Bad Girls

by Phelps, M. William

“Sustained,” Judge Ray said. “Rephrase.”

  Jen agreed that her actions and words did not project remorse. It was now, after having her revelation and reintroduction to Christ, that she was feeling remorseful. She had repented and confessed her sins.

  Matthews had Jen answer questions regarding how she met Bobbi and moved into the party house. How she willingly took part in all the gunplay and taking photos and having sex and drinking and drugging. How all of it was by her own volition, and that nobody had made her do any of it. And, to be clear, a lot of the time, her own mother and sister had taken part in what went on at the party house with her, Bob Dow, and Bobbi, as well as scores of other girls.

  Jen’s response: “Yes, sir.”

  She agreed she had participated and had never been forced to do any of it.

  Matthews even caught Jen in a lie when he asked, “Now, you introduced yourself to Bobbi Jo, correct, when y’all first met?”

  And she responded, “Yes, sir, I did.”

  He established that Bobbi and Audrey were dating then, asking, “So you kind of took her away from Audrey?”

  “Yes, I did.”

  As the questioning leaned more toward her view of the relationship between Bobbi and Bob, and how it progressed, Matthews asked, “You said you guys are—that, you know, you got into witchcraft?”

  “Yes,” Jen said.

  “So do you believe you’re a witch?”

  “No, sir, I do not.”

  “Did you at the time?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Do you believe that Bobbi Jo is a witch?”

  “Not exactly a witch, sir. She’s just—she was into that stuff.”

  “Well, do you believe that she has some kind of supernatural powers?”

  “Could you explain ‘supernatural powers’?” Jen wanted clarified, demanding a more clear description of the phrase. She seemed fascinated in talking about this. It was obvious the subject had piqued Jen’s interest.

  Matthews smiled out of the corner of his mouth. He thought for a moment. Then: “Well, do you think she can put a spell on people?”

  “Yes, I do.”

  He allowed that bizarre response to hang in the silence of the courtroom for a moment.

  “Do you think she still has that capability?”

  Bobbi sat and listened carefully, entirely bowled over by the conversation taking place in front of her. She could not recall sharing with Jen a desire to partake in witchcraft or put spells on people. It seemed so foreign to Bobbi’s Baptist upbringing. So entirely opposite to what she and Jen did after meeting near April 6, 2004, in what amounted to just twenty-seven days they spent together. It must have been all the dope, Bobbi surmised. Jen had bugged out and believed that Bobbi had some sort of supernatural power, when it was Bob Dow who had collected all those Wiccan books at the house. Even Audrey later admitted that she was into Wicca, but she had never, ever heard Bobbi mention it.

  Had Jen dreamed up the idea that Bobbi was a witch by connecting her to Bob and Audrey while she had been messed up on dope? Was this Jen’s reality? Was she confusing that world of being high with the natural order of things in her life at the time?

  (“She must have been,” Bobbi told me. “I have no idea where she got that.”)

  “Yes, sir,” Jen explained to Matthews, admitting (with a straight face) that she felt Bobbi Jo Smith, her codefendant, could cast spells on people.

  “Do you believe that you can read people’s minds?” Matthews asked. Jim Matthews couldn’t believe the state’s star witness was talking about witchcraft and saying the defendant was capable of casting spells. It was not only laughable but incredibly demeaning to listen to Jen speak as if such highly arguable nonsense was fact.

  “Not now, no,” Jen answered.

  “Do you believe that you ever had that capability?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you believe that Bobbi Jo can read people’s minds?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Can she just read somebody’s mind anytime or—”

  Jen interrupted: “If she chooses to, yes.”

  Matthews did not know where to take this line of questioning. He was overwhelmed by Jen’s ability to place herself in the realm of fantasy and claim Bobbi was a mind reader and witch who could cast spells.

  Could a jury believe anything Jen had said then, during her court case, in Texas Monthly, or in any of her statements to police after hearing such mythical, fairy-tale nonsense?

