Continuing, Jennifer told just about the same story as Laron had previously, explaining how she made plans with Shannon to sell him a half ounce of weed for $55, but they did not have the drugs and planned on taking his money.
“Jenni didn’t know about [it],” Jennifer said, indicating that Jenni Charron was not part of the robbery/murder in any way.
She then gave a blow-by-blow account of speaking to Shannon and coaxing him to follow her behind the renovated house. She even told him where to park his scooter.
“I knew Laron and Lamont were waiting behind the house.”
As they got to the corner of the back of the vacant house, Jennifer told Wawrzynski, that was when Shannon saw Lamont and Laron waiting. “They will give you what you came for,” Jennifer said she told Shannon at that point.
He was a bit uneasy about the deal, she said. Shannon sensed something was up.
“I’m going watch out for the cops while you get what you came for,” Jennifer said she told Shannon before walking away from him.
“As soon as I walked by the back corner of the house, I could see Lamont grab him by the neck from behind. . . .” Lamont had wrapped his arms around Shannon’s neck and had pulled him backward. “Laron put the gun to his head . . . and that’s when I ran away and heard one gunshot and then a second gunshot. . . .”
At times, Jennifer was “very emotional,” Wawrzynski noted in his report of this initial interview: She expressed remorse for the victim.
After they finished, Jennifer Mee seemed very different. It was as if she had unloaded an enormous burden off her fragile psyche. She smiled a lot. She seemed “jovial,” Wawrzynski pointed out in his report of the conversation. It was quite a difference from the former person sitting, crying uncontrollably at times, tears streaming down her face, while admitting to taking part in a robbery that had resulted in a murder.
“Can I have something to eat?” Jennifer said a number of times after they wrapped up the interview and she agreed to provide a second interview on tape.
“Sure,” Wawrzynski said. He told her that one of the detectives had gone out to get some pizzas for everyone.
“I think I might be pregnant with Lamont’s baby,” Jennifer said next, kind of just spouting things off the top of her head. “And you know, I consider myself trisexual,” she added jokingly, laughing. “I’m willing to ‘try’ anything!”
Sergeant Terrell Skinner, who had no idea what Wawrzynski and Jennifer had just talked about, brought in the pizza. He put it on a table inside the room where Wawrzynski was interviewing Jennifer. She ate as though she hadn’t had food in quite some time.
“Do you remember me from years before?” Wawrzynski asked Jennifer as she ate.
“I don’t . . . ,” she said.
He explained how she had run in front of his car years before in an alley near her home, “and I had to brake hard.”
That made Jennifer smile. “I do remember that.” Near the end of his report detailing this interview, Wawrzynski made one final point: It should be noted at no time did [she] hiccup.
CHAPTER 74
JENNI CHARRON WAS not yet finished talking. Sitting, and still not formally interviewed by detectives, Jenni made several more spontaneous statements. Now, though, her comments were, without Jenni knowing, corroborating what Laron and Lamont had shared with detectives in other rooms. If you look at that as a cop, you can only draw one conclusion: the truth was finally rising to the surface.
“I think I’m pregnant with his child,” Jenni began this time.
The cop was amazed that Jenni was sharing such intimate secrets.
“It’s one of the reasons why we wanted Laron to take the blame—because Lamont has a child. But Laron then decided he did not want to take the blame, because I might be pregnant.”
It was obvious they had all made up a story in case law enforcement came knocking, but they had now abandoned that tale. They were confident that coming clean was the right thing to do.
Jenni and the cop talked some more. The cop wasn’t asking her questions. Jenni was, more or less, working through the situation on her own. At one point, she mentioned how “stupid” the entire crime was and even seemed to blame the victim by asking herself why a person would ever go online, talk to someone, and then go out and meet that individual in person. It seemed so dangerous, she said.
