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Philly Homicide - Season 2 Episode 6 - The Hit List
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Short filmTranscript
00:06He took me on his wing and the city is going to guide me.
00:09John Davis, the night manager, was this terrific guy.
00:12Somebody was lurking in the back of the van waiting for his opportunity to strike.
00:19Who has a motive to want this person dead?
00:22He is a prodigy. He is a talented musician.
00:25He had an opportunity to be in one of the best boy bands in the country or in the world.
00:31Boys to men become very successful and this causes some resentment.
00:35That is when everything turns.
00:37She tells us that the attack on John Davis was part of a contract
00:43where they had agreed with one another to kill five individuals.
00:48She was a black widow. She was a narcissistic woman that just wanted to eliminate men.
00:52He said to her, one down, four to go.
01:15The music scene in Philly has a long history and has influenced many musicians over the years.
01:20When a local talent hits it big, the whole city celebrates the win.
01:26But sometimes, artists make headlines for all the wrong reasons.
01:30Like in 2001, when a murder turned the Philly music scene on its head.
01:44About a week before Christmas, at the David's Bridal warehouse in White Marsh Township,
01:50one of the employees opening up the building in the morning comes to the parking lot
01:56and sees the night manager's van parked there.
01:59The engine is running.
02:01And that struck him as unusual.
02:04He thinks he's asleep.
02:07So he's banging on the window with no response.
02:11And then he opens the door and he can see that there's blood everywhere.
02:17And then calls 911.
02:22White Marsh Police get onto the scene.
02:25They see that the person that is still in the van, their foot is still on the brake.
02:30But they can see that the victim has been dead for a couple of hours.
02:38Montgomery County homicide detectives are notified and now a joint investigation commences.
02:45When the detectives arrive, they set up a perimeter so that there would be no entry anywhere near that van.
02:53There are certain things that they can notice by just quickly looking.
02:57There's a gunshot wound to the back of the head from relatively close range
03:01that looked like the shooter was in the van behind him in the back seat.
03:08The first thing you think about is, was this a robbery?
03:12But he has his wallet, the van is still there, and he has $700 in cash in his pocket.
03:18So it's unlikely that's a robbery.
03:21When the man who was coming to open the warehouse tells the police positively,
03:26this is my colleague, John Davis.
03:28And we, of course, get the identification from his wallet,
03:32matches up to the photograph on his driver's license.
03:34There's no question that it was John Davis.
03:40After confirming John Davis' identity, the forensic unit examines the inside of his van.
03:46The forensic people take photographs of everything
03:49and then begin to collect hairs, fibers, blood, DNA, things of that nature.
03:56The van itself is clean, except for where the blood was located.
04:00We know that killers frequently leave behind forensic evidence,
04:04so we're looking for fingerprints, and there weren't any.
04:09It was very unusual.
04:11That tells us that the crime scene was wiped down
04:14with a specific intent to keep us from finding forensic evidence.
04:20Police officers realize that this seems very personal.
04:24The gunshot wound to the back of his head implies
04:26that somebody was lurking in the back of the van,
04:29really waiting for his opportunity to strike.
04:36We were asking the owners of the warehouse,
04:39is there any surveillance video or anything of that nature?
04:43Mind you, this is 2001, so there wasn't.
04:46We were kind of operating in the blind here.
04:51Naturally, the first thing that we look for is the motive.
04:55We want to know who this person is,
04:57who was the last person to see him alive,
04:59and then who has a motive to want this person dead.
05:03Asking around his workplace,
05:06detectives are able to piece together a timeline of John's final hours.
05:10There was a fellow that he worked with, Mr. Woodson,
05:12that was the last person to see John alive.
05:18I first met John Davis.
05:20I applied for Davis Bridal Distribution.
05:23When I came in, he saw me and he said,
05:26you're a tall guy.
05:27That's what we need, some tall guys with long arms around here.
05:30He thought I was a motivated guy.
05:32So he took me on his wing and said he was going to guide me in.
05:35He was more like a father figure.
05:36He was older than me at the time.
05:37He was training me on life, work, and being a parent.
05:50December the 17th was brisk.
05:52It was cold.
05:53I was in there doing my PM duties,
05:55getting the, you know, cleaning up,
05:56making sure everything's organized.
05:58John in the back, I see him back on his desk on the phone.
06:01He's talking.
06:02He said, give me a minute.
