The Answering Machine Message: The Unsolved Murder of Jennifer Clemmings

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:10):
A beautiful and vivacious thirty two year old woman has
hit a sweet spot for success.

Speaker 2 (00:15):
In her life.

Speaker 1 (00:17):
She was a high ranking sales consultant for the beauty
company Mary Kay, even earning the famous pink Cadillac. But
one evening in two thousand and two, all of her
momentum would be halted when her life was snuffed out
by a violent sexual predator. When she realized she was
in danger, she heroically placed a covert phone call to

(00:39):
a friend, which was recorded on this friend's answering machine.
The recording is a chilling exchange between Jennifer and the
person most likely responsible for taking her life. Her friend
called for help immediately upon receiving the message, but it
was too late, and to this day, nobody has been
able to identify the evil voice in this message. Connections

(01:03):
to nearby cases in forensic advances give her family hope
that they too will get answers someday soon, and they
are not giving up. I'm your host, Megan, and each
week on a Simpler Time True Crime, I cover older
unsolved cases and challenge the idea that a simpler time
means a safer time. This week, I'm bringing to you

(01:25):
the unsolved murder of Jennifer Clemmings. Jennifer Clemings was born

(01:50):
in Jamaica on March first, nineteen seventy the baby of
the family with four older sisters. Her family moved to
the United States when she was.

Speaker 3 (02:00):
About ten years old.

Speaker 1 (02:01):
She graduated from New Buffalo High School in Michigan, where
she was a three sport athlete. She ran track, did cheerleading,
and played basketball. Jennifer stayed in Michigan for college, attending
Farris State University and earning a degree in international business.
But after that she wanted to change, and so she

(02:22):
moved to the Atlanta, Georgia area a couple of years later.
After she moved to Georgia, her mother and her sister,
Jackie followed suit. This was a great fit because Jennifer
was known to be the ultimate aunt to her sister
Jackie's children. According to an article in the Atlanta Constitution,
she'd even sometimes fill in for her sister if she

(02:43):
couldn't make it to school events. Jennifer was known for
being a social butterfly, and she was very driven. This
led her to the path of working in sales for
the Huge Direct Sales multi level marketing company mary Kay.
Mary Kay is like a name you're familiar with. It
has been in the MLM space since nineteen sixty three,

(03:05):
and it's a company where independent consultants sell makeup and
skincare products directly to customers. Money is made in a
couple of different ways. First by purchasing the products at
wholesale pricing to then resell for profit, and then also
by recruiting your own team of consultants, and by doing
that you earn bonuses and commissions on your team sales.

(03:28):
The more you advance in that, the more you rank,
as they referred to it in the direct sales world,
and different ranks give you different perks based off of
your individual in team stats and sales performance. At mary Kay,
one of the ultimate signs of success was and still is,
earning their pink Cadillac. And in two thousand and two,
when Jennifer was ranking in this way, that required someone

(03:51):
to have the title of at least sales director and
her team would have had to pull in ninety six
to one hundred thousand dollars in wholesale production over a.

Speaker 3 (03:59):
Six month peace.

Speaker 1 (04:01):
That doesn't mean they had to sell all of that
product to customers. It just means they needed to make
those wholesale purchases with hopefully the intent to sell to customers,
and orders had to be placed by the leads like
Jennifer and her consultants. It's also typical to have to
have a minimum amount of people on your team at
least twenty four, and Jennifer had a team of fifty

(04:22):
six and was considered a senior sales director. She had
qualified for the car three separate times and was definitely
in a more exclusive earnings category at the company. You're
probably wondering why I'm deep diving on this Mary Kay
business infrastructure so much with you and one, it's to
paint a picture of how successful she was relative to

(04:43):
the thousands of other consultants in the company and the
life that may have afforded her. But also the MLM
slash track sales model is not without its drawbacks. It's
come under fire before and we have no idea if
her job had anything to do with who she crossed
paths with, but just put a pin in it for now,
because it does come back later. Jennifer Clemmings hard work

(05:05):
and success had afforded her the ability to purchase a
home in Stone Mountain, Georgia in Decab County. The house
was located on Martin Road, a cute middle class subdivision.
The house was a great size for Jennifer, with plenty
of room for a woman living alone. It was a
three bedroom split level that was around thirteen hundred square feet.

(05:26):
It was on a lot big enough to have a
garden and a little privacy in her yard, but also
she was surrounded by neighbors. You would not feel isolated
at all on this property. In the months and days
leading up to her death, Jennifer was focused on giving
back to her community and starting new initiatives. Jennifer and
her best friend Alissa had been planning to form a

(05:48):
used clothing charity to help women who had faced abuse, homelessness,
and other disadvantages. They also wanted to branch out of
this and create a model to give advice on business
success and how to dress, how to do your makeup,
and other similar things to women, particularly brides about to
get married. And actually, just a couple of days before

(06:10):
her murder, Jennifer and Alissa had conducted their very first
workshop for a bridal party. It's just beautiful that Jennifer
did not just sit with her success. She was actively
trying to coach and mentor others to be successful like her,
and I just I do think that's a beautiful thing.
Jennifer's best friend Alissa described Jennifer to the Atlanta Constitution

(06:33):
as larger than life, and she said quote she could
get a Peprelli.

