The Murders of Britney, Tatianna, N’Kiah, and Aja
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And welcome back to Sisters Who Kill. All right, you guys, you already see the title. This one is a huge trigger warning. This one has to do with the torture and death of minors, as well as some very graphic details. So proceed listening to this episode with caution. 20% of our audience just turned it off. No, wait, please come back.

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kill for 30% off and free shipping microdose.com promo code kill our players this week are Brittany Marie Jacks Benita's oldest daughter and our victim Tatiana Jacks Benita's second oldest daughter and our victim Nakia Fogle Benita's second youngest daughter our victim Asia Fogle Benita's youngest daughter our victim

Nathaniel Fogle Jr., Bonita's boyfriend and Asia Nakia's father, and Bonita Jacks, our murderess. Bonita Jacks was born in 1974 in Merlin to her mother, Mammy Jacks. Come on, Merlin. That's how they say it, Merlin. That is how they say it. That is how they say it. I know it is.

As a little girl, Bonita went to school in Charles County, Maryland. And she struggled in school and she wasn't able to learn as quickly or pick up on concepts as well as the other kids in her grade. Now, she told some people that she dropped out of school after the sixth grade, but her mom actually confirmed later that she dropped out of school in the 10th grade because at 17, she found out that she was pregnant with her first child, Brittany Marie Jacks.

Brittany was born on January 5th, 1991. And two months after Brittany was born, that's when Benita decided that she was going to drop out of school. What was difficult to Benita about Brittany's coming into the world was that she didn't know who the dad was.

First, she filed a petition against this man in 1995 saying he was Britney's father. And that petition went unsettled for quite a few years. The following year, Benita had her second baby, Tatiana. And Tatiana was born on October 9th, 1996. And in 97, she filed a petition against this man named Kevin J. Stoddard from College Park, Maryland, saying that you are my baby's father.

He goes to court. They get the paternity test. Turns out he is her child's father, and he is ordered to pay $342 in child support every month.

Boom. Seems like this was a really easy fix. He even told the judge that he is fully prepared to financially support her and his daughter. And it seemed like it was great. But soon after their court date, he never started making child support payments and he pretty much ghosted her. Now, meanwhile, Benita is still trying to figure out who is Brittany's daddy.

OK, she was told by the court that she had to submit some of Britney's DNA samples so that, you know, they could test and see if this man is actually her baby's father. Turns out she never turned in the DNA samples. So then she got arrested. She had to stay in jail for two days. I heard some places three days, but she had to go to jail for a couple of days so that they could collect the DNA samples.

from Brittany and then they finally let her go. The DNA test proved that the man that she claimed was Brittany's father was not Brittany's father. Now here Benita is it's her it's her two daughters it's

She's supposed to be getting child support for one kid. She's not. She needs money and she doesn't have a high school education. So what does she do? She decides she's going to go to cosmetology school. So in 2000, Benita enrolls into Aaron Academy of Beauty in Waldorf, Maryland. Now, she's a student there. And, you know, when you go to the beauty schools, you can get your hair done for really cheap. So she was starting to get a little clientele. The director of the program said that she really had a nice touch when it came to doing the girls hair.

hair and makeup and cuts and color and all that wonderful thing. So she was really looking forward to getting her license. Now, the next year, 2001, she finally finds out who her baby daddy is for Britney. She was able to file another court hearing. Britney is now 10 years old and

And here is Norman C. Penn Jr. He's like, okay, the DNA test proves that 99.9% that this is my kid. All right, I'm ready to take on this 10-year-old. And he's ordered to pay $388 a month in child support. He also never started making the child support payments. So you got two baby daddies that you went through the court system for, and now one of them even started paying their child support. That is pathetic. Sound about right.

While she's working at the hair school and she's really good on her feet, this man started coming in and getting his hair corn rolled by her. And he was really cute and she was really liking him. And his name was Nathaniel Foggle Jr. Nathaniel Foggle Jr. was born on March 16th, 1969 to his mother, Jessie Foggle and Nathaniel Foggle Sr. Now, she was braiding his hair at the shop and

They was talking and vibing. He was like, hey, can I get your number? And she does, and they start kicking it. Next thing you know, the two of them moving in together. Things are going so well. Bonita ends up pregnant, and she has her third daughter, Nakia Fogle. Soon after, she has another daughter, her last daughter, Asia Fogle. Nakia went by Chunky Monkey, and Asia went by Red Baron. They had this happy little family, a family of six,

You know, so money was tight, but they had love. Stacey Lynch, the director at the cosmetology school, said that Benita brought both of the new girls in when they were newborns so she could show them off to her classmates. From her observation, Benita seemed like a good mom, and she loved them kids. Even when Stacey would see Benita outside of the school, she always had her girls with her. Both of these girls, they...

age up a bit and Benita enrolls them in the Meridian Public Charter School where they were learning Spanish, good on them. And they love to draw and color and play jump rope and play with their dolls, you know? They also love SpongeBob and Dora the Explorer. They were just normal kids living their life. At this point, everything with the family seems all right. Girls are in school. The family's not homeless. Kids are being fed.

Neighbors and family members describe Bonita as a caring and attentive mother. There's like no signs of any real trauma or nothing, just a regular home. But then money starts getting tight. Bonita and Nathaniel, they're using drugs. And I'm not sure what all drugs. The only thing I've heard specifically mentioned is weed. I also heard that they were dabbling in PCP and like, yeah, PCP on their blunts. Which?

which has a very dangerous effect on your mind. Yeah, for sure, for sure. Yeah, wasn't great. Not only were they smoking, but they were smoking around the kids. Around 2005, when Nakia and Asia were like three and four, they sitting there teaching these kids how to smoke, these toddlers how to smoke, talking about it's funny and we'll all be high together.

Now, eventually the money issues get to them and they end up losing their home. First, they asked Benita's mom could they go stay with her. And she said that the girls could come, but she didn't take care of no grown ass man. And Benita was like, if my man ain't welcome, neither am I. So they roughed it on their own.

In December 6th of 2005, Benita applied for housing assistance, enlisted Nathaniel as her spouse, and said that she had four female children. On December 14th of 2005, the family stayed at the D.C. General Hypothermia Shelter, and they stayed there until April of 2006. Benita ends up applying for food stamps, Medicaid, TANF, all later that month. And they're still living in the shelter, but the girls are still enrolled in school,

And in January, Brittany enrolls into Eastern High School and Tatiana enrolls in Watkins Elementary. Now, Nakai and Asia, they're not in like real school yet. There's no record of them being enrolled anywhere at this time. On April 9th of 2006, they finally leave the shelter to go live with family and friends. Not sure who that was, but...

That's what the records show. On June 16th of 2006, Bonita has a behavioral health visit, but there was no information listed about that visit, how it went, what they found. On July 12th of 2006, a month later, CFSA received a report from a nurse that Nathaniel checked himself out of George Washington Hospital.

They had just diagnosed him with leukemia, and they were saying, you know, he's going to need treatment, things are bad, but, you know, he left without advisement. The nurse goes on to tell them that both parents had substance abuse issues, and they said that the family said that they were living in a van. She was unable to provide an address, and so CFSA couldn't follow up on the report.

Now, the following month, on August 30th, Brittany is enrolled at Booker T. Washington Public Charter School. A nonprofit organization helps the family get a row house in D.C. in the same month in August. On September 5th, Asia and Tatiana, they're enrolled at the Meridian Public Charter School. On September 20th, Nakia has her World Child Medicaid visit.

Then on October 5th, Nakia is enrolled at Meridian Public Charter School, which what took you so long to get her there? Now, during this time, Nathaniel's struggling with his cancer and it's very hard on Benita. The drug use continues, but at this point it's like, are y'all smoking? I mean, you know, is he smoking to ease the pain or is he smoking because he's an addict or, you know, but both don't have the money to pay for any type of treatment. Yeah.