06:05Mr. Woodson told police that there's some snafu with setting the alarm.
06:10But they eventually get the alarm set.
06:13They left about 9, 9.05.
06:16They're conferring in the parking lot.
06:21He was like, man, love you, dude.
06:22Gave me a hug.
06:23He said, have a good night.
06:25As I'm backing up, I see him getting in the car.
06:27I see the door shut.
06:30I backs up.
06:31I'm proceeding to leave the lot.
06:33I see his light, so I'm thinking he cool.
06:36I leave.
06:36I go home.
06:37I got in the shower, and me and my lady was in bed.
06:42Next morning, when they came to me and told me what happened,
06:45I was like, how?
06:46I just left him.
06:47There's no way in the world, man.
06:50Being the last person to see John alive,
06:53police want to confirm Woodson's whereabouts.
06:56His girlfriend is able to verify he was home all night.
06:59We and John never had no issues, and I just was there for a short amount of time, and I
07:04was doing good, and me and John had good rapport.
07:07We talked to people that were working with him at David's Bryle, and we asked, is there some motive work
07:14-related?
07:15But what we got was a composite of this terrific guy.
07:23I would describe John Davis as a life-changing individual, and personalities is off the charts.
07:30Very enthusiastic person.
07:33At work, if it was a boring moment, not when he was in the area.
07:36He was very good at team-building and motivating people to feel like they can overachieve, even if they didn't
07:43have it in them.
07:45John was a very community-orientated person, very involved with youth development, doing community service at different YMCA's in the
07:54Philadelphia area.
07:55He said he loved everybody, because he always seen potential in people that they didn't even see potential in themselves.
08:01Come somebody to work, we go sit in and have a beer or whatever, a quick beer.
08:04He spoke highly of his family, seven days a week.
08:08After speaking with John's colleagues, detectives want to contact his loved ones to notify them of his death.
08:18Cops speak to the owner of the distribution warehouse, and they're able to get his home address,
08:23where they're able to speak to his current girlfriend, Tamara Walls.
08:27And she is devastated.
08:31One of the things we try to do is create a timeline.
08:34We asked her, you know, where were you?
08:36And she was at a friend's house, and when did you last talk with John?
08:40I called him that night.
08:46She does tell police officers that she spoke with him from her friend's house.
08:52And police were able to verify this.
08:55That was done with the cell phone.
08:56We were able to determine that at about 9.40 p.m., that's when that call was made.
09:02So that fit in with the timeframe for when he had set the alarm.
09:08John's girlfriend then tells detectives that the start of their relationship was less than ideal.
09:14She lets them know that John was in a previous relationship when they got together with a woman named Kimberly,
09:21John's ex-wife.
09:24They did meet at the time where him and Kimberly were still married, but John decided to leave Kimberly and
09:29be with Tamara.
09:30And according to Tamara, it was a little messy.
09:34She says the divorce from Kimberly Williams was very contentious, and perhaps she wanted to hurt him.
09:42John had just recently decided that he was going to marry Miss Wells.
09:46So we thought that maybe that would create a motive for the jilted wife to kill him.
09:55Coming up...
09:56Investigators realize that she has a prior record, and they connect her to a firefighter who was recently shot in
10:03Philadelphia.
10:04His story sounds eerily similar to what happened to John Davis.
10:09Heaven knows the serial killer in training what he would have done had we not been able to move as
10:15rapidly as we did.
10:24The day after John Davis was shot to death in the parking lot of his workplace, detectives set out to
10:30talk to his ex-wife.
10:32It sounded as though the ex-wife, who also had children with John, would have a motive to want John
10:40dead because he had left her.
10:43Cops are beginning to wonder, was this a complicated love triangle?
10:48So they wanted to speak to Kimberly Williams to see if they had any leads there.
10:56We don't go in there assuming that she's the person, but we want to find out whether that motive is
11:02something that she might have acted upon.
11:07So police officers get to Kimberly Williams' house, and they're surprised to find out they had an amical breakup.
11:16They were not resentful.
11:18He was still continuing to take care of the kids that he had in that relationship.
11:23And she has no idea who would want to do something like this.
11:28There was not the vitriol, not the anger, not the attitude that detectives expected she would have if she really
11:37were involved in the killing.
11:40Kimberly Williams was at work that night.
11:43She says that her kids were being watched by her mother, that after she finished with work, she came home.