Speaker 3 (06:37):
Going at the supermarket.

Speaker 1 (06:40):
Jennifer was also known for signing her name as the
Jennifer Clemmings, which became a moniker. She was known by
within Mary Kay and those closest to her. Jennifer's sister
Jackie told the same paper that Jennifer used to jokingly
tell her and her sisters I'll pray for you when
they did something crazy, and would always give her a

(07:00):
big kiss on the cheek and refused to get off
the phone or leave in person unless they said I
love you to each other. She said, you couldn't be
around Jennifer and be in a bad mood. Jennifer took
her Christian faith seriously and it was intertwined into her
last conversation with Jackie. The morning of the murder, Jennifer

(07:21):
had called her sister Jackie from her car phone. Jackie
wasn't feeling well and Jennifer said to her, quote, girl,
let me pray for you. And so Jackie had Jennifer
pray for her over the phone, and little did she
know that would be the last conversation she would have
with her sister. In the early evening of January twenty seventh,

(07:41):
two thousand and three, Jennifer had a phone conversation with
her best friend Alissa and Alissa's husband, Rinardo. According to
the couple, they had a very regular conversation about life
and friends and family. As they were getting off the phone,
Jennifer didn't share any big plans for the evening. She
certainly didn't discuss having anybody over, and that's something Ronardo said.

(08:04):
She would have told them that was just her disposition
and her communication style, and it would have gone along
with what they were already talking about. Shortly after getting
off of the phone with Jennifer, Alissa and Rinardo got
on their computer where they had dial up Internet. For
my younger listeners, dial up internet worked through your landline phone.

(08:24):
You would connect your computer to a modem which would
dial your internet provider, just like making a phone call.
While you were online. The phone line was completely tied up,
so if someone picked up the phone, you'd hear this
awful screeching noise that I can still hear in my head,
or you'd get disconnected entirely. You couldn't use the phone
and internet at the same time unless you had a

(08:47):
second line. In some instances, a call coming through might
kick you off the Internet. I know that's something I
used to experience. And in this case, the timing and
circumstances worked out in a way such that Alissa and
Ronardo were on the computer and a phone call was
not able to ring and come through, but a voice
message was left on their answering machine. When they noticed

(09:10):
it a short while later. They estimated this timeline to
be no more than thirty minutes. They played it and
were disturbed by what they heard. It was their best friend,
Jennifer Clemings, and she seemed to be secretly recording an
intense exchange between herself and a man in her home.
I'll get into more of what was said in a minute,

(09:32):
but when Alyssa and Rinardo hear this exchange, they immediately
call nine one one and they rush over to her house.
Lieutenant Rod Bryant was a rookie detective at the time
and he's actually been part of this investigative team for
Jennifer Clemmings since the beginning. He stated that when you
walked into the first floor of Jennifer's home, everything was

(09:53):
orderly and undisturbed. Her purse was sitting on a chair
in the living room, her kitchen was all cleaned up with.

Speaker 3 (10:00):
Dishes put away.

Speaker 1 (10:02):
But as responders made their way up the stairs, the
first signs of trouble appeared, bloody streaks on the wall
and on the light switches, and then walking into Jennifer's room,
they stumbled into a nightmare. Jennifer was bound, covered in
blood and stab wounds, and it was clear to those
first responders that they were already too late. Just as

(10:35):
a quick heads up, this next part is where I'll
discuss a bit more about the graphic nature of how
she was found. And I also just want to take
a moment to acknowledge how painful this must be for
Alissa and Rinardo. They are not at fault here at all,
but they've had to carry this burden with them of
not being able to pick up the phone when she called.

(10:56):
My heart just breaks for them, and I'm sending them love,
not only for that guilt that they carry, but the
trauma of having to hear this message in real time.
According to Lieutenant Rod Bryant, Jennifer was stabbed multiple times,
her feet were bound, and her shirt was still on
but somewhat pressed up. In one of the crime scene photos,

(11:18):
it appears that her shirt even tucks up in a
way around her bra because of the angle the knife
had stabbed her. So it's just this bunched up appearance.
I couldn't find any specifics in the source material if
the bottom half of her clothing had been removed from
the waist down, but Lieutenant Bryant did say that she
had been sexually assaulted, so that does steer me in

(11:39):
that direction. He also said that they were unable to
recover any DNA related to.

Speaker 3 (11:45):
That sexual assault.

Speaker 1 (11:49):
The murder weapon was a bunch of different knives from
Jennifer's own kitchen, And this is where it gets bizarre.
She didn't have the fanciest set of knives. Whoever did
this to her broke the knives in the process of
stabbing her. And each time the killer broke a knife,
he must have returned back downstairs to retrieve another one
and use that, And he kept grabbing the same knives.

(12:12):
He kept grabbing the smaller steak knives versus getting a
bigger knife, and then when he would break the knives,
he sort of stacked them in a way that investigators
would refer to as a signature behavior, the type of
behavior you might see repeated by a serial offender. He
had stabbed Jennifer through her blouse and put those knives,

(12:35):
just laid them on her. To conceptualize how this crime
took place and who might have been the perpetrator, we
have to revisit that voice message left on the answering machine.
There's no publicly available recording of the voice message for
me to be able to insert parts of it into
this episode, and to be honest, I don't know that

(12:57):
I would even.