They're really just struggling, and he's basically dying before her eyes. Right. November 30th, their food stamps get canceled because Benita didn't update the requested information. On December 7th, a Medicaid worker spoke to Benita over the phone and urged her to come in and receive care. They knew that both parents were abusing drugs and knowing the effects, she knew that she needed care just like Nathaniel did.

Now, at this point, Nathaniel is on hospice due to his leukemia. Like, we're out of hope. We're just trying to make you comfortable right now. And Benita, she loved Nathaniel. And she told herself that he was God. He was immortal, so he can't die. It's just not even possible.

On January 14th of 2007, Benito was arrested for driving an unregistered vehicle, improper use of tags, and failure to exhibit a permit. And then the next month, on February 19th, Nathaniel dies. When Nathaniel died on February 19th, 2007, everything in Benito's world changed.

She didn't even tell her daughters that Nathaniel had passed away. She did not go to the funeral. She became more and more isolated. And Nathaniel's mom, he knew that they were struggling. So at first she was paying rent for Bonita and the girls. And then after a while, she stopped paying rent. And she found out that the girls were living in a van. And then Nathaniel,

And she stopped hearing from them altogether. She attempted to find them. She was trying to call them. But Benita would never let her in the house, would never let them around. And after a while, she said, listen, I need you to not call. I need you not to come back ever again.

slowly but surely, everybody was realizing that something was going wrong. Like Benita used to make sure that her and the girls were dressed up. Everybody's hair was done. Everybody looked clean. Like even when we were struggling a little bit, I'm not going to make the kids look crazy. But people were noticing that

Not only is Benita not taking care of herself, she looks like she's not eating. She looks like she has not put a brush in her hair in a long time. But the girls are looking disheveled. They're looking unkempt. These clothes are not fitting them anymore. In 2007, a neighbor was like, hey, I will go ahead and take you to McDonald's. Let me take you and get something to eat for you. And the girls, no worries, just a friendly, nice neighbor.

She noticed how in one day, it was like March of 2007, the girls were clean. And then the very next day when she saw all the girls, it was like they were in rags. And she's like, how could this have possibly happened so quickly? So she ends up talking to Benita. She's like, hey, girl, what's going on? Like, you apply for your stamps. And Benita was like, girl, that is just so much paperwork. I don't know how I'm going to be able to apply again because it is so much paperwork. And I get that. Like,

food stamps paperwork is extremely overwhelming. I don't know how it is in the state of Maryland, but in the state of Georgia, it is hard. In the state of Florida, it was also hard. Like, it's not easy. And so if you're discouraged and you're sad and it's something that you have to do, a lot of times you're not going to do it.

And then one night, Benita has a dream. In this dream, Nathaniel comes to her and tells her that he died because there are demons in all of the girls, all four of them. And what she needed to do was release the demons from the girls and

That sometimes means that they have to go. You have to almost starve the demons out of them. And once those demons are gone, he and the girls will be resurrected because he himself is Jesus Christ. And you, Benita, are Mary Magdalene.

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Benita, of course, believed this dream that she saw and heard and was there. The relationship between Benita and her oldest daughter, Brittany, Brittany is like 16 at the time. Brittany has literally been with her mom through everything, through moving from place to place, living in the van, living at friends' house, living at grandma's, living at the shelters. She's been there ever since.

through it all. And everybody knows that Brittany and Bonita have the, what seems to us a very normal teenager and mom relationship. They're arguing. They don't, they're not afraid to get loud when family's around. Like it's not the best relationship, but Brittany tried to be normal, right? She wants to go to school. She has a MySpace pay. She even had a boyfriend, but at home, like,

Here is her mom saying, you got demons in you. You got demons in you. She says she had the spirit of Jezebel in her. All the Southern Church folks just let out a big sigh. She's like, you're Jezebel. You're Jezebel. The fights between Benita and her oldest daughter, Brittany, were becoming so bad. And Benita was thinking...

That this demon inside of her daughter just had a tight hold on her and she wasn't going to be able to let it go. So one day, Brittany goes to school. It's March 2nd, 2007. She goes to school. She kind of has a normal day. She comes home. She never goes to school again. She wasn't unenrolled. She wasn't called out. She just never showed up again.

Now, on March 21st, Tatiana, Nakia and Asia are officially unenrolled from school. They ask Benita, well, where are the girls going to go? She says she's going to be homeschooling the girls. They say, OK, sign this paper. She signed it. They were done. He dies in February. March, the girls are pretty much out of school. And from then on out, they're looking bad. They're looking tattered.

Now, at some point after Brittany had left school, she ended up like seeing her boyfriend or talking to her boyfriend. His name was Lipoi Kelly. And he said that he hadn't seen her for a while. She hasn't been in school. And when he talked to her, she just seemed sad and he couldn't figure out why. And as soon as they saw each other, that was the last time he heard from her. She never answered his phone calls anymore. He wasn't responding on her MySpace account anymore. And he said,

And he didn't really know what happened. At home, Bonita had locked Brittany in a room away from her sisters because she said that her demon was so strong that she did not want her to be such a bad influence on her sisters. So her mom locks her in a room, duct tapes the door, locks it so that she can't get out. She doesn't feed her anymore.

Brittany is unable to bathe. If Brittany needs to go to the restroom, she has to use the restroom in the closet of the room. And even though Brittany can hear that there are other horrors going on in the house, there is nothing that she can do about it because she's locked in. Now, some time passes and Brittany, remember, she wasn't officially unenrolled from school. So 33 days of school pass and her school counselor was like, um, where is this girl?

So she calls Child Protective Services to report emotional neglect because Brittany hasn't been at school. She tries to come up to Benita's house and Benita says, ma'am, you cannot enter into this house. My daughter is being homeschooled now. We don't need you here. Thank you. Goodbye. And I mean, technically, that's Benita's right.

She goes to visit Benita on April 27th. On April 28th, an actual social worker comes and tries to do an assessment. No one answers the door of the home, so the social worker leaves a note on the door asking for Benita to get in contact with her. Two days later, on the 30th, a social worker, Kathleen Lopez, visits the home. She speaks to Benita, but Benita again says, you can't come into this house.

Again, that's her right. Then a couple of days later, April 30th, Kathleen Lopez. Now, this is the social worker from school, the school counselor that said, hey, this girl hasn't been here for 33 days. She decides that she's going to pull up at Bonita's house again. And she's just like, hey.

Still wondering where Brittany is. Don't know what's going on. And again, she says Brittany is just fine. She won't be returning to school if she leaves this house. She'll probably run away and we don't want any of that. So I will be homeschooling her. So then Kathleen is like, hold on. That sounded like a red flag. Let me go and call and put in another report.

Because at this point, she can tell that something is off with Bonita. She's like, hey, putting in this report, y'all need to follow up on this case. It seems like the mom has mental health issues. I'm kind of feeling like the daughter is being held against her will. And she hasn't been at school in over 33 days. Somebody please just go back.

and actually check and lay eyes on this girl. So Kathleen, she making the calls, making the calls. And finally the police, they go in response. Police Sergeant James LaFranchise goes and visits the Jack's home on April 30th, 2007 and interviews Benita in her front yard. And Benita, you know, unless you got a warrant, you cannot come into my house. And he was like, okay, you know, that's your right. And Benita says, I'm homeschooling the girls. Here's the books that I'm using to teach them.

and he's like, okay, well, can I come in? No. So he's like, okay, well, guess my job's done here, you know? If you say you're giving these kids an education, best of luck to you. So at this time, he did not, you know, go back to his office and write down a paperwork of what he saw, slipped his mind, didn't give a fuck, who knows, right? So...

On May 10th of 2007, the social worker Kathleen Lopez writes a letter to the Youth Social Service Division of the D.C. Superior Court, and she expressed her fear that Brittany was being held hostage, but the social workers did not investigate her claims. Now, Brittany is still being locked away by her mother. She's not being given food. She's being told that she's been possessed by a demonic spirit. She's being given over-the-counter medicine on an empty stomach.

