Latest / Murder Files Unsealed / “Black Widow” Hit List: The Calculated Murder of John Davis

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“Black Widow” Hit List: The Calculated Murder of John Davis · Murder Files Unsealed

0:00
Speaker 1: So I want you to picture the biting like bone
0:03
chilling cold of a Pennsylvania winter night.
0:05
Speaker 2: Oh that damp cold.
0:07
Speaker 1: Yeah exactly. It's December seventeenth, two thousand and one, literally
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exactly one week before Christmas.
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Speaker 2: Right.
0:13
Speaker 1: People are rushing home doing all their last minute shoping.
0:15
The neighborhoods are all lit up, and right in the
0:17
middle of all this this holiday anticipation, there is a
0:22
sprawling David's Bridal warehouse.
0:25
Speaker 2: Out in White Marsh Township, right just outside of Philly.
0:28
Speaker 1: Yeah exactly. And normally, you know, a place like that
0:31
is kind of the ultimate symbol of optimism.
0:32
Speaker 2: Sure, it's wedding dresses, right.
0:34
Speaker 1: It's where thousands of gowns are shipped out. You associate
0:37
it with new beginnings, nervous brides, families coming together. But
0:41
in the dimly lit employee parking lot of this massive
0:44
distribution hub, that narrative just violently.
0:47
Speaker 2: Shifts, it really does.
0:48
Speaker 1: This place becomes the site of a chilling, like, highly
0:51
calculated execution.
0:52
Speaker 2: It's the ultimate contrast. You have this industry built entirely
0:56
on romantic hope serving as the backdrop for a crime
0:59
driven by honestly the darkest, most twisted manifestation of romantic obsession.
1:05
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's exactly what it is.
1:07
Speaker 2: We are looking at a scenario where the everyday, mundane
1:11
reality of warehouse logistics collides with just a terrifying level
1:15
of paranoia. When you read through the investigative reports and
1:19
the court records detailing this case, they read less like
1:22
a standard robbery and more like a psychological thriller.
1:25
Speaker 1: And we're going to dive straight into the mechanics of
1:28
that thriller today.
1:29
Speaker 2: Absolutely.
1:30
Speaker 1: We are pulling from the book The Black Widow hit List,
1:33
Murder and David's Bridle, which reconstructs the case through court records,
1:37
news reports, and interviews from true crime documentaries. But we
1:40
are going beyond those tabloid headlines today.
1:43
Speaker 2: Yeah, specifically that Moniker the Black Widow hit.
1:45
Speaker 1: List, right, because that was plastered all over the news
1:48
at the time.
1:48
Speaker 2: It really was. But our mission for this deep dive
1:51
is to dissect the actual anatomy of a deeply toxic relationship.
1:55
We need to explore how unfulfilled ambition, insidious coercive control,
2:00
an extreme, unchecked paranoia culminated in a bizarre, handwritten five
2:06
man hit list.
2:07
Speaker 1: It is so bizarre and without giving away all the
2:10
twists right out of the gate. This story takes us
2:13
to some very strange intersections.
2:15
Speaker 2: It really goes everywhere it does.
2:17
Speaker 1: I mean, we start in warehouse logistics, but we are
2:19
going to find ourselves diving deep into the vibrant Philadelphia
2:24
R and B music scene of the nineteen nineties, which
2:26
is wild. Okay, let's unpack this. Let's go right back
2:29
to that freezing December night in two thousand and one
2:32
and look at the physical reality of the crime scene.
2:35
Speaker 2: So we're in White Marsh Township. The police arrive at
2:38
the parking lot and the victim is John A. Davis Junior. Okay,
2:41
he's thirty six years old and he's a supervisor at
2:44
this David's Bridal warehouse. And the scene is well, it's
2:48
essentially frozen in time.
2:50
Speaker 1: What do you mean by frozen?
2:51
Speaker 2: Davis is slumped in the driver's seat of his Nissan van.
2:54
But the detail that gives you pause is the state
2:57
of the vehicle. Right the engine is still running, blowing
3:00
warm air into the cold night, and Davis's foot is
3:03
still pressed firmly on the brake pedal.
3:04
Speaker 1: Oh wow, so he hasn't even shifted into gear to leave.
3:07
Speaker 2: No, not at all.
3:08
Speaker 1: He is literally interrupted mid departure. If you're a detective
3:13
walking up to that van, what does that physical posture
3:16
tell you before you even open the door.
3:19
Speaker 2: It tells you immediately that this was an ambush. He
3:22
just didn't see it coming. I mean, human instinct when
3:25
confronted with a threat while behind the wheel is flight right,
3:28
you punch the gas exactly, Yeah, you take your foot
3:30
off the brake, you hit the gas, you tried to duck,
3:34
or you throw the car into reverse. The fact that
3:37
his foot is still resting heavy on the brake means
3:39
his brain didn't even have the millisecond required to register
3:43
a threat.
3:43
Speaker 1: That is terrifying.
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Speaker 2: It really is. He was sitting there, likely waiting for
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the engine to warm up, maybe listening to the radio,
3:50
and his life simply stopped. And then there's the second
3:53
detail that changes the entire trajectory of the night for
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law enforcement.
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Speaker 1: A wallet.
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Speaker 2: Yes, his wallet is still in his pocket. It contains
4:00
approximately seven hundred dollars in cash, untouched.