  Jen then explained that she had since given up reading minds. It was a power, she told jurors, she could take or leave. And she had chosen not to do it anymore. She mentioned Bobbi’s birthday as the last time she had chosen to read a mind—a day that had started with meth and booze, and had ended with cocaine and more booze and more meth. And it was clear in her statement to the court here that she was confusing reality with being high, saying, “Some weird stuff was going on at the house. We had just stayed up, like, a week or so doing drugs. . . .”

  This was the same witness who jurors were now supposed to believe was telling the truth about what happened and, based on that testimony, send a woman to prison for what could turn into a life sentence.

  CHAPTER 57

  JENNIFER JONES AND JIM Matthews continued to take pokes at each other. They talked about the green trunk, Bob Dow’s life in general, how Bobbi and Bob had known each other for a longer period than Jen originally thought. Then Matthews asked an important, pivotal question: “Your claim today and your claim at your [court case] in front of your jury was that it was all Bobbi Jo’s idea to kill Bob, right?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Even though that Bob is the guy that’s meeting most of your . . . needs, right?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Even though . . . she’s getting an income from Bob, right?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  This “yes,sir”/“no,sir” went on, back and forth, as Matthews directed Jen through a litany of questions, before establishing that Bobbi had had several girlfriends before Jen had come into the picture.

  “Yes, sir, she did.”

  “In fact, she was a girlfriend with your sister?”

  “Yes, sir, she was.”

  “Okay. So making that transition from Audrey to you, she didn’t murder Audrey, did she?”

  “No, sir.”

  “She didn’t try to talk you into murdering Audrey, did she?”

  “No, sir.”

  “She didn’t try to cast a spell on anybody to murder Audrey that you know of, did she?”

  “No.”

  “She didn’t cast a spell on you to murder Audrey, did she?”

  “No, sir.”

  Over the next ten minutes, Matthews was able to trip Jen up on several occasions, showing jurors how she had continually contradicted her prior testimony and those two statements she gave to police. In the scope of the murder narrative and what happened before and after she killed Bob, all of it was extremely hard to follow.

  One of the questions Jen stumbled on was that she had known Bobbi for merely weeks and there she was supposedly killing for her. On merit, it didn’t make much sense. Matthews qualified Jen’s description of the affair as a “deep, loving relationship,” making the implication that he saw the relationship differently and Jen, perhaps, was so “afraid” of Bobbi leaving her, that she went so far as to commit murder for her? Sort of a “kill him or else” ultimatum was the hypothetical situation that Matthews posed with his line of questioning. A girl who had never before been in a lesbian relationship had met and hooked up with her sister’s girlfriend (whom she referred to as a “dyke” just twelve days before they began dating). After a mere three-plus weeks of being with her, she had committed the ultimate act of evil under her direction. How were jurors supposed to believe such a thing?

  “Yes,” Jen answered. “Because she had already shown me that she could leave.”

  Matthews sarcastically said, “Right—and she had cast a spell on you?�
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  “By cheating on me,” Jen swatted back. “She had already showed me that I was not the only person in her life.”

  “You knew that going into the relationship that you were not the only person in Bobbi Jo’s life, right?”

  Matthews expected an argument, but Jen said, “Yes.”

  This was where a solid investigation into Jen’s background—had Matthews done it—would have come in handy. According to Bobbi, Jen was sleeping with some guy at the same time she was ripping and running with Bobbi.

  Matthews continued with a question the jury should have taken note of and, honestly, relied on to immediately toss out everything this woman had ever said about this case. During the penalty phase of her case, after she pled guilty to murder, Jen had already testified under oath and given an account of what had happened. Her testimony was public record. So, Matthews asked, why volunteer after that to testify at Bobbi’s trial? There had to be a reason. Here, Matthews was completing the cycle: ending where he had begun.

  “Because at that time I had gotten a large sentence and it scared me,” Jen admitted. “And I didn’t want to go to prison.”

  “And you were looking for a deal from the prosecutor?”

  “Yes, I was.”