And the rest of the kids, they're kept away from her sister. Brittany can't help them. They can't help Brittany. And I just imagine how scary that is, like, for one of your siblings to be trapped in your house, to be beaten, to be yelled at. And it's just like, do you act right so it's not you? Or are you in fear? Do you band together as a sibling bond? Like, especially because they're so young. What really are they supposed to do?

You know, of course, this situation that they're living in and probably a little bit of Benita being a teen mom and her and Brittany being pretty close in age. They argued a lot during this time, their whole life, but especially during this time, they're arguing a lot. And one day in a fit of rage, Benita goes into Brittany's room with a knife. They argue and she stabs her daughter in the stomach, leaves the knife in the room and covers her daughter's naked body with a white T-shirt. And she leaves Brittany to bleed out on the floor.

Now, this same month, Benita was seen by a neighbor moving all the furniture out of her house and into the backyard. She says that she's doing this because she believes the demons would get into her furniture. Now, my neighbor told me that. I know my neighbor on some shit. Like, hey, Carl, what you doing? Oh, just getting rid of demons. You know. Hmm. Where's the kids? With the demons. Call the police. Save them kids.

But yeah, she was like, this is the only way to purge the demons out is to purge everything else. And the neighbor's looking at Benita and Benita's looking awfully skinny, a little too skinny. And Benita was like, well, you know, I've been diagnosed with cancer. So it's been a battle. And this is probably, this probably brings the neighbor on to mind a bit more of their business. Like, oh,

I was about to say, that's the perfect way to shut somebody up. You know what I mean? Like, oh, cancer. Now there's like a huge sympathy card in there and you see her frilling and she's just trying to do the best she can. Maybe the medicine's fucking with her head or whatever. But you just put one up for her and hope she'll be all right, you know? Now, around the same time, neighbors are saying that they smelled a foul odor, but they just assumed it was a dead rat.

The last person to see any of the children alive was a family friend, Tawana Richardson. Tawana would bring Benita her Social Security checks twice every month. And she said the last time she saw the two youngest girls, Asia and Nakia, was in June of 2007. But she had not seen Brittany in several months. Now...

Whether this was just due to bad timing or Brittany being asleep or out or whatever, she didn't know. You know, she's just trying to do her part, drop out the checks and make sure this family gets whatever money they have coming in. On May 1st, CFSA and the police try and enter the home, but nobody answers. They see there's old mail on the porch and a letter that was previously left by CFSA. They come back the next day and they try and make contact again, but again, Benita does not answer.

It was confirmed by the Penn Attendance Intervention Center that none of the kids were currently enrolled in school. The social workers ask about the local homeschooling policy, which says that the parent only has to request a form and fill it out, and DCPS will authorize if homeschooling can take place. Now, I don't know if she got this official DCPS stamp of approval, but it seems like, yeah, because nobody's pushing the issue of these kids not being enrolled.

On May 11th, CFSA filed a referral to the Diligent Search Office to locate the family. Five days later, on May 16th, Bonita used an address for a relative in Waldorf, Maryland. CFSA contacted Charles County only to find out that they were looking for a family and were unable to contact them. CFSA submitted the case for closure, and it was approved for closure the same day. Like, oh, you can't find him? Well, wrap that bitch up. Like...

We all tried, right? Because at this point, they're thinking the family has moved out of jurisdiction. Nobody has laid eyes on the family or, more importantly, the children. It's just like, oh, well, they ain't answering here, must not be here. Right. On June 13th, Brittany is unenrolled from Booker T. Washington Public Charter School. On June 14th, CFSA got a letter from Charles County stating that they are unable to locate the family.

All right, listen, we tried, they tried. So I guess we're done here, which is crazy. Like, I feel like if you can't find a family, you should do something. You look hard, you keep looking. Right, you should do something. You should look, you should put a warrant out. There should be something.

But during this time, nobody had seen them. Nobody had heard from them. Benita and the girl still at that house. And she still believed that each one of the children had a demon in them and she needed to get the demons out of them. Left alive is Tatiana, Nakia and Asia. And they hadn't eaten in a long time because she was thinking that if she starved them, she starved the demons out.

Inside of the house, there is absolutely nothing. No furniture, no TV, nothing. The girls were in basically rags, if that. And Bonita was also constantly filling the girls up on over-the-counter medicine. I'm sure y'all know that over-the-counter medicine on an empty stomach means you're going to throw up.

And so these girls were throwing up and basically wherever they threw up, the throw up stayed there. Nothing was getting cleaned. Nothing. Nothing was getting cleaned up. There's trash everywhere. So one night, Benita gets the other three girls dressed and they're in tall tees, nothing special, nothing underneath them. And she attempts to strangle all three of them. Asia is hit on the back of the head with a blunt force object. Now,

There's not many details I can give you other than that, because we're not sure exactly when the girls died. The timing. Was it all in one night? Was it one after the other? We're not really sure. After all three girls were dead, dressed in white T-shirts, Benita placed them on the bathroom floor from oldest to youngest, and they laid there. Mind you, Brittany's body is still locked in the other room.

On August 25th, the water and sewer authorities disconnect the services to the house because they were not paying the bills. They were not paying rent. You know, you got to stop paying for a while for them to turn off everything. That was water and sewer. I think electric was electric and gas was turned off in September.

On October 31st, they didn't get their welfare checks anymore because she forgot to recertify. She forgot to redo the paper that was needed for her welfare. And that was all of 2007. Now, here it is, January 2008. She, I guess, is acting like the girls are still alive, but definitely for herself, she enrolls the entire family for Medicaid, re-enrolls them. And then on January 9th, 2008, there comes a knock at her door.

It's not Child Protective Services or anything like that. It is the U.S. Marshal. And they are here to give you your eviction notice. Because the only reason they forced this way into their house is because money. It's because the bills weren't going to get paid, so you got to get out of here so somebody else can pay it. Not the kids, not anybody's well-being, money. Mm-mm.

Not to mention the school worker, the school social worker was literally screaming to everybody, please go find them kids. None of this wasn't enough alarm concern to say at least let's do a welfare check and let me put eyes on all of these kids. It's not until your bills don't get paid. That's how what's her face got caught? What's that girl named? The one that everybody wants us to do. Michelle Blair? Yep, that's how Michelle Blair got caught. Getting evicted. Like nobody giving a damn about anything but the dollar. Yeah.

Because that's what's most important to people in this society. Like, that's all they care about is capitalism, money. A human life means nothing. But anyways, the U.S. Marshal is there and he's like, ma'am.

It stinks. This house stinks. She answers the door and she's wearing a white shirt that clearly has like old brown stains. Later, we do find out that they are blood stains that are on her shirt. These kids have been dead for a while now. Let's just go ahead and let you guys know. So he's like, man, we need to come inside. At first she says no. He kind of like, it's like, no, ma'am, we're coming inside. He looks around the house. There's nothing there, but he can smell that like decomp stank. Okay. Decomp stank.

smells really, really bad. And at first he's like, it stinks a lot. Maybe it's rotten meat, but he's looking around the house and there's garbage everywhere. Like it's giving hoarder, it's giving disgusting.

That's probably why it smells so bad in this house. So then he is looking around and he can kind of tell that Bonita is like blocking the stairs, kind of sitting on the stairs. She don't want him to come upstairs. Ma'am, let me get past you and walk up the stairs. No. And he's like, no, ma'am, I'm about to come upstairs and look upstairs because something in this house is wrong. She starts like,

Getting aggressive with him. She even spits on the U.S. Marshal, which girl like calm down. She spits on him. And so they forcibly move her out the way and they go upstairs to see what is happening in this house. The first thing they do is they go into the bathroom and they see the

Tatiana, Asia and Nakia laying on the floor in a very advanced stage of decomposition. This was terrifying to them. They continue to look around and they see this door and the door was very curious to them because it's like duct tape clothes like it's covered in duct tape. There was one article that I read that said that it had a locking key, but the majority of the things I read said that it was covered in duct tape.