4:04
Speaker 1: Okay, See that changes everything. Yeah, because if you hear
4:06
about a shooting in an industrial park late at night,
4:09
your brain naturally goes to a.
4:11
Speaker 2: Mugging sure, a robbery gone wrong, right, But.
4:14
Speaker 1: If a guy has seven hundred dollars in his pocket
4:16
and the killer doesn't even bother to check, you have
4:18
to throw the robbery theory right out the window. You
4:21
did if the wallet is there, wipull the trigger well.
4:24
Speaker 2: The untouched money forces investigators to look at the ballistics
4:27
to understand the intent. And Davis was shot a total
4:30
of three times. Okay, one shot was delivered to the
4:33
back of the head at very close range. Two more
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shots were fired into his torso, but from slightly different angles,
4:38
and all three bullets were fired from the exact same firearm.
4:42
Speaker 1: Let's analyze that sequence. One in the back of the
4:45
head at close range, two in the torso. That is terrifyingly.
4:49
Speaker 2: Precise, highly precise.
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Speaker 1: A close range headshot is basically an execution. It's someone
4:55
walking right up to the glass. If I'm a detective
4:58
looking at a guy with untouched cash and an execution
5:01
style shooting, my mind jumps immediately to a professional.
5:04
Speaker 2: Hit, like an organized crime element exactly.
5:07
Speaker 1: But at the same time, this is a warehouse manager
5:09
at a bridal company. So how do investigators pivot from
5:12
thinking professional assassin to deeply personal vendetta because they can
5:19
look eerily similar on paper.
5:21
Speaker 2: They do look similar, but the underlying energy is completely different.
5:24
And that's what detectives look for. A professional kills with detachment.
5:28
It's just a job to them, right, nothing personal exactly.
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They want it done quickly and quietly and sure. The
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close range headshot mimics that, but highly personal vendettas often
5:38
mimic professional hits when there is an extreme obsessive level
5:42
of jealousy or hatred involved. I see an obsessed individual
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kills with a desperate need for finality. They want to
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make absolutely sure the person is gone. The two follow
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up shots to the torso from different angles suggest.
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Speaker 1: Movement like panic or adrenaline.
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Speaker 2: Adrenaline yes, or maybe even a secondary participant. When the
6:00
money is left behind and the victim is someone whose
6:03
life doesn't brush up against organized crime or high stakes finance,
6:07
the investigator knows they are looking for a personal.
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Speaker 1: Connection, a motive rooted in emotion, not business, which means
6:13
they have to dissect John Davis's life to find out
6:16
who could possibly hate him this much. And that brings
6:20
us to the tragedy of who John Davis actually was.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, his background makes this so much harder to process.
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Speaker 1: When you read the accounts of the people who worked
6:28
with him, the violence of his death seems even more incomprehensible.
6:33
This was a thirty six year old guy whose entire
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career was built around logistics and people management.
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Speaker 2: He was a supervisor, right.
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Speaker 1: He oversaw the distribution of formal wear across the entire
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Northeast region. That is a high stress, fast paced environment
6:49
with a million moving parts. Absolutely, you expect a manager
6:52
in that role to be a bit of a tyrant
6:53
just to get things done, but he wasn't the opposite.
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Speaker 2: Actually, there's a great quote from one of his coworkers,
6:59
Bobby Ways, who described Davis as being exceptionally good at
7:03
team building and motivating people.
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Speaker 1: That's rare in that kind of setting.
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Speaker 2: It is he had this rare ability to inspire confidence
7:09
in his warehouse staff. He was the kind of boss
7:11
who made a vast, demanding, physically exhausting warehouse feel like
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a supportive community. He was known for staying late, helping
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load trucks if they were behind schedule, and he actually
7:22
knew the names of everyone's kids.
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Speaker 1: That's the mark of a really good guy.
7:26
Speaker 2: Hmmm.
7:26
Speaker 1: And outside of work, he was a dedicated father. He
7:30
had a positive, healthy relationship with his ex wife, which
7:33
I think speaks volumes about his emotional maturity.
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Speaker 2: I really does.
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Speaker 1: He had zero known enemies, He wasn't involved in gambling,
7:41
he wasn't in debt, he wasn't wrapped up in illicit activities.
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He was a beacon of stability, cletely clean. So how
7:48
does a guy with no dark secrets end up executed
7:53
in a van?
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Speaker 2: To answer that, we have to introduce a name from
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his past. Vernelle Jones, Okay, Brunel Jones. She was a
7:58
former employee at the David's Bridal warehouse. She had worked
8:02
there alongside John Davis before she eventually left the company. Now,
8:06
the source material is very explicit about this boundary, and
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it's crucial to establish it right now. Definitely, the relationship
8:12
between John Davis and Vernelle Jones was strictly professional. It
8:16
was friendly, yes, because Davis was a friendly, approachable manager,
8:19
But there was absolutely zero romantic involvement between them.
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Speaker 1: That is a vital point to underline. There was no affair,
8:27
no secret romance, no inappropriate workplace dynamic at all. None.
8:32
He was just being a supportive former boss and the
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heartbreaking part is that friendly nature is exactly what set
8:40
the trap. Yes, because on the evening of December seventeenth,
8:43
the night of the murder, Davis gets a voicemail on
8:46
his cell phone is from Vernelle.
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Speaker 2: Jones, right out of the blue.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, she suggests they reconnect, grab a drink, catch up,
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and you.
