Landlord's killer dies in prison

By Todd Cooper - Omaha.com

January 19, 2013

The strange, sordid and, at times, miserable life of Monique Lee has ended.

Lee — the 29-year-old serving a life sentence for strangling her landlord, Omaha businesswoman Karen Jenkins — died at the Nebraska women’s prison in York. The cause of death was not known but Lee reportedly had been housed in a medical unit for an illness in recent days.

Corrections officials had not released reports of her death; a corrections web site listed her date of death as Friday.

Lee’s death — just two months after she was sent York to serve her life sentence — brings an end to what her attorney called one of the more “strange, odd, unusual” cases he has handled.

Lee had pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity in the October 2010 death of Jenkins, a well-traveled businesswoman and college instructor who had just earned her doctorate degree.

Lee was bipolar and had suffered from schizophrenia since childhood.

Her brother and sister testified that she had molested her brother when they both were children. Also as a child, she tried to poison her mother by soaking her food in WD-40.

She told others that she killed Jenkins, 48, because a man named “Black” threatened to take away her children if she didn’t.

Prosecutors believed her real motive was rooted in the fact that Jenkins had served her with eviction papers in the days before.

The slaying further exhibited Lee’s bizarre behavior. Lee and her brother, Gary Lee, lured Jenkins to one of Jenkins’ vacant apartments on the pretense that Gary Lee wanted to rent the apartment.

The brother and sister then strangled Jenkins. Monique used Super Glue to seal her nostrils and mouth shut.

They hid Jenkins’ body — apparently moving from place to place — before it was discovered more than week later under an abandoned house across the street from Lee’s apartment at 40th and Ames Avenue.

A jury rejected Lee’s insanity defense. Under Nebraska law, the defense must prove that a defendant suffers from mental illness that makes her incapable of distinguishing right from wrong.

Douglas County Public Defender Tom Riley said there was no doubt that Lee was mentally ill.

“She had longstanding mental health issues,” he said. “Her upbringing was extremely difficult.

“There’s always some unanswered questions in any case. But with Monique, there were some gaping ones as to what actually occurred and why.”

Life sentence in slaying of landlord

By Todd Cooper - Omaha.com

November 14, 2012

Cynthia and Karen Jenkins were so close they were like twins.

Born just 11 months apart, the sisters shared everything. They argued and laughed, telephoned and teased each other every day, even when Karen Jenkins was traveling to faraway places.

They shared something else, too: If Karen had a tenant who had trouble making rent, Cynthia would hire her to clean houses.

But one of those tenants, Monique Lee, began stealing from Cynthia, stopped showing up for work and stopped paying rent. After giving her several reprieves, Karen served Lee with an eviction notice in October 2010.

Two weeks later, Lee and her brother, Gary, lured Karen Jenkins, 48, to a vacant apartment — and strangled her.

Now Lee, 29, will serve a life sentence — after Douglas County District Judge James Gleason imposed the term Tuesday.

Cynthia Jenkins knows a little something about life sentences.

The Omaha woman said she's lost without her sister.

“Monique's pretty much killed me, too,” Cynthia Jenkins told the judge Tuesday. “I can't take care of my family the way I used to. I can't forgive her. I can't find any hope. I can't find any answers.

“What did (Monique) have to gain for what she did? It's a mystery.”

Lee's attorney, Douglas County Public Defender Tom Riley, said the mystery is rooted in mental illness. Riley had detailed Lee's history of mental illness from childhood — and had argued that Lee was not guilty by reason of insanity.

Douglas County Attorney Don Kleine acknowledged that Lee had mental illness but argued that she premeditated Jenkins' killing once she was served with the eviction papers. A jury convicted Lee, rejecting her insanity defense. Gary Lee was convicted of second-degree murder.

A week after her October 2010 disappearance, Jenkins' body was found under an abandoned house across the street from the bar Jenkins was renovating at 40th Street and Ames Avenue.

Now, whenever Jenkins' family gathers — be it at home or at the bar, now named Doc's Place — talk inevitably turns to the senselessness of Karen's death.

“That's the most frustrating part,” Cynthia Jenkins said. “Every time we get together, we try to make sense of it.”

It won't ever make sense, brother Kenneth Jenkins said.

Karen Jenkins, a businesswoman and former college instructor, had traveled the world and received a doctorate in conflict resolution. She was ornery and playful and full of energy, her family said.

“Karen had a way to give joy, to give a piece of herself to every friend she had,” Cynthia Jenkins said.

Ken Jenkins said the family is trying to focus on the quality of Karen's life, not the cruelty of her death.

“You can't hate,” he said. “If you hate, you can't pick the pieces up, can't move on. If you hate, you become them.”

