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Body Bags with Joseph Scott Morgan: The Poisonous Truth Behind Julie Jensen's Death · Crime Stories with Nancy Grace

0:08
Speaker 1: Body Backs with Joseph Scott Morgan. Death is a great equalizer,
0:21
Speaker 1: and when you're faced with the possibility of it, it
0:24
Speaker 1: compels us to reflect. I think you see that a
0:27
Speaker 1: lot with the people that are faced, unfortunately with terminal illnesses.
0:31
Speaker 1: But what if you don't have a terminal illness, but
0:33
Speaker 1: yet you have a suspicion that you might die? And
0:38
Speaker 1: I don't mean of old age, that somebody in your
0:43
Speaker 1: world has an end for you, somebody that you love,
0:47
Speaker 1: that you trust, that you've created a family with as
0:50
Speaker 1: their sights, I'm possibly killing you. Today we're going to
0:54
Speaker 1: talk about a woman who, over a period of year
1:00
Speaker 1: years and through court proceedings, board testimony from the grave
1:06
Speaker 1: against her husband. Today we're going to talk about the
1:10
Speaker 1: poisoning homicide of Julie Jensen. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan and
1:17
Speaker 1: this is Bodybacks. Joining me today is Dave mac Dave
1:25
Speaker 1: is a crime reporter with Crime Online. They always tell
1:30
Speaker 1: us when we go to seminars and these sorts of
1:33
Speaker 1: things as death investigators, one of the base rules is
1:37
Speaker 1: that if you have a homicide, look for some stranger
1:41
Speaker 1: in a dark alley. You don't suspect somebody that you've
1:44
Speaker 1: never met or come across. They always tell you to
1:48
Speaker 1: look at those that are in the inner circle. And
1:51
Speaker 1: the case that we're talking about on bodybacks today, boy
1:54
Speaker 1: talk about being in the inner circle. I'm talking about
1:58
Speaker 1: in such an intimate way that you've got a case
2:01
Speaker 1: where you've got a caregiver that brought about the death
2:04
Speaker 1: of his wife for years.
2:06
Speaker 2: I would tell folks that if anything violin never happened
2:09
Speaker 2: to my wife, police's going to look at my library
2:12
Speaker 2: of books and they'll see all the crime books that
2:14
Speaker 2: I've got. They would go ahead and slap the bracelets
2:18
Speaker 2: on and take me downtown. That would be it. In
2:21
Speaker 2: this particular case with Mark Jensen, police immediately, I mean
2:26
Speaker 2: the investigators, they get on scene and you've got a
2:28
Speaker 2: woman dead in her own home. Who are we going
2:30
Speaker 2: to look at? There's the husband. We often hear that
2:33
Speaker 2: term rush to judgment. Well, it's not a rush to judgment.
2:37
Speaker 2: It's just the facts of the case are laid out
2:39
Speaker 2: in front of you. In certain evidence has kind of
2:42
Speaker 2: a timestamp on it. In this particular case, we're talking decades.
2:46
Speaker 2: We're talking a quarter of a century before justice can
2:50
Speaker 2: even be meted out. Mark Jensen met Julie Griffin back
2:54
Speaker 2: and we're talking nineteen eighty one. Here, Julia is working
2:57
Speaker 2: at a Sears department store. Mark was a student. They
3:01
Speaker 2: were both students in college. Mark graduated, Julie didn't. They
3:04
Speaker 2: moved to this place called Pleasant Grove. Just sounds like
3:08
Speaker 2: a nice place to raise a family. They did have
3:10
Speaker 2: two children. The children were eight and three at the
3:14
Speaker 2: time of Julie's death. We're looking at a relationship that
3:17
Speaker 2: was not perfect by any stretch of the imagination, but
3:21
Speaker 2: there was something that Julie did that Mark couldn't let
3:24
Speaker 2: go of, and that's what led to what we're about
3:26
Speaker 2: to talk about.
3:27
Speaker 1: Back to what you had said earlier, Dave, it's not
3:30
Speaker 1: from an investigative standpoint. I'm not talking about the general
3:33
Speaker 1: public here. That's neighbors and that sort of thing. For
3:37
Speaker 1: us in the world of investigations, it is not a
3:41
Speaker 1: rush to judgment. It is a need to assess. It's
3:45
Speaker 1: a need to assess and consider all of the possibilities
3:49
Speaker 1: that surround the case. Because when you have an individual
3:54
Speaker 1: that dies in an intimate setting, and we're talking about
3:58
Speaker 1: in one of the prosecutors in the case use the
4:00
Speaker 1: term the marital bed. And you can draw anything you
4:03
Speaker 1: want to from that, But that term the marital bed,
4:07
Speaker 1: it implies and I know that that's what the prosecutor
4:10
Speaker 1: was getting at. It implies a certain level of intimacy.