8:52
Speaker 2: Have to think about the psychology of receiving a message
8:55
like that. Davis actually mentions this voicemail to a coworker
8:58
before he leaves his shift. Oh really Yeah, He expresses
9:02
a little bit of apprehension. He's wondering why a former
9:04
employee wants to meet up out of the blue, But
9:08
ultimately his nature wins out. He decides to be nice,
9:11
He decides to be polite. He expresses an openness to it.
9:14
Speaker 1: I mean, think about your own daily life. How many
9:17
times have you gotten a text from an old coworker
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wanting to grab coffee or pick your brain. You never
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assume you're walking into an ambush. You assume they need
9:24
a reference, or they just want to vent about their
9:26
new job. It exploits normal, everyday politeness, exactly the very
9:32
qualities that made John Davis so well loved his approachability,
9:36
his willingness to connect with people were weaponized against him.
9:40
If he had been a colder person, if you just
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deleted the voicemail from the former employee, he would still
9:46
be alive.
9:46
Speaker 2: He was lured precisely because he was a decent human being.
9:50
But to understand why Vernelle Jones was calling him, and
9:53
why that call led to a bullet in the back
9:55
of his head, we have to look past the victim
9:57
and the bait. We have to focus on the person
10:00
the strings, the man who orchestrated this entire nightmare.
10:03
Speaker 1: Let's bringing Kenny Burnout Junior. He's in his early thirties
10:07
at the time of the murder, and his background is
10:09
where the story takes this massive, unexpected left turn away
10:13
from warehouse logistics and straight into the Philadelphia music scene.
10:17
Speaker 2: This part is always so shocking to me.
10:19
Speaker 1: It is wild. Berno had deep ties to the vibrant
10:23
Philly R and B scene in the late eighties and
10:26
early nineties. In fact, he was a former member of
10:28
a vocal group called Unique Attraction.
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Speaker 2: Unique Attraction, Yes, and.
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Speaker 1: For anyone who doesn't know music history, Unique Attraction is
10:37
the group that eventually evolved into the internationally massive diamond
10:40
selling R and B group boys to.
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Speaker 2: Him men, that context is staggering when you consider the
10:46
trajectory of his life.
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Speaker 1: He was right there. He was at the genesis of
10:49
one of the biggest music acts of the entire decade.
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But Berno didn't ride that wave to stardom. No, he didn't.
10:56
The sources indicate he left the group due to personal responsibilities. Specifically,
11:02
a former girlfriend of his got pregnant and he had
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to step away to provide to the family. So he leaves,
11:07
and the guys who was singing harmonies with go on
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to sell millions of records, win Grammys, and tour the world.
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Speaker 2: What's fascinating here is how that specific flavor of thwarted
11:15
ambition alters a person's psychology. We aren't just talking about
11:19
someone who wanted to be famous and failed.
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Speaker 1: It's way deeper than that.
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Speaker 2: We are talking about someone who was on the exact
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precipice of global fame, immense wealth, and adulation and had
11:30
to walk away from mundane everyday responsibilities.
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Speaker 1: Yeah.
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Speaker 2: His brother Lamar was interviewed later and claims that Burno
11:37
didn't hold any bitterness toward the other guys in the group,
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but psychologically speaking, when a person has that magnitude of
11:45
unfulfilled ambition when they have to watch their peers achieve
11:49
their exact dream. That energy rarely just dissipates. If it
11:54
isn't processed in therapy or channeled into a healthy creative outlet.
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Speaker 1: It ferments, It turns into something thing ugly.
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Speaker 2: It mutates into a desperate need for significance and control.
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Speaker 1: So if he has all this prustrated energy from missing
12:06
out on boys the seconds, he doesn't just start a
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new band. He takes it out on the people closest
12:11
to him. Unfortunately, Yeah, he enters into a relationship with
12:14
Vernelle Jones, who crucially was an aspiring singer herself.
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Speaker 2: Right she harbored dreams of musical stardom.
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Speaker 1: And Berno saw an opportunity there. He positioned himself not
12:25
just as her boyfriend, but as her promoter, her manager,
12:29
her gateway into the industry. He essentially took his thwarted
12:32
career goals and projected them entirely onto her.
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Speaker 2: He created a dynamic where he was the sole arbiter
12:38
of her success, and in doing so, he demanded absolute,
12:43
terrifying control over her life.
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Speaker 1: It's like Burno, is this frustrated theater director.
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Speaker 2: That's a good way to look at it.
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Speaker 1: He got kicked out of a massive Broadway hit right
12:50
before opening night, and instead of moving on, he decides
12:54
he is going to violently stage manage real life instead.
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Speaker 2: Wow.
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Speaker 1: He treats Arnelle like an understudy or her entire where
13:00
reality is bounded by the stage he builds, He dictates
13:03
her wardrobe, who she talks to, where she goes total
13:05
control right, and if she steps off his stage by
13:08
talking to a former lover or even a friendly former boss,
13:11
she ruins the production. So he forces her to write
13:14
those characters out of the script permanently.
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Speaker 2: That analogy gets right to the core of the narcissistic
13:19
control at play here. A director believes they are the
13:22
omnipotent creator of the world on stage. Burno believed he
13:26
should have that same omnipotence in his relationship.
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Speaker 1: Which is terrifying.