11:49We were able to verify all these things, not only with talking with the mother and with her, but with
11:54telephone records and the like.
11:59Homicide investigation is a process of elimination.
12:02So even when we eliminate the ex-wife and the current girlfriend, that's advancing the ball because those are people
12:10who are out.
12:12As detectives map out their next move, John's body is taken for autopsy.
12:19The autopsy on John Davis was December 18th, a few hours after the body had been found and processed.
12:27We were reasonably certain that he'd been shot before midnight, December 17th, because he was exhibiting rigor mortis, which is
12:33something that takes several hours to come on.
12:37He was a victim of a homicidal gunshot, and all the bullets that struck him stayed in.
12:44As we expected, Dr. Hood told us that John Davis had been shot in the back of the head, but
12:50also Dr. Hood discovered two additional bullet holes in John's torso, which we did not know of at the time.
12:59All three bullets were retrieved, and they all appeared to be the same.
13:06The ballistics experts gave us the information that was obvious to him that they were .38s, and that they had
13:12fired from a .38 revolver, and the same one.
13:16This, of course, becomes very important in our case.
13:22But for Dr. Hood, there is something about the pattern of John's wounds that is not adding up.
13:29Why do we have an execution-style wound in the back of the head, and then these two rather unusual
13:34wounds that are shot into him at very different angles in the back and the chest?
13:39All three bullets were identified as having been fired from the same weapon.
13:44So now we have somebody who shot from three different directions with the same gun, or if there's two shooters,
13:52it means that they've used one gun, which only adds another layer of weirdness to this case.
14:00Realizing that there are now two possible killers on the loose, detectives expand their search to come up with a
14:06lead.
14:07We realized that this personal connection must be outside John's immediate group, so we wanted to find out if there
14:16was anything more we could learn from the employees that John worked with at the warehouse.
14:25Going back to people we've already interviewed is not uncommon. In the moments after a traumatic event, people's memories can
14:32be affected, so a second or even a third conversation with them can bring up new details.
14:40Detectives speak with Robert Woodson, John Davis' co-worker, and he does recall a conversation at the end of the
14:48dinner shift.
14:51He's got his phone in his hand texting, and I said, John, what's up, man? Why you, you know, what's
14:55going on? Why you got that look on your face like that? What's going on?
14:58He said, nothing, just got a call from the chick I used to do, and she want to meet up
15:01with me, but I'm a little skeptical, man, because I ain't seen this girl in a minute.
15:05He said they had a sexual relationship at one time. John thought that she wanted to meet up to rekindle
15:10or try to go out, but he was very apprehensive about meeting her.
15:16Mr. Woodson told the police that none of this would have stuck in his mind but for the fact that
15:22John expressed fear and then said, I wonder if I'm being set up.
15:29But Mr. Woodson didn't know who that was. He only knew I was a former employee.
15:33I had no name. I had no familiarity when I'd never seen her. My assistant at David's Bridal's before I
15:38even got hired.
15:40John had a work line that had voicemail on it, so the IT people at David's Bridal were able to
15:46get us the information from John's work phone, get the recordings from the voicemails, and we did get a hit.
15:58Hey, John, I'm calling you, letting you know. I'll be up here at 9.30.
16:17Detectives investigating the murder of John Davis have discovered a voicemail on his work phone. The message is from a
16:22woman and was left hours before Davis was killed.
16:25For investigators, this is the first big break in the case.
16:32Hey, John, I'm calling you, letting you know. I'll be up here at 9.30.
16:38It became important to us to figure out who this woman was that John was supposed to meet that night.
16:44So we talked with other people who worked there, and this employee remembered a specific incident where this Vernell girl
16:54left work.
16:55She left in her own car. Around 5 and around 6.30, a man drove up in the same car
17:02and asked to speak with Davis.
17:05The boyfriend had come there and said, stay away from my girl.
17:11So there was no fireworks or anything. Then the boyfriend leaves.
17:17The co-worker's account feels like a promising lead.
17:21But there is one problem.
17:24They don't know if Vernell is a name, if it's a nickname.
17:28This is not a David's Bridal store, which would typically have about 8 to 10 employees.
17:32This is a warehouse. There's hundreds and hundreds of employees that work there.
17:37So detectives have a lot of names to go through.
17:41While one team of investigators pours over the employee records, another focuses on John Davis' phone.