4:13
Speaker 1: So when you're working a case and you think who
4:18
Speaker 1: would have access to Julie Jensen within her domicile, within
4:22
Speaker 1: her bedroom, on her bed, you don't have any signs
4:27
Speaker 1: at the scene of forced entry or struggle. That's kind
4:30
Speaker 1: of our benchmark, isn't that. You hear that in every
4:32
Speaker 1: television show. We'd look for those sorts of things, busted
4:35
Speaker 1: out windows, an overturned furniture. There's no evidence to that.
4:38
Speaker 1: You have to have the means, you have to have access,
4:40
Speaker 1: you have to have opportunity. I think in a case
4:44
Speaker 1: like Julie's case, you have to be able to control.
4:48
Speaker 1: You have to be able to control the situation. And
4:50
Speaker 1: that goes to this other point that you made about
4:54
Speaker 1: the relationship that they had. This marriage was marked by
4:58
Speaker 1: Infidelitylie transgressed several years before, and the husband just he
5:04
Speaker 1: could not get past that, and of course he wound
5:07
Speaker 1: up being unfaithful as well. And so you look at
5:10
Speaker 1: that and you think about motivation, who would want to
5:13
Speaker 1: do this, and how much. Sometimes the scars the assessment
5:17
Speaker 1: that you're doing from a forensic standpoint, the trauma is
5:23
Speaker 1: not necessarily all external that you're looking at, because people think, no,
5:27
Speaker 1: when you have a case where somebody is very rageful,
5:31
Speaker 1: in a case of bludgeoning, for instance, they're going to
5:34
Speaker 1: just beat somebody to a bloody pulp with either their hands,
5:38
Speaker 1: or they're going to beat them with some heavy object,
5:43
Speaker 1: or perhaps they're going to get a knife. Intimate cases
5:46
Speaker 1: that we've covered, certainly on body bags, where you think
5:49
Speaker 1: about somebody as cut and stabbed multiple times, we talk
5:53
Speaker 1: about things like overkill. That doesn't exist in this case,
5:56
Speaker 1: but I would submit I think for the listeners to
6:01
Speaker 1: consider this, the way in which Julie died and met
6:06
Speaker 1: her end is as equally horrific. And it's hard to
6:12
Speaker 1: kind of express that to people that are not exposed
6:16
Speaker 1: to poisons, because that's what we're going to talk about
6:20
Speaker 1: in other associated factors. It's really hard to take the
6:23
Speaker 1: measure of it when you begin to think what a
6:26
Speaker 1: languishing death this was that Mark subjected her to.
6:30
Speaker 2: Here's what we're really looking at. We both alluded to it.
6:32
Speaker 2: I'm going to throw it out there. Julie Jensen had
6:35
Speaker 2: a two day affair. Two days, that was it, and
6:39
Speaker 2: it was with a person that she had a very
6:41
Speaker 2: low opinion of. Later on just she said not very
6:43
Speaker 2: many kind things about him. She really regretted it. It
6:46
Speaker 2: was just a two day lapse of judgment that she
6:50
Speaker 2: apologized for, tried to make right, and it just Mark
6:54
Speaker 2: Jensen wouldn't let it go. For the next several years.
6:57
Speaker 2: He started plotting and planning what he was going to
7:00
Speaker 2: do to get rid of her. Jensen. And when we
7:04
Speaker 2: think about getting on the internet and looking for things,
7:06
Speaker 2: we know how police use that to find out what
7:09
Speaker 2: we've been looking for, what we've been reading, what are
7:12
Speaker 2: our habits? And I don't think of that when I
7:14
Speaker 2: think of the late nineties, the mid and late nine
7:16
Speaker 2: I don't at all.
7:17
Speaker 1: I'm so glad you mentioned that because that was striking
7:20
Speaker 1: to me. You know, that happened in the searches that
7:22
Speaker 1: you're referring to. This is back in nineteen ninety eight.
7:26
Speaker 1: I can only imagine that the people that were involved
7:29
Speaker 1: in this case thought, Wow, this is something new fangled.
7:32
Speaker 1: We're we're using a computer to kind of pry into
7:36
Speaker 1: somebody's life and assess what they were doing. It was
7:39
Speaker 1: new stuff back then, not like.
7:41
Speaker 2: Today, and that's the thing, so he doing all these searches.
7:44
Speaker 2: I guess he didn't even think for a moment that
7:47
Speaker 2: this could be used against him later on, as it was.
7:49
Speaker 2: But bottom line is, from the time the affair was discovered,
7:54
Speaker 2: he plotted her demise and Mark Jensen apparently was not
7:59
Speaker 2: that lie about it either, because Julie fairly quickly started
8:03
Speaker 2: seeing what he was doing. She noticed changes in his habits,
8:06
Speaker 2: noticed he was doing things different, so she started kind
8:10
Speaker 2: of being a private eye. She started investigating him. She
8:14
Speaker 2: started watching what he was doing. And it got to
8:17
Speaker 2: the point where Mark's telling people that Julie's depressed and
8:21
Speaker 2: is mentally not there. She's telling her best friends, neighbors
8:26
Speaker 2: that she is not suicidal, to the point where she
8:28
Speaker 2: writes a letter and it is to her neighbor if
8:33
Speaker 2: anything happens to me, We hear about these movies and stuff,
8:37
Speaker 2: but this happened in real life. If anything happens to me,
8:40
Speaker 2: I didn't do it to myself. You gotta look at Mark,
8:43
Speaker 2: my husband. When police were investigating, they're trying to figure out, hey,
8:48
Speaker 2: how she died and two what led up to it?