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Speaker 2: It is a hallmark of these abusive dynamics is the
13:32
dual PERSONA Berno came from a close, seemingly supportive family background.
13:38
Oh really, yeah, he could present a completely normal, even
13:41
charming facade to the outside world. He could walk into
13:44
a room and be the charismatic music manager but behind
13:47
closed doors, the volatility was extreme. He maintained a tyrannical,
13:51
violent dictatorship over Jones.
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Speaker 1: Let's talk about the reality of that dictatorship. Yeah, because
13:56
how do we get from a controlling boyfriend who dictates
13:59
who she talks to to a literal hit list in
14:02
a David's bridal parking lot.
14:04
Speaker 2: It's a huge escalation, it is, and that brings us to.
14:06
Speaker 1: The introduction of Vernell Jones and the Moniker. The media
14:09
is slapped on this case.
14:11
Speaker 2: The black widow, so Vernelle Jones was in her early
14:13
thirties desperate for that gateway into the music industry. She
14:17
believed Burno was the key, but the price of admission
14:20
was enduring a horrific daily reality. The testimony later revealed
14:24
that Jones was subjected to intense physical, emotional, and sexual
14:28
abuse by Burno. Jesus, we aren't just talking about a
14:31
toxic relationship. We were talking about systematic dismantling of her agency.
14:36
Speaker 1: And layered on top of that physical abuse is Burno's extreme,
14:41
almost hallucinatory paranoia regarding Jones's past.
14:45
Speaker 2: The jealousy was out of control.
14:46
Speaker 1: He becomes obsessed with her prior romantic history. He demands
14:51
to know everything about anyone she had ever been involved with,
14:54
or anyone he perceived she might have been involved with.
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Speaker 2: Right perception was everything.
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Speaker 1: It doesn't matter if it was a serial his boyfriend,
15:00
or just a guy who smile at her in a
15:02
warehouse three years ago. This obsession culminates in a physical artifact,
15:07
a handwritten list the hit list, Yes, a hit list
15:10
of five men identified only by their initials.
15:13
Speaker 2: This is where the psychological manipulation reaches its absolute zenith.
15:16
Burno presents Jones with an ultimatum. He tells her she
15:19
has to eliminate the men on this list to prove
15:22
her loyalty.
15:22
Speaker 1: To him, to literally kill them.
15:24
Speaker 2: Yes. If she doesn't, the relationship is over, and by extension,
15:28
her dreams of a music career are over. But more implicitly,
15:32
given the physical abuse, if she disobeys, her own life
15:35
is likely in danger.
15:37
Speaker 1: It is a deadly test of loyalty.
15:38
Speaker 2: It is, but the mechanism of this test is vital
15:41
to understand. Burno engineered a chilling ritual of shared culpability.
15:46
Speaker 1: What do you mean by that?
15:47
Speaker 2: According to the accounts and forensic reconstruction, Burno was the
15:51
one who planned the hit on Davis, he drove her
15:54
to the scene, he fired the initial fatal shot into
15:57
the back of John Davis's head, okay, and then he
16:01
handed the gun to Jones and forced her to fire
16:03
the additional rounds into the victim's Torso I.
16:06
Speaker 1: Really want to pause here and debate the media's framing
16:09
of this, because the prosecutors use the term, the documentaries
16:12
use the term, and even our source material highlights the
16:15
black widow label.
16:16
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's everywhere, But when I hear black.
16:18
Speaker 1: Widow, the implication is a woman who is a cold,
16:21
calculating predator, a woman who intentionally lures man into her
16:25
web and kills them for her own financial game or
16:29
malicious enjoyment. But based on the mechanics you just described,
16:33
the physical abuse, the forced participation, that doesn't fit the reality,
16:37
not at all. So by calling her a black widow,
16:41
isn't the media using a catchy, misogynistic misnomer that actually
16:46
obscures the very real, very dark reality of severe domestic abuse.
16:52
Doesn't it sort of let Burno off the hook by
16:54
framing her as the mastermind seductress.
16:57
Speaker 2: You're exactly right about the media sensationalism of scaring the truth,
17:01
But legally and ethically we still have to grapple with
17:03
the fact that she was a willing participant in pulling
17:06
the trigger.
17:06
Speaker 1: Right.
17:07
Speaker 2: The black widow trope is incredibly seductive for tabloids because
17:09
it fits a recognizable narrative archetype. It sells papers, of
17:13
course it does, but sociologically it fundamentally misrepresents the power
17:17
dygritics of coercive control. When you look at the mechanics
17:19
of domestic violence, particularly the extreme cases, forcing a victim
17:23
to participate in a crime is the ultimate tool of
17:26
an abuser.
17:27
Speaker 1: Because it binds them to you legally exactly.
17:30
Speaker 2: It's about manufacturing inescapable complicity. Why force her to fire
17:35
the gun after the victim is already dead or dying,
17:38
to make her part of it. Yes, because once her
17:40
finger pulls that trigger and her DNA is potentially on
17:43
that weapon, or she knows she is an accessory to murder,
17:47
she can never go to the police. Wow, she can
17:50
never leave him. She is now a murderer too. She
17:53
is trapped in his web. If anyone is the spider
17:56
in this scenario, it's burnout.
17:57
Speaker 1: That makes total sense.
17:59
Speaker 2: The black widowly diminishes her status as a victim of
18:02
profound course of control and elevates her to an orchestrator,
18:06
which contradicts the physical evidence of Bernau initiating the violence.