17:48Police have this phone number, and they find that it goes to an insurance company in King of Prussia.
17:55So White Marsh detectives show up and try to find out, where does this number lead them to?
18:01A woman does come forward and she says, hey, this is my extension, but I did not make the call.
18:07But I can tell you who did.
18:10She allowed a person named Vernell Jones to use her extension, that she made several phone calls,
18:17one of which she overheard her telling a person that she would meet them that evening between 9.30 and
18:2410 o'clock.
18:25Then she heard Vernell say, don't tell anybody I'm coming or worse to that effect.
18:31She also then witnessed or overheard Vernell get off the phone and immediately make a phone call to her boyfriend
18:38and says,
18:39I'm going up there and I'm going to meet with him.
18:43Well, by this point, Vernell Jones is now somebody that we're very interested in.
18:48So we wanted to get a background on her.
18:52This is when we discover that Vernell Jones was in the Philadelphia music scene and had been a singer for
18:59years,
19:01part of a locally well-known group called Surprise.
19:09They reach out to her.
19:10They ask her to come down to the station, but she doesn't come alone.
19:14She brings her boyfriend slash manager, Kenneth Vernell.
19:21It's not unusual for people to bring someone to the police station with them while they're being questioned,
19:26but they're thinking in the back of their head, this could be a love triangle.
19:31And what does Vernell have to do with it?
19:35We make the decision to go ahead and interview Vernell Jones with him there.
19:42She says that, yes, she worked at David's bridal and that she was friendly with John Davis, dating on and
19:50off casually,
19:51and that she had made calls and set up a meeting for after work on the 17th of December to
19:59have a drink with him.
20:02She admitted that she tried to make her boyfriend, Kenneth Vernell, jealous,
20:07and did set up a meeting to meet with John Davis, but that she chickened out in the end.
20:13Kenny's acting all sympathetic, squeezing her hand and whatnot, but he actually was kind of in the way and was
20:22making it more difficult for us to do our job.
20:24He seemed to be more interested in the details of the crime than we think somebody who's just there for
20:30moral support ought to be.
20:32He put himself into the mix and put himself on our radar.
20:37Vernell's alibi is that she was with Kenneth and the only time that she was not with Kenneth was for
20:44about a period of a half an hour, but that she didn't go anywhere.
20:48Detectives are beginning to feel that there's something suspicious going on with Vernell, but they can't keep her because they
20:55don't have any evidence.
21:02Vernell Jones is now somebody that we're very interested in, so we went and talked with her sisters and her
21:09family.
21:10We wanted to ascertain whether Vernell Jones had been violent in the past toward any other boyfriends.
21:19So when we spoke with her family and friends, they gave us a list of various relationships with other men
21:25in the past, one of whom was Ronald Humphrey,
21:29who was a Philadelphia fireman who worked next door to where she lived.
21:36Investigators are now talking to Ronald Humphrey, and they've discovered that between July of 2001 and August, Humphrey had a
21:45relationship with Vernell Jones.
21:50We're trying to find out was she violent in any way toward him, just for background information.
21:57And when we asked him, he said, that bitch shot me, which was a, you know, quite a surprise to
22:08us.
22:17It's been four days since John Davis was found shot to death, and detective's prime suspect is his former lover,
22:24Vernell Jones.
22:24Now they're learning that she shot another one of her exes.
22:29Could be a coincidence, but detectives rarely believe in coincidences.
22:36On December 21st, 2001, our detectives interviewed Ronald Humphrey, and he tells us that Vernell Jones, the previous October, had
22:49shot him.
22:53Between July of 2001 and August, Humphrey had a sexual relationship with Vernell Jones.
23:00But Kenneth Burnow gets wind of it and comes to the fire station and confronts him in front of everyone.
23:08After that, Humphrey had no contact with Vernell Jones until October, and that's when she called him out of the
23:16blue, saying that she wants to hook up.
23:20And finally, he agrees to meet with her.
23:25There was a specifically arranged date by her, which is of great significance.
23:31They buy some beer, then they drive to a secluded area in Fairmont Park, which is in Philadelphia.
23:39It turns into a sexual encounter.
23:44She performs oral sex on him, and he thinks that it's going to go further.
23:50Vernell Jones, according to the fireman, says she has to go to the bathroom as she gets out of the
23:55fireman's truck.
23:59She leaves the truck, he goes to the back seat of the truck, anticipating that they're going to have sex.