They open the door and in that room, they find Britney's naked body laying on the floor with a white T-shirt laying on top of her. She was pretty much a skeleton laying in dried pools of blood. Plus, like your body melts when you decompose, like you melt. And it was seeping through the floorboard.

The marshals run outside, they gag, they throw up, and of course they call for backup. Seven months is a long time for human bodies to be in a house rotting while somebody is living in that house. Not one, not two, not three, but four human bodies. Four bodies. Not in a freezer.

Not buried, not in a suitcase covered with air freshener everywhere, just there. She ain't right. She ain't right in the head. The smell is death. Right. You know, she was saying that the demons had a smell. She said the demons have a smell to them and she had to get the smell out of her house.

And I guess she needed to get the smell of decomp in. That's disgusting. Those babies, like we can link to you guys where you can see actual pictures of the girls. They are in a deep stage of decomposition. Tazzy, you recently learned about decomp. You want to share some things you learned? So there are certain stages that it goes through. And, you know, first the body decomp.

starts to try and release all the fluid by turning into gas. And so the body bloats. And then after that, like the skin starts to split from the bloating and that's when they start to seep fluids. And then the skin starts to get so rotten that it literally melts off, which I had to go Google videos. I was like skin melting off.

It's like the nitrogen in the body gets so high and then everything just seeps out. And it's just like they said the nitrogen once that body starts melting and expelling all those liquids and stuff, that nitrogen is so high. Like if it was left out in grass or something, it would kill anything underneath it. Like plants, whatever, couldn't even survive. And the skin just falls off and it's just...

if it's preserved the right way, like if animals don't get to it, not like flies and stuff, but like vultures, and it stays in a hot enough space to where like the bugs, if it's out in the sun, it'll get so hot that the bugs can't survive in there. The bacteria can't survive in there. And the body will naturally mummify itself. That's what...

That's what these bodies are doing. The local news breaks. Four girls found dead in a dirty home at the hands of their mother. Like, what a headline, right? The community is outraged. And nobody's more mad than Kathleen Lopez.

Because she came and she came and she called and she called and she reached out for help and nobody cared about the welfare of these young girls. Mr. LaFranchise, who went to that house on April 30th of 2007, it's January 9th of 2008, went to that house on April 30th of 2007, still has not filed that report.

About what he saw that day. So you know what he did this day? He found that fucking report. On the day she was arrested. On the day they found his body. On the day those bodies were found. Several, several fucking months later.

But here's the thing. Like, it's been so long. And now you're like, oh, shit, my ass is on the line. So he says he comes by and he sees the two younger girls and that the house seemed OK. Oh, yeah. And how much detail can you really go into? Nine months ago. Can you recall what you saw nine months ago? What were you doing nine months ago, Mariah? Nine months ago. What were you doing last April? I have no idea. You have to give me a minute to think about it.

That was a long time ago. And I might come up with a couple of things, but like a little welfare check that you'd bother not even to write down on paper. What do you really put in? So then he put, I saw the two younger girls in the house. Everything seemed okay. Right. Or even that he saw three of the girls, right? So a homicide investigator gets on scene. This place is crazy, right? The mayor is at this house. The sheriff and the marshals are at this house because of the eviction.

The chief of police is at this house because of the bodies. You've got several units of police here, whether it's going to go to the child welfare people or the homicide division. It is just people going in and out the house, in and out the house. And so one guy is like, this is not how a crime scene is supposed to work.

So he goes to the commander and he was like, who's in charge of this scene? I got two real good detectives on my team. We'd be happy to take it over. He's like, OK, it's yours. He says, everybody get out the house. Y'all put up yellow tape at both ends of the block. Don't let nobody come on this side. Don't let nobody come on this side. Clear out. We got to figure out what's going on here. He said that neighbors were walking in the house, like everybody just wants to see the bodies. Like it was just so chaotic and unbelievable that it became a spectacle.

Of course, Bonita's brought in for an interview, and this interview lasted eight hours. Bonita, she does not look well. She is also in a white T-shirt with a rag on her head, and, like, they're asking her, ma'am, how long have your kids been dead? And she's like, mm, she's not talking very loud. She's talking kind of like this. Like, it's very eerie. The cops are like, what happened to your kids? And she's like, I don't know.

She lets them know that she went up there one day and they just never woke up. And I was like, when? When did they not wake up? Because they didn't die recently. So they're like, when did they die? And she was like, she's pointing to the young and she's like, well, first this one died. And they're like, okay, then what did you do? She was like, I laid her body in the room. And they're like, okay, well, where did the other kids stay? In the room with their sister. And they're like, okay. Okay.

well, when did the next one die? And she's like, two days later, she didn't wake up. And they're like, okay, and what'd you do? You know, laid her body next to her sister. And I was like, okay, then what? Then the next one didn't wake up. And she's just saying that her kids are just not waking up, not waking up, not waking up. I got one time for my kid to not wake up. It won't happen to the others. I got one time. Like, and we just sitting here just, oh,

And then making the other kids sleep next to their dead sister's body? What? Like, that's crazy.

Because in her mind, in her mind, they were they needed to all be dead and they would all come back. So no worries. Right. In her mind, this was just a temporary thing. They were going to be resurrected. They're in this interview. They're still trying to get her to talk like this. Like I said, this interview went on for eight hours. They're trying to get her to talk more about it. They pull out a sonogram picture of Asia. And this is when Benita starts crying.

This is when she starts telling the detectives that demons have possessed her daughters, and she believed that if she killed the demons, her daughters would be brought back to life. They talk about her relationships with her daughter, and, you know, it comes out that Benita and Brittany, they had a rough time. Benita tells them that she believes Brittany was possessed with a Jezebel demon, and this made her the hardest to control. She goes on to tell the detectives that she was Mary Magdalene and that Nathaniel was Jesus Christ.

And this is all sounding wild, right? They're like, okay, so tell us why we found Brittany in the room, duct tape sealed, all of that. She said I had to keep Brittany locked away so that she won't influence her sisters. I can't have the rest of them out like this. I've already lost one to this Jezebel spirit. I can't lose the others. They're asking her, okay, when did they die? Like,

How long ago was it? She says right before her lights got turned off, which was around September of 2007. We're in January of 2008, around September of 2007. That's when she says the kids die. She told the detectives that she did starve the girls for a substantial amount of time before their death. Trying to, I guess, flush out them demons. She says the girls got so bad with the demon possession. She was like, you're a demon, period. That's it.

And she said she would try and control Brittany and Brittany often fought her back. She said the girls were making screeching noises and just being bad. They were crazy in her mind. She wasn't the problem. They were. The detectives are like, when did things get like this for you? Because the records early on don't show you to have had history of child abuse or whatever. So when did things get like this? And she says after Nathaniel died, her whole life fell apart.

The detectives, they can't find history of mental illness or anything. From what they could deduce, Nathaniel's passing was her breaking point. And that's when she tells him, you know, after he died, he came to her in a dream and said that they would all be resurrected. She said Nathaniel was trying to protect her. Throughout this whole interview, she's not necessarily saying Nathaniel died. The detectives are like, okay, when Nathaniel died, and she was like, he went to sleep. Yeah, so when he died, he went to sleep. So, like, it's been...

Almost a year. He died in February. He'll be back. This is all temporary. He's literally just in a tomb. Once I do what I need to do, he will come back. We're like one month shy from a year since his passing. And she still can't even comprehend, at least from what she's telling the police, can't comprehend the fact that he's gone.

You know, after detectives finish interviewing her, they go and they run an autopsy report. Now, this interview is still going on. And she said that, of course, when Asia was the first person to die in her sleep, that the girls thought it was funny. She said they laughed, they thought it was funny, and they didn't even care that Asia had passed away. She said Nakia died the following night. And then when Tatiana died, she had, like, green stuff coming out of her mouth and out of her nose. She kept saying that...

