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Method of murder: Strangulation - Stabbing
with knife
Location: East Orange
and Newark, New Jersey, USA
Status: Sentenced to life in prison on March 2, 1993
Paroled Rapist Charged With Killing
5 Women in New Jersey
By Charles
Strum - The New York Times
April 14, 1992
A 25-year-old paroled rapist who had
been in prison since he was 14 was charged today with five murders and
four rapes in East Orange and Newark that the authorities said began in
December, less than a month after his release.
The suspect, Jerome Dennis, was arrested Sunday
morning before dawn at his home in East Orange. He was formally charged
today, two days after law-enforcement agencies formed a task force to
investigate the deaths of several women whose bodies were found in
desolate parts of East Orange in the last eight months. Three bodies,
including the most recent victim, a high school girl, were found on
Friday within a block of each other. A fourth was found Saturday
afternoon.
At Mr. Dennis's arraignment today, an assistant Essex
County prosecutor, Norman Menz, said the defendant had confessed to each
of the crimes and had been identified by two East Orange women whom he
is also accused of attacking. Mr. Menz said one of the women also
identified a knife found near the body of the teen-ager as belonging to
Mr. Dennis.
But in a news conference called by the prosecutor's
office before the arraignment and in Mr. Menz's brief remarks to the
court, there was almost no information about what had led the
authorities to their suspect. Officials refused to comment on a motive
or how the victims were selected. They also declined to discuss any
possible links between Mr. Dennis and the women, or whether any witness
to the attacks had come forward. And they would not discuss Mr. Dennis's
early life or prison record. The only common thread, they said, was the
race of the women, who, like Mr. Dennis, were black.
Mr. Dennis was "not just plucked out of the thin air,"
said the acting Essex County prosecutor, Peter J. Francese, having
rebuffed all questions that went beyond the identity of the suspect and
the victims.
The arrest also raised questions about whether Mr.
Dennis was being monitored by state parole authorities and whether the
pattern of killings and attacks had been under investigation previously.
Again, the law-enforcement officials did not comment, although Mayor
Cardell Cooper of East Orange, who attended the news conference, said he
was satisfied that the task force had acted properly.
Residents Still
Fearful
But this evening, as women and families poured into
City Hall for a City Council meeting, some women said they remained
fearful and were skeptical about the arrest because it was done so
quickly.
"All the media was after them," said Renee Boone. "I
think what they needed was a suspect fast."
More than 200 people jammed the meeting. Sitting with
children on their laps, many said they were thankful for the police work,
while others expressed anger at the unanswered questions. One man said
the sketchiness of the information released reminded him of the Warren
Commission report on the assassination of John F. Kennedy.
During his arraignment before Judge Joseph A. Falcone
of Superior Court, Mr. Dennis, a slim man about 5 feet 7 inches tall,
stood on one side of the courtroom with his manacled hands shielding his
face. He spoke only when the judge asked him for his Social Security
number, and pleaded not guilty to all the charges through his court-appointed
public defender, Joseph Kracora. Bail was set at $2 million, pending a
grand jury indictment.
Mr. Dennis was paroled from the state prison at
Yardville on Nov. 19, after serving the mandatory minimum 10 years of a
30-year sentence for rape, criminal restraint and armed robbery,
according to the Essex County prosecutor's office. He was initially
charged in 1981 in Essex County and was sentenced as an adult, Mr. Menz
said.
The bodies of the women Mr. Dennis is accused of
killing were found in desolate, poorly lighted areas under train
trestles or along highway embankments within walking distance of the
East Orange police station on North Munn Avenue. The assault victims
were attacked in the same vicinity. One was from Newark; all the rest
who were identified were from East Orange, a city of 73,000. Mr.
Dennis's home, at 254 North Walnut, is a few blocks north of where the
bodies were found.
Bodies Found
The first victim identified in the charges today was
a 26-year-old woman who was raped on Dec. 12. She survived the attack.
The second was Robyn Carter, 41, of Newark, whose
body was found Dec. 16 in Newark. It was not clear how she died or how
long she had been dead.
The third victim was another assault survivor, a 23-year-old
woman who was attacked on Feb. 22.
Three bodies were found on Friday. The first was that
of Jamillah Jones, 16, of Beech Street. She was found dead of stab
wounds at 2:49 A.M. on Main Street at North Maple Avenue by an East
Orange police officer.
Then, at 6:14 A.M., as the East Orange police widened
their search for evidence, they found the body of Elizabeth Clenor, 30,
of Crawford Street. Ms. Clenor, the mother of two children, was reported
missing by her mother on Feb. 17. She died of a blow to the head, the
Medical Examiner said.
At 4:04 P.M. on Friday, the body of Stephanie Alston,
30, was found.
The next afternoon, another body was found decomposed
beneath foliage near Oraton Parkway and Route 280 West. That victim has
not yet been identified.
Attempted-Murder Charges
The authorities said three of the dead women had been
raped. Mr. Dennis was also charged with attempted murder in the attacks
on the two women who survived.
The deaths of two other women under investigation by
the task force were not listed today in the charges against Mr. Dennis.