Speaker 3 (12:57):
If it was available.

Speaker 1 (13:00):
You can listen to parts of it on the Oxygen
channels DNA of Murder with Paul Holes, Season one, episode seven,
there's something really ethically blurry I feel like about including
audio of someone's last moments, and I'm never about sharing
those types of things unless there is.

Speaker 3 (13:16):
A very clear purpose.

Speaker 1 (13:17):
And there's two I could think of. One to determine
what Jennifer was conveying and how that might lead us
to information about what happened and who killed her. And two,
if this gave any information about who her killer was,
could someone recognize his voice? Did he have a distinct
way of speaking? And I will say the DNA of

(13:39):
Murder episode did use the audio for that purpose, and
they had some great takeaways that I'll share. But even
in that episode, it's very hard to understand without it
being subtitled. And so given the fact that there isn't
a publicly available SoundBite and it's hard to understand, I'll
give the best description in transcript that I can. Even

(14:01):
though the DNA of Murder episode and a couple of
other news sources share it, there's nothing that has just
a single uninterrupted audio of it from start to finish.

Speaker 3 (14:11):
So just be aware this is going to be kind
of in bits and pieces.

Speaker 1 (14:16):
The voice message starts out with the sound of her
phone dropping on the floor, and it cuts into a
man speaking saying something along the lines of I want
my money. Though that piece is a little muffled, you
can hear something about money and then she says okay,
very much like that, and you can hear him say
I take my money. Why are you playing me, and

(14:37):
she says, I'm not playing you, and he says get
on the floor, and then she very.

Speaker 3 (14:43):
Quickly says, I done told you.

Speaker 1 (14:45):
I forgot I apologize, and then he repeats get down
on the floor. At this point, her demeanor is very
much that of trying to talk down an angry person.
You can still hear the fear in her voice, but
she is trying to remain calm in reason with her.
At another point, you even hear her validate him you
want your money, and she's kind of giving that impression

(15:07):
that I'll give him his money and this will get
cleared up and he can leave. But around this time
things start to escalate. The man says, just get down
on the floor. I'm not gonna hurt you. I'm gonna
teach you a little something, and she says okay, okay,
and he says, just sit down and do what I
asked you and you won't get hurt. And that's when
she starts to get into talking about his money. She says,

(15:29):
do you want your money? And he says, just get
on the floor. I won't hurt you, and she says,
do you want your money? And then he gets angry
and says do you think it's a game and she says, no,
I don't think it's a game, and he says, sit
down like I asked you, And then from there his
tone shifts even further. It gets very icy, and he says,
lay down on the floor.

Speaker 3 (15:50):
You want me to hurt you.

Speaker 1 (15:51):
You cannot fight, And Jennifer tries one more time to
get his attention to snap him out of whatever mode
he's in, and she says, listen, listen to me, and
the offender says, no, you're going to listen to me,
and then he asks feel close to death, and she
starts to get a more panicked tone and says, why.

Speaker 3 (16:12):
Are you doing this?

Speaker 1 (16:14):
Then towards the very end of the recording, he gets
into clearly what's about to be the sexual assault. He
implies that he's going to assault her, and he says,
don't fuss, okay, and then he says, put your hands
behind your back, And this is kind of the moment
that the one moment she really does try to defy
him verbally. She says, I'm going to leave them, and
then he quickly says, do what I asked, Do what

(16:36):
I say, and she says okay, and he says, put
your hands behind your back, do what I said, and
you don't get hurt.

Speaker 3 (16:43):
And she says okay, and then.

Speaker 1 (16:45):
He says, I'll stick my kin you is what I'll do.

Speaker 3 (16:49):
Then you owe me.

Speaker 1 (16:52):
The message ends shortly after this, with mainly just the
sound of her praying, which is heartbreaking. There's one other
little clip I heard, but I'm not sure where within
the message it occurred, but you hear kind of this
little whisper like sound out of her, and you can't
make it out at all, and then you hear him
saying something along the lines of what's all that talking?

(17:14):
And so police had a thought that maybe she had
tried to whisper her killer's name. They sent it out
to the FBI to evaluate. They actually also sent it
over to the forensic tech team at Georgia Tech, and
nobody could make out a name or anything she said.

Speaker 3 (17:30):
So this was completely a dead end.

Speaker 1 (17:34):
But going back to the voice message, there is a
lot to unpack with it. First, let's talk about why
she called her friends in the first place, and why
not nine one one.

Speaker 3 (17:42):
And how this all transpired.

