Banita M Jacks

Victims

4 convictions of felony murder, three of them also of premeditated first-degree murder; she was acquitted of the premeditated murder of her eldest daughter

Years active

Summer 2007

Location

Washington, District of Columbia, USA

Method

Strangulation - Stabbing with knife

Status

Tried on twelve charges before a judge in the Superior Court of the District of Columbia from July 15, 2009, having waived her right to a jury and rejected an insanity defence. Judge Frederick H. Weisberg convicted her on eleven of the twelve counts on July 29, 2009: four of felony murder, three of premeditated first-degree murder for the three youngest girls, and four of first-degree child cruelty. He acquitted her of the premeditated murder of her eldest daughter, Brittany. Sentenced on December 18, 2009 to the mandatory minimum of thirty years for each of the four murders, imposed consecutively for a total of 120 years, the judge rejecting both a defence motion over her earlier refusal of an insanity defence and its request that the terms run concurrently.

Jacks was born in 1974 and lived with her four daughters in a house in south-east Washington DC: Brittany Jacks, seventeen; Tatianna Jacks, eleven; N'Kiah Fogle, six; and Aja Fogle, five. She had been in serious difficulty for a long period: homeless at points, bereaved of her partner, and increasingly withdrawn.

The girls were killed in the summer of 2007, strangled or stabbed. She remained in the house with their bodies until January 9, 2008, when US marshals arrived to serve an eviction notice and found them. She told investigators the children had been possessed by demons.

She was convicted at a bench trial in 2009 and sentenced on December 18, 2009 to 120 years.

What the case is remembered for in Washington is what preceded it. The girls had been out of school for months, and reports had been made: a social worker had visited, a school had raised concerns, police had been to the house. The city's Child and Family Services Agency had had the family in its system. Mayor Adrian Fenty dismissed six agency employees in the immediate aftermath, and the case drove a restructuring of child protection in the District.

This is a single-act sequence in one household, not a serial case, and it is in the archive under that classification.