  Matthews asked one more question and passed the witness. It was a solid point to end his cross-examination on. It was clear to jurors that Jen had pled her case and then, after thinking about it, went hunting for a deal to get her sentence reduced. Again, how could a juror believe anything this witness said after that?

  Sitting and staring at her former close friend and lover, Bobbi was stunned. She felt entirely betrayed and blindsided. It was almost as if Jen was purposely lying to spite her. Complete revenge. Bobbi couldn’t help but think of how, while they were in California after being busted and Blythe police officers had Bobbi handcuffed behind her back, sitting on a chair, Bobbi felt this different side of Jen emerge for the first time. Jen had stood in the same room, not wearing handcuffs. When the cops left the room for a moment, Jen walked over and, for no reason, choked her, Bobbi revealed.

  “And I couldn’t do anything to stop her,” Bobbi told me. “They caught her and stopped her. And when they asked her about it [later], she said she was ‘playing.’”

  As she sat in the courtroom, listening to her case unfold in front of jurors, Bobbi felt as though Jen once again had her hands around her neck.

  “Look, I lied,” Bobbi admitted. “I was trying to have the same story as Jennifer. I said what she told me to say. What we agreed on. But after that second time (second statement to police after the lie detector), I’ve kept my mouth shut. Now she, on her own, has changed her story.... What, six or seven times? In the Texas Monthly, it changed three times alone! And then [during] my trial, it changed again. After the second time (that second statement), I never opened my mouth because I didn’t know what she was going to say.”

  Part of what Bobbi felt riled Jen the most—the impetus for Jen’s revenge-fueled attack—was what happened when they were locked up. Bobbi confessed to me, “Yes, after Jen pled guilty . . . I told her I didn’t want to talk to her anymore because I was involved with someone else.” It was after that, Bobbi said, when Jen “flipped.” She was determined to see Bobbi pay for betraying her.

  Regarding the statements, Bobbi said, “Jennifer and I were never separated. We talked twenty-four /seven, and in California they kept us together. I tried to have the same story she did. She told me we’d come out of it if we kept the same story. I was very confused. . . .” Bobbi couldn’t understand what was going on when, after calling her grandmother, and knowing that Dorothy was going to call the police, Bobbi became “the main suspect.” She was especially perplexed by this, for there was never any question that Jen had taken the gun, seduced Bob into the bedroom, and pulled the trigger.

  CHAPTER 58

  MIKE BURNS BROUGHT IN Audrey Sawyer to describe some of what took place during the road trip. Audrey answered questions from the prosecution and Jim Matthews, but she added very little to the ultimate question of whether Bobbi coerced or convinced Jen to kill Bob Dow.

  Then Krystal Bailey (who would die tragically in a horrible motorcycle accident sometime after Bobbi’s trial) came in and also talked about the road trip. When Matthews got hold of her, he began by having Krystal reveal that Bobbi was a typical type A personality who liked to have the attention cast upon her. And yet, although she craved being the center of attention at the parties, Bobbi had never rubbed Krystal as being sinister or evil or a person who could kill anyone—let alone Bob Dow.

  Matthews raised the topic of Wicca and that mind-reading business Jen had been so certain of, asking Krystal, “Do you believe that Bobbi Jo can cast spells on people?”

  “Yes, I do,” she said.

  “Do you believe that Bobbi Jo can read people’s minds?”

  “Yes.”

  “Okay. And I think you also said that Bobbi Jo’s scatterbrained?”

  “Yes.”

  “Okay.”

  “Fickle,” Krystal said out of the blue.

  “You weren’t in the room when Jennifer murdered Bob Dow, were you?”

  “No, I was not.”

  “You weren’t in the house?”

  “No, I was not.”

  “Weren’t outside?”

  “No, I was not.”

  “Weren’t peeking in the window?”

  “No.”

  “So you don’t have any personal knowledge of what happened exactly? You just know what people said?”

  “Just what Jennifer and Bobbi Jo said.”

  “And that story has been changed around, right?”

  “That’s right.”

  While sitting at his table in front of the witness stand, Matthews took a moment. Then: “Pass the witness.”

