Detective Describes Gruesome Conditions of Murder Scene

WASHINGTON - There was no furniture in the house.

No curtains, no clothing, no food.

The electricity had been turned off.

Cigarette butts littered the floor along with empty juice bottles.

That's how Detective Mitchell A. Credle described the house where Banita Jacks was found with the decomposing bodies of her four daughters.

As part of the hearing, Superior Court Judge Frederick Weisberg found probable cause to order Jacks, 33, to remain held on murder charges.

And, Weisberg did reduce one of the four charges of first-degree murder to second-degree murder because he was not convinced it was premeditated. A grand jury could still decide it was.

Credle, the lead detective in the case, testified in D.C. Superior Court Monday that the bodies of the three younger girls -- Tatianna Jacks, 11, N'Kiah Fogle, 6 and Aja Fogle, 5 -- were found in a bedroom on the second floor of the Southeast row house.

The girls were each in white T-shirts lying side-by-side, in order of their age. The girls each had ligature marks around their necks as though they had been strangled. Two of the girls had fibers on their necks; one of them had a blunt force trauma to the back of her head.

In the next room, the body of Jack's oldest daughter, Brittany, 17, was lying in what Credle said was "a pool of blood." Her body was riddled with holes, likely the result of advanced decomposition.

Brittany had apparently been stabbed three times in the left abdomen. Near her body, police found what they described as a "steak knife." According to Credle, Brittany's stab wounds were exposed with the rest of her body covered by a T-shirt. The room where Brittany was found was sealed shut at the base of the door with T-shirts and duct tape. A key for the door was found above the door jamb.

According to Credle, Brittany ran away from home just a few months before she was murdered, staying in a home her mother had taken her daughters in the past. Brittany was there for three months and started taking classes at Booker T. Washington Charter School.

In March 2007, Banita Jacks showed up at the house and took Brittany home. She took her out of school on March 9.

Tatianna, N'Kiah and Aja were enrolled at Meridian Elementary School until March 7.

On April 2, Brittany had contact with a friend on the Internet site, MySpace. That was the last time anyone had contact with her.

On April 27, a counselor from Booker T. Washington and a police officer went to the Jacks home to check on Brittany. Jacks answered the door after the officer's repeated knocking. She would not let the counselor nor the officer in the home. When the officer asked her for identification, she told one of her younger daughters to "get my (expletive) purse."

According to Credle's testimony, the little girl told the officer, "I don't want you to take my mommy."

Jacks told the counselor that Brittany was being home schooled, and the counselor and officer left. Three days later, a D.C. Police truancy officer went to the house. While the officers observed the three younger daughters alive and well, there was no sign of Brittany.

Around the middle of May, neighbors say they saw Jacks and her three youngest daughters moving furniture out of the house. They put it all in the backyard and told neighbors they could help themselves. When neighbors asked why she threw out all of her furniture, Jacks told them it was because of ants.

The neighbors on either side of the Jacks family told detective Credle that Banita Jacks would come to their back doors and ask for food, water and cigarettes. The neighbors said they stopped hearing the sounds of the little girls playing in the home around July. By August, they noticed a foul odor. A neighbor thought the odor was dead rats.

At that time, Banita Jacks started to lose weight. She told neighbors she had cancer and the kids had gone to South Carolina.

On May 20, a witness told police he went to the Jacks home to inform the family they had to move or they would be evicted. Nobody came to the door, but the witness heard the children inside.

On Sept. 6, he returned to the house and spoke with Jacks and offered her $500 in moving expenses. She told him she needed more time to move. He came back on Jan. 8 and told Jacks she would be evicted. Again Jacks said she would not leave. He returned with the U. S. Marshals the next day.

After the U.S. Marshals entered the home and discovered the bodies, they placed Jacks in custody. She was taken to a police station and interrogated for eight hours by Credle. Some of what Jacks told him in those eight hours didn't make sense, Creadle said.

He said he pressured her to confess to the stabbing of Brittany and the strangling of the three younger girls. Jacks would not confess. She told investigators the children died one-by-one and that she didn't call police because she didn't trust them.

Jacks referred to Brittany as "Jezebel," Credle testified. She told the detectives it was a Biblical reference to a prostitute. Jacks told police Brittany was seeing boys and had been poisoned by outside influences.

Credle testified that Jacks told him she took away the girls' clothes so they wouldn't run away and they were possessed by demons. She told police she knew if she stopped feeding the children they would get weak and the demons would leave their bodies. She also talked about the resurrection of her dead husband.

Throughout the more than 2 hours Credle testified, Jacks sat saying nothing and appearing emotionless. Dressed in a dark blue prison jumpsuit, Jacks was shackled as she entered the courtroom. About a dozen family members sat in the courtroom. Jacks did not speak to any of them.

The judge did deny a request to release Jacks to the custody of her relatives.

The Office of the Chief Medical Examiner has determined that all four girls were homicide victims, but the exact causes of their deaths remain a mystery. Experts from the Smithsonian Institute have been called in to help with the examination of the decomposing bodies.

A bug expert is working to find out what the dead bugs found near the bodies can tell investigators. Investigators theorize that because the bugs found near Brittany's body were bigger than those found near the three younger girls, Brittany was dead longer.

Another court hearing is scheduled for April 4.

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