18:09
Speaker 1: But again, we can't ignore it. She didn't warn Davis, No,
18:12
she did. She made the phone call, she set.
18:14
Speaker 2: The bait, right coerced or not, She made a choice
18:17
to protect herself over the lives of the men on
18:19
that list, and John Davis, as tragic as it is,
18:22
was actually victim number two.
18:24
Speaker 1: Oh wow, wait, victim number two.
18:26
Speaker 2: Yes. To really understand how they arrived at that David's
18:30
bridal parking lot and how this dynamic escalated, we have
18:33
to look backward. We have to look at the terrifying
18:35
trial run that happened months earlier.
18:37
Speaker 1: Okay, let's get into that.
18:39
Speaker 2: We need to flash back to October of two thousand
18:42
and one, so two months before John Davis was murdered.
18:45
This brings us to target number one on Bernau's handwritten list.
18:48
Target number one, a man named Ronald Humphrey.
18:51
Speaker 1: Okay, so Humphrey's profile is very different from Davis's because
18:55
Humphrey was a Philadelphia firefighter and crucially, he was actually
18:59
an ex lover of Vernell Jones, right. It wasn't just
19:02
a friendly former co worker. There was a documented romantic
19:06
history there which placed him squarely in the center of
19:09
Berno's paranoid delusions exactly.
19:11
Speaker 2: And the incident in October is chaotic. There is an
19:14
encounter inside Humphrey's truck in Philadelphia, Jones is present and
19:18
Humphrey is shot. Oh man, But there is one critical
19:22
world altering difference between this incident and what happened to
19:26
John Davis.
19:27
Speaker 1: What's up?
19:28
Speaker 2: Ronald Humphrey survived.
19:29
Speaker 1: Oh thank god he lived to tell the tale he did,
19:32
and the quote he gave to the police from his
19:34
hospital bed is incredibly blunt and leaves zero room for misinterpretation.
19:39
Speaker 2: It's a very direct quote.
19:40
Speaker 1: Yeah he told the detectives quote that bitch shut me unquote.
19:44
Speaker 2: That's survival, and that direct identification is monumental, I bet,
19:49
because not only did he survive to point the finger,
19:52
but that October shooting provided the ultimate forensic link for
19:56
the entire investigation. The bullet that was recovered from humphrey
19:59
shooting was analyzed by the crime lab.
20:01
Speaker 1: So let's talk about how that works in two thousand
20:04
and one, because it's not like TV where a computer
20:06
spits out a match in ten seconds.
20:07
Speaker 2: No, not at all. In two thousand and one, ballistics
20:09
matching is a very meticulous physical process. Right When a
20:13
bullet travels down the barrel of a gun, the rifling,
20:16
the spiral grooves inside the barrel that make the bullet
20:19
spin for accuracy, leaves distinct microscopic scratches.
20:24
Speaker 1: On the metal of the bullet, like little lines.
20:26
Speaker 2: Yes, these are called striations. Every single gun barrel leaves
20:29
a slightly different pattern of striations, almost like a fingerprint,
20:33
due to the manufacturing process and general wear and tear. Okay,
20:36
ballistics experts look at the bullet recovered from Humphrey under
20:39
a comparison microscope side by side with the bullets recovered
20:43
from John Davis, and they just line them up exactly.
20:46
They are looking to see if those microscopic scratches line
20:49
up perfectly, and in this case they did.
20:52
Speaker 1: Wow.
20:52
Speaker 2: It proved definitively that the exact same gun was used
20:56
in both crimes.
20:58
Speaker 1: So we have a botched attempt in October where the
21:01
victim lives and names the shooter, and a successful execution
21:04
in December. If you are analyzing the psychological escalation here.
21:11
What does that timeline tell you? It's very telling, because
21:13
common sense says, if you try to shoot someone and
21:15
they live and they know who you are, you go
21:18
into hiving, you panic, you throw the gun in a
21:20
river and skip town. But Burno and Jones didn't.
21:23
Speaker 2: No, they didn't panic, and that speaks to the absolute
21:26
delusion in arrogance driving Kenneth Burno.
21:28
Speaker 1: Arrogance is the right word.
21:30
Speaker 2: If we extrapolate from the psychology of coercive control and narcissism.
21:34
Humphrey's survival didn't serve as a deterrent. It served as
21:37
a brutal learning curve.
21:39
Speaker 1: Oh that is so dark.
21:40
Speaker 2: It made Berno refine his methods. Think about the mechanics
21:43
of the two crimes. The first attempt in the truck
21:46
was chaotic, close quarters, perhaps impulsive in its execution. So
21:51
for target number two, John Davis, they change the plan entirely.
21:55
They use bait. They lure him to a dark, isolated,
21:58
familiar parking lite, so premeditated. Burno takes the lead to
22:02
ensure the first shot is lethal from behind. They learn
22:05
from their failure, and we know this wasn't going to stop.
22:08
Speaker 1: Why because of what Burno said, Yes.
22:10
Speaker 2: After Davis was murdered, Burno reportedly uttered an absolutely shilling
22:14
sentence to Jones. He said, one down, four.
22:17
Speaker 1: To go, one down, four to go. That is sick.
22:20
It is he didn't even count Humphrey because Humphrey lived.
22:23
Davis was the first success in his twisted mind.