Speaker 1 (17:45):
So Jennifer's house had no signs of force entry. If
you listen to my podcast regularly. You know, a soapbox
belief of mine is that having no sign of forced
entry does not automatically equate to knowing the person, despite
that always being the reflex takeaway. There are a million
reasons why someone might open the door for someone and
then that's all it takes. Because if a person then

(18:07):
rushes the door open, brandishes a weapon, tricks their way in,
they've now made entry into the house with no sign
of tampering with a lock or kicking in a door
or breaking a window. But in this case, because of
how the exchange goes that we hear later, we do
get this sense in this case that she at least
knows this person in some capacity. We know that the

(18:29):
downstairs area is pretty pristine and so it doesn't appear
that a struggle took place here. But then she heads
up to the bedroom and this is where the conversation
took place at the time Jennifer began calling her friends
and where the sexual assault and murder would take place.
So why her friends in not nine one one? Well,
for my listeners who remember having a portable landline phone,

(18:52):
there was a button on it that was a redoll
button rather than having to hit multiple buttons and key
in someone's full phone number, or even dial nine to
one one. You could push one button and it would
just call the last person you talked to. Presumably, Jennifer
may have sensed that whatever interaction was happening when he
first made entry into the ground floor was not going

(19:12):
well and she was uncomfortable. Maybe she went upstairs to
get money out of her bedroom and get the phone,
and then he, in the meantime, has grabbed the knife
from the kitchen and brandished it, and in calling her friends,
she's hoping to alert them to what is happening so
she could get help. In that quick moment from him
getting that knife and brandishing it, that's when the call

(19:33):
goes through to their answering machine, and you can hear
her drop the phone and immediately shift into her de
escalation language. I can say now in listening to it
several times, she definitely starts in that calmer, de escalation mode,
and by the end you can tell she realizes she's
in a lot more trouble than she first thought. Law
enforcement has had several experts weigh in on this recording,

(19:55):
and they have analyzed it forensically for years. On the
episode of DNA of Murder with Paul Holes, he has
a forensic linguist named doctor Betsy Barry Waite in and
listen and analyze this voice recording to figure out what
linguistic clues she can obtain and going into it. He
doesn't give her any information about the crime or the circumstances,

(20:17):
and she has some really interesting observations. She discussed how
he doesn't say give me your money. He repeatedly calls
it his money, and Jennifer also refers to it as
his money. Paul Holes talked about how this sort of
does imply that sometime prior to this there was some
sort of financial exchange between these two, because if he

(20:37):
was ranting and she didn't owe him any money, she
might say something like I can get you some money,
or I have my money, or something like that, but
she keeps calling it his money.

Speaker 3 (20:47):
I tend to agree with that.

Speaker 1 (20:48):
But I think it's also worth noting that she was
saying it in a way that was validating him, kind
of like I hear you you want your money, which
is a pretty common de escalation technique and doesn't necessarily
mean she was involved in this narrative.

Speaker 3 (21:02):
It could just mean she's playing along with his.

Speaker 1 (21:04):
Reality as a self preservation technique, and we know that
Jennifer is a highly extroverted people person who is skilled
in all things interpersonal. Doctor Barry also pointed out how
he said why are you playing me, which is telling
because he's sort of placing himself as the victim of
the situation when he's clearly in a position of power.

(21:26):
In this current dynamic, she's the victim here. Another part
Doctor Barry honed in on was his repeated use of
if you do X y Z, you won't get hurt
or I'm not going to hurt you, And we see
that a lot because he's intentionally minimizing the risk and
his action so that he increases his chances that she complies.

(21:47):
In the beginning of the exchange, it's all about I
just want my money, and then as it becomes clear
he intends to rape her, he minimizes that and treats
it as that's all I want and implies it's just
sort of this transactional exchange and that after that she
will be safe. But of course we know that's not
how it goes. We know that he was lying and
that ultimately he was there to sexually assault and kill her.

(22:11):
Paul Hols shared in the episode that this is a
common tactic for people to gain entry or control in
this situation where they intend to sexually assault or kill
the victim, and they gain that control by focusing on
it being a robbery or something else, because that lets
the guard down of the person and makes them think,
if I just cooperate, then this person will let me go.

Speaker 3 (22:32):
They're here for this other reason.

Speaker 1 (22:34):
And that gets the person to comply, and then it's
easier to go about doing which you actually came there
to do. Doctor Barry ultimately believes that the man on
the recording was an African American man between the ages
of eighteen to forty five, and that he was from
the South. You can almost hear a bit of a
regional dialect in there, but she and the lead investigator
just sort of generalize it as a Southern man. In

(22:56):
the end, the consensus was that this was a financial
transaction and that that piece may have been used as
a ruse to gain entry for discussion, but that ultimately
the money was very, very secondary to the primary motive
of sexual assault. One final and maybe one of the
most chilling conclusions Doctor Barry had from the recording was

(23:18):
that she felt the phrases the suspect used team they
seem scripted and part of a game he was playing,
and that he was having her play his game by
his rules, and that he.

Speaker 3 (23:29):
Had used the script before.

Speaker 1 (23:32):
A little later in the episode, I'll discuss some cases
that could be connected to Jennifer's, but first let's take
what we know about the crime so far and see
who in Jennifer's circle may be connected. Jennifer's friends and

(23:55):
family couldn't think of anybody who would want to hurt her.
She was one of those people who had an infectious spirit.
She dated, but not a ton according to what investigators
found out, and she was really just focused on her business.
So then they had to look into who might she
have had a financial transaction with. As it turns out,
Jennifer did hire day labor sometimes for projects in or

(24:18):
around her house.

