Joshua Jenkins

George and Alene Jenkins had tried to have children for several years without success. Eventually they adopted two children but the specifics on how, when, or how old the children were upon their adoption are unknown to me. By 1995 the couple lived in Las Vegas with their fifteen year old son, Joshua and ten year old daughter, Megan.

It is unclear how old Joshua was when he began having behavioral issues but it was said that by the age of five he was in “treatment for his educational, behavioral and mental health obstacles.” It seems that things did not get better as he got older. Sometime in late 1995 or early 1996 it was discovered that Joshua was “plotting” to kill George. He armed himself with a crossbow and a rifle and attempted to attack him. His plot failed and his parents sent him to Visa del Mar, a boarding school in Los Angeles for troubled children. This was apparently not the first issue they had with Joshua as it was said that the police were called several times because of his “anger, threats and violent tendencies.”

On Friday February 2, 1996 George, Alene and Megan headed to the Los Angeles area and picked Joshua up from school and then headed to the home of Bill and Evelyn Grossman, Alene's parents, in Vista California. The plan was to spend the weekend there. At some point early on Alene and Joshua had an argument. Later that night after the family went to sleep Joshua struck... literally. George had gotten up to go to the bathroom and Joshua attacked him with a hammer. He then moved on to Alene, Evelyn and Bill while they slept. After bludgeoning them with the hammer he then went into the kitchen and got a knife and stabbed each on directly in the heart. Amazingly it seems that Megan has slept through it all.

The following morning Joshua took Megan to a store and he asked her to pick out an ax for him to purchase. It is unclear what reason he gave her that he needed the ax, nor is it clear if she knew her entire family was dead. They returned to the Grossman home where Joshua used that ax on Megan and murdered her also. He then piled all of the bodies in the master bedroom of the home and began to set several small fires throughout the home. He escaped in his parents' car.

The fire was seen, the bodies were found and suspicion went straight to Joshua. On February 4^th he stopped at a convenient store to ask for directions for the best route to Nevada. The clerk on duty recognized him from the newspaper and contacted authorities. Joshua almost readily confessed to the murders and gave the details as to what happened. He initially told investigators that he committed the crime out of revenge for his parents sending him to the boarding school. Later he would say “the world's really messed up and I didn't want them to live in it anymore...too much problems... too much hate.”

Joshua was charged with five counts of first degree murder and one count of arson. He initially plead not guilty by reason of insanity in juvenile court on February 14^th. His trial was set to start on April 17, 1997 but the day before he changed his plea to guilty after considering the fact that the prosecutors were charging him as an adult.

There was still a trial of sorts but not in the traditional sense. In fact, it was not really called a “trial.” It was called a “sanity phase” but there was a jury of ten women and two men who were to decide whether Joshua would go to prison or a mental institution. If you read my last blog then then you know I went into about the idea of being legally insane. If you have not read that, or others in which I discussed at length the M'naughton Rule then a simple Google search will give you a more in depth idea of what it entails. I will simply leave it at the fact that if a person knows the difference between right and wrong they are not considered to be insane. It appears in this case that one or more psychiatrists considered Joshua to be “mentally unfit, maybe even schizophrenic” they did not consider him to be legally insane. The defense criticized one of the psychiatrists that the prosecutors presented. His name was Park Dietz and is fairly infamous. Dietz apparently testified at the trials of Jeffrey Dahmer and John DuPont claiming they too were sane. In the same respect, the prosecutors were critical of the defense experts who claimed Joshua was insane.

During the sanity phase the jury was shown a videotaped confession that was made on the day of his arrest. It was said that throughout the video he showed “no emotion, sadness, anger or remorse and answered all questions” that were posed to him. There was also evidence presented that Joshua had asked a counselor at his new school if the quickest way to kill a person was by cutting their throat. It was also said that he told the counselor “Watch, I won't be back here next week.”

The jury found him guilty but sane. On June 30, 1997 Joshua Jenkins was sentenced to 112 years in the state prison. He officially was admitted into the system the following month. He became eligible for parole in February of 2020 but it was said that he voluntarily waived his hearing then and again in 2021. His next hearing is scheduled for August of 2022.