  The judge explained a few legal matters to Krystal Bailey and released her from the stand.

  Kathy Jones was up next.

  CHAPTER 59

  KATHY JONES HAD lived a hard life. There was no way for Mike Burns to put a shine on what had been decades of drugs, jail, and personal problems. Kathy had done time on a litany of charges and had been sentenced to what could be termed as nothing less than perpetual parole. Kathy had a street-smart Texas toughness about her. It was, at times, hard to follow her speech because she bounced around so much when talking. She spoke fast, and she spoke with a significant Texas brogue.

  Because Kathy had been busted for everything under the sun, Burns had her admit it all to the jury. In addition, there was also no hiding the fact that Kathy was, at the time her testimony was being given, residing in the Hobby Unit, in Marlin, part of the Texas State Prison. She was under lock and key for violating her parole as part of an eight-year sentence, which she had received for robbery. She was slated to be released in just a few days, however, on December 1, 2005.

  The most important part of Kathy’s testimony came when Burns asked her what happened on the day the girls came bursting into the apartment.

  Kathy explained.

  “Okay, well,” Burns said in a strange choice of words, “what did you hear who say what?”

  “Well, I don’t know,” Kathy answered. “I can’t recall who said what first. But ‘We killed Bob.’ And . . . and Jennifer was saying that she was pretty upset.”

  In her only statement to the MWPD, Kathy had stated the following: “Jennifer and Bobbi Jo came to the apartment.... They both ran into the apartment and said that they had killed Bob. Jennifer said that she had killed him, and Bobbi said ‘they’ killed him.”

  To the jury, Kathy described Jennifer’s demeanor on that day as “uncontrollable . . . shaking, crying. . . .” Whereas, Kathy said, “Bobbi Jo didn’t . . . She was just kind of, like, it was just . . . like, excited, adrenaline rush, I guess. I don’t know how to—not showing, you know, no emotion.”

  “No emotion” could be easily confused with disbelief or shock. Bobbi wondered why no one was challenging all these women
coming in and saying she didn’t care about what Jen had done to a man she arguably loved like a father. Or that she was in total disbelief and astonishment that Jen had actually murdered Bob.

  She had just killed [Bob]. . . . I couldn’t believe what was happening.

  Mike Burns had Kathy explain the road trip, beginning with robbing Bob Dow’s trailer, and ending with how they went their separate ways in Arizona. What became clear in Kathy’s version of what the girls had said about the actual murder while on the road was how fluid and ever-changing their stories became over time. Jen and Bobbi had told several different versions of what had happened; each time they talked about it, a new alteration was inserted. Kathy, Audrey, and Krystal were never certain of what happened to Bob, or who actually pulled the trigger.

  What might have hurt Bobbi was an exchange Kathy and Burns had near the end of Kathy’s direct testimony. Burns asked about any statements Bobbi had made during the trip. Out of the blue, Kathy said something she had never told the police or anyone else: “What I recall Bobbi Jo saying while we was in the truck, she let me know, she said, ‘I brainwashed your daughter.’ And she said, ‘She’ll do anything.’ You know, it’s anything—Bobbi Jo knew that anything she told Jennifer to do, Jennifer would do, or just asked.”

  Bobbi dropped her head. What the hell? She couldn’t believe it. It was something, as she recalled, she had never said. Why should a jury believe Kathy, a career criminal—the mother of the woman who had murdered Bob? She had partied with Bob, right beside two of her own daughters! She’d even had sex with Bob . . . on camera. There were several photographs and films left behind to prove it. But maybe most important, this was the first time Kathy Jones had ever recalled this conversation (which she said was between her and Bobbi, with no one else around).

  Jim Matthews went right for Kathy Jones’s jugular. He tried to prove that, despite how sure she was of herself now, she had a hard time in the past—much like her daughter—keeping her stories straight.

  “Okay, Miss Jones,” Matthews began. “Let’s talk about y’all . . . when y’all were riding in the truck and the gun got tossed out the window. Do you recall making a statement to the Arizona Police [Department] about that incident?”