8:51
Speaker 2: In the fall. She died December third, nineteen ninety eight.
8:55
Speaker 2: But in the fall in September, he Mark Jensen gets
8:58
Speaker 2: drunk at a a business conference. He was in financial business,
9:03
Speaker 2: and he gets drunk with this guy, ed Klug. They
9:06
Speaker 2: start talking about their bad marriages, and Jensen goes further
9:10
Speaker 2: and talks about ways to kill his wife that he
9:11
Speaker 2: has found online that can't be discovered, that he could
9:15
Speaker 2: poison her. He was very specific. Now they were both drunk,
9:19
Speaker 2: but ed Klug was like, dude, divorce is an option,
9:24
Speaker 2: and he Jensen wouldn't let go. He's not just thinking.
9:27
Speaker 2: He's studying. And he decides ethanol gli called anti freeze.
9:32
Speaker 2: And this is before any freeze was changed. It used
9:35
Speaker 2: to be kind of a sweet liquid that looked drinkable,
9:38
Speaker 2: and so that was the method that Mark Jensen chose.
9:41
Speaker 2: What would that do to somebody if they were given
9:44
Speaker 2: any freeze over a period of time.
9:46
Speaker 1: Well, this is kind of a slow role, if you will,
9:50
Speaker 1: relative to what was going on in their relationship. And
9:54
Speaker 1: you're right, it did have a sweetness to it back then.
9:58
Speaker 1: And here's the thing used to put out. There were
10:01
Speaker 1: these warnings with anafhreees, particularly when people would do they're
10:06
Speaker 1: all maintenance at home, you know, the days of the
10:08
Speaker 1: so called shade tree mechanic. Run down and have somebody
10:12
Speaker 1: flush your radiator for you and then put in new
10:14
Speaker 1: anafhrees and you do all changes and all that sort
10:18
Speaker 1: of thing. And one of the things that would happen
10:20
Speaker 1: many times is that people would discard anaphreeze or leave
10:24
Speaker 1: it lying about. Well, it does have a sweetness. And
10:28
Speaker 1: probably those animals within a neighborhood that we're most attractive
10:33
Speaker 1: would be dogs. You know, they're driven by their noses,
10:35
Speaker 1: and they come up to this and boy, they put
10:38
Speaker 1: their tongue to it, and it's got a real sweetness
10:41
Speaker 1: to it. They lap it up and take on a
10:44
Speaker 1: big dose of it at one time. I mean, you know,
10:46
Speaker 1: it's like eating cake to them. Probably it's just very satisfying.
10:51
Speaker 1: And then the next thing, you know, you've got a dog.
10:53
Speaker 1: If you're observing the dog, the dog appears. If the
10:57
Speaker 1: people can imagine this to be inebriated, you know, they're
11:01
Speaker 1: kind of disoriented, they're stumbling, you know, their gait is unsteady.
11:05
Speaker 1: These sorts of things, and it really impacts them very
11:09
Speaker 1: acute sense when the dogs would take on this much.
11:13
Speaker 1: But here's the thing. The dogs would eventually die. And
11:17
Speaker 1: many people, I think for a long time, we're thinking,
11:20
Speaker 1: you know, how in the world did my dog die?
11:23
Speaker 1: Was it some kind of disease that they succumb to. No,
11:26
Speaker 1: it was actually poisoning. And there are a number of
11:28
Speaker 1: cases out there where people have used or had used
11:32
Speaker 1: antaphreeze in the past to poison local animals that were
11:37
Speaker 1: walking through. If you can imagine people did want dogs
11:40
Speaker 1: in their yard, for instance, are people that were angry
11:43
Speaker 1: at their neighbor, they would put out a bowl of
11:45
Speaker 1: antifreeze mixed with water or juice or something like that,
11:49
Speaker 1: and they would give it to the dog, and the
11:51
Speaker 1: dog would die. They would succumb to it. But in
11:54
Speaker 1: Julie Jensen's case, you've gotten Mark who is slowly poisoning
12:01
Speaker 1: her over period of time, where he's giving her bits
12:05
Speaker 1: of antifreeze that he's introducing actually into glasses of orange juice.