It was because of the demons. The weaker the girls got, the weaker the demons got. And I needed to make sure that the demons were weakened. And this entire time, Brittany is locked in the room and she's screaming, I know what's going on. I know what you're doing. I'm going to get you because she has that spirit in her, you know? And then she says, then she looks one morning and she sees Brittany dead on the floor, lying there with her mouth open.

She said, I didn't walk in. I just looked from the doorway. And they're like, and the detectives, they can tell like Brittany's in a more advanced stage of decomposition than the other girl. So it was clear that Brittany died first, but she's saying that Brittany was the last person to die. So then the detectives ask her, they say, well, can you tell me how Brittany died? And then Bonita says, I'd like to speak to an attorney.

Of course, they started to ease up off of her. The detective looked at her and he was like, how? You were getting used to their dead bodies. Like these dead bodies, they were like furniture. You just let them turn into skeletons and you were just walking around them.

The medical examiner said that the girls had to have been there for more than 15 days, but it was definitely longer than that. And the reason he could say that was because of the bugs that were on their bodies. And this was a tragedy. The mayor, Mayor Fenty, he swore that he was going to investigate. He said, quote, every single contact that this family has had with the government, with people who are paid to look out for the welfare of the children, we will come back and we will have a full report because they're

Somebody dropped the ball somewhere. Now, a spokeswoman for the D.C. Public Charter School Board, her name was Nona Richardson. She said that their three youngest daughters were attending the Meridian Public Charter School in Washington pretty consistently after.

And when the girl stopped showing up, she tried to get in contact with the mother by mail. She tried to get into contact with the mother by telephone. And eventually she made a home visit. And that is when Benita decided to withdraw them from school officially. If they're withdrawn from school, there's nothing that they can do. Everybody's looking at each other.

Child and Family Services, they're looking at each other like, oh, well, we tried to get in contact with her. We got these addresses, but no one was able to get in contact with her. What are we supposed to do? So people were asking, well, did they move to Maryland in the first place? Were they actually living at the address that they listed? Nobody knows.

When they asked Benito, why didn't you just call the police? The girls were dead. You had done something really bad. Why did you not just call the police? And she said that she didn't want to get in trouble. And honestly, she didn't trust the police.

Going up and cleaning up the crime scene, of course, the girls were taken out. They had to officially identify Brittany through her dental records because her body was so badly decomposed. And what was also very interesting was next to Brittany's body was a knife. They were like, oh, my goodness, here's a knife. Here's the murder weapon for Brittany. Let's take it in for testing. And the crazy thing about that was that there were no fingerprints on that knife. There was no DNA on that knife.

And no one can really figure out why. After all of this was said and done, on January 10th, 2008, Bonita was arrested and charged with four counts of first-degree murder.

She was held without bond. And then a few days later, on January 13th, that CPS worker that filed the report the day that the children were found went back and decided to amend the very late report, saying that he thought he saw Brittany, too, on that day way back when.

Benita was arrested on 12 charges, which were premeditated first-degree murder, felony murder, and cruelty to children for each of her kids. So these three charges, four times. She was facing a life conviction if she was found guilty, and many people tried to get her to take a plea. The trial began on July 15th of 2009 in Superior Court of the District of Columbia. ♪♪

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RocketMoney.com slash sisters. She pleaded not guilty and rejected the insanity defense. She decided to have a bench trial where Judge Frederick H. Weisberg would be the only one deciding on her innocence. She would not have a jury. Bonita decided not to testify in her own trial. So her taped interview with the police was presented at the trial after the judge ruled it was admissible.

The defense tried to keep this out because they claimed police began interviewing Benita about the deaths before they had evidence that she was the one responsible. It don't even honestly matter if they had evidence for her to be responsible. You in that house and your kids is upstairs. Your kids' skeletons are upstairs. They didn't just die. They didn't recently die. So you coming in for some. Now, Benita requested to not be present in court when they played the tapes and instead waited in the Superior Court cell.

The trial lasted for eight days where the prosecutors argued that Benita starved her children, isolated them from relatives, neighbors, friends, school officials, anybody who might give a damn about them. And then they said for months after she killed her daughters, she stayed living in the house with the bodies decomposing. She even tried to make it seem like no one lived in the house at all. She kept the blinds drawn. She let the mail pile up. She stopped paying the bills, would only leave out the back door.

They say that she thought she'd have at least another year before she would have been evicted, and by that time, the bodies would have been decomposed completely. The first witness called to the stand was Deputy Marshal Nicholas Grant. He was one of the officers there to carry out Bonita's eviction notice, and he said that Bonita answered the door wearing nothing but a white T-shirt and a white headscarf. He said that she spat at him and wouldn't let any of the marshals into the house, so of course they had to push their way in. And once inside, he talked about how awful it smelled that they all had to cover their faces.

Another witness went on a stand. His name was LaShawn Ragland. She was a family friend, and she stated that for a short time in 2006, she let the family stay at her house. She said that Bonita and Brittany would have arguments regularly with each other about how badly Bonita was punishing Brittany, not giving her food, keeping her away from the other girls.

And on the stand, she spoke about how Nathaniel and Benita would let their three- and four-year-old at the time, Asia Nakia, smoke weed because they thought it was funny. On day two of the trial, Benita's mom took the stand. She talked about when Benita was young. She was a teenage mom, but still she took great care of Brittany and even her other girls. She talked about her relationship with Nathaniel and how she had no idea that Benita and them were struggling the way that they were. No idea that they were on food stamps and living in shelters.

She said over the past few years, Benita and I hardly spoke. The last time she saw the girls was three years prior, but when last time she saw them, they were happy and healthy. And at this time, they was around age five or six. She was asked by the prosecutor, if you had known what your daughter was going through, would you have helped? And she said yes.

Which I personally think that that is a loaded question, because first of all, on the stand, of course, you're going to say that you're going to help. But when you told her that she couldn't have her man there, that was almost pretty much damn near the last time that you heard from her. So how did his mom know that they were in financial ruins and you didn't? And also the truth could also be that, you know, you were giving her tough love and

It just sounds fake on the stand to me. I was like, objection leading on. But like, if you knew that she was hurt, would you have helped her? Of course you would have.

Like you could ask the neighbors the same thing. Exactly. If you knew that those girls were going to die, of course you would have helped her. But the thing was, sometimes you need help without knowing that somebody is going to die. It should not even gotten to the point where those girls got like disheveled, you know, because somebody should have been helping them.

And it seems like people were trying, right? Like even the nurse was like, hey, you should come in for treatment too. I can't tell you what to do, but it feels like you need to come in and get some of these good old pharmaceuticals. Right. She says that although she hadn't seen a girl since 2005 or 2006, that she did call social services to come and check on them. And she said if Benita would have contacted her for help, she wouldn't have hesitated. She said, I would have been there.

When prosecutors were talking to the judge, they said, listen, judge, your honor, the house was desolate. It was sad. No furniture, no food, no toilet paper. None of the household staples that you would think should be in a house were there. It was just simply gone. They were like, Brittany's room, there was a key on the ledge, like the top ledge of the door that clearly showed that she was being held hostage in there.

Brittany was living in that room by herself. She has to use the bathroom in the closet and all this because her mom thinks that she's possessed by demons. This is this is an open and shut case. She murdered these girls and Brittany is no little girl like Brittany was tall. She was six one and she ran away from home a couple of times and each time they would fight. It was always something and

Here's the boyfriend getting on the stand. He hadn't seen her since March. And then she stops answering the calls. Prosecutors then bring one of the neighbors to come up and testify about the treatment that Brittany got.

One of the neighbors, they knew that it was getting so bad between Brittany and Benita that a neighbor said, hey, how about I take Brittany off your hands? Like here, here's a custody agreement. How about, you know, you don't have to do nothing for me. Just like, let me, let me get Brittany off of your hands. And she denied that. She said, no, Brittany has to stay here. As soon as she stopped going to school, Brittany's cell phone was disconnected completely.

