St. Johnsbury, Vermont is a town of 6,200 in the northeast part of the state 40 miles south of the Canadian border. It is home to St. Johnsbury Academy, the prestigious prep and boarding school established in the 1840s. This was not a place where people got murdered.
Melissa Jenkins had been a science teacher and the girl's basketball coach at St. Johnsbury Academy since 2004. The 33-year-old single mother was completing her Masters Degree in Education and was employed part time as a waitress at Creamery Restaurant in nearby Danville where she had worked 12 years.
On Sunday evening, March 25, 2012, 30-year-old Allen Prue and his wife Patricia, a couple from Waterford, Vermont, were riding about in their car. Allen made his living driving around the area delivering the local newspaper. In the winter he plowed driveways. Two years before he had plowed Melissa Jenkins' driveway, but after he had asked her out a couple of times, she discontinued his service. In the fall of 2011 Prue showed up at her house drunk and asked if he could resume plowing her driveway. She declined his offer.
As Prue and his 33-year-old wife drove around that evening, he said he wanted "to get a girl." The girl he had in mind was Melissa Jenkins. Patricia Prue approved of the idea. To lure the intended victim out of her home she called Jenkins and said that she and her husband had broken down near her house. Could Melissa give them a lift?
Before Jenkins left her house to help people she barely knew, she called her former boyfriend to report she had just received a "weird call from a girl and guy who used to plow her driveway." In case something happened to her Melissa Jenkins wanted someone to know where she had gone. After speaking to her ex-boyfriend she put her 2-year-old son Ty in the car and drove off to help the Prues.
The moment Jenkins climbed out of her car Allen Prue, with the school teacher's son looking on, grabbed and started strangling her. He pushed the stunned woman into his vehicle where, as he drove to his house in Waterford, Patricia Prue continued choking the victim "to make sure she wasn't breathing." The Prues left the Jenkins boy behind unharmed in his abducted mother's car.
The Prues carried Jenkins (she may have been alive but unconscious) into their house where they removed her clothing, repeatedly stomped on her then laid her badly bruised corpse onto a tarp. After pouring bleach on her body the Prues carried the tarp-wrapped victim back to their vehicle. They drove to a spot along the Connecticut River near Barnet, Vermont. At the river's edge in a wooded area they tied a cinderblock to Jenkins' body and rolled it into the water.
Back in Waterford the murderers burned the tarp, Jenkins' clothing and the garments they had been wearing.
Melissa Jenkins' former boyfriend, two hours after she had notified him about the "weird call" she had just received, tried but failed to get back in touch with her by phone. He drove to her house, and nearby, found Jenkins' idling SUV with her 2-year-old boy asleep inside. Next to her car he found one of Jenkins's shoes. Fearing foul play he called the police.
An investigator with the Vermont State Police traced the "weird call" Jenkins had received back to the Prues. Confronted by the authorities, Allen Prue confessed.
On Monday afternoon, March 26, 2012, the day after the murder, the police found Jenkins' body along the river about ten miles from her house. At the scene officers recovered condoms and condom wrappers. The victim's feet had been tied with a length of white rope. Bruising of her face, neck, torso, arms and legs suggested that the Prues had given Jenkins a severe beating.
Charged with first-degree murder, kidnapping and conspiracy to commit murder, the Prues were held without bond at the Northeast Correctional Facility in St. Johnsbury. They pleaded not guilty. The medical examiner ruled Melissa Jenkins' death as "homicide by strangulation."
The Allen Prue murder trial, following a change of venue, got underway in Burlington, Vermont on October 7, 2014. In her opening statement, Caledonia County state's attorney Lisa Warren told the jurors that the Prues who had been engaged in a sexual relationship with a neighbor, wanted somebody they could "play with" on the night of Melissa Jenkins' murder.
Defense attorney Robert Katims, in his opening remarks, blamed the murder on the defendant's wife. "Patricia Prue strangled the victim," attorney Katims said, "because in her crazy, twisted mind Patricia had become obsessively jealous of Ms. Jenkins. The evidence will show that Patricia Prue strangled Melissa Jenkins without telling Allen she was going to do it, without planning it with him and without Allen Prue agreeing in any way, shape or form with the idea of harming Ms. Jenkins in any way."
The defense attorney informed the jurors that Patricia Prue suffered from multiple personality disorder and had complete control over her weak-minded husband who quit school at age 16. It was the defendant's low I.Q. that allowed detectives to break him down in a seven hour interrogation. The defendant's murder confession, according to attorney Katims, had been coerced and was therefore false.