12:10
Speaker 1: So it would have been essentially undetectable to the palette
12:15
Speaker 1: that sweetness that's associated with orange shoes. And you're taking
12:19
Speaker 1: this on and it will over a period of time
12:22
Speaker 1: the ethlene glycol, which is the primary ingredient in anti freeze,
12:27
Speaker 1: would begin to build up. It attacks multiple areas within
12:31
Speaker 1: your system. It's devastating to the kidneys in particular and
12:35
Speaker 1: the liver. You'll have individuals that will go into renal
12:40
Speaker 1: failure as a result of it. After they have been
12:42
Speaker 1: given US for a protracted period of time, they just
12:45
Speaker 1: become very toxic. They're always in a stupor if they
12:49
Speaker 1: have it on board and they're being kind of I
12:50
Speaker 1: don't want to use term microdose because that implies that
12:53
Speaker 1: it's a very, very minuscule amount, because it's not necessarily
12:58
Speaker 1: to the point where it's just a drop. It takes
13:01
Speaker 1: more than simply a drop in order to accomplish this.
13:04
Speaker 1: But as they're being dosed daily by a caregiver in
13:08
Speaker 1: this case like Mark, they become progressively sicker. And isn't
13:13
Speaker 1: that interesting because this goes to the mindset of a poisoner.
13:18
Speaker 1: Poisoners traditionally have been portrayed as individuals that are stealthy,
13:27
Speaker 1: they're quiet, many times, kind of reserved. They like to
13:31
Speaker 1: be in control of things, and that goes to the
13:35
Speaker 1: heart of being able to have access, right, how could
13:38
Speaker 1: you consistently have access to somebody that you wanted to
13:41
Speaker 1: poison them? Now? Yeah, I mean you could give somebody
13:44
Speaker 1: a big door dose of some type of horrible substance
13:48
Speaker 1: like arsenic perhaps and they would keel over. But if
13:50
Speaker 1: you didn't want somebody to suspect that it was you,
13:55
Speaker 1: and you have access to them daily, you're giving them
14:00
Speaker 1: this while pretending to care for them. Because as she's
14:04
Speaker 1: getting the substance, she's getting sicker and sicker and sicker,
14:10
Speaker 1: and that actually opens up the door for him to
14:13
Speaker 1: become a sympathetic person. He's a good husband. He's standing there,
14:16
Speaker 1: he's next to her bedside, he's taking care of her
14:19
Speaker 1: as she's feeling bad, and all the while he's given
14:22
Speaker 1: her antifreeze. Do you think of somebody that can get
14:47
Speaker 1: close enough in order to apply some kind of toxin
14:52
Speaker 1: to an individual and set it up in such a
14:55
Speaker 1: way that you can guarantee that they're going to ingest it,
14:57
Speaker 1: that it will be introduced into their body. But you know,
15:01
Speaker 1: poisoning requires patience, and I think that perhaps Jensen may
15:07
Speaker 1: have run out of patients in this case. He just
15:09
Speaker 1: couldn't wait for his wife to die.
15:12
Speaker 2: Joe, that is probably one of the sickest, saddest things
15:16
Speaker 2: to think about with somebody that is the mother of
15:20
Speaker 2: your children at this point, somebody you have known for
15:23
Speaker 2: seventeen years, you've built a life together, and you have
15:27
Speaker 2: come to this point in December of nineteen ninety eight
15:31
Speaker 2: because of a two day affair that took place seven
15:35
Speaker 2: years before. You've plotted, You've planned, you've researched to find
15:40
Speaker 2: out the best, as you mentioned, stealthy way of killing
15:44
Speaker 2: your spouse and getting away with it. The problem is
15:48
Speaker 2: what Mark Jensen didn't realize. He wasn't the smartest person
15:51
Speaker 2: in the room. It was probably his wife. Julie actually
15:56
Speaker 2: figured out something was going on, and she started talking
16:00
Speaker 2: to friends. Just like he drunkenly exposed himself to an
16:04
Speaker 2: acquaintance during a conference. Julie too, had outed him to neighbors,
16:09
Speaker 2: saying she suspected something was afoot, keep an eye on
16:12
Speaker 2: him if anything happens to me, and she wrote a letter,
16:15
Speaker 2: if anything happens to me, it's look at Mark, and
16:19
Speaker 2: when you look at she died. After the anti freeze,
16:23
Speaker 2: Mark got tired of waiting, so he adds ambient. She's
16:26
Speaker 2: now in the marital bed. She is not dead. Mark
16:30
Speaker 2: decides he's got to get this done. He has got
16:32
Speaker 2: to put her out of her his misery actually, and
16:37
Speaker 2: so he suffocates her, which I can't. You know, oftentimes
16:40
Speaker 2: you'll talk about a knife is such a personal thing
16:42
Speaker 2: to use a personal weapon? How about your bare hands?
16:44
Speaker 2: What kind of person can actually suffocate, kill, strangle the
16:49
Speaker 2: life out of somebody that they've built a life with.