“The dude worked at Walmart,” Jenni said. “He’s never been in trouble.” This was an interesting statement, because it meant that Jenni and Jennifer Mee had talked about Shannon, either before the crime or after. Then, without any elaboration or reason, she added, “Little Jen masterminded this whole thing. . . .” Jenni had just verified what Laron and Jennifer Mee herself had talked about by further explaining how they (Laron, Lamont, and Jennifer Mee) were supposed to provide a half ounce of weed and planned on grabbing the dude’s cash and running.
“Lamont has gunpowder burns on his temple because he was so close when the gun went off.... Laron, Lamont, and Jen 2 were supposed to split the sixty dollars three ways.” She paused before adding how “stupid it was” that a man had been murdered for $60.
“I make a good living cleaning houses,” she said. “I use the money to pay rent for me and my mother. I also feed and clothe my boyfriend, and I just recently allowed Jen 2 and her boyfriend to move in with us.”
Jenni admitted that she had lied when she spoke to a detective earlier. “But, hey, you can’t blame me for trying.”
The cop then asked, “Why did they take a gun? Couldn’t Laron and Lamont just beat him up and take the money? At least, then, nobody would be dead.”
“They took the gun because ‘other people out there’ have guns.”
Joe DeLuca and Dave Wawrzynski then took Jenni into a second room and formally put her statement on record. It was a short interview. She summarized what she had been saying. It was important to the SPPD that Jenni Charron was a witness, not a suspect in the case. That was very clear from all the evidence.
When she was finished, detectives brought her back to that initial interview room, where she waited once again for a ride back to the Eighty-Ninth Avenue apartment so she could grab her keys and head back home to her own apartment.
In his report of the time he spent with Jenni Charron, Officer Mark Blackwood said, I was told that the detectives considered Charron a witness and not a suspect.
While waiting to be released from the SPPD and driven back home, Jenni stood outside and smoked a cigarette with an officer. It just so happened Laron was brought outside so he could smoke, too. Laron and another officer stood far way, on the opposite side of the walkway.
“I love you,” Laron yelled after spotting Jenni standing, puffing away. “Come visit me in jail!”
“I love you, too, Ron. Yes, I’ll come and see you—and I’ll be looking for a lawyer for you.”
When she returned to the interview suite, Jenni decided to give the cop one more piece of information she had just remembered, most definitely to take herself completely out of the equation, so the SPPD would not look at her as a co-conspirator or accessory after the fact. Jenni made a point before leaving to tell the officer that it was Jen 2 who stripped Lamont of his clothing when he came home. And it was Jen 2 who placed all of Shannon’s belongings in a Save-A-Lot bag with Laron’s and Lamont’s clothes and then poured bleach on it all, hopefully destroying any forensic evidence.
CHAPTER 75
DETECTIVE TERRELL SKINNER had been involved in many different tasks as the investigation into Shannon Griffin’s death unfolded, both as a supervisor and on an investigatory level. As the sergeant-in-charge of Homicide, Skinner was a hands-on type of boss. He liked to get into cases and look at them instead of pushing paper around, counting beans, and disciplining cops. One of the responsibilities Skinner took on in Shannon’s case included sitting down and speaking with Lamont Newton and then, later, Jenni Charron. Skinner had also popped in on several of the interviews the other detectives conducted as they wer
e going on.
Skinner had met with Officer Blackwood outside that room in Burglary where Jenni had been placed after she had first been brought in.
“She doesn’t want to talk without an attorney,” Blackwood had told Skinner.
Jenni had made it clear that she did not want to participate in any interviews without first speaking with her attorney.
“But she’s not a suspect,” Skinner had explained to Blackwood. “She’s a witness. She does not need an attorney.”
* * *
Skinner stepped into the room and sat down with Jenni. He introduced himself. “Hi, Jenni, listen, I just spoke with Officer Blackwood and he tells me you want an attorney. I want to make it clear that you’re not a suspect here. You’re a witness, okay? You don’t need an attorney.”
Jenni was comfortable with that and so she opened up. If she was not being viewed as part of the team that had robbed and subsequently murdered Shannon, why not talk about all she knew? After all, back at the apartment, she and Jennifer Mee, Lamont, and Laron had talked decisively about this very moment: what to say and when to say it.