Speaker 3 (24:20):
She would hire people from her church. I guess her
church sort of kept a.

Speaker 1 (24:24):
Bunch of names on hand of people who were looking
for work, and she would also take people from places
like home depot. This felt like a really viable lead
to investigators because maybe Jennifer was supposed to pay somebody
for work she had done. So police tracked some of
these people down, but none of them panned out as suspects.
They can't rule that out completely, but so far that

(24:46):
has not produced any names. And when they played the
audio file too friends and family and people in her
church and people around and said, does this name sound
like anybody familiar to you? Nobody recognized the voice. When
Jennifer's best friends Alyssa and Rinardo were interviewed, Ronardo talked
about the MLM slash direct sales model of Jennifer's business.

(25:10):
I shared earlier that in order to maintain your rank
and its attached commissions, you needed to have you in
your downline purchase a certain amount of wholesale inventory. And
Rinardo speculated that maybe she had borrowed money from someone
to buy bulk inventory to hit a threshold needed for
her business. And when asked, would she have told you
guys about that, Ronardo said, Uh, not me, because I

(25:33):
would have told her that all of that was a
bad idea and she knew I didn't support that. But
Alsa said she may have mentioned it to her and
she hadn't, so if this was the scenario, she was
definitely keeping it a secret. They were asked, did she
have people in her life she could have gone to
you to ask for money and say, it's not even
to do with Mary Kay or her business. Maybe she
just did have a different financial need she needed money

(25:54):
for something. And the answer is yes, she did date
people with a lot of money. They even talked about
a guy and they weren't clear if she dated him
or not, but definitely hung around with them, and he
had a yellow Lamborghini, which you don't see every day.
This is all just speculation about who she may have
had a financial transaction with. We have no idea if
she was struggling to maintain things with her business. We

(26:15):
don't know, if she had another expense in her life
we don't know about. It's just a possibility to explore.
One thing I think is worth noting is that in
that voice exchange, Jennifer implies that she would get him
his money, and that's almost as if she had it
on hand, and so that leads me to believe that
this was not some huge amount of money. People don't

(26:36):
typically have thousands of dollars just sitting around their house,
So maybe a couple hundred at most, if not something
as minimal as twenty thirty bucks.

Speaker 3 (26:44):
Maybe she was.

Speaker 2 (26:44):
Out one night.

Speaker 1 (26:45):
I mean, we know she was single and social, so
maybe she's out one night and.

Speaker 3 (26:49):
Can't find her card or cash or something, and.

Speaker 1 (26:51):
A man she meets picks up the tab and says,
don't worry about it, you can just pay me back.

Speaker 3 (26:56):
That could be a bar tab for all.

Speaker 1 (26:57):
We know, and that's what's constituting this exchange. Of course,
I'm just using that as an example. There's no evidence
that this specific exchange happened, but it's something that could have.

(27:18):
Taking this break to quickly say thank you so much
for listening to this week's episode so far, don't forget
to leave the show a five star review wherever you
get your podcasts, and follow me on social media, especially Instagram,
where I post about each episode with pictures to tie
it all together and give information about the new projects
I'm working on. All of your support helps me reach
new audiences, and don't forget. If you have case suggestions,

(27:41):
please email them to me at Simpler Timecrimepod at gmail
dot com. Now back to the show. As investigators were
working the case early on, they couldn't help, but be
drawn to a nearby case that happened just six weeks

(28:02):
earlier in December of two thousand and two, and that
was the murder of Tamika Taylor. Tamika was just twenty
seven years old and also super career oriented. She was
a rising star in the mortgage banking world in Atlanta
and had just purchased a beautiful home in Lithonia, Georgia.
Tamika was very security conscious. She had installed an alarm

(28:26):
on her house that she kept armed at all times
because she lived alone, she was dating a lot. She
was single and successful and just enjoying herself, and she
held a high standard for men she would consider dating.
They had to be financially independent and responsible. She even
wanted them to have a credit score of over seven hundred.
Tamika was tall, so she liked a taller.

Speaker 3 (28:48):
Man, a bigger man, someone that was taller than her.

Speaker 1 (28:50):
So she definitely had a type, and she wanted men
that had aligned aspirations and goals with her. Because of
Tamika being very successful in social she ran with an
elite crowd in Atlanta, and she was often in the
company of professional athletes and local celebrities On December fifth,
two thousand and two, Tamika was supposed to attend a

(29:13):
party for a well known radio personality in the area.
Her alarm system in financial records showed that she left
her house that day after lunch and did some shopping.

Speaker 2 (29:23):
She went to.

Speaker 1 (29:23):
Victoria's Secret a little after three pm and made a purchase,
and then she came back home. She called the party
host at around five pm to ask if she could
bring a guest, which he said was okay, and then
less than an hour later, Tamika's security system was disarmed.
Tamika never made it to the party that night. The
following morning, she was found dead inside her home. There

(29:47):
were no signs of force entry, and records showed that
her alarm system had been disarmed the evening before and
never reset. Inside her bedroom, Tamika was found bound and nude.
She had been dabbed dozens of times, including wounds to
her face, in an attack so brutal it stunned investigators.
The weapon was a knife taken from her own kitchen.