One was identified over the weekend as Maria Ferguson,
27, of East Orange. The other, whose body was badly decomposed, has not
been identified. Ms. Ferguson's body was found Aug. 28, 1991, before Mr.
Dennis's release; the other was found last Wednesday. Both were
discovered in an abandoned building about a mile from the area where the
other victims were found or attacked.
At 254 North Walnut Street, where Mr. Dennis lived in
a three-family Victorian house, the shades on all three floors were
drawn this afternoon. The house, with weathered yellow siding and a
broad open front porch in need of a paint job, sits on a street of older
homes, some single-family, some two- and three-family houses. Signs on
nearby streets warn would-be criminals that it is a "crime watch"
neighborhood.
Neighbors said they did not know the suspect and were
not even sure they had ever seen him.
Troy Cofield, a superintendent who works for the
owner of the house next door, said crime is usually more common in an
area across Park Avenue, a major thoroughfare here.
"We still got a woman out there who's an unsolved
murder," he said. "It makes you feel odd that it's in your neighborhood
and even odder that it's next door. I have a wife and two kids and I had
told her not to go out alone."
Mr. Francese, the acting prosecutor, said the
investigation by the task force into all the crimes would continue, and
he urged citizens to call a 24-hour hot line, (201) 676-0406.
The task force consists of representatives from the
state police, the East Orange police, the Essex County Sheriff's
Department, the New Jersey Transit Police and the Newark Police
Department. Mr. Francese said that Federal Bureau of Investigation had
been asked to join the task force today. The investigation is being
coordinated by Mr. Lenz, who is also head of the homicide squad in the
prosecutor's office.
A Model Inmate, and Now a Suspect
Again
New Jersey Officials Say Parolee Accused in 5 Slayings Showed No
Signs of Trouble
By Charles
Strum - The New York Times
April 15, 1992
Jerome Dennis, the East
Orange man accused of killing five women since
his release from prison last fall, was a seventh-grade
dropout who grew up in one of the poorest
neighborhoods in Newark and had run-ins with the
law even before his arrest on rape charges in
1981.
But during the 10 years he
spent in prison for rape, and in the five months
he was on parole, Mr. Dennis was described as a
model inmate and parolee. He attended vocational
cooking classes and a Bible study group behind
bars and held two jobs after his release under a
parole program that provides intensive
monitoring.
Parole Officer 'Shocked'
"There are cases where
someone is paroled and convicted, and you go
back and with hindsight you can see it was a
problem waiting to happen," said Robert Egles,
executive director of the state parole board. "But
the file is 100 percent, nothing missing. It's
hard to see how this alleged behavior will end
up being explained."
Mario Paparozzi, the
supervising parole officer for the New Jersey
Bureau of Parole, said Mr. Dennis's parole
officer was "surprised and shocked" when his
client was charged Monday with five murders and
four rapes since December.
While the authorities have
refused to say how they came to focus on Mr.
Dennis, who has pleaded not guilty, they
asserted that two of the women who survived the
attacks had identified him. Most of the bodies
of the murder victims were found within a block
of each other, in desolate or dimly lighted
areas within walking distance of Mr. Dennis's
home.
A special task force of law-enforcement
agencies continued work on the case today, as
one of the victims, 16-year-old Jamillah Jones,
was buried. A spokesman for the Essex County
Prosecutor's office, Ray Weiss, said the
investigation included testing on samples of Mr.
Dennis's hair, blood and saliva.
Mr. Weiss said that he did
not know when a grand jury would be convened.
Under goals set by the State Supreme Court, a
defendant who is held under no bail or high bail,
like the $2 million set for Mr. Dennis, should
have his case heard by a grand jury within 30
days, and should be brought to trial within 60
days after that.
Mr. Dennis was released Nov.
19 after serving the mandatory 10-year minimum
of a 30-year sentence for rape. As a special
condition of his parole, he was ordered to
participate in the parole agency's Intensive
Supervision and Surveillance Program, which
assigned him to a parole officer who maintains a
relatively small caseload in order to devote
extra time to each case.
An official familiar with Mr.
Dennis's case, who spoke on condition of
anonymity, said Mr. Dennis was also required to
continue the psychological treatment or
counseling that he had begun in prison, and he
apparently complied.
Mr. Dennis's parole officer
in East Orange had no more than 25 cases, Mr.
Paparozzi said, compared with as many as 80 or
90 for other workers. Mr. Paparozzi said that
before Mr. Dennis was released, a parole
counselor at the prison would have begun the
process of finding him a job, housing and
financial aid to prepare him for his return home.
In Mr. Dennis's case, home
had long since become a dim memory.
In custody since 1981, when
he was 14, Mr. Dennis spent almost half his life
in prison. Instead of going to school, playing
sports and learning to live independently, he
was learning about baking and cooking at the
Garden State Reception and Youth Correctional
Center in Yardville, N.J. Worked at Bakery
Asked if the intensive
supervision program could substitute for those
10 lost years, Mr. Egles, the parole board
director, said, "You've just made an ideal
argument for halfway houses."