“Can we talk?” Skinner asked.
“Yes,” Jenni responded.
Skinner asked Jenni what she knew about Shannon Griffin.
Charron stated she met the victim, Griffin, on a social network site about a week ago, Skinner wrote in his report. She advised she decided to meet with Griffin because she and Laron got into an argument and broke up.
This statement was in total contrast to just about everything the SPPD had gotten from Jennifer Mee, Laron, Lamont, and even Jenni up to this point. It was almost as if Skinner’s report had mixed up the two Jennifers. And yet it wasn’t a typo or a name out of place within the report. The details that Charron (as Skinner named her in his report) spoke of with him came directly out of Jenni’s mouth.
“I asked Griffin to meet me at the park in the five hundred block of Seventh Street North,” Jenni explained to Skinner, according to his report of a conversation he had with her. “As I was waiting for Griffin at the park, Laron, Lamont, and the other Jennifer that dates Lamont showed up.” From there, she claimed, when Shannon arrived, he and Laron “got into an argument and Laron pulled out a gun from a gray bag and forced the victim behind the vacant house. Afterward, I heard several shots.”
Based on that statement alone, it appeared that Laron, according to what Jenni Charron had just told Sergeant Skinner, executed Shannon Griffin for meeting up with his lady.
“What did you and Lamont and Mee do when Laron took the victim behind the vacant residence?”
Jenni didn’t flinch. She said: “We went back to my apartment.... Laron came back several moments later, stating he and the victim struggled over the gun and it went off.”
“Did Laron leave anything at the crime scene?”
“The gun. The bag the gun was in. A black Polo hat and his black Jordan sandals.”
Skinner said thanks and walked out of the interview room. As he left, Jenni cracked a smile.
She had put their plan in motion.
* * *
Detective Skinner went out into the office and found Dave Wawrzynski, his lead detective running the investigation. He then explained what Jenni Charron had just told him. By this time, Wawrzynski had already spoken to Lamont and Laron and had gotten totally different versions from what Jenni had just told Skinner.
“I interviewed Laron,” Wawrzynski explained to his boss. “He said it was Mee that lured the vic to that area after meeting him online, for the purposes of a robbery he and Lamont were supposed to do. Laron stated that when the vic arrived, Mee brought him to the rear of the vacant house, and he and Lamont proceeded to rob him. . . .”
“All right,” Skinner responded. He was confused. He needed to get to the bottom of what was going on. So he went into the room where they had Laron waiting. Skinner explained to Laron what his girlfriend, Jenni Charron, had told him personally.
“No, no . . . After the robbery, Jen, Lamont, and Jenni decided, without my permission, to come up with the story Jenni gave [you] because . . . I would get a lighter sentence if I took the fall for the entire murder.”
Skinner sat and thought for a moment. It made sense.
“Look, his belongings are in the bathroom at [Jenni’s friend’s house] inside the vent,” Laron said, hoping to prove that what he was saying was the truth and that Jenni was only trying to protect him.
Skinner radioed Gary Gibson, who was still on the scene where Laron and Lamont had been arrested. He asked Gibson to check out the vent and get back to him.
Sure enough, there were Shannon Griffin’s belongings inside a bag, stuffed inside that vent.
Still, Skinner wanted to be certain. He grabbed Jenni and walked her down to the room where Laron was being held.
Jenni sat down.
“You tell Jenni here to tell the truth about what happened,” Skinner explained to Laron.
Jenni began to cry. “I . . . never met him online,” she said without anyone twisting her arm. “It was [the other Jennifer] that met him online and set up the robbery, along with Laron and Lamont. I was . . . at home when those three went to do the robbery. . . .”
Jennifer Mee had already given a formal statement to the SPPD. In a brief recorded interview Jennifer had given when she had first arrived, she blamed the others and told that same park story Jenni had told Skinner. But now, Skinner wanted the truth out of Jennifer Mee. So he summoned for a detective to bring Jennifer to his office so he could talk to her himself.
