Trial Insider: People v. Jade Janks

Deputy District Attorneys Teresa Pham and Jorge Del Portillo talk about their trial strategies in prosecuting People v. Jade Janks.

On December 21, 2022, Jade Janks was found guilty of first degree murder. Janks murdered her former stepfather, Tom Merriman, after discovering nude photographs of herself on Tom's computer. Tom was the founder of the Butterfly Farms in Encinitas, CA and the murder took place in Solana Beach, CA.

This case received lots of publicity and was featured on CourtTV.

FACTS:

On December 23, 2020, Tom was transferred from Scripps Hospital to an aftercare facility and Jade Janks decided to clean Tom’s apartment for him before he was discharged. While she was cleaning Tom’s apartment, she discovered nude photos of herself on his computer. She was so disturbed by the discovery that she couldn’t shower alone and feared Tom would be discharged early and come home.

She began plotting the murder and sought help from a “fixer”, Alan Roach, who was a friend of a friend. The plan was to dose Tom with sleeping pills, get him to his bed, suffocate him, and stage it to look like an overdose.

On December 31, 2020, Janks dosed Tom after picking him up from Aviara Healthcare, but the fixer never showed up. The fixer sent his buddy Brian Salomon to help out, but when she asked Brian to strangle Tom, Brian immediately left.

Janks called her friend Adam for help. When Adam showed up, she confessed to dosing , suffocating and strangling Tom to death. She asked Adam to move Tom’s body into a wheelbarrow and into Tom’s bed to make it look like an overdose. Adam didn’t want any part of it and left.

Adam reported to the police that his friend confessed to murdering Tom. When authorities were looking for Tom, they couldn’t find him. When they brought Janks in for questioning, she claimed not to know where he was.

After hours of searching inside the property, in the early morning hours of Jan 2, 2021, detectives found Tom’s body buried under a pile of trash. After arresting Janks and searching her cell phone, detectives found very suspicious text messages including:

• I just dosed the hell out of him.
• I really didn’t want to involve that many people.
• It’s going to be Weekend at Bernie’s.
• I can’t keep a kicking body in my truck. (*says truck but likely meant trunk)

An autopsy found no signs of strangulation but did find toxic levels of zolpidem, otherwise known as Ambien.

Crime or Fiction: Each episode we look at the laws on the books and quiz the panelists to see if they can guess which law is fake. 2 are real, 1 is fake--can you guess which one is the fake? The theme of this episode are laws from the Solana Beach Municipal Code.

A. It’s illegal to have an apiary in a residential zone.

B. It’s illegal to tattoo a person’s skin if it has a rash or pimples.

C. It’s illegal to have bamboo over 15 feet tall.

Disclaimer: The views expressed on this podcast are solely of the speakers and do not reflect the views of the Deputy DA's Association nor the District Attorney.

Questions and comments can be emailed to [email protected].

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Music by: The Only Ocean - "Snake"

Image by: Pixabay user Michael Gaida.