the microscopic blood droplets resembled impact spatter, and the only way he could have gotten the impact spatter on him if he was the one holding the murder weapon and inflicting the blows to Billy Joe.
Sean's defense team presented a much different interpretation of the blood spatter. According to his defense, when Sean found Billy Joe in the backyard, he knelt down beside her. He then told his two daughters, Lodi and Annie, to get back, and that's when he put his hand on her right shoulder and pulled her face up towards him. He said he saw a bubble of blood in one of her nostrils and heard what he described as a squeaking sound.
His defense argued that the blood spots, which also contained specks of skin, were sprayed on his clothing when Billy Joe exhaled blood through her nose. And this explains the 150 microscopic blood droplets. The prosecution attempted to disprove this part of the defense's story by saying no blood spatter was found on any of the first responding police officers or on the paramedics.
If blood was, quote, misting out of Billy Joe's nose, none of the blood got on anyone besides Sean. The prosecution also argued that Sean never told first responding officers that Billy Joe was breathing when he discovered her. But the defense had an explanation for that, too.
Anthony Schervener, an expert for the defense, said that Sean knelt down beside Billy Joe several minutes before paramedics and the police arrived. So he was the only one that she might have still been breathing with. She wouldn't have been breathing by the time paramedics arrived. This explanation aligned with what the forensic pathologist found.
Based on the autopsy, the pathologist concluded that Billie Joe might still have been breathing when Sean found her. And if that's true, this theory could explain the 158 drops of blood. When the police arrived, blood was everywhere, including visible bloodstains on both of the patio doors.
Besides the 158 microscopic blood spots, no other visible bloodstains were seen on Sean's clothing. Sean insisted that any blood found on his clothes resulted from him trying to help her. His defense argued that with an attack as brutal as the one on Billy Joe, you'd expect to see more blood on Sean as well as his clothing.
Based on Billy Joe's injuries and the blood everywhere else, you'd expect the killer's clothing to be soaked instead of only finding microscopic drops. At trial, the defense conducted experiments to prove that the blood could have gotten on Sean's clothing from her breathing out onto him as she died.
But the prosecution countered this experiment and said that the defense's experiment was, quote, impossible. It's impossible because according to the pathologist, her injuries would have been so severe that she wouldn't have been physically able to take deep enough breaths to cause the amount of sprayed blood.
The pathologist said Billy Joe would have had to inhale 2.2 liters of air to be able to exhale forcefully enough to see that amount of blood spatter on Sean's clothes. The case against Sean was built on 158 small blood spots on his clothing.
Although the prosecution couldn't offer a motive, they suggested that Sean had beaten Billy Joe to death after a day of, quote, frustration and irritating events. Sean had a history of having a temper and abusing his wife and children. And on February 15th, 1997, he had enough. His rage and anger spilled over to murder.
After closing arguments for both sides wrapped up, the case was handed over to the jury. After only a few hours of deliberation, the jury returned a verdict. Sean was found guilty of murdering his foster daughter and sentenced to life in prison. After weighing the forensic evidence, the jury decided with the prosecution's two expert blood spatter experts.
They believed that the only way Billy Joe's blood could have been sprayed on Sean's clothes was if he was her attacker. The jury didn't think the blood could have gotten on any other way onto the clothing. They didn't believe that it could have come from her exhaling on Sean's clothes. Sean's fate was decided almost entirely on 158 tiny spots of blood.
In 1999, Sean appealed his murder conviction. In his appeal, he argued that the forensic evidence was inaccurate. And because the forensic evidence was the biggest piece of evidence that convicted him, the conviction should be thrown out. Sean's defense team had always maintained that the blood spots were sprayed on him when Billy Joe exhaled blood through her nose.
But the judge in the 1999 appeal disagreed. The judge concluded, quote, even if Billy Joe had been able to breathe out as she lay dying, blood spattering would not reach the height on Sean's clothing at which spattering was found, end quote. So in 1999, Sean's first attempt at appeal was denied.
Following the 1999 appeal, the Criminal Cases Review Commission began investigating. The Criminal Cases Review Commission is England and Wales' authority investigating possible miscarriages of justice and wrongful convictions. Many people believed in the blood evidence, and they thought that Sean was guilty. But not everyone. There was a shadow of doubt over the blood spatter evidence and its credibility.
The Criminal Cases Review Commission reviewed the blood evidence for the next two years. Specifically, the blood evidence used to convict Sean in the original criminal trial and during the 1999 appeal. During their two-year investigation, they spoke with an expert who claimed that the blood found on Sean's clothes could have resulted from a rare condition.
This condition would have caused gases to build up inside Billy Joe's lungs, which could have caused her to breathe out blood involuntarily. This theory offered another possible explanation for the blood spatter. In 2004, the Criminal Cases Review Commission referred the case back to the appellate court.