“You’ve been lying to us the entire time, haven’t you?” Skinner asked Jennifer. “Well, it’s time for you to tell us the truth.”
Jennifer Mee looked at him. She thought she’d been through this with Wawrzynski already. Tears welled in her eyes. She appeared shaken to the core.
“I will . . . tell the truth,” she said through tears.
Skinner called Wawrzynski into his office and told him to get with Jennifer Mee and interview her a second time. Get it on record.
“The results of the Mee and Newton interviews, as well as Raiford, removed Charron from participating in the offense,” Wawrzynski told me later. “Their statements were factually consistent . . . with the scene, as well as the evidence collected.”
Furthermore, knowing that some would later question all of this, Wawrzynski noted, Laron, Lamont, or Jennifer Mee never brought Jenni Charron into the planning or carrying out of the crime, with the exception of those first stories for which they all later said on record were lies to support a story they had made up.
CHAPTER 76
WHEN IT WAS first conceived in the early 1600s, the autopsy was considered controversial and speculative. To many people, the idea of cutting open a human body and searching inside to see what information could be learned about a death felt medieval, not to mention a terrible insult to the dead and invasion of the soul and spirit. The first recorded autopsy, according to Guy N. Rutty’s book Essentials of Autopsy Practice, was performed in Massachusetts in 1647.
Nearly 370 years later, the autopsy is one of the only reliable ways we use to figure out medically and scientifically how a human being exactly died. In Shannon Griffin’s case, there was no doubt he had been shot and those wounds caused his death. Yet, as the associate medical examiner (ME), Dr. Chris Wilson, found almost immediately by studying Shannon’s body, those reports from the three alleged murderers that there had been “two gunshots” fired did not match up with the wounds Dr. Wilson uncovered on Shannon’s body.
In no particular order of appearance, Wilson located a gunshot wound on Shannon’s “right upper lateral chest near the right shoulder,” a second wound “in the upper chest in the midline,” a third in his “right upper chest,” and a fourth and final wound located “in the right upper chest, immediately inferior” to the third gunshot wound.
Shannon Griffin had been shot a total of four times.
Wilson put Shannon’s death at 11:35 P.M. His findings in
cluded “multiple gunshot wounds of chest with associated injuries to aorta, lungs, with hemopericardium (bleeding in the heart itself) and bilateral hemotho-races (an accumulation of blood).”
Shannon had been shot through the heart.
He never had a chance.
Dr. Wilson concluded the cause of death to be “multiple gunshots wounds,” the manner of death—no surprise here—“homicide.”
CHAPTER 77
NOT LONG AFTER Jennifer Mee was arrested, her friend Allison Baldwin was at home with her boyfriend when Ashley McCauley, Jennifer’s sister, called.
“Holy shit . . . oh, my God . . . they killed someone.... They shot someone.... Jennifer’s arrested! She’s in jail,” Ashley said.
“Wait, wait, wait . . . ,” Allison responded. “Jennifer would never kill anybody. What the hell happened?”
Ashley was crying. “They killed someone.... They killed someone. . . .”
After they hung up, Allison called Rachel.
“We don’t know what happened,” Rachel clarified. “All we know is that Lamont and Laron shot somebody. . . .”
The ties that bind were fraying and would soon break. Earnest Smith spoke to his brother, Lamont, over the phone. Lamont told him Laron had explained to him on that night how they were going down to the park to “sell somebody some weed.” It seemed so simple. It was second nature. They had done it so many times before.
“He never even told Lamont that it was going to be a robbery,” Earnest claimed Lamont told him. “My brother was going into it blind. You know, they get there and Laron pulls out a gun and starts shooting, so [Lamont] basically didn’t know what was going on until the last minute.”
“I’m truly sorry for what happened to Shannon,” Lamont told me. “I ask for forgiveness from his family. Even knowing I didn’t do it or played a part, I didn’t do anything to stop it. . . .”
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