In the intensive supervision
program, because the officer's caseload is
limited, he is able to visit with the client
once a week, or pay extra visits to his work
place or home. A parole officer in this special
program usually helps find jobs and housing and
acts almost as a surrogate family member in
budgeting or other personal decisions.
Mr. Dennis was employed for
several months at the Pleasantdale Bakery, a
kosher bakery on Pleasant Valley Way in West
Orange. Employees said Mr. Dennis, who worked as
a porter, was quiet and diligent. They said they
knew he had been in prison. He also worked part
time at a cleaning job in an East Orange Burger
King.
Arrested With Brother
Mr.
Dennis entered the
criminal-justice system
11 years ago as a teen-ager,
after committing three
rapes in Newark in the
fall of 1981.
According to court
records and
conversations with
people familiar with the
case, Mr. Dennis was the
seventh of nine children,
who were raised
primarily by their
mother in the Columbus
Homes, a huge housing
project, now abandoned,
next to Route 280 West
in Newark.
Records suggest that he
had been in trouble with
the authorities before
his arrest, but he was
never charged as a
juvenile delinquent. He
dropped out of the
Newark public school
system in the seventh
grade.
He
was arrested with an
older brother, William,
on Nov. 6, 1981, the
night of the third
attack. The prosecutor
who handled the case,
Richard Banas, said
today that he remembered
the arrest as "bizarre."
After
the attack, the two
youths went to a phone
booth in Military Park
in downtown Newark and
called the Essex County
police, Mr. Banas said.
"They
told the police what
they were doing, on the
tape-recorded police
phone system," he said.
"They were bragging." He
said they described the
attack in obscene detail
and asserted that two
Newark police officers
were also involved.
The
phone call lasted almost
an hour, Mr. Banas said,
by which time the police
had traced the call and
dispatched officers to
apprehend the boys. Mr.
Banas said the boys'
father was called as a
prosecution witness in
the trial, but he did
not recall details of
his testimony or what
became of the man.
William Dennis is still
in prison.
As
the family broke up,
their home, at 4
Sheffield Drive,
disappeared. In 1982,
Newark began to abandon
the Columbus Homes, tall
red-brick monuments to a
failed housing policy
that now stand empty
with their windows
smashed and debris
blowing through barren
courtyards.
But
the authorities believe
that Mr. Dennis, in a
sense, returned home
after 10 years away.
On
Dec. 16, a Newark police
officer discovered the
body of Robyn Carter, a
41-year-old Newark woman,
inside the building at
14 Sheffield Drive. Mr.
Dennis is charged with
her murder.
New Attempted-Murder Charge for
Suspect in Women's Deaths
The New York Times
April 18, 1992
The paroled sex offender
charged with the murder of five women has been
charged with an additional count of attempted
murder and assault, the Essex County prosecutor
has announced.
The suspect, Jerome Dennis,
25 years old, was arrested early Sunday morning
after investigators found the bodies of four
women in a one-block stretch of East Orange,
several blocks from where Mr. Dennis lived.
The body of a fifth murder
victim was found near the site where Mr. Dennis
grew up in a Newark housing project. At least
three of the women were raped.
Identified in
Lineups
Mr. Dennis was previously
charged with the attempted murders of two East
Orange women. Prosecutors say both have
identified Mr. Dennis in police lineups.
Meanwhile, another East
Orange man was charged today with the murder of
a woman whose body wasfound in an abandoned
building. The body was originally linked to the
investigation that led to Mr. Dennis's arrest.
Curtis Lee Stone Jr., 28, was
charged with killing 27-year-old Maria Ferguson,
whose body was found in August in an abandoned
building on Washington Street. Ms. Ferguson had
been strangled, officials said.
The third charge of attempted
murder against Mr. Dennis, filed Wednesday and
announced Thursday evening, was an April 3
attack on a 32-year-old Newark woman who was
stabbed in the neck, said Ray Weiss, a spokesman
for the Essex County prosecutor. The woman was
treated at a hospital and released.
Mr. Dennis was paroled in
November from a state reformatory after serving
10 years. He and his brother, William, were
convicted in 1983 of two rapes and an attempted
rape in Newark.
William Dennis, now 29, was
sentenced to 30 years without parole and is at
East Jersey State Prison.
Prosecutors charge that
Jerome Dennis committed the first of five
slayings less than a month after his release.
Guilty Plea to Killing 5
New Jersey Women
The New
York Times
February 28, 1993
A
paroled sex offender has
pleaded guilty to
killing five women and
assaulting two others
last year in East
Orange.
Jerome Dennis, 26,
pleaded guilty Friday to
four counts of murder,
one manslaughter count
and two counts of
aggravated assault. In
return for the guilty
pleas, prosecutors said
they would drop 30
lesser charges against
Mr. Dennis, who has
spent a decade in prison
for rape and robbery.
Prosecutors said they
would ask Judge Joseph
A. Falcone of Superior
Court to sentence Mr.
Dennis to life in prison
with no possibility of
parole for 60 years.
Judge Falcone set March
12 as the date for
sentencing.
