Life had not started out for Jennifer with all of these problems. She had always lived a quiet existence, devoid of much trouble, controversy, major problems, or issues other than her own educational challenges and health concerns. Jennifer actually dreamed of one day “playing in the WNBA,” professional women’s basketball. This, mind you, coming from a girl who is five feet tall, 145 pounds—not your typical starting forward or guard on the court in women’s basketball. A second dream she had, if basketball fell out of her reach, was to own a hair salon.
Jennifer had long, brownish black hair—thick, healthy hair—bushy eyebrows (for which she was actually ridiculed after becoming a celebrity, with one website seemingly devoted to pointing out that her only crime was having a “disastrous battle zone” over her eyes), brown eyes (constantly darting left to right), pudgy cheeks, and a fair-skinned, white complexion (for a Floridian). Jen and Rachel, despite the mom being much taller, shared similar features and could have, at one time, passed for sisters.
“I’m a very hands-on type of person,” Jennifer explained to me. “I’ve always seen my life going into doing big things.”
Moving out of the house, away from Rachel and her sisters, Jennifer said, was something she did because staying at home made her feel “like an outcast,” as though she didn’t belong or fit in. She and her stepfather, Chris Robidoux, at the time Jennifer moved out in the months before her eighteenth birthday, could not stand to be in the same room together.
“I felt like I couldn’t make anyone happy,” Jennifer recalled of that period when things came to a head and she left home.
According to others, during the time Jennifer’s star had completely fallen (mid-2007, after the hiccup popularity subsided, and when she was arrested on murder charges in 2010), she led a “transient” lifestyle, hopping from one motel room to another, one friend’s apartment to the next, with nowhere truly to call home. And that transitory way of life was going to hurt Jennifer as she went before a judge for the first time.
CHAPTER 8
AFTER SHE TALKED to that radio station, and the interview she gave went viral in Tampa and the surrounding communities outside St. Pete, the media became like a growth on Rachel’s skin, now infected and bleeding, more irritating by the moment.
This story exemplified the fact that in this country, whether we want to admit or dismiss it, we love nothing better than to see a star dissolve in the sky as it falls, crashing and burning before our eyes. We prop people up, knock them down, and turn the fall into entertainment.
Rachel was a nervous wreck at work and couldn’t do her job after the radio interview and subsequent satellite truck invasion moving into St. Pete.
“I have to sit in the office,” Rachel told her boss.
“Go ahead.”
“I almost felt as if I was outside of my body,” Rachel recalled. “I had so much stress.”
The massive movement to report on this story began to twist Rachel’s insides out. It was as if, Rachel explained, zombies attacked the restaurant. Media were unyielding. Reporters began badgering her: phone calls, texts, e-mails. They’d had her contact information because of the hiccup story. Now they all wanted the exclusive with Rachel. What was the mother of the Hiccup Girl thinking? How was she feeling? How was Jennifer handling jail? Was she still hiccupping?
This was so much more than going to the next-door neighbor—“She was a quiet kid. You’d never expect it from her”—and getting that proverbial clichéd sound bite for the nightly news. Quite the opposite, Rachel was the mother of the Hiccup Girl, whom everyone had come to know so well after Rachel had made all those appearances with Jennifer. How did she feel about her daughter allegedly being involved in a brutal murder? And what happened, anyway? What was Jennifer saying about her involvement?
In any other place, at any other time, with any other suspect, this sort of murder would have been a blip on page A-24 of the local newspapers, a little article mentioning what happened, and that would be all. It would have been forgotten. No television media whatsoever. It’s a sad testament to what we value as news in today’s world, but it’s the truth that an inner-city crime isn’t as interesting to news watchers as the wealthy socialite knocking off her husband in Palm Beach. We want our murder stories packaged one way—and this case would not have been considered newsworthy had Jennifer Mee not been a part of it.