Internet was disconnected. There was no way for Britney to see the outside world or communicate to the outside world.

And from then on, people said on the stand, I saw the smaller two girls, sometimes saw the middle girl, but just did not see Brittany again. Prosecutor said, listen, this was a prison of torture, Your Honor. The murders, this was just the climax of this scheme that she had come up with.

Benita was represented by a public defender, Lloyd Nolan, and he argued that although Brittany was living there, she was not responsible for the death of her daughters. He said that Benita was completely innocent from killing the girls. He said that the only evidence...

that really linked her to these crimes was the fact that she was there when the U.S. Marshal arrived and she was there with the dead bodies. But there's nothing else. Remember that knife that was found in Brittany's room?

It had no DNA on it. And it didn't make sense because like if she's going to leave the knife in there, why would she stab Britney, wipe the DNA and the fingerprints off and then leave it in there? So that was probably the only ground he really had to stand on there. He said, listen, other than that, there's no scientific evidence that says that Benita did anything to those girls. You can't prove through any type of evidence that she is guilty.

They went on to go and talk about this interrogation. And he said, "Listen, the way that the police interrogated my client was brutal to say the least." Which is like, "Ooh, it's brutal? Not the kids' bodies, but the interrogation was brutal? Okay." And Your Honor, they're playing these tapes for you, but they're cutting out some of the things that were in the tape. You can't have it both ways. Either give us all of the tapes or give us none of the tapes. Don't take out some of them. Don't redact it. Like, let's put it all on the table.

The defense attorney, I mean, you have to feel like, wow, what the fuck? But he is grasping for straws at this point. He even points the finger at the prosecutors. Look at those prosecutors. They had to consult four different medical examiners. Four.

So you can't tell me that they can prove without a shadow of a doubt that my client is the one that killed these babies. This is just battle of the experts just so they can find somebody that fixed the storyline that they are trying to present here. None of these witnesses here say that she abused those girls. I mean, and they didn't. The witnesses were saying, you know, we hadn't heard from them in a couple of years. But when we did hear from them, she was a great mother. The girls were kept up other than the smoking thing.

And the defense of the lawyer was like, listen, everything can be explained. That scientific evidence not linking her to these bodies explained. The arguments that the neighbor said that they heard, mother-daughter tiffs. All mother-daughters have them explained. These kids seeming like they're starving. That's not because Benita is a bad mother. That's not because she hated the children. It's because she couldn't pay her bills. It had to do with money, your honor. And then they bring up

Police Sergeant James LaFranchise. This nigga here. Mr. Saw the kids, didn't report, report, re-report. They finally brought his ass to the fucking stand. They say, so you had a report that said that you thought that you saw Brittany on April 30th, 2007. And you said that you saw the other girls and they seem happy and healthy. He's like, yeah, well...

I must admit that I didn't see Brittany back in 2007. He was like, I was trying to, I put the report in late. And since I put the report in late, maybe there were a few inaccuracies. He was like, maybe I was just writing based off of this wishful thinking that I thought I saw her because I wanted to, because it felt like it should have been the right thing.

And he was like, it's stressful. Seeing all these cases is stressful. Trying to find and track down these people is stressful. And the stress of the job got to me. And because the stress of the job got to me, I dropped the ball. I might not have seen her. Which is like, half of me is like, pay these people more and make sure there's more organization in the caseload. Half of me is like, what?

there should be checks and balances if something goes wrong and you can't find these kids there needs to be something more right but boy oh boy he dropped the ball which I mean is good for the defense here is somebody else to place the blame on I would charge that motherfucker like honestly you need prison time too high key high key Judge Weisberg reviewed the evidence for two days and then found Bonita guilty on 11 of the 12 counts of murder and child cruelty

She got four counts of felony murder, four counts of child cruelty, and three counts of first-degree murder, giving her life without parole. He said, quote,

or some other reason known only to Benita Jacks, she intended to kill them. Her acts were intentional and reckless and caused each child grave injury and ultimately death. He noted that on the morning of her arrest when U.S. Marshals knocked on her door that she stalled them by asking to see proof of the eviction and even tried to block the officers from climbing up the stairs where the girls' bodies were.

He also said that Benita herself influenced his verdict. In her interview tape, she told detectives that Asia, Nakia, and Tatiana died in her sleep, but also she showed that it wasn't that simple. They were lined up side by side according to age. There was some point of calculation there with them, you know? He stated that she took a downward spiral soon after her boyfriend Nathaniel died.

and suggested that his death made Benita, quote, extremely depressed. And by that spring or summer of 2007, quote, caring for the girls was a huge burden on an increasingly stressed out mother. Judge Weisberg agreed with prosecution that Asia Nakaya and Tatiana were strangled, although it wasn't certain that this was the cause of death, but he disagreed with the argument that Benita planned to kill his oldest daughter. Basically, she was stabbed, but we don't know that the stabbing caused the death.

We don't know how planned out that was. There just wasn't enough evidence to speak to it, which is why she only got the three counts of first-degree murder. She was found guilty of a lesser murder charge because she did not seek medical attention for Brittany once she was stabbed. But he was like, I just can't put it at first degree. Now, the defense tried to fight these findings. He said the body was too badly decomposed to make a determination of a cause of death. But judges like, listen...

That's my rolling on it. Now the whole time the judge is reading his findings to the court, Benita is motionless. She'd shake her head from time to time and purse her lips a couple times, but she did not speak. She did not testify. The judge said he believed that it's possible that Brittany...

could have been severely depressed or even suicidal because of how her mother treated her. So then that was another one of his points as to why he shouldn't give her first degree murder. He was like, there's no fingerprints on the knife. It very well could have been that Brittany stabbed herself and was like, get me out of this hellhole, you know, one way or another. Benita's still responsible because you didn't save her, but we don't know who stabbed her. The judge said, quote, I can only imagine that the torture and torment on Brittany must have really done some damage to her psyche.

At the end of the trial, Judge Weisberg said that this was one of the most challenging and difficult cases he's heard. The ALSA Michelle said that she was pleased with the verdict and her co-counsel, Deborah Sines, called it a very sad case. You know, although they got justice, they could not bring back these lives.

One of Benita's attorneys, Peter Krauthammer, said that he plans to appeal and that they were going to file psychiatric records to prove insanity and hope to have her transferred to a mental facility. He goes on to say he feels very bad for Benita. Benita's family members and Nathaniel's family members filled the courtroom, but nobody commented after the verdict.

We're waiting for sentencing and Bonita's lawyers get to work. It's October 16th and they file an appeal on her behalf regarding her insanity defense. Now, they said that there was a newly issued report from the doctor who performed a psychological evaluation on Bonita shortly after she was arrested. And they didn't have this information when they initially went to trial. Because of this new information, they say, listen, she was not competent enough to...

to refuse or accept the insanity defense. So she didn't pursue it because she wasn't competent enough to pursue it. And that her mental state made her reject the attorney's advice. The judge is sitting in his chambers and in comes the prosecution. And the prosecution is like, listen, we got this evaluation. I need you to take this in consideration when you are sentencing this person. And the judge was like, first of all, I'm in chambers.

You're supposed to present this with everybody around, with the prosecution here, everything. And you telling me that you have had this report for a week and you have failed to bring it into evidence until now, until you wait and to see what my verdict is going to be? No, absolutely not. So he did say she was guilty. And then he would take the insanity and the reports from the psychologist and put them into consideration.

One of the requests that he got when deciding what the sentence would be was for the sentences to run concurrently. And the judge was like, no, no, no, whatever I give her, she will be locked away. So this delayed sentencing for a little while. However, they all came back on December 18th, 2009, where Benita was sentenced to 30 years for each murder, giving a grand total of 120 years behind bars.