16:52
Speaker 1: It's a tough thing to assess looking back on it,
16:56
Speaker 1: but that came up. The forensic pathologist did did a
17:00
Speaker 1: fantastic job because they had a lot of speculative information
17:06
Speaker 1: to begin with. Because you know, when you look at
17:09
Speaker 1: let me break it down this way, when you're doing
17:11
Speaker 1: a toxicology exam relative to the death of someone, we
17:16
Speaker 1: use a standard panel toxicologically, and we draw blood, We
17:22
Speaker 1: draw urine if there's urine available, If it's in the bladder,
17:26
Speaker 1: we take vitreous fluid, which is from the eye. Many
17:29
Speaker 1: people don't know that, and sometimes we'll take bile if
17:32
Speaker 1: the gallbladder still exists, if it's still in place, and
17:37
Speaker 1: you'll run what's referred to as a standard panel and
17:39
Speaker 1: you're looking for stuff that is common that you think
17:43
Speaker 1: might have a contributory factor to this person's death. You
17:47
Speaker 1: begin to think about things like opiate's. Do you think
17:50
Speaker 1: about morphine, cocaine, metabolite, benzodiazepine. Oh, you even look for solicylates, aspirin, THC,
17:59
Speaker 1: A lot of the things that are kind of part
18:01
Speaker 1: and parcel of the world that we live in and
18:03
Speaker 1: things that people might have access to. You're not going
18:06
Speaker 1: to go in there looking for ethlene glycol It's just
18:11
Speaker 1: I'm not saying that it's not detectable. It's just not
18:14
Speaker 1: something you're going to do on the first pass. And
18:16
Speaker 1: so you have to have other answers. And when they
18:18
Speaker 1: began to take a look at her body, and I'm
18:21
Speaker 1: talking about from an external manifestation, not what was going
18:25
Speaker 1: on internally, she had some kind of what we refer
18:30
Speaker 1: to as post mortem artifacts on kind of the right antier,
18:34
Speaker 1: which is the front aspect of her chest, her arm,
18:39
Speaker 1: her face, and it was non distinctive really, But the
18:43
Speaker 1: conclusion that they came to was she had in fact
18:48
Speaker 1: been smothered. And it's often been stated that smothering is
18:52
Speaker 1: one of the most difficult traumatically related causes of death
18:58
Speaker 1: to kind of termine. Many times we'll look at with
19:03
Speaker 1: the standard smothering and smothering. When I'm referring to this,
19:07
Speaker 1: I'm talking about where you have a surface that is
19:11
Speaker 1: either applied to the face or the face is pressed
19:15
Speaker 1: down into and the airway is essentially accluded. At that
19:19
Speaker 1: point in time, you can't breathe through your nose in
19:22
Speaker 1: your mouth, there's not a lot you can look for.
19:24
Speaker 1: You don't have the same pressures associated with that where
19:27
Speaker 1: you're always going to get the little particular hemorrhages in
19:30
Speaker 1: the eye. But one of the things we'll look for
19:33
Speaker 1: is to say, for instance, at the frenula are intact.
19:36
Speaker 1: Those are those little connective bits of tissue in the
19:39
Speaker 1: upper lip and the lower lip. You can kind of
19:41
Speaker 1: feel that with your tongue, and sometimes you'll get little
19:43
Speaker 1: lacerations in there. We see this with hands smothering with
19:46
Speaker 1: small children. They're fighting against you know, that primal instinct.
19:50
Speaker 1: But in Julie's case, we had mentioned the Anna freeze
19:54
Speaker 1: that she had on board, but you know she also
19:56
Speaker 1: had ambient, which is a sleep aid which is going
20:00
Speaker 1: to make you groggy, and in addition, to that. She
20:04
Speaker 1: had also been prescribed Paxel at some point in time,
20:07
Speaker 1: which is an antidepressant, anti anxiety medication. People that have
20:12
Speaker 1: OCD perhaps will be given a Paxel. So you've got
20:15
Speaker 1: these kind of substances in her system that are kind
20:20
Speaker 1: of depressing her system, if you will. From a respiratory standpoint,
20:24
Speaker 1: the antifreeze has the effect. It's an alcohol, so it
20:27
Speaker 1: has an effect that kind of euphoric effects, sleepiness, drowsiness,
20:31
Speaker 1: all those sorts of things that impact us as well.
20:33
Speaker 1: But it just wasn't getting the job done. So what
20:37
Speaker 1: the friends of Cathologists determine is that more than likely
20:42
Speaker 1: Mark Jensen actually did something called burking b u r
20:47
Speaker 1: ki ng. It's an old term, and let me kind
20:51
Speaker 1: of give you the history of it, because this is
20:53
Speaker 1: quite amazing. Burking used to occur many years ago when
21:00
Speaker 1: people were attempting to kill individuals in order to turn
21:06
Speaker 1: their corpses over to anatomist and just let that sink
21:11
Speaker 1: in just for a second, to turn them over to
21:14
Speaker 1: anatomist who would dissect the bodies. In the context of
21:17
Speaker 1: medical schools, they wanted healthy cadavers that were free of trauma.