The feel of the first stories published about Jennifer’s arrest was that the media members were hoping and wishing like hell she were guilty. It would be a much bigger story if Jennifer had pulled the trigger and had turned into some type of villainous murderer in the years since her hiccup celebrity had risen and fallen. Already, within a day, Jennifer’s Myspace pages were being pillaged and quoted by media, the emphasis on her “gangsta” lifestyle, as if this had been a clear indication that Jennifer had turned to deadly means to sort out her problems in life. As it was, none of the facts surrounding twenty-two-year-old Shannon Griffin’s murder had been made public yet.
Not one media outlet had looked into the background of this girl and where she had come from—there was an assumption that her life had spiraled out of control because she was once famous and, after losing all of that fame, became bitter and self-centered and needed that fame in order to exist.
My name is jennifer, im almost 19, she had posted on her Myspace months before her arrest, but dont let the age fool you, the struggles ive been through has made me grown up so much....
Jennifer explained to me that her life growing up “with four younger sisters” was “okay”: “My mother always worked to make ends meet.”
But something happened early in life, Rachel and Jennifer later claimed, and it changed everything.
“I was raped at an early age,” Jennifer said, “. . . and after that happened, I became very depressed. I felt like it was my fault.” The alleged perpatrators were white, which became the reason, Jennifer claimed, she wound up depising white men and dating just African-American males.
CHAPTER 9
RACHEL NEEDED TO get out of Denny’s, into her car, and move the hell away from the mob of media, with the calls, texts, and e-mails, and find a lawyer who could take Jennifer’s case. For her own sake, Rachel needed to find out what had happened. Before she had the facts to contend with, Rachel didn’t want to start judging people and those Jennifer hung around. (After all, Rachel knew Jennifer was no Girl Scout.) If Jennifer was involved, there was an explanation and they’d deal with it. However, they couldn’t do that without a lawyer—a damn good one, too. Rachel worried that Florida had become a ground zero over the past ten years for super-high-profile court cases seen around the world. Jennifer’s was now slated to be next in a line that included William Kennedy Smith, Casey Anthony, and soon George Zimmerman—all of whom had been, or would eventually be, acquitted.
Rachel took a call from the radio station after the interview aired, according to Rachel’s recollection, and the disc jockey felt bad, he said, about airing the interview without Rachel knowing. Rachel was careening off the walls, her mind a mishmash of possibilities, none of them good.
“I know a lawyer you can call,” the disc jockey said. “He’s waiting for you to phone him.”
“Yeah, who?”
“John Trevena. He’s out of Largo.”
Trevena was a well-respected litigator, who had represented some high-profile defendants and won. As a Board Certified Criminal Trial Lawyer, Trevena brought to the courtroom a wide swath of experience as a former police officer, former assistant state’s attorney (ASA), not to mention his more than twenty-five years in criminal and related civil rights matters. Big and burly, at times donning a Burl Ives goatee or just the mustache half of it, Trevena’s career, as what he once called an “effective litigator,” spoke for itself. His core message was one that included the thoughts of a lawyer who understood “what is at stake” for his clients on a personal level. Trevena wasn’t a guy collecting a check to sit next to some newsworthy criminal and go
through the motions; he promoted himself as a guy who deeply cared about justice and its place in a free society. Incredibly, he did not think murder cases were the toughest to fight inside a courtroom. He once told a reporter, “In my experience, I would say that DUI manslaughter cases are the most complex, because sometimes you are representing people who have no criminal history, but are facing a double-digit prison sentence. . . .”
He further explained that representing “professionals or mothers who are not alcoholics or frequent drinkers,” but still face the sledgehammer of a judge and years behind bars for a “single mistake,” takes an incredible amount of defensive tact and legal knowledge to support properly. In addition, Trevena knew that plea deals had never been easier to negotiate, mainly because the court system, at least in Florida, cannot deal with the flood of criminals and potential long-term court proceedings it faces: “I believe that the system does not have the financial ability to sustain the number of defendants entitled to a jury trial. If everyone were to exercise their right to a jury trial, the system wouldn’t be able to function.”1
Still, could Rachel afford such a lawyer? With that kind of experience came a second mortgage and debt.