22:26
Speaker 2: Exactly.
22:26
Speaker 1: He is basically gamifying murder. But going back to the investigation,
22:31
you have a surviving victim in Philadelphia who names Vernell Jones,
22:35
and you have a bullet from that shooting that matches
22:37
a bullet in a brand new homicide in Montgomery County.
22:40
Speaker 2: It's a gold mine for a detective.
22:42
Speaker 1: A surviving victim and a matching bullet is an absolute
22:46
dream scenario, which shifts the narrative directly into the investigative breakthrough.
22:52
How did the police start putting these pieces together?
22:54
Speaker 2: It's a rapid, methodical unraveling from there the investigation into
22:58
the Davis murder. Prosecutor in the region, okay, I know that,
23:10
as we discussed earlier, they looked at the crime scene,
23:12
the running car, the untouched money, and immediately pivoted away
23:17
from a robbery motive.
23:18
Speaker 1: They know it's personal, so they do what you do
23:20
in the early two thousands. They go straight to the
23:22
cell phone record exactly. It's not smartphones with GPS tracking yet,
23:26
but they can pull the call logs and there it is,
23:29
sitting right there on John Davis's phone records, the voicemail
23:34
from Vernelle Jones left on the very evening he was killed.
23:37
Speaker 2: The bait, the bait. That voicemail is the thread they
23:40
start pulling. It gives them the name they need. They
23:43
look up Vernelle Jones, they see she's a former employee.
23:46
The connection is established, so the police reach out and
23:49
ask her to come in for an interview. Now, under
23:52
normal circumstances, a suspect and a murder investigation might try
23:57
to play it cool. Sure, they might bring a lawyer,
23:59
or they might just feign complete ignorance and answer questions politely.
24:04
But Vernell Jones makes a crucial, bizarre mistake.
24:08
Speaker 1: What did she do?
24:09
Speaker 2: She brings Kenneth Burno with her to the police station.
24:12
Speaker 1: Let's analyze that. Yeah, why on earth would you bring
24:16
your abusive, murderous boyfriend to the police station when you
24:20
were being questioned about a murder you both just committed.
24:23
Speaker 2: It makes no sense.
24:24
Speaker 1: Was it him demanding to go to keep an eye
24:27
on her to make sure she didn't crack under the pressure.
24:29
Speaker 2: Almost certainly, it circles entirely back to that coercive control.
24:33
Berno couldn't trust her to be out of his site,
24:35
especially not in a room full of experienced homicide detectives.
24:38
He needed to manage the narrative. He needed to be
24:40
the director of the scene too, But in doing so,
24:43
he trips his own wire. How so well The sources
24:47
detail how Burno's behavior in the waiting room and during
24:49
the interview process was overly inquisitive.
24:52
Speaker 1: Oh, he has too many questions, way too many.
24:55
Speaker 2: He wasn't acting like a supportive boyfriend comforting a grieving
24:59
former call. He was asking the detectives too many questions typical.
25:04
He was trying to figure out exactly what the police knew,
25:08
what physical evidence they had recovered from the parking lot,
25:10
who they were talking to.
25:12
Speaker 1: It's the sheer arrogance of the narcissist. He genuinely thinks
25:16
he's the smartest guy in the room.
25:17
Speaker 2: Always.
25:18
Speaker 1: He thinks he can counter interrogate seasoned homicide detectives and
25:21
they won't notice. But all he's doing is shining a massive,
25:25
flashing spotlight on himself precisely.
25:28
Speaker 2: Narcissism often demands that the individual feels superior to authority.
25:33
Burno couldn't resist the urge to probe the detectives, believing
25:36
he could outsmart them and steer the investigation away from them.
25:39
Speaker 1: But cups pick up on that immediately.
25:41
Speaker 2: They recognize that behavior instantly. A grieving friend doesn't try
25:45
to cross examine the police about ballistics or timelines. No,
25:48
they just try exactly a guilty party does the questioning.
25:51
His behavior gave the detectives the gut instinct they needed
25:54
to look closer at him.
25:56
Speaker 1: Here's where it gets really interesting. Though. You have Burno
25:59
acting highly suspicious in Montgomery County where the Davis murder happened, right,
26:03
But you also have the Philadelphia Police Department dealing with
26:06
the Ronald Humphrey shooting from October. These are two different jurisdictions.
26:11
How often do neighboring police departments actually communicate effectively, especially
26:15
back in two thousand and one, It can be.
26:17
Speaker 2: A challenge, for sure, But when a firearm is involved,
26:20
ballistics databases are the bridge. The interagency cooperation here is
26:25
what locked the trap ah the bullets. Yes, Montgomery County
26:29
has the Davis homicide, the suspicious voicemail, and the bizarre
26:33
behavior of Bernou and Jones. Right PHILLYPD has the Humphrey
26:37
survival and the direct accusation against Jones. Once the crime
26:41
labs run the bullets and confirm the match, the jurisdictions
26:44
realize they are working the exact same conspiracy. Wow, the
26:48
physical evidence connects the chaotic domestic violence incident in October
26:52
and Philadelphia to the cold blooded execution in December in
26:56
White Marsh Township.
26:57
Speaker 1: So the evidence just becomes an avalanche cell phone records, ballistics,
27:01
a surviving eye witness. So by late December two thousand
27:05
and one, just weeks after John Davis is killed, the
27:08
couple is arrested.