21:21
Speaker 1: Back in years and years ago, you didn't want somebody
21:24
Speaker 1: had been run over, bright carriage or shot because you
21:27
Speaker 1: couldn't appreciate all of the anatomical points of reference that
21:31
Speaker 1: sort of thing, because they've been disrupted. But if you
21:34
Speaker 1: burk somebody and it actually comes from a guy's name,
21:38
Speaker 1: you sit on their back, or you could sit on
21:40
Speaker 1: their chest and literally sit on them. And that's what
21:44
Speaker 1: they think that Jensen actually did. He sat on the
21:49
Speaker 1: right aspect of her what would be called by physicians
21:53
Speaker 1: her posterior right chest, which essentially is the right side
21:58
Speaker 1: of her back, and pressed her faith into that pillow.
22:02
Speaker 1: As her breathing became progressively more and more labored, she said, come,
22:07
Speaker 1: She's to come, because she couldn't breathe anymore. And this
22:11
Speaker 1: turns out to be a smothering.
22:13
Speaker 2: Beyond the fact that you're bringing up terms such as
22:16
Speaker 2: burking and thing that will now haunt my nightmares. I
22:20
Speaker 2: have to think, Joe, that Mark Jensen had such a
22:25
Speaker 2: powerful urge to wreak havoc on his wife, the plotting,
22:30
Speaker 2: the planning, and when everything came to an end, he didn't,
22:35
Speaker 2: she wasn't dead, and he was left with this. So
22:39
Speaker 2: I'm betting that he had to look up a way
22:41
Speaker 2: to suffocate her without leaving a mark, because when I
22:45
Speaker 2: think of strangling, I think of the little piece in
22:48
Speaker 2: the throat, the little bone that that one gets cracked
22:50
Speaker 2: into strangling, and then you've got the blood in the eyes,
22:53
Speaker 2: those telltale signs of somebody who's been strangled. So if
22:57
Speaker 2: you do this as you called it, burking does the
22:59
Speaker 2: victor and then still have those types of marks.
23:03
Speaker 1: There's another term that could be applied here, compression asphyxia. Anatomically,
23:09
Speaker 1: all these areas would be compromised. They're not going to
23:11
Speaker 1: be working at their full capacity. So let's just just
23:14
Speaker 1: think about this for a second. She's and I've seen
23:17
Speaker 1: the crime scene photos of her. There, she's lying on
23:20
Speaker 1: the right aspect of the bed. We all have a
23:23
Speaker 1: particular side, you know, that we choose to sleep on.
23:26
Speaker 1: There's a night stand there. She's lying on the right
23:29
Speaker 1: side of the bed, her head turned to the right
23:32
Speaker 1: in this image, and she's got her The bed covers
23:35
Speaker 1: are pulled up, just just covering her waist. Her body
23:39
Speaker 1: was positioned in such a way that he could have
23:42
Speaker 1: sat down on her because she's really near the edge
23:45
Speaker 1: of the bed. He could have sat down on her
23:47
Speaker 1: as if you were sitting on a chair, and his
23:50
Speaker 1: full weight is going to be compressing down on her chest.
23:53
Speaker 1: What do we require in order to breathe? Well, one
23:56
Speaker 1: of the ways we assess many times if someone is
23:59
Speaker 1: still live, and you'll see physicians make note of this,
24:03
Speaker 1: they'll say, the chest is still rising and falling. Well,
24:06
Speaker 1: that gives us an idea that they're in taking air
24:09
Speaker 1: and they're expelling their at that point in time. And
24:12
Speaker 1: as he's sitting there, he has the ability to take
24:15
Speaker 1: his left hand, if you'll imagine just taking your left
24:17
Speaker 1: hand as his buttocks is placing pressure on her. He's
24:21
Speaker 1: taking his left hand and pressing her head down into
24:26
Speaker 1: the pillar and the mattress so that her nostrils are
24:30
Speaker 1: blocked and her mouth is blocked as well. So not
24:33
Speaker 1: only can her chest not rise and fall, but her
24:36
Speaker 1: airway is blocked as well. So it's almost a guarantee
24:40
Speaker 1: when you've got somebody whose system is depressed like hers
24:43
Speaker 1: was by these agents that she had on board, that
24:46
Speaker 1: she's going to die, and in fact she did. If
25:09
Speaker 1: you were faced with your own mortality, realizing that there
25:13
Speaker 1: is a probability that you're going to die, perhaps at
25:17
Speaker 1: someone's hand other than her own. When faced with the
25:21
Speaker 1: possibility that you might die, what would you do, particularly
25:26
Speaker 1: if you suspected that someone had you in their sights.
25:30
Speaker 1: In Julie Jensen's case, she penned a letter. She penned
25:33
Speaker 1: a letter and gave it to her neighbor Davy. We
25:37
Speaker 1: don't come across cases like this very often.