“No way,” she said.
“Pro bono,” her radio guy advised. “Call him!”
It appeared John Trevena had expressed some interest in representing Jennifer without a fee.
CHAPTER 10
RACHEL AND CHRIS Robidoux had always been, as Rachel later put it, “more country-living kind of people” than the city dwellers they became after moving to Florida. Whereas Florida is a winter mecca for snowbirds flying south to escape the cold New England winters, Rachel and Chris left their home state of Vermont and wound up in St. Pete after several extended family members got together and made the decision to relocate. Thus, after Rachel’s daughter, Ashley McCauley (Rachel’s maiden name), moved out at seventeen (Jennifer following shortly after), Rachel and Chris responded to that country blood pumping through their veins and moved to Spring Hill, Florida, a ninety-minute drive from St. Pete.
“Chris and I believed it was better to live in Spring Hill and raise the [younger] kids there, away from the city,” Rachel explained.
Spring Hill was closer to their roots. Rachel and Chris had grown up in different New England states as children: Rachel in Connecticut; Chris in Vermont. They had actually met for the first time on a class field trip to Old Sturbridge Village, Massachusetts, in the fifth grade. That was 1981. Rachel was eleven, Chris one month older.
Fast-forward to 1993. Rachel and Chris were introduced by Rachel’s girlfriend. This was after Rachel and her family moved to Rutland, Vermont, from East Hartford, Connecticut, and Rachel made the decision to stay in Rutland after her family moved back to Connecticut. Rachel and Chris had no idea they had hung out on that field trip so many years earlier, until one day after they started dating and began chatting about it. When she met Chris, Rachel had two young children from different fathers to take care of already and was in her early twenties.
Rachel had been in a “long-term relationship” with Jennifer’s father before she met Chris, “but that didn’t work out,” she said. Jennifer was just eighteen months old, and Ashley three months, when Rachel and Chris fell in love. And over the next several years, as they built a home in Rutland, living just outside the town seat, they had three children together: Kayla, Destiny, and McKenzie. Chris and Rachel now had five girls to raise.
“By 2004, my parents, who were living in New Jersey with my brother,” Rachel recalled, “were retired and wanting to move to Florida.” And after several conversations between everyone, it was agreed that they’d all make the move to St. Pete.
Jennifer was the oldest when they moved; she had just turned thirteen. The principal culture shock to Jennifer was the transition from a “very small school and town,” Rachel made a point of saying. “K through eight [grades] were in the same building, one stop sign in the center of town back home.” This, on top of all those other small-town New England clichés you might find in a Stephen King novel. On top of that, Jennifer had grown accustomed to the intimacy and personal connection between student and teacher that the New England school system offered. It seemed as if it happened overnight that Jennifer was thrust into the hustle, bustle, and absolute disconnected school environment most of Florida has experienced, where classrooms can run into the forty to fifty students, with some forced to sit at desks in the hallways. Yet, as large as Florida’s education system is, within all of that, Florida has still managed to post rankings in the top ten and twenty of the nation (2012). When Jennifer entered Florida’s school system, it was ranked thirty-fourth. At the time of her arrest, it was eighth.
“The school Jen went to when we first got to Florida,” Rachel explained, “had an elevator—and it was just a middle school.”
Additionally, Jen had friends in Vermont she had left behind, and she was now forced, essentially, to integrate herself into a mixture of classes and cultures that she had not been used to or had ever interacted with before.
“Not an excuse,” Rachel noted, “but just the fact that her life changed so remarkably.”
“We had never even seen black people in Vermont,” one family member later said.
During their first week in Florida, Rachel had a scare. Jen usually got off the bus at the same time, same location (nearly in front of the house), every day she had gone to school since they had been in Florida. But just a few days into this new routine, Rachel waited, but Jen never showed up.