24:06She opens the door with a silver revolver, fires a shot right at him, hits him in the right upper
24:16arm.
24:19The Philadelphia Police Department investigated the shooting incident.
24:23At that time, Ron doesn't tell them that it was Vernell that shot him because he was in a relationship
24:28with someone else,
24:29but his story sounds eerily similar to what happened to John Davis.
24:37The conversation with Ronald Humphrey is of critical importance because we have his eyewitness testimony that it was a silver
24:45revolver.
24:46We know from the three bullets we took out of John Davis that they came from a revolver.
24:59The Philadelphia Police were able to turn that bullet that they had dug out of the truck over to our
25:05expert,
25:05compare that to the three bullets that came out of John Davis.
25:10With all signs pointing to Vernell's involvement in both shootings,
25:15detectives go back to her family to understand why she would want two men dead.
25:23Vernell Jones was 32 years old at the time of this crime.
25:28Her and her sisters used to perform all the time.
25:31And after a while they formed a girl group called Surprise.
25:35Vernell was the lead singer of Surprise, and she was going to become really the talent.
25:44Vernell really wanted to pursue music, but the gigs were not coming often enough.
25:49So she had to work a nine-to-five at the bridal warehouse.
25:54As the group was getting better and better and getting more and more opportunities to play,
26:00her hours at the bridal warehouse were getting in the way.
26:04And it was the habitual missing of work that led to her firing earlier that year.
26:10Kenneth Burnow was a manager of musicians.
26:14And he meets this charismatic, very attractive, talented woman, Vernell Jones.
26:20And he decides, I'm going to make her a star.
26:23But Kenneth Burnow is somewhat of a celebrity himself.
26:29I'm Lamar Burnow, youngest brother of Kenneth Burnow Jr.
26:34At an early age, he had a gift.
26:37Kenny entered into Creative and Performing Arts High School,
26:42and the choir picked certain members to be part of a group called Unique Attractions.
26:48And they would go to churches all around Philadelphia singing, making a name for themselves.
26:54And they sang for Michael Bivens.
26:57And that's what made history, because he enjoyed the sound
27:01and changed their name to Boyz II Men.
27:05When it came right down to the contract time,
27:08he found out his girlfriend was pregnant and decided to let go of show business.
27:13Kenny was okay with it, because he was in college.
27:16No one ever knows how long your singing career will last.
27:20But if you go to college and get a degree, you have something to fall back on.
27:25So that was his focus.
27:28Boyz II Men become very successful, selling over 60 million albums.
27:35And this causes some resentment in Kenny.
27:39There's always some regret, but Kenny said, well, look, it was their time.
27:44It was just their time.
27:46I'm not gonna say he wasn't hurt.
27:48He never took his hurt to a point that it destroyed anyone else.
27:58Verno decided, I still want to be in music.
28:01But he decided to be in a different capacity.
28:03He decided to contribute to somebody else's stardom.
28:07And that was the stardom of Vernel Jones.
28:11When Kenny met Vernel, that changed Kenny.
28:19She was a different type of woman.
28:22Vernel wasn't his only artist.
28:23He was just, she was just the main artist that he was working with.
28:26Vernel had the potential that he saw that he could help her grow.
28:32Vernel, and she just thought he just was the king of music.
28:37At this time, Kenny's still married.
28:39But I would always see Kenny taking care of Vernel financially.
28:45I would see Vernel acting like she was his queen.
28:53After a while, his marriage is dwindling.
28:56It eventually ends.
28:58Then, Kenny and Vernel do have a tumultuous five-year relationship.
29:08Friends and family often provide us with background info on a suspect.
29:12But that doesn't always give us a motive.
29:15As detectives work out the why in a case,
29:18physical evidence can help us figure out the how.
29:21Ballistics take the bullet taken out of Humphrey's truck
29:25and see if there's anything consistent with the bullets
29:28that they've already recovered from John Davis's injuries.
29:32And lo and behold, they find out
29:35that it is the same type of bullet
29:37and the same type of casing shot from the same gun.
29:42This is a huge break in the case.
29:45That links the killing of John Davis
29:48just to the wounding of Mr. Humphrey, the fireman.
29:52And the linchpin, the thing that connects the two of them,
29:55is Vernel Jones.
30:07Ballistic testing has linked the same gun and bullets to both John Davis
30:11and Ron Humphrey's shootings.