Besides the rare condition that might have caused Billy Joe to exhale the blood, they also argued that the jury didn't hear from Sean's other daughters, whose story seemed to support their fathers. During the original criminal trial, police had been told by Lois, who by this point had divorced Sean, that their daughters had changed their original stories, which back up their father's claim of innocence.
But at the 2004 appeal, Annie's testimony supported the defense's case that Sean would not have had time to commit the murder. This time, the appellate court sided with Sean and ordered a retrial. Based on this alternative explanation of the blood and Sean's daughter's testimony, a retrial was ordered for 2005.
The blood spatter evidence from the first trial was heavily scrutinized at the retrial. The question at the second trial came down to one thing. Could the blood drops have gotten on Sean's clothing any other way besides him being her attacker? If the defense could prove there was an alternative explanation and that the blood evidence can't be trusted, then that creates reasonable doubt.
Reasonable doubt is all the defense needed to secure an acquittal. Besides the 158 droplets of blood found on Sean's clothing, the prosecution didn't have any other solid evidence linking him to the murder. During the second trial, several forensic experts testified that the blood found on the clothes could have gotten there as Sean helped Billy Joe during her final moments.
Tests conducted in a lab showed that the blood could have come from small amounts of air leaving through a, quote, pinhole in Billy Joe's blood-filled nose. Dr. Ian Hill testified for the defense and said the blood could have come from a blockage in Billy Joe's lower airway and that the blood spray could have been caused when Sean moved Billy Joe's body before the police arrived.
Billy Joe survived for several minutes after the attack, and experts suggested that the high pressure in Billy Joe's lungs meant that any movement of her body could have released the blockage. This would have then sent a spray of blood over whoever was near her at the time. In this case, the blood was close enough to Sean. There was also testimony about the size of the blood droplets.
An expert for the defense suggested that beating someone, like how Billy Joe was beaten, would likely produce blood droplets of varying sizes, but the blood spots on the clothes were almost identical in size. Before handing the case to the jury, Sean's daughters testified. They all said in the weeks leading up to Billy Joe's murder, they were concerned about prowlers and break-ins in the area.
One of Sean's daughters even testified that she believed the side gate may have been opened when they returned home and found the body. After a three-month retrial, the jury could not reach a unanimous decision. So a second retrial was scheduled for February 2006.
But like the first retrial, the jury in the second couldn't reach a verdict either. The jury simply couldn't decide on the blood evidence and how the blood ended up on Sean's clothes. After the failure of two juries to reach a verdict in the retrials, Sean Jenkins was officially acquitted by the Crown Prosecution Service.
Based on the failure of both retrials, the Crown Prosecution Service ruled that Sean could no longer be tried for Billy Joe's murder. He became the first person in British criminal history to be acquitted after being tried three times for the same crime. Today, the murder of Billy Joe remains opened and unsolved, but Sean's acquittal wasn't without its controversy.
Many people still believe that Sean was the man responsible, and a guilty man has been set free, while other people question the forensic evidence. Many are still troubled about how those 158 tiny drops of blood got on Sean's clothes. This case has sparked a massive debate about using blood spatter evidence in criminal trials in England.
It also has called into question its validity and credibility in criminal cases, especially in cases involving the most serious crimes like murder. Sean Jenkins was convicted primarily based on the blood spatter testimony presented at the first trial. But since then, experts have disagreed about how the blood could have gotten on his clothes.
And throughout the years, experts have never been able to definitively say whether Sean is guilty or not based on the blood evidence. After his acquittal, Sean Jenkins is considered a free man. Not long after Billy Joe's murder, he and Lois divorced. And since the trials, Sean has been in the process of rebuilding his entire life.
The murder of Billy Joe Jenkins remains unsolved. To share your thoughts on Billy Joe Jenkins' story, be sure to follow the show on Instagram and Facebook. To find out what I think about the case, sign up to become a patron at patreon.com slash forensic tales. After each episode, I release a bonus episode where I share my personal thoughts and opinions about the case.
You'll want to listen to this one because I'm going to share with you who I think killed Billy Joe. To check out photos from the case, head over to our website, ForensicTales.com. Don't forget to subscribe to the show so you don't miss an episode. We release a new episode every Monday. If you love the show, consider leaving us a positive rating with a review. You can also tell friends and family about us.
Thank you so much for joining me this week. Please join me next week. We'll have a brand new case and a brand new story to talk about. Until then, remember, not all stories have happy endings.
Forensic Tales is a Rockefeller Audio production. The show is written and produced by me, Courtney Fretwell-Ariola. For a small monthly contribution, you can help create new compelling cases for the show.
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If you'd like to become a producer of the show, head over to our Patreon page or send me an email, Courtney at ForensicTales.com to find out more. For a complete list of sources used in this episode, please visit ForensicTales.com. Thank you for listening. I'll see you next week. Until then, remember, not all stories have happy endings.
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