27:09
Speaker 2: The countdown has stopped.
27:10
Speaker 1: Yeah, the reign of terror is over. Before they can
27:12
move on to target number three on that handwritten list.
27:15
And with their arrest, the narrative moves from the dark
27:17
streets and parking lots into the stark, fluorescent reality of
27:21
the courtroom.
27:22
Speaker 2: And this is where their toxic bond of forced loyalty
27:25
completely shatters. Obviously, the timeline of justice here moves steadily
27:29
from two thousand and two to two thousand and four.
27:31
Once in custody, the illusion of Berno's omnipotence vanishes for Fornell.
27:35
Speaker 1: Jones, right, he can't control her from another cell.
27:37
Speaker 2: Exactly Faced with the reality of prison, the physical separation
27:41
from him, and perhaps finally out from under his constant
27:44
coercive control, she breaks. In two thousand and two, she
27:48
pleads guilty in the Ronald Humphrey shooting case and agrees
27:51
to become a cooperating witness for the prosecution against Kenneth
27:54
Burno oh.
27:55
Speaker 1: Man, the ultimate betrayal in Berno's eyes, the woman he
27:59
forced to kill to prove her loyalty is now the
28:01
star witness against him.
28:03
Speaker 2: Poetic justice in a way, it really is.
28:06
Speaker 1: So we get to Berno's trial in two thousand and four,
28:09
and you have to look at the defense strategy his
28:12
team employees, because it is incredibly revealing what to do.
28:16
They don't just argue he's innocent or he wasn't there.
28:19
They attempt to shift the entirety of the blame onto
28:22
Vernell Jones.
28:23
Speaker 2: Oh wow.
28:24
Speaker 1: Yeah, they lean completely into that black widow trope we
28:29
were discussing earlier.
28:30
Speaker 2: I mean, it was realistically their only viable play given
28:33
the mountain of forensic evidence in her testimony, but it
28:35
was profoundly.
28:37
Speaker 1: Cynical, extremely cynical.
28:38
Speaker 2: The defense tried to paint Jones as this hyper jealous,
28:41
malicious instigator. They pointed to the Humphrey shooting and argued
28:45
that she was the one with the violent history against.
28:47
Speaker 1: Former lovers right because of Humphrey.
28:49
Speaker 2: And they said that Berno was just a bystander caught
28:51
in her web. They tried to leverage the misogynistic archetype
28:55
of the deadly seductress to excuse a man with a
28:58
documented history of severe domestic abuse and control.
29:01
Speaker 1: They essentially asked the jury to believe that an aspiring
29:04
singer manipulated a former R and B star into a
29:07
murderous rampage.
29:09
Speaker 2: Which is absurd.
29:10
Speaker 1: But the jury saw right through the theatrics. They didn't
29:14
buy the black widow defense for a second. The text
29:17
notes that the jury deliberated very quickly. I'm not surprised
29:20
they convicted Kenneth Burno a first degree murder and conspiracy.
29:25
For anyone listening who isn't a lawyer, break down exactly
29:28
what first degree murder means in Pennsylvania and why that
29:31
specific charge is so important.
29:33
Speaker 2: Here sure. In Pennsylvania, first degree murder is a criminal
29:36
homicide committed by an intentional, willful, deliberate, and premeditated.
29:41
Speaker 1: Act, premeditated being the keyword exactly.
29:44
Speaker 2: The prosecution had to prove that Berno didn't just snap
29:47
in a moment of passion. They had to prove he
29:49
planned it out right. The handwritten hit list, the acquisition
29:53
of the firearm, the use of Jones to leave the
29:55
bait voicemail, the driving to the specific location, the running vehicle,
29:59
all all of that demonstrates extensive premeditation.
30:02
Speaker 1: It's textbook premeditation.
30:04
Speaker 2: Because of that conviction, he was sentenced to two concurrent
30:07
life sentences. He is never getting out of prison.
30:09
Speaker 1: Good And what about Vernell Jones? She was coerced, yes,
30:15
but she still pulled the trigger. How did the justice
30:17
system hander her culpability?
30:20
Speaker 2: Fornelle Jones was held accountable for her actions, but the
30:23
law recognized the nuance of her situation through a plea deal. Okay,
30:28
she pleaded guilty to third degree murder for her role
30:31
in Davis's death.
30:32
Speaker 1: What's the difference there?
30:33
Speaker 2: Third degree murder in Pennsylvania is essentially any murder that
30:37
isn't first or second degree. It involves malice, but not
30:41
necessarily the specific premeditated intent to kill that first degree requires.
30:46
I think in the context of a plea deal, accepting
30:49
a third degree charge often reflects a compromise. The prosecution
30:53
gets her vital testimony to lock away the mastermind burnout right,
30:57
they need her to get him, and in exchange, they
30:59
acknowledge them mitigating factors of her severe abuse and coercion,
31:02
which lowers her sentence from life without parole.
31:05
Speaker 1: She received a sentence of seventeen to thirty five years,
31:08
which was added to her prior sentence for the Humphrey shooting.
31:11
Speaker 2: That's a long time.
31:12
Speaker 1: It's a long stretch, but she did eventually serve her
31:15
minimum time. The sources indicate she was paroled in December
31:18
of twenty eighteen.
31:19
Speaker 2: I can imagine that was controversial.
