Results tagged “banitajacks”

You have to sit through an intro from NBC4's Pat Collins to get to it, but this recently released video of D.C. police interviewing Banita Jacks shortly after her arrest truly is chilling, though not for the reasons we expected. Jacks definitely appears to be weak and tired (she had by all accounts been starving herself, too) but what we found most startling was how lucid she actually seems. Given the nature of the crime, we were expecting the rantings of a woman who had little to no grasp on reality, but Jacks actually speaks to detectives in even tempered, complete thoughts, noting that she knows what the discovery of the bodies of her four daughters must look like to police, and explaining that she didn't seek out help when her daughters started dying because she "knew that this was going to happen ... a bunch of trouble for me."

Breaking news from the Washington Post:

A D.C. Superior Court judge on Wednesday found Banita Jacks guilty of killing her four daughters in a case that shook the region for its cruelty.

Continue reading "Banita Jacks Found Guilty of Murdering Her Daughters"

The bench trial in the case of Banita Jacks, who is accused of killing her four young daughters in a Southeast rowhouse over a year and a half ago, begins tomorrow. Jacks waived her right to a jury trial, although it is assumed that she probably have had a better chance at an acquittal in front of twelve jurors. Judge Frederick H. Weisberg -- who some may remember as a vital part of a story by Colbert I. King which won the Post a Pulitzer in 2003 -- will hear the case. Jacks adamantly declined to plead insanity, even going so far as to refuse to even meet with attorneys who suggested such a course of action. WaPo's Keith Alexander has a tidy roundup of the case to date, if you are looking to get caught up before proceedings start tomorrow.

It's been a little over a year since the decomposed bodies of Banita Jacks's four daughters were discovered inside their Southeast D.C. home. The house is still for sale, and WTOP's Mark Segraves took a look inside, with just incredibly disturbing results.

There is no smell that would indicate the home's history. There are some holes in the drywall and the plumbing is not working. Other than that, it appears to be your average rundown house.

Continue reading "Jacks Girls Wrote on Wall: 'Yes I Do Love Mom'"

Via the Post, Banita Jacks pleaded not guilty this morning to first-degree murder charges in the deaths of her four daughters. A trial date has been set for Dec. 1, and her attorneys have 15 days to inform Judge Frederick Weisberg if they intend to go forward with an insanity defense. Jacks has also been charged with failing to provide the girls with adequate nutrition and medical attention. The decomposed bodies of the four girls, who had been variously beaten, strangled and stabbed, were discovered in a Southeast rowhouse in January. Authorities now believe they had been dead for six months before they were found.

D.C. Wire reported late yesterday that the D.C. Public Charter School Board has passed new attendance and truancy policies in the wake of the killings of the daughters of Banita Jacks. The decomposing bodies of the four girls were found dead in their Southeast home after having been absent from school for months. Charter schools will now be required to report attendance statistics on a quarterly basis, and will mark attendance at a threshold rate of 85 percent, and truancy at less than 20 percent.

There's been a lot more attention placed on the goings on at D.C.'s Child and Family Services Agency since the gruesome discovery of the murdered daughters of Banita Jacks, and rightly so. But two different stories in today's edition of the Examiner paint nearly opposite portraits of what might be going wrong inside the agency.

Mayor Adrian Fenty announced this morning that Banita Jacks' four murdered daughters have been positively identified through a mix of dental records and DNA analysis. The victims can now be confirmed to be Brittany Jacks, Tatiana Jacks, N’Kiah Fogle and Aja Fogle, all sisters between the ages of 5 and 16. All four decomposed bodies were discovered Jan. 9 in their home on the 4200 block of Sixth Street SE.