(30:11):
Evidence that the scene also confirmed that she had been
sexually assaulted. The crime scene was bizarre and disturbing. Like Jennifer's,
there was blood everywhere. There were two red plastic cups
on either side of the bed. On the side you
may presume was Timika's typical side to sleep on, the
cup was still there, and the reason I say it

(30:32):
was probably her side is because it had a charging
block and alarm clock, lots of miscellaneous items that led
me to believe it was her nightstand. The other one
was mostly empty, and the red cup that had likely
been sitting on it was knocked over next to it.
Next to that cup was laundry detergent, and it seemed
like the killer had brought this upstairs to try to clean.

Speaker 2 (30:53):
Up with it.

Speaker 1 (30:54):
On the bed was a used condom right out in
plain sight.

Speaker 3 (30:59):
And then in her.

Speaker 1 (30:59):
Sock drawer there was a blood soaked sock and police
wondered if the perpetrator used this sock like a glove.
There were other spots in the room, such as a
pile of papers on the floor that looked like they
had been touched, but they had blood stains on them
that looked like the stain could have been made from
someone wearing something over their hands. Also, just of note,

(31:20):
this is never talked about in any of the source material,
but when I was looking at the crime scene photos.
There's also seeming like two cups on her actual dresser
as well, the same dresser that had the bloodstained sock
in it, But rather than them being red solo cups
which were what were found on her nightstand, these were
like drink.

Speaker 3 (31:39):
Glasses, so looked like they still.

Speaker 1 (31:42):
Had some sort of maybe like alcoholic beverage with coke.
It just kind of looked like alcoholic drink beverages. So
I don't know what came of those, but they were
in the picture. Analyzing that crime scene, authorities noticed the
two cups and the used condom and wondered had she
had someone over mantically who they had consensual sex. Maybe

(32:03):
this was the person she was intending to bring to
the party that night, and then that person turned on
her and brutally murdered her. With odd about that is
that the killer tried to clean up some evidence, So
why would they clean up that evidence but leave a
condom with their DNA on it out in plane view.
This made investigators consider that maybe she had a consensual

(32:25):
sexual partner earlier in that day, that the condom wasn't
from the killer, and that the killer and the consensual
sex partner were not one and the same. In that scenario,
she could have even had an overnight guest the night before,
had sex that morning, did those errands came home and
then let her killer in that evening. That theory is
further solidified by the fact that the DNA profile was

(32:47):
loaded into codis and it didn't get any hits. So
either the person who had sex with her and used
that condom is not a killer and just a sex partner,
or it is the killer, but they never committed a crime.

Speaker 3 (32:59):
They were caught four before or after that.

Speaker 1 (33:02):
But if it was just an innocent sex partner, that
person has never come forward to explain to authorities that
they were with her earlier that day, and whoever her
guest was going to be for the party that night
never came forward either. Despite Tamika's case having physical evidence,
no suspects were identified and the case went cold. So

(33:24):
let's compare the case to Jennifer's. Both women were young, beautiful,
and successful black professionals. Tamika was twenty seven and Jennifer
was thirty two. They were single, had no children, and
were deeply career driven, moving in elite professional circles. While
investigators have never found any direct overlap between them personally

(33:47):
or professionally. The similarities in their lives and deaths are striking.
Both lived alone in single family homes just a few
miles apart and were murdered just six weeks apart. Both
were sexual assaulted and brutally stabbed in the early evening hours,
and in both cases the killer used knives taken from
their own kitchens, indicating the attacker came unarmed and likely

(34:10):
planned to use what was available inside the home. But
despite all of this, the lead investigator, Lieutenant Rod Bryant,
has gone back and forth on if the two cases
are connected or not. He has acknowledged the nearly identical
methodologies and victim profiles, but has also said he thinks
they are looking for two separate killers, and he can't

(34:31):
fully give away why he thinks that. But I know
he has access to way more information than I do,
so the jury is still out.

Speaker 2 (34:39):
On that one.

Speaker 1 (34:50):
For the last part of this episode, I want to
take some time to discuss one potential suspect whose name
came up after he was arrested for a series of
gruesome crimes in a few years after the murder of
Jennifer and Tamika. The man's name is Charles Lendel Carter.
He was a divorced man in his forties who worked

(35:11):
as a chef in many local establishments. He was tall,
well over six feet tall and over two hundred and
fifty pounds, and he seemed to have sort of a
Jacqueline Hyde type personality. One of his ex girlfriends described
to him as very loving and nurturing and not a
mean bone in his body, and another talked about him
having a dark side.

Speaker 3 (35:32):
He dated a lot and was.

Speaker 1 (35:34):
Very much out in the club and bar scene and
would pick up and date many different women, some who
he'd get very obsessed with and didn't take well to
being broken up with. Behind what people saw of Charles
Carter on the surface, he was committing horrible crimes without
people knowing, and his undoing would be the death of
forty year old Lisa Rosenthal in two thousand and six.