30:14Since Ron Humphrey has already confirmed that Vernel Jones was his shooter,
30:18authorities are ready to make an arrest.
30:22It is two days before Christmas and police believe they have their woman.
30:27They go get Vernel Jones and they find her at Kenneth Burnow's house.
30:32She is charged with conspiracy and third-degree murder.
30:37She is taken to Montgomery County Jail
30:40and she continues to deny that she has any connection with John Davis's death.
30:48The community's reaction to Vernel's arrest is shock.
30:53And the press goes wild.
30:56The only thing I know about her is from what I heard on the news.
30:58I just heard that she was a black widow.
31:01She was a narcissistic woman that just wanted to eliminate men.
31:09Vernel's already in jail for the murder of John Davis
31:11and on January 10, 2002,
31:14the Philadelphia Police Department had the charge of aggravated assault
31:19for the October shooting of Ronald Humphrey.
31:25Despite having physical evidence to connect Vernel to both cases,
31:29the Ronald Humphrey shooting will be pursued first in the courts.
31:33We now know we have a guaranteed strong case against Vernel Jones
31:38for the wounding of the fireman
31:40because he's still alive and can tell us what happened.
31:44When Vernel got locked up, Kenny was shocked.
31:48He started calling different lawyers to see if they would take her case.
31:54So initially detectives saw the relationship between Vernel and Kenny
31:59as a loving relationship.
32:01He would encourage her.
32:04But then they began to wonder if this relationship was more,
32:08was he guiding her?
32:11Was he coaching her?
32:12Was he putting words in her mouth?
32:14Was he telling her what she should say to the police officers?
32:18We all think that Kenny Berno is a conspirator, if not a killer.
32:22So now the goal is, how are we going to gather the evidence to prove that?
32:30My assessment was that Vernel Jones was flaky.
32:35And I was absolutely sure that Kenny Berno would not pay enough attention to her
32:41while she's locked up.
32:46Initially, when she's in prison, Kenny Berno is visiting her, writing to her, calling her.
32:52Well, those visits and calls and letters get fewer and fewer until eventually they stop.
33:00And Vernel Jones is getting visits from her family and they're saying, you know, Kenny's out there and he's dating
33:07other girls and he's getting away with this.
33:11We know that the pressure is working on her and that would eventually work its way to the point where
33:17she's not going to go down by herself.
33:21But Vernel remains silent.
33:24This goes on for eight months until August of 2002, when her trial for the shooting of Ron Humphrey is
33:31about to begin.
33:32Vernel Jones realizes she's all alone.
33:36She realizes she has no one to support her.
33:39She realizes she has been holding the truth all along.
33:43And then that is when everything turns.
33:50August 21st, 2002, she decides to take a plea bargain in Ronald Humphrey's case.
33:58She pleased to aggravated assault and she gets 10 years behind bars.
34:03And as a part of her plea bargain, she begins to talk.
34:08She wants to get out from underneath the possibility of a mandatory life sentence for the murder of John Davis.
34:14And we want to know what involvement Kenny Berno may have had in the murder.
34:21So we set up the meeting and what she told us was far in excess of what we had anticipated.
34:31Vernel proceeds to tell them that her boyfriend of five years has been abusive.
34:39He was possessive and very much a part of everything that she was doing.
34:45I never saw Kenny hit her.
34:48There's not one police report about him abusing her.
34:51My theory is she had to create that backstory because Vernel couldn't handle Kenny seeing other women.
35:00Vernel said that she wasn't allowed to have a pager.
35:03She was only allowed to use a cell phone that he paid for that was in his name so he
35:08can keep track of the records.
35:12Vernel Jones also was required to hand over every check that she made.
35:16So all of her money was going to Berno, so she didn't even have her own money to take care
35:22of her own family.
35:24He went from being relatively normal to obsessed with Vernel Jones.
35:33He was crazy jealous and even threatened some of the people that she had relationships with previously.
35:43Vernel tells detectives the relationship hit her fever pitch in the summer of 2001 when Kenny accused her of having
35:50a sexual relationship with his cousin.
35:53He's beating on her.
35:55He's being emotionally and verbally abusive and she's scared.
35:59So she goes along with whatever he says.
36:02So Kenny required her to write down the men that he thought she had a sexual relationship with.
36:09There were five of them.
36:11And then Vernel gave Vernel an ultimatum.