25:40
Speaker 2: No, In this particular case, that letter became a big
25:44
Speaker 2: issue in court because she wrote it and it was
25:49
Speaker 2: considered and I guess, I mean, Joe, you've dealt with this.
25:52
Speaker 2: I'm sure with forensics and trials and things like that,
25:55
Speaker 2: that when somebody writes this down, okay, of what they suspecting.
26:00
Speaker 2: To be clear, they're not out and out accusing anybody
26:03
Speaker 2: of anything, just merely saying, if anything happens to me,
26:07
Speaker 2: I am not suicidal and I would not take my
26:11
Speaker 2: own life. You need to look at Mark, my husband.
26:14
Speaker 2: And that's exactly what she did.
26:16
Speaker 1: No, there's a concept in the law that's referred to
26:19
Speaker 1: as a dying declaration, and most of the time that
26:23
Speaker 1: applies to let me give you for instance, let's say
26:26
Speaker 1: an individual has been traumatized in some way to the
26:29
Speaker 1: point where they suspect that they are dying and let's
26:32
Speaker 1: just I don't know. They're riding in the back of
26:34
Speaker 1: an ambulance and they make this spontaneous comment that so
26:39
Speaker 1: and so did this to me, and then they wind
26:42
Speaker 1: up succumbing to that injury. Well, that's weighted in a
26:47
Speaker 1: particular way in the eyes of the court. Now here's
26:50
Speaker 1: the caveat. If you don't die, that statement doesn't have
26:54
Speaker 1: the same value, all right. So that's kind of an
26:56
Speaker 1: interesting little side note. It's called a dying declaration. And
26:59
Speaker 1: the old though legal way of looking at this, and
27:02
Speaker 1: this is kind of kind of an interesting statement. Is
27:05
Speaker 1: that probably going to get the phraseology wrong, but it's
27:08
Speaker 1: something paraphrase like this, an individual does not want to
27:11
Speaker 1: go to God with a lie in their mouth. That
27:14
Speaker 1: sounds very early English common law, doesn't it. So it's
27:18
Speaker 1: the litmus test. You're not going to lie right before
27:21
Speaker 1: you die, because you're going to face judgment for that.
27:23
Speaker 1: So if you're going to put a truth meter to it,
27:27
Speaker 1: that statement suddenly becomes has more validity to it than
27:30
Speaker 1: if you're just in healthy condition you make this statement,
27:32
Speaker 1: all right. So when she wrote that letter, it had
27:36
Speaker 1: some weight to it. It certainly had some weight. And
27:38
Speaker 1: then we were talking, David, you had mentioned that this
27:41
Speaker 1: happened in nineteen ninety eight, and you think this guy
27:45
Speaker 1: wasn't He wasn't hooked up on charges for her death
27:50
Speaker 1: until what was it two thousand and two? Is that
27:52
Speaker 1: what that was? It was two thousand and two, And
27:54
Speaker 1: then he didn't stand trial in the first trial until
27:58
Speaker 1: two thousand and eight, and that letter was actually admitted
28:01
Speaker 1: his evidence at that point in time.
28:03
Speaker 2: It was a big part of the investigation. Joe the detective,
28:06
Speaker 2: on seeing the day they came to the house, Julie
28:09
Speaker 2: Jensen had not been quiet in the months leading up
28:12
Speaker 2: to her death. She actually had left messages for the
28:16
Speaker 2: police saying she was afraid her husband was trying to
28:19
Speaker 2: kill her. And the detective had been on vacation for
28:22
Speaker 2: a week. When he got back, he listens to his
28:25
Speaker 2: voicemails and lo and behold, here's Julie Jensen saying, I'm
28:28
Speaker 2: really afraid my husband's going to kill me, And lo
28:30
Speaker 2: and behold, they get a call Julie Jensen has died
28:33
Speaker 2: in her bed just because somebody says, I think my
28:36
Speaker 2: husband's trying to kill me. She could be trying to
28:38
Speaker 2: frame him, and police are not going to just take
28:40
Speaker 2: that and say, oh, we got to get him now.
28:43
Speaker 2: They're going to do what anybody would do and say, well,
28:45
Speaker 2: maybe there's more afoot. And actually that's what Mark Jensen's
28:49
Speaker 2: team tried to say, that Julie Jensen was so depressed
28:52
Speaker 2: and everything else that she wanted to commit suicide. And
28:55
Speaker 2: it's like the movie Gone Girl. Make Mark Jensen look
28:58
Speaker 2: guilty of murder.
29:00
Speaker 1: Try to blame him for this in advance, and this
29:03
Speaker 1: kind of postmortem framing, if you will, which is fascinating
29:07
Speaker 1: construct in and of itself. Are you going to that link?