(35:58):
Lisa had moved to the Alfa rad of Georgia area
after leaving her marriage in Long Island, and she had
relocated with her boys. Her eleven year old son returned
home from school one day and found his mother horrifically
murdered just inside the doorway. She had been stabbed multiple times,
including in her face. A couple of days after the murder,

(36:19):
the boys were taken back through the town home to
see if they noticed anything of theirs or their mothers
that was missing, and they didn't see anything in the
main parts of the home, but when they got to
their bedrooms they said, actually yes, they noticed that their
gaming consoles were missing, along with some of their Nintendo
games for their GameCube and their Aceventura Pet Detective DVD.

Speaker 3 (36:44):
In interviewing those.

Speaker 1 (36:45):
Closest to Lisa, they spoke to the family and then
a really close friend of hers, and they were trying
to get a sense of what men may have known Lisa,
including romantic partners of the friends. They wanted to see
who might have that familiarity with Lisa where she'd opened
the door for them, and this friend dropped a bombshell.
She had recently broken up with her boyfriend, and by she,

(37:06):
I mean the friend broke up with her boyfriend, not Lisa.
Her boyfriend's name was Charles Carter, and she broke up
with him because he had stolen her young son's gaming
console and video games. With this knowledge, cops went to pawnshops,
and wouldn't you know Charles Carter had pawned games and DVDs,
including ace Ventura Pet Detective, and he had signed the

(37:30):
receipts with his name. Just two weeks after Lisa's murder.
The items were still at the pawn shop and they
had Carter's fingerprint on them. Carter was arrested and interrogated,
and police presented a mountain of evidence they had against him.
Still he wouldn't confess in the interrogation room, but on
the way to the county jail, Carter began bearing his

(37:52):
soul to the driving police officer, who pushed record on
a device in the front seat. He started to say
that nobody he had any idea what it was like
to be in his head, how he lived in fear
of himself all the time, living with his mother, scared
he was going to lose control and murder his own mother.
And then he said, I did horrible, horrible things. I

(38:13):
might be some type of sick, mother effing serial killer.
This was a shock. Police realized he had not only
committed this crime, he was responsible for others. And when
they submitted his DNA and DA codis, they got two
more hits, first for the two thousand and five murder

(38:34):
of Angela Thayer Green. Angela was a mother of six
who was sexually assaulted and strangled while her kids were
outside of the home. Carter had previously dated someone in
Angela's social circle and had familiar with her home, its layout,
and her schedule. She lived in Norcross, Georgia, which is
the same town Carter resided in at that time. He

(38:58):
was then connected to the two one thousand and four
murder of a prel Allen. A prel and Carter had
previously dated very casually, and he said he used to
take her out dancing to Jamaican clubs. A pre was
found stabbed to death in her town home. Carter received
three life sentences for all these crimes and is currently
still incarcerated and will be for the rest of his life.

(39:21):
But authorities wondered could these be connected to Jennifer and
or Tamika's cases. Of the three confirmed Carter victims, two
were black and one was white. Two were stabbed, and
I'm unclear if it was knives found within the home
or not that could be important. One was strangled. These

(39:42):
three women were working class women. They didn't necessarily run
in the same types of social circles that Jennifer or
Tamika did, and they were also all mothers whose children
were not at the home at the time of the crimes.
They also all occurred in apartment or town home buildings
with connected units. Jennifer and Tamika did not have children,

(40:02):
and they lived in standalone, single family homes, both in
busy subdivisions. When we look at Tamika's case, Carter wouldn't
fit the profile of a man who would meet her
dating criteria. He was in and out of employment in
the restaurant industry and lived with his mother in a
long term stay hotel. He was pawning things to get by,

(40:23):
so if he was responsible for Tamika's death, he would
have had to shown up with a ruse. In coming
back to the whole known to the victim part, Carter
knew all three of his verified victims, so we'd have
to figure out if he was involved with Tamika or
Jennifer's case, how did he know them? And there is
a thought on that Jennifer's sister told Paul Holes on

(40:46):
the show DNA of Murder that Jennifer used to go
to Jamaican clubs sometimes. Remember she's from Jamaica originally, and
Charles Carter talked about going and taking a prel allen
to Jamaican clubs, So did she encounter him there? Going
back to my little scenario I talked about earlier, what
if she had a small fling with Carter or danced
with him a few nights at the club, he picked

(41:08):
up the tab and that constituted to him what she
owed him. She wouldn't necessarily be afraid to open the
door to him, and it would be a small enough
amount of money that if he led with that, she
probably would have that amount of money on hand at
her home. But having him show up randomly may have
gotten her intuition piqued enough that she hit the redell
button on her phone. We don't know, It's just a

(41:30):
possible scenario. What we do know is that the Paul
Holes Show aired in twenty twenty, and I should just
clarify this far into the episode while we're at it,
that Paul Holes is a former cold case investigator who
gained fame working the Golden State killer case, and so
in this TV show he would work with cold case
detectives to help reevaluate their evidence from older cases to

(41:52):
see what they might have to work with now with
present day DNA advancements. In the case of Jennifer Clemmings,
originally remember there was no DNA from the sexual assault,
but police had preserved evidence of her shirt in the knives,
and Paul thought, given that these were cheap knives in
that they were breaking during the assault, maybe the killer
cut himself in the process and there could be traced