36:15Either you kill these five guys or our relationship is over.
36:20She tells us that the attack on John Davis was part of the manifestation of a contract where they had
36:32agreed with one another in writing to kill five individuals.
36:44Montgomery County detectives are all ears as Vernel Jones reveals her list of past lovers and the reason Kenneth Berno
36:52was making her target them.
36:55Kenney creates this hit list because he feels like this is the only way for Vernel to show her allegiance
37:01to him.
37:03They agreed to kill Larry Tucker, a former co-worker, Ronald Humphrey, the firefighter, John Davis, and two of Vernel's
37:10cousins.
37:11She has to kill the first name on the list.
37:15And that first name is Ronald Humphrey.
37:20Vernel told investigators she was terrified because not only did Vernel drive her to the scene of where she was
37:28supposed to kill Ronald Humphrey, he was hanging in the background in the car waiting for her to do it.
37:37She was so nervous she couldn't even fire a straight shot.
37:41When she shot him, Mr. Humphrey, he didn't go down like it's on TV.
37:46And that frightens her and she runs off.
37:49Well, that infuriates Kenny.
37:52So they decide that the next person they're going to kill is John and they'll come back to Ronald Humphrey.
37:58And this time Kenny's going to fire the fatal shot because she's an incompetent marksman.
38:06So on the night of the murder, they're waiting for John Davis when he comes out.
38:11Somehow Kenny has gotten in the back of the van and she's hiding in the shadows.
38:18When John Davis and Vernel returned to the van, Kenny Verno fired the shot in his head.
38:27And as another gruesome act of allegiance required Vernel to fire two shots into his body from the same gun.
38:37She was terrified. She was upset. He was happy and joyful.
38:43And then said to her, one down, four to go.
38:50Detectives know Vernel's word isn't enough to build a case against Kenny Verno.
38:55The detectives wanted to see Kenny.
38:58They wanted to ask him questions.
39:00Kenny showed up at the Montgomery County District Attorney's Office with his lawyer.
39:05And instead of answering direct questions, he's getting kind of, you know, smart with these detectives.
39:12But they didn't like that.
39:15So we got a search warrant for Kenny's place.
39:19And we find the address of a man in Atlanta, Georgia, who was on the contract list.
39:25That man was Larry Tucker.
39:28We called him.
39:29We were able to corroborate what Vernel had told us.
39:33We also have the fireman's eyewitness testimony.
39:36And we could corroborate that Kenny came to the workplace of John Davis and Ronald Humphreys.
39:43So I thought circumstantially we had enough.
39:49December 17, 2002, a year to the date of when John Davis was found dead,
39:57Kenneth Verno was charged with criminal conspiracy and first-degree murder.
40:01The very next day, Vernel Jones decides to take a plea deal
40:06and agree to third-degree murder and conspiracy
40:10and to testify against her ex-boyfriend Kenneth Verno.
40:17I won't say the entire case against Kenny Verno rests on what Vernel says,
40:22but a great deal of it and the strongest pieces of evidence
40:26are all of the things that she testified about her victimhood at the hands of Kenny Verno.
40:34They help to explain her conduct.
40:37That's very impactful to a jury.
40:42When Vernel was being cross-examined, he said,
40:46did you shoot John Davis?
40:48She said, yes, but I know Kenny took the fatal shot.
40:54I know Kenny's innocent because I know he's not going to take a man's life.
41:00But I know Vernel is guilty because she confessed to being guilty.
41:07The jury sees things differently and finds Kenneth Verno guilty of conspiracy
41:11and first-degree murder in the killing of John Davis.
41:15He is sentenced to life in prison.
41:17For her part, Vernel Jones is given a reduced sentence of 17 to 35 years.
41:24When he was found guilty, it was a shock to all of us.
41:30The family was hurt.
41:33Our thoughts and prayers go to the victims.
41:37But the judicial system has failed my brother.
41:43I have some sympathy for Vernel Jones because women can be forced to do things that they otherwise wouldn't do.
41:50She was ultimately paroled to try to rehabilitate her life in 2018.
42:05The great man is gone.
42:07So I think that on all areas, everybody's suffering.
42:11They took a well-respected man away from us.
42:14And honestly, I think that they got what they deserve.
42:19God knew John was good.
42:21John, I love you, man.
42:22I know you're in a better place, man.
42:24And I know you right now, you're sitting at the Senate table up in heaven.
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