31:21
Speaker 1: Oh naturally, that parole sparked a lot of mixed reactions
31:25
because on one hand, you have psychological experts who understand
31:28
coercive control. They recognized that she was a victim of
31:32
severe abuse who was forced into an impossible, terrifying situation
31:37
where her own life was likely on the line.
31:39
Speaker 2: It's survival.
31:40
Speaker 1: But on the other hand, a completely innocent man. A
31:44
father is dead because she made that phone call and
31:47
pulled that trigger, regardless of who told her to do it.
31:50
Speaker 2: It is a profound ethical and legal tension that the
31:52
justice system struggles with constantly. How do you balance the
31:55
reality of psychological coercion with the absolute finality of murder?
32:00
Speaker 1: You really can't balance it perfectly.
32:01
Speaker 2: Her parole reflects the legal completion of her agreed upon sentence.
32:05
She paid the debt the state decided she owed, but
32:08
for the families involved, the sentence is eternal.
32:11
Speaker 1: And that brings me to a piece of testimony from
32:13
the source material that is just absolutely devastating. It's from
32:18
John Davis's cousin, Deborah Kelly.
32:20
Speaker 2: Oh I remember this, Yeah.
32:21
Speaker 1: She was speaking during the sentencing hearings and she articulated
32:25
the unbridgable unfairness of it all.
32:27
Speaker 2: What did she say?
32:28
Speaker 1: She said that the families of the perpetrators Berno and Jones,
32:32
they can still go to a prison on visiting day.
32:35
They can sit across a table from them, right, they
32:37
can hear their voices, look them in the eye and
32:40
know they are still alive on this earth. But John
32:42
Davis is gone forever. His family only gets a cold headstone.
32:47
Speaker 2: It is the starkest reminder of the human cost at
32:49
the center of all this psychological analysis. The media legacy
32:53
of this case, the episodes of Philly Homicide, the features
32:57
on true crime networks. They tend to immortalize the bizarre
33:00
canics of the crime.
33:00
Speaker 1: Yeah, they focus on the flashy stuff.
33:02
Speaker 2: Yeah, they focus on the handwritten hit list, the thwarted boys,
33:05
the second men, ambitions, the betrayal in the courtroom. But
33:09
at its core, beneath all the sensationalism, this is a
33:13
cautionary tale about how unchecked jealousy and paranoia can radiate
33:17
outward and completely destroy innocent lives.
33:20
Speaker 1: It's a tragedy that started with one man's inability to
33:23
handle his own failures and ended with a beloved father
33:26
bleeding out in a van in a bridal warehouse parking lot.
33:30
Speaker 2: If we bring this entire deep dive full circle, we
33:32
have to sympathize the tragedy of John Davis. He was
33:35
a man whose only mistake was being a friendly face
33:38
to the wrong person.
33:39
Speaker 1: He was just a nice guy.
33:41
Speaker 2: He was a good manager, supportive colleague, and by simply
33:44
being open to catching up with a former coworker. He
33:47
inadvertently stepped off the edge of his own reality and
33:49
into a web of someone else's severe paranoia and unfulfilled ambition.
33:53
Speaker 1: He had no idea what he was walking into.
33:55
Speaker 2: None. He was collateral damage in a psychological war he
33:58
didn't even know was being fought.
33:59
Speaker 1: I mean, think about that the next time your phone
34:01
buzzes with a text from someone you haven't spoken to
34:03
in years. We spend so much time worrying about the
34:06
obvious dangers in our lives. We do. We worry about
34:09
our own conflicts, our own mistakes, the enemies we might
34:12
make it work, or in our personal lives. But this
34:15
case proves that sometimes the most profound and dangerous threats
34:20
don't come from our own lives at all.
34:22
Speaker 2: No, they don't.
34:24
Speaker 1: Sometimes the threat comes from the unseen demons of the
34:27
people on the absolute periphery of our existence. Yeah, you
34:32
can do everything right, you can be a good person,
34:34
You can have no enemies and still cross paths with
34:38
someone else's nightmare.
34:39
Speaker 2: The randomness of that intersection is terrifying. It underscores how
34:43
deeply interconnected we all are and how fragile the bubble
34:46
of our everyday safety really is.
34:48
Speaker 1: Before we wrap up, I want to leave you with
34:50
one final lingering thought tam all Over, something that builds
34:53
on what we've discussed today, but takes it in a
34:55
slightly different direction. We spend a lot of time talking
34:58
about Kenneth Burnou's thwarted ambition, his exit from the group
35:02
that became Boys the Second Man, and how that failure
35:05
mutated into a violent need for control over Veranelle Jones, Right,
35:09
But think about the alternative timeline. What if Kenneth Burno
35:12
had stayed in unique Attraction. What if he hadn't left
35:16
and he had achieved the massive global fame, the wealth,
35:20
and the adulation of Boys the Second Man.
35:22
Speaker 2: That's a fascinating question.
35:24
Speaker 1: Would his deep seated narcissism and need for absolute control
35:27
have simply evaporated in the warmth of the spotlight? Or
35:31
would millions of adoring fans and unlimited financial resources have
35:35
simply become a much larger audience in a much bigger
35:38
stage for a tragedy that was always waiting to happen.
35:41
Speaker 2: Wow, that's something to think about.
35:43
Speaker 1: Thank you for joining us on this deep dive.
35:45
Speaker 2: Thank you