‘I strangled her,’ Lee says in call from jail

By Todd Cooper - Omaha.cpm

May 4, 2012

So much for the whodunit.

In the course of her first-degree murder trial this week, Monique Lee’s defense has been questioning whether prosecutors could prove that Lee killed her landlord, Karen Jenkins, a college instructor and businesswoman.

However, one person didn’t question who did the killing: Lee herself.

In a December 2010 phone call from jail — played by prosecutors Thursday afternoon — Lee told her sister that she killed Jenkins.

“I admit, I did it,” she said at one point.

At another, she blubbered, through her tears, how she did it.

Pressing Lee about why she was charged with first-degree murder, sister DeShawndra Boatman asked Lee whether she shot or stabbed Jenkins, 48.

Lee didn’t respond.

“C’mon, Monique, just tell me,” Boatman said. “I won’t tell nobody. I won’t tell mom. ... Did you drug her?”

“I didn’t drug her,” Lee said, sniffling. “I choked ... I strangled her. I strangled her, Shawndra.”

Douglas County Public Defender Tom Riley has left little unturned as he has questioned whether someone else — namely Lee’s brother, Gary Lee — could have killed Jenkins.

But that part of the defense was undermined Thursday as his own client’s words reverberated through the courtroom.

In addition to the jailhouse phone calls, prosecutors say, Lee has made admissions to both of the psychiatrists who have evaluated her.

And her brother Gary Lee is expected to testify Friday that he helped Monique Lee after she became upset that she was being evicted.

All of those things may mean the defense soon will turn to the second prong of their strategy: their argument that Lee was insane at the time of the killing.

The three phone calls — made two months after Jenkins was found dead — show a desperate woman. Douglas County Attorney Don Kleine and Chief Deputy Brenda Beadle said it’s a woman covering her tracks — and trying to deflect blame for strangling Lee with a vacuum cleaner cord.

Riley, on the other hand, likely will point to some elements of the phone calls as signs that Lee wasn’t all there.

Throughout the phone calls, Lee seems consumed with her children — and with the consequences she might suffer.

In the second phone call that day, Lee adamantly denies acting alone — or out of anger for getting initial eviction papers.

“I admit, I did it,” she says. “It wasn’t based off of what everybody thinks it is. My kids was being threatened.”

By who? Boatman asked.

Lee refers to a mysterious man at a nearby body shop — and to a yellow truck parked in the neighborhood.

“All I know is his name is Black,” Lee said. “I would get phone calls, messages telling me what clothes I was wearing ... like they was watching me. I was being threatened. My brother was being threatened.”

Lee tells her sister that Jenkins’ body was moved by the unnamed man and his friends. Gary Lee is expected to testify he helped his sister hide the body.

“He kept threatening me,” she said. “He started telling me, ‘Do it or die. So I did it.’”

Authorities noted that Lee provides more details with each phone call. In the first phone call, Lee says she strangled Jenkins. In the second call, her sister asked what role their brother, Gary Lee, played.

“Gary watched,” Lee said. “He just stood there and watched. And he held her down.”

In the third phone call, she vents to Boatman about their little brother cooperating with police — and pinning the motive on the eviction.

“Gary throw all this (expletive) on me,” Lee says. “You mean to tell me, I been letting you live in my house and then you going to throw this (expletive) on me? ... This is my blood.”

Courtroom spectators were spellbound by the tapes. A few of Jenkins’ family members and friends dabbed away tears. One buried her head in her hands.

At one point, Lee’s mother left the courtroom in a huff. She shot a glare in her daughter’s direction before flinging open the courtroom doors.

Two jurors scribbled furiously as Lee made her admissions. Another closed his notebook and leaned back in his chair.

A female juror tried to stifle tears as Lee repeatedly asked about her 6-year-old daughter and 3-year-old son.

Lee: “Have they asked about me? ... I need to hear them.”

Boatman: “They’re fine. I just told ’em ‘Mom has to take a vacation.’”

Finally, Boatman — who now has custody of the children — puts the daughter on.

“Hi, baby. Hey, baby,” Lee says, her singsong voice muffled by tears. “You take care of your little brother, OK? I love you.”

“I love you too,” her daughter says.

Later, Lee asks about the life sentence she could face for murder.

“They probably are going to try to give you life,” Boatman says. “They might give you 20 years.”

“Well, 20 is a lot better than life,” Lee says. “As long as it’s not forever. As long as I can get out and see the kids.”

She pauses.

“If I could change this, Shawndra, I swear to God I would. I can’t stand being away from my babies.”

Did woman in landlord slaying know right from wrong?