Interior designer accused of killing stepfather after finding naked pictures of herself
David Millward
Sun, 11 December 2022 at 8:11 pm·3-min read
Interior designer Jade Janks
A California interior designer has been accused of drugging and strangling her former stepfather after catching him using a naked picture of her as his screensaver.
Jade Janks, 39, is on trial for murdering Thomas Merriman, 64, with whom she founded Butterfly Farms, a non-profit research institution.
According to Deputy District Attorney Jorge Del Portillo, Ms Banks stumbled on the nude screensaver while tidying the home they shared in Solana Beach, California.
Ms Janks found more images when she searched the computer and was left “beyond freaked out”, Mr Del Portillo told the jury.
How the photographs, which were taken with consent by Ms Janks’s boyfriend a decade ago, ended up on Merriman’s computer is unclear.
Incensed by the discovery Ms Janks plotted her revenge, the prosecuting attorney alleged.
“This was no accident. This was murder by design,” Mr Del Portillo told the court. Ms Janks planned to kill Merriman, but make it appear as if he had taken an overdose, he added.
He died on New Year’s Eve in 2020, hours after Janks had collected him from a rehabilitation facility where he had been recovering following a fall.
Even though Merriman had divorced Ms Janks’s mother, she still looked after him.
The prosecution alleged that Janks had told her friends she had drugged Mr Merriman and tried to suffocate him.
Jurors were shown a series of incriminating texts she had sent to various contacts.
“I just dosed the hell out of him,” she wrote in one. “He’s waking up. I really don’t want to be the one to do this.”
“I can’t carry him alone and I can’t keep a kicking body in my trunk,” she said.
Janks eventually called her friend Adam Siplyak for help, the prosecutors said.
Mr Siplyak told jurors in Vista, California that Ms Janks asked him to help move the body.
“She said, ‘I killed him, and he’s in the back of my [Toyota] 4Runner,’” Mr Siplyak recalled. “I said, ‘I can’t help you … no way, I’m out of here. I have a son to raise’.”
Thomas Merriman, Jade Janks’ stepfather
Mr Siplyak said he refused to look inside the car fearing that doing so would incriminate himself.
Instead, he called the police the following day, who searched Merriman’s home and found his body beneath a pile of boxes and rubbish on January 2. Prosecutors said he died of a sleeping pill overdose.
Defending attorney, Marc Carlos, told jurors that Mr Merriman’s death was due to his poor health and the cocktail of pills he had been taking.
“The medical examiner will not tell you it was strangulation. The science does not support strangulation,” Mr Carlos added.
Merriman, he added, was an alcoholic who abused his pills. His health was failing and was in chronic pain.
He left the rehabilitation facility with a considerable amount of medication, including sleeping pills which, Mr Carlos suggested, he took himself.
“Jade Janks loved her stepfather,” Mr Carlos added. “Tom Merriman loved Jade Janks. Unfortunately, Tom Merriman was a troubled individual, and he loved her in different ways.”
Ms Janks has pleaded not guilty to murder. She could face life in prison if convicted.