29:10
Speaker 1: And she had made no secret about telling people within
29:13
Speaker 1: her circle that she felt in danger. But you know,
29:16
Speaker 1: the sad thing about this, this comes down to a
29:18
Speaker 1: mother's love. She had two children, and by all accounts,
29:23
Speaker 1: she was a fantastic mama, and she did not want
29:29
Speaker 1: to walk away from her family, this creation, this familial
29:34
Speaker 1: unit that she had created along with Mark. After all
29:39
Speaker 1: of these years, she had two sons that she was
29:41
Speaker 1: very proud of that were the center of her universe
29:43
Speaker 1: and she did not want to leave them. And just
29:46
Speaker 1: imagine that you're a mother, you have the sense that
29:49
Speaker 1: you're in danger. But yet you've got these two young kids, right,
29:54
Speaker 1: they might be in danger as well, perhaps that if
29:57
Speaker 1: they're left with this guy, because if he'll killed a mom,
30:00
Speaker 1: he might kill them as well. She wanted to be
30:03
Speaker 1: there to protect them, and they were very young when
30:06
Speaker 1: all of this. Their grown men obviously now, but when
30:09
Speaker 1: this first occurred back in nineteen ninety eight.
30:12
Speaker 2: They were eight and three.
30:13
Speaker 1: Yeah, they were eight and three. She had to be
30:15
Speaker 1: there for them. You have this dynamic within the family
30:19
Speaker 1: that you don't want to she doesn't want to leave them.
30:22
Speaker 1: She has to be there to protect them. And she
30:24
Speaker 1: had even said, she had even said on a couple
30:27
Speaker 1: of occasions, that he's dangerous. She had an awareness of danger.
30:31
Speaker 1: And she didn't just say it to the next door
30:32
Speaker 1: neighbor means to be this letter, she had said it
30:34
Speaker 1: to a number of people, including this detective that she
30:38
Speaker 1: left a message for.
30:39
Speaker 2: And that's the part that again you and I have
30:41
Speaker 2: talked about a couple of times from the very beginning,
30:44
Speaker 2: because she had spoken out to her enters or close friends.
30:47
Speaker 2: She had reached out to police that they weren't looking
30:50
Speaker 2: at Mark. But you can't just arrest somebody because somebody
30:55
Speaker 2: said they might do something, and that's why they built
30:58
Speaker 2: a case. It actually took a couple of months before
31:00
Speaker 2: they ever actually sat down with Mark Jensen and interviewed him.
31:04
Speaker 2: That was like March the following year, and in that interview,
31:07
Speaker 2: which you can see online, they're pushing and trying to
31:10
Speaker 2: get him to admit because the detective is like, dude, really,
31:13
Speaker 2: how did it happen? How did she die? And Mark
31:15
Speaker 2: Jensen stayed to this story. Hey man, she had been sick.
31:19
Speaker 2: She was sick that morning and she just died. It
31:21
Speaker 2: was only after they found out that he had been
31:23
Speaker 2: having an affair with Kelly Leabonni. And by the way,
31:26
Speaker 2: that affair began in September of nineteen ninety eight. Julie
31:31
Speaker 2: dies December third. Additional little sidebar, Kelly Leabanni entered into
31:35
Speaker 2: a sexual relationship with Mark Jensen two weeks after she
31:40
Speaker 2: was married. She was a newlywed when she began having
31:44
Speaker 2: a sexual relationship with Mark Jensen, whose wife turns up
31:48
Speaker 2: dead three months later, and then he eventually marries Kelly Leabanni.
31:52
Speaker 2: So there was a lot going on in this story.
31:54
Speaker 2: In the interpersonal relationships that had Pete police swirling trying
31:57
Speaker 2: to put together everything in in order to take a trial.
32:01
Speaker 2: And as you mentioned, they did how to do two trials,
32:03
Speaker 2: the first one it was in two thousand and eight,
32:06
Speaker 2: and that letter from the grave, it became a focal
32:09
Speaker 2: point of that first trial.
32:11
Speaker 1: It did, and I think that in the second trial
32:14
Speaker 1: they were not able to utilize that letter. But when
32:18
Speaker 1: you have this physical evidence. Bringing this back around to
32:21
Speaker 1: the physical evidence, you have the evidence that there was
32:25
Speaker 1: actually an freeze in her stomach when she was autopsied,
32:29
Speaker 1: and the toxicologists made a fantastic point from a stand even.
32:33
Speaker 1: He said, that is not a substance that you would
32:36
Speaker 1: expect to find in someone's system, let alone, you know, immediately,
32:40
Speaker 1: in their stomach, and that implies that they had been
32:42
Speaker 1: dosed in the short term. The toxicologist went on to
32:46
Speaker 1: describe that she had been being dosed for a while,
32:50
Speaker 1: so this was kind of an ongoing progression that was
32:53
Speaker 1: portrayed in court, and they were able to put together
32:57
Speaker 1: this timeline. You combine that with the idea that she
33:00
Speaker 1: had in fact been smothered, it turns out that they
33:03
Speaker 1: didn't need the letter. But I think the letter revealed
33:05
Speaker 1: a lot. I'm Josep Scott Morgan and this is body Backs.