(42:15):
DNA evidence on those knives. In addition, maybe there was
some significant forensic evidence on her blouse. So that was
sent for DNA testing, and at the end of the
episode it was revealed that it did produce a DNA
profile that was suitable for direct comparison DNA testing. In
Tamika's case, they also had some success because they wanted

(42:37):
to pivot away from the condom that wasn't producing these suspects,
and that likely wouldn't hold up in court even if
they found someone, because the defense could just say, yeah,
they had consensual sex. That's why there was a condom
and that's why it was left out. But it's kind
of hard to talk your way out of DNA being
on the inside of this bloody sock, so they tested
that and they did find a very low level male

(43:00):
profile that is suitable again for direct comparison DNA testing.
And then they further said at the end of the
episode that Dacab County was looking to compare Carter's DNA
to the DNA profiles they had for the evidence found
at the women's crime scenes. That sounded promising, but here
we are in twenty twenty five and there's been no

(43:22):
information on a hit. So I've got to believe that
in doing the direct comparison it wasn't Carter, but they
also haven't come right out and said that, so I
don't know for sure. On one hand, it's exciting that
they have a direct comparison. Now I do wonder if
they've been able to compare the two profiles and link
or onlink Jennifer and Tamika's cases conclusively. But while there's hope,

(43:46):
there is one drawback. By the sounds of it, the
samples these cases have are small and only suitable for
what's called short random repeat testing or STR testing. And
bear with me because I'm not an expert, but with
STR tests this uses a very small portion of the
DNA typically thirteen to twenty specific markers.

Speaker 3 (44:06):
For the FBIS coded system.

Speaker 1 (44:08):
They have it expanded out to twenty now, and it's
useful for matching to a known suspect, just that direct
comparison like a direct relative, or to search law enforcement databases.
But unfortunately it would not be viable for genetic or
forensic genealogy because that uses SNP profiling. SMP stands for

(44:28):
single nucleotide polymorphisms and that analyzes hundreds of thousands of
smps across the genome. That's what companies like jed match
or family Tree DNA used to build family trees and
identify distant relatives. In order to do that type of testing,
at least right now in twenty twenty five, you need
a large, robust DNA sample, So right now it doesn't

(44:52):
appear that that's an option, But we know technology changes constantly,
and we may just be weeks, months, or any short
amount pea away from having a way to further test
the DNA that they do have. But in the meantime,
that's where things stand. Investigators believe it's possible that whoever
killed Jennifer told somebody about the crime. I know I've

(45:14):
mentioned in another episode Sometimes partners will come forward years later,
one who they might have been in a relationship with
the suspect at the time and they've said, yeah, we
got in a fight and he said I'll kill you
like I did so and so, and either they didn't
take it seriously at the time or they were too afraid.
It's possible that Jennifer Clemmings murderer has been violent in
their relationships, and that's not the only option. It's possible

(45:36):
that Jennifer's killer fled the Atlanta area after the crime.
Maybe there's an unsolved case in your state or area
that sounds a lot like this case. Turn that lead
over to investigators. They are very motivated to solve this crime,
not only Jennifer's but also Timikas, whether or not they're related.
And the great thing is there is hope because if

(45:57):
they have a viable suspect, they can do that direct comparison.
So if you have any information on the murders of
Jennifer Clemmings or to Meeka Taylor, please contact the GBI
tip line at one eight hundred five nine seven eight
four seven seven. If you're not a phone call person,
you can also submit tips through their website. Just log

(46:17):
on and type in GBI dot GA dot gov and
as soon as you start to scroll down, you'll see
where you can click the online tip form. Jennifer's family
is still trying desperately to find her killer. Her loved
ones have an Instagram page and her honor, which I'll
link on my Instagram page. I wanted to just do
what I could to put the information out there in

(46:39):
front of a new audience and make sure her case
was heard by new people. So please share this episode
and her case. Jennifer Clemmings was a beautiful, driven woman
who brought joy to those around her. Her loved ones
deserve the truth and the closure that's been denied to
them for far too long. This has been another episode

(47:02):
of a simpler time true crime. If you appreciate the
work I'm doing, please leave a five star review wherever
you listen to podcasts. Word of mouth helps me tremendously
as well, so go ahead and tell your friend or
your nail lady, or the person at the DMV or
the person at the grocery store check out line. But seriously,
as always, thank you so much for listening, and I'll

(47:22):
be back next Monday with another episode

All Episodes

Episode Transcript

Popular Podcasts

CrimeLess: Hillbilly Heist

Crime Junkie

Stuff You Should Know

.css-15opob5{left:0;position:absolute;top:0.8rem;} All Episodes

.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}The Answering Machine Message: The Unsolved Murder of Jennifer Clemmings

Episode Transcript

Popular Podcasts

.css-r6mb8g{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:1;overflow:hidden;}CrimeLess: Hillbilly Heist

Crime Junkie

Stuff You Should Know

All Episodes

The Answering Machine Message: The Unsolved Murder of Jennifer Clemmings

CrimeLess: Hillbilly Heist