After this, Benita was sent to a mental health facility in St. Elizabeth's. There, she refused a mental health evaluation in jail, and she refused to speak to the jail doctors. And then they said that all of a sudden she showed improved behavior because they had given her antipsychotics. They just drug you in jail. Y'all want to go to jail? They're just going to give you drugs. In April of 2009, the D.C. office of the inspector general released a report saying,

And this report was about child and family services, okay, and several other local government parties about their failings to meet the obligations in the Jacks case, especially because, you know, this is a clear-cut case.

that if you would have intervened and did what you were supposed to do, not one, not two, not three, four children would still be alive. They said that the family was supposed to receive monthly visits based on its housing placement. Never did. The school system didn't follow through when the girls dropped out of school, which y'all can't say that Ms. Lopez didn't because Brittany's counselor definitely was trying to figure it out. But the other school, it took a while.

So the school system didn't follow through. This report said that the police did not fully investigate when they were called to the house, which fucking clearly. And also it said that the health care providers did not follow up on things that should have been red flags.

So everybody has a little bit of blame at this point. The same report also faulted the lack of overall coordination and communication between the various agencies involved with the family. You got the school calling the police, the hospital calling them. Who is the central person and how do we make sure if we're all working on the Jacks case, if we're all trying to figure out what's happening to the Jacks family, it's

We need to make sure that all government facilities are on the same page. Six, count them, six child welfare workers were fired. There is a union and three of them actually were able to get their jobs back. But initially six were fired because of what happened to Brittany, Tatiana, Asia and Takaya. Also, one year after all of this went down, the house was put up for sale.

It was pretty run down. It was abandoned. There wasn't much to see. But a year later, somebody found in the house, in the room where Brittany was locked away, that there were writings on the wall. And some of the writings said, yes, I do love mom. And another part of the writing said, love me. Here it is. Brittany is like, we argue, but I love you. I don't know why you're crazy. Why are we doing this? But I feel like even as a teenager, like my mom and I used to get into it.

Like nobody's business. But at the end of the day, like, why? Why don't you just love me? I'm the kid. I didn't make the decision to be here. You did. So Mayor Fenty goes on to say the loss of these four girls will never be forgotten. My administration will not rest until we've done everything humanly possible to prevent this type of tragedy in the future. He goes on to say, I don't think anyone in the city can remember a case involving this many young people who have died in such a tragic way.

And a year after the arrest, the inspector general's office released a comprehensive support on when the city provided services. And that's how we got the dates of like how many times everybody's going back there. And from this case, they kind of restructured the system to kind of have these connections. OK, police, you should report to police.

DCFS, you should be in contact with the school and kind of tying everything together. But this wasn't a thing before the Benita Jacks case. And it's like, these cases are always bittersweet, but it's like, if these four kids had to die, unfortunately, this was their purpose in life, was to change this. So that this much systemic negligence doesn't go on. I mean, there's still their loopholes or whatever, but...

unfortunately that was their purpose mammy jack's bonita's mom sued the city for 10 million dollars saying you know the city fucked up not keeping track of these kids which i agree but who are you who are you to sue on their behalf that wasn't enough money where were you who's suing you for negligence i mean it's not her responsibility but it's like damn but she sued the city for 10 million dollars and the city settled

The District of Columbia was set to pay $2.6 million for the death of Brittany, Tatiana, Nakia, and Asia. Under the settlement, the Attorney General's Office said that $1,012,500 will go to the estate of Asia Fogle and $1,012,500 will go to Nakia Fogle. And then once the kids age up, the number drops significantly. So...

And 375,000 will go to the estate of Tatiana Jacks. And so Asia was five at the time. Nakia was six. Tatiana was 11. And 200,000 will go to the estate of Brittany Jacks, who was 16. They said that the plaintiffs were required to pay $245 to set up a special needs and education trust for the living siblings in

of those deceased. So like they had half siblings on their daddy's side and stuff. And so a portion of this money, $245,000 of that money went to them to help them with their education and needs like that. $260,000 had to be donated to Safe Shores, which is a youth advocacy group or organization. And then the attorneys got $1 million of that money. A quarter meal was paid to the trust. A quarter meal was donated.

$1 million was paid to the attorneys. So it really leaves grandma with like $500,000. Then that gets taxed. So you got like 30% off of that. So she really got like $350,000. I mean, which it ain't nothing to snort at, but it's also not $2.6 million, which really reminds me of the work that I do. I...

I'm sharing a piece of myself. I facilitate class action lawsuits and I'll be like, this is a three million dollar lawsuit. Well, by the time the attorneys take day one point five and then you have administration fees that take somewhere between three quarter to half a million. And then you divide it between three million people in the class. Everybody end up with like thirty dollars.

And it's supposed to be, ooh, do you see that $3 million settlement and everybody's so excited about it? Most of that shit is going to the attorneys. The same way the attorneys took damn near half of that shit, a million dollars. They made a million dollars off of this shit. How did they suffer? How do the attorneys always walk away with more than the victims? I'm telling you, boy. When I saw the news coverage of that and they said the lawyers will walk away with about a million, I said, well, damn, where's the rest of the money?

She ain't walking away with nothing.

Now, Britney's dad, Norman C. Penn Jr., also filed a lawsuit against the District of Columbia following the deaths of his daughter. He alleged that the government agency failed to properly handle the complaints about his daughter and safety. And because of their negligence, Britney suffered mentally, physically, emotionally, and eventually died horribly. He also accused the city of failing to properly train, supervise, control, direct, and monitor their employees in their duties and responsibilities. And he demanded answers as to why the girls weren't in a safe environment, which...

Everything you said is correct. Where the fuck were you at? If Britney was so bad off, why you ain't take her? And now you want to sue? Oh, you get the fuck out of here. First of all, he just saw a payday when he saw one because remember, he ain't paid no fucking child support. You ain't paid no fucking child support. Like, nigga. It took you 10 years to even... Don't play with my son now. Damn it. Well, I guess not. I guess it was a little less than 10 years because she ain't submit Britney's DNA, but still...

Benita is now located at FCI Hazleton in Brewston Mills, West Virginia. Her earliest possible release date is July 2nd, 2110. Another source says that she was imprisoned in FCI Waseca, Minnesota. How the hell would she get out to Minnesota? Well, I heard somewhere that she was in Texas because, you know, once you're in prison, you're going to be there forever. They move you around.

The mental health facility that they had her in was in Texas, I believe. That's exactly where she needs to be, in a mental health facility. I read a couple of articles when researching this case. One was an article about the hindsight of this case. And it was like, you know, a lot of people are coming down hard on, you know, the people who were responsible for...

For the kids in the government, like the social workers and stuff like that. But they're like, these people are overworked. And now they've gone and fired six people. And so now they're going to be overvillaging. What am I trying to say?

And now they're going to try and they're going to be harder overcompensate resources, you know, coming down harder for, you know, just try not to be one of the six who were fired for thinking things were OK. There was like, OK, if she took her kids out to homeschool, does it require this much? And if she did, you know.

move to another state should they have tracked them down that hard. That's taking resources away from a kid who possibly needs somebody to check up on them. But there's got to be some type of balance. Like, the thing is not to snatch these kids away from homes when it's not necessary, but you've got to follow up on your cases. Somebody should have laid eyes on these kids at the end of the day. All you had to do was lay eyes on them. And then they would have known that this was a case that was extreme where they needed to...

But the thing about it is you can say, oh, we're coming too hard on them and holding them too responsible. They just didn't do enough. Nobody confirmed the state of these girls. These girls were malnourished for months. These girls were missing for months. Nobody was looking for them. She didn't get caught because they were searching for them kids. She got caught because she got evicted from her house. Had she paid her rent? Anybody have noticed?

She would have been a-okay. These weren't people who were missing persons. They weren't listed as missing or anything. Everybody said everything's fine. No need for concern. They just vanished and everybody pointed their finger. I think that's a little weak to sit there and say, oh, we can't put too much on them. No, they just didn't do enough. The fact that you're writing articles months after you didn't write an article until you found out this lady killed her kid. I mean, you didn't write a report until you found out the kids were dead.