Rachel thought at first that the bus was late or had broken down. She soon found out, however, the bus had dropped off other kids in the neighborhood on time.
Her heart raced.
Where’s Jennifer? Oh, my . . . she’s gone.
“My daughter is missing,” Rachel said after phoning the police. “She hasn’t come home from school. I have no idea where she is.”
The school confirmed Jennifer got on a bus.
Rachel panicked. She was frantic.
It got real when the police showed up and asked for a “recent photograph” of Jennifer, along with any information regarding where Jennifer might have gone off to, or if she could have run away.
After taking a report, the cop said, “Come with us.”
Rachel got into the cruiser and off they went in search of Jen.
Jen had unintentionally gotten on the wrong bus and was dropped off at a stop where she had no idea how to get home, so she started walking.
As Rachel and the cop drove around, there she was, a few miles from the house, trying to navigate her way home.
A mother saw her firstborn and breathed a tremendous sigh of relief.
Welcome to Florida, Rachel thought.
CHAPTER 11
AS RACHEL WONDERED whether the high-profile attorney she had been introduced to, John Trevena, could actually help, a bit of hope began to dawn over the horizon. Still, after hearing that Trevena wanted to take on the case, Rachel had a hard time getting a grasp on the severity of the situation and what was happening. Everything seemed so surreal—maybe even unreal, as if events were happening to someone else, at some other time. Running on pure adrenaline, Rachel still held on to that out-of-body sensation, wondering when reality would finally sink in.
“Not sure I ever did understand what was going on,” Rachel said years later as she looked back. “I had a hard time accepting that it was all as bad as it was—I mean, my daughter was being charged with first-degree murder.”
Trevena told Rachel what time to come in for their meeting, while adding one caveat: “Come in through the back.”
The local media had found out that Trevena might be taking on the “Hiccup Girl Case” and reporters had stormed his offices. Besides that one statement to the radio station, Rachel had not come out and said much of anything. The media, which had grown accustomed to unfettered access to Rachel and Jennifer during the hiccup phase, desperately wanted that exclusive, local take on the c
ase from Jennifer’s mother. The way Rachel explained their constant badgering, she felt as if the local media thought they deserved the story because of how much exposure they had given Jennifer during her hiccup phase.
Rachel brought along her mother—Jen’s grandmother—for support. They were escorted up through the back, ushered into Trevena’s office, and told to have a seat.
By now, Rachel was in tears, surely beginning to feel the weight of this escalating, unfolding situation. Here she was sitting in an attorney’s office discussing her daughter—who was sitting in jail on felony murder charges—and not really having any idea what had happened.
Most of what Trevena initially asked was in regard to Rachel and Chris’s finances.
Rachel made it clear they could not afford any sort of retainer. They just didn’t have the assets or the capital. Neither did her parents. If Trevena was looking for a big payday out of this, he was speaking to the wrong family.
Undoubtedly seeing the marketing potential and extraordinary notoriety he could obtain for his law firm for taking on the case, Trevena agreed to represent Jennifer pro bono. It might sound self-serving, or maybe a fifteen-minutes-of-fame ride on the media wave, but attorneys like Trevena take on these cases free of charge for several reasons, and it is hardly for the fame or notoriety. Sure, who could blame a guy for wanting to expand his business? But Trevena had a track record of taking on high-profile cases and getting people off—or at least getting sweet plea deals. He wanted to help this family. He said he was going to do everything in his power to first get Jennifer out of jail on bond. Then they could find out what in the name of Florida oranges had happened and deal with it from there.
“What can you tell me about what she’s done? What do you know?” Trevena asked. He was a well-groomed, well-dressed man in a fitted suit, with a silk tie. His office was modest; awards and citations and graduate certificates hung on the walls. There were plants and a watercooler, along with velvety, plush carpeting. It smelled of air freshener.
One Breath Away: The Hiccup Girl - From Media Darling to Convicted Killer Page 3