Eight months later, seven months later, that's when you write a report? Come on now. Right. You said, ooh, I should do that. Somebody should have said, hey, where are your reports? I saw another article that mentioned her, and they were talking about how back-to-school times, you always see a spike in child cases because that's a time when people besides the parents are finally putting eyes on the kids. These kids go home for the summer.

And nobody's watching them. Nobody's looking out for them. So it's not until they go back to school and the teachers are seeing that they're a little skinny or that they got bruises or that they cry every day. It's not until then that somebody's reporting something, which is part of the reason why it's so important. Like, it's almost scary to know somebody can homeschool their kid and it's like, yeah, that's your freedom, that's your right, and you can control their education. But they miss out on social skills and they miss out on other people who are supposed to be watching them. COVID was horrible.

And that's why COVID was so hard for a lot of people. And people were like, these kids, sometimes their only meals are at school. The only time that they get a break from the chaos is at school. Sometimes the only time that they know that somebody knows that they need help

is because somebody noticed at school. Yeah. And these kids went for a year, like two years, a year and a half, two years. Yeah. This was a really sad case. Definitely one of the saddest ones that we've done thus far. The murders of Brittany, Tatiana, Nakia, and Asia.

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and enter the code SISTERS20 to get $20 off your first month. That's N-U-U-L-Y dot com, newly with two U's, with code SISTERS. Newly subscription clothing rental. Change your clothes. All right, y'all. It's time for... I'm not black. I'm OG. I didn't do it, but if I did, this is how I would have gotten away with it.

I didn't do it, but if I did, I would have not been doing those hard drugs. Like, I don't understand how you can do hard drugs and not have money at the same time. And I also don't understand how if I need a place to live and my mama says that me and my four kids can live there, but the man can't, baby, you're going to have to live with your mama real quick while I live with my mama real quick and we just get our money up real fast. Right?

Sometimes the van? Like, come on. You know what I'm saying? Ain't no way I'm swapping out my mama house for a shelter to put my kids in just so I can stay with my man. No, I ain't do it. But if I did, she's so, she's so, I believe that she's so out of her mind. Because the resources weren't available to her. She's in a, not that they weren't available to her, but she's in such a state of depression. Like, she didn't take them.

And it's just like you ignoring the calls. There needed to be wellness checks, several wellness checks, and not just on the kids, but on her. She was not well. She was also dropping weight. It's not like she was eating good.

And the kid, like, everybody was being starved out. Everybody was suffering in that house. And she was suffering to her own mind. And so it's hard to sit there and say that she should have did this and that differently. And she's still sitting there talking about, I'm not insane. Don't put me down for an insanity plea. That's insane. The lawyers are sitting there trying to be like, please let us do a sanity against her wishes because she's insane.

I ain't do it, but if I did, I would see my grandbabies more. I ain't do it, but if I did, I would have stepped up as a father of my kids. I ain't do it, but if I did, as a police, I would have cared more when we're talking about the lives of children. I think I would, like, try and find a priest or a pastor and be like, I need you to interpret this for me. And maybe that pastor would have been like,

this is beyond my control, but I can tell you some resources where you can go. Because what? Girl, if he didn't rise back in three days, baby, he ain't Jesus. And then they were talking a little like she was, you could tell that she like at one point went to church, but probably didn't have a Bible and was making stuff up. But she was like, you just have to, everything will be perfect. We just have to suffer because it does say in the Bible, you suffer for a little while and then you'll be made perfect. She was like, we just all had to suffer together. So what did she think? That she needed to be the

The last one, like, I just don't get it. Like, all the kids were going to be resurrected. How is he Jesus? And then all the kids are going to be resurrected. I would have been like, Pastor, I need to talk to you. What does this mean? Please interpret my dreams. Even if you didn't go to a pastor, I'd go to like a psycho. What are they called? What are the people called that read your hands? A psychic. Hey, I had this crazy dream. And hopefully somebody would have been like, mm-mm.

No, the cards say that you need to go to the hospital. The cards say you need help. I don't have anything else. This was a sad, sad case. I ain't do it, but if I did, if somebody wanted to take the kid, take the kid. Like somebody tried to take Brittany. Put them kids up for adoption or whatever you in over your head. Just get away from them. Hold them with somebody else. But like if you needed to be away from their demonic spirits, just get away from them.

But if anything is telling y'all to kill y'all kids, it ain't got... Right. I was about to say, they're going to be like, well, I was just thinking that there was going to be a random story. I know what them Bible stories say, but it's not. Yeah. Parole or no parole? I just want her to stay in the institution. Yeah, they're just going to have to keep her in the mental health spaces. She's just going to have to stay in the institution, a mental institution. Yeah, they're just going to have to keep her in the mental health facility. Because what? What?

I just know that baby Brittany was trying to get to her sisters, like not just herself. Like, mom, stop. I know that my three little sisters are in there suffering and there's nothing I can do. She really was. She was a prisoner. And now you're a prisoner forever. Let's read some reviews. Let's go home. I do. Let's end this sad story.

All right, you guys, if you want to leave us a review, I'm glad that I hope that you enjoyed this story. If you'd like to leave us a review, please do. You should leave us a five star and written review anywhere that you can, wherever you're listening. See if you have the option to do so. And if you don't have the option to do so, no worries. Wherever you're listening has a share button. Share with your closest friend so that they can be on to Sisters Who Killed 2. Please also make sure that you are following and subscribing to the channel.

so that each week you also get very new updates every time that we drop an episode. I don't have a review yet. Do you? Yeah, I'm going to do this first one I see. This one says tens across the board. Found out about you guys from jokes on you. I love how you guys tell the stories from Mirage singing to the dialogue. Read reenactment. I can't help but keep coming back. I've been binging from the first episode to Twins and the latest at this point to your Skinner.

One underrated thing I adore about this podcast is the consistency. I still got 60 episodes to go before I'm caught up. However, you ladies make work fly by. I drive for a living. I've been telling all my friends about Sisters Who Killed, the second best thing of 2023. My engagement is the first. Congratulations.

Sorry about my rant. I was going to wait till I'm all caught up. But after the last one, I had to give y'all flowers. Side note, I just finished Sky Mims. I really appreciate how y'all handled talking about the murderess and the victim. Thanks. Man, I can't find there was a guy in the discussion. It was like my wife, my fiance just loves this. And this is your her favorite time of the week. And I was like, tag your wife so we know it's real. Yeah.

In the discussing group. Okay, so this next one, the only reason I'm reading this one is because it gave five stars while giving a little bit of constructive criticism. So I appreciate this. It says five stars. The title of it says, please don't eat while recording. And the body of it says, I had my AirPods in. I swear I tried to lean away from the mic. I was trying to sneak a cupcake because I'm a fat ass. And...

Today, Mariah sent me a screenshot talking about what was Tazzy sucking on. She said, I ain't hearing nothing. I was like, I was really hoping they couldn't hear it. It had so much icing on it. I was trying to get the icing down before I spoke. It was just at the teeny tiny end. Taz, you know you be eating and talking with your mouth full. You need to stop. I'm sorry, guys. Don't do that. I have not eaten anything this whole episode. Just a little water. I tried to sneak just a little bit for a tiny second. Gotcha. Gotcha.

Yeah, they did. All right. Thank you guys for listening to this episode. If you want to follow and keep up with us, please do. Follow us on Twitter, Sisters Who Kill, TikTok, Sisters Who Kill Podcast. You can follow us on Instagram, Sisters Who Kill Pod. There's a public Facebook page. Like it so you can get updates on your feed about everything Sisters Who Kill. And also on Facebook, there's a private discussion group where we chit chat, we laugh, we talk about the cases, we have a good time. You must answer the questions to get in. Anything else from you, friend?

Talk to us when we talk back. Bye. Bye.