Following the testimony of the medical examiner, prosecutor Warren played the audio recording of the defendant's confession to the jury. She next called Patricia Prue to the stand who invoked her Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination. A few days later, a Vermont state detective testified that Patricia Prue had used her laptop computer in 2011 to research tips on how to kidnap and rape a girl without getting caught. A search of the defendant's computer revealed that it had been used to shop for a stun gun. (The Vermont State Chief Medical Examiner had testified that a stun gun had been used on the victim the night she died.)
On October 22, 2014, following nine days of testimony and the attorneys' closing arguments, the case went to the jury of six men and six women. After deliberating six hours the jury found the defendant guilty of first-degree murder as well as the lesser crimes. The judge sentenced Allen Prue to life behind bars without the possibility of parole.
On February 12, 2015, Patricia Prue pleaded guilty to the charge of first-degree murder. The next day, at a sentencing proceeding that had been initially scheduled as a mental competency hearing on her former not guilty by reason of insanity plea, Prue apologized to Jenkins' family. She said she wished she had received the mental health help she so desperately needed. "I'm not sorry we were caught," she said to thirty family members present in the courtroom. "I am sorry that it ever happened."
Patricia Prue's attorney, Brian Marsicovetere, used the sentencing hearing to call for more support for mental health services in the state. He said his client suffered from post-traumatic stress and various personality disorders. She also had panic attacks as a result of intense anxiety.
Caledonia County State's Attorney Lisa Warren told the judge that Patricia Prue had spent months plotting Melissa Jenkins' murder. "The couple stalked Jenkins, acquired a stun gun and bought a prepaid cellphone to call the victim and ask for help," she said.
The judge sentenced Patricia Prue to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
Melissa Jenkins had been a science teacher and the girl's basketball coach at St. Johnsbury Academy since 2004. The 33-year-old single mother was completing her Masters Degree in Education and was employed part time as a waitress at Creamery Restaurant in nearby Danville where she had worked 12 years.
On Sunday evening, March 25, 2012, 30-year-old Allen Prue and his wife Patricia, a couple from Waterford, Vermont, were riding about in their car. Allen made his living driving around the area delivering the local newspaper. In the winter he plowed driveways. Two years before he had plowed Melissa Jenkins' driveway, but after he had asked her out a couple of times, she discontinued his service. In the fall of 2011 Prue showed up at her house drunk and asked if he could resume plowing her driveway. She declined his offer.
As Prue and his 33-year-old wife drove around that evening, he said he wanted "to get a girl." The girl he had in mind was Melissa Jenkins. Patricia Prue approved of the idea. To lure the intended victim out of her home she called Jenkins and said that she and her husband had broken down near her house. Could Melissa give them a lift?
Before Jenkins left her house to help people she barely knew, she called her former boyfriend to report she had just received a "weird call from a girl and guy who used to plow her driveway." In case something happened to her Melissa Jenkins wanted someone to know where she had gone. After speaking to her ex-boyfriend she put her 2-year-old son Ty in the car and drove off to help the Prues.
The moment Jenkins climbed out of her car Allen Prue, with the school teacher's son looking on, grabbed and started strangling her. He pushed the stunned woman into his vehicle where, as he drove to his house in Waterford, Patricia Prue continued choking the victim "to make sure she wasn't breathing." The Prues left the Jenkins boy behind unharmed in his abducted mother's car.
The Prues carried Jenkins (she may have been alive but unconscious) into their house where they removed her clothing, repeatedly stomped on her then laid her badly bruised corpse onto a tarp. After pouring bleach on her body the Prues carried the tarp-wrapped victim back to their vehicle. They drove to a spot along the Connecticut River near Barnet, Vermont. At the river's edge in a wooded area they tied a cinderblock to Jenkins' body and rolled it into the water.
Back in Waterford the murderers burned the tarp, Jenkins' clothing and the garments they had been wearing.
Melissa Jenkins' former boyfriend, two hours after she had notified him about the "weird call" she had just received, tried but failed to get back in touch with her by phone. He drove to her house, and nearby, found Jenkins' idling SUV with her 2-year-old boy asleep inside. Next to her car he found one of Jenkins's shoes. Fearing foul play he called the police.
An investigator with the Vermont State Police traced the "weird call" Jenkins had received back to the Prues. Confronted by the authorities, Allen Prue confessed.
On Monday afternoon, March 26, 2012, the day after the murder, the police found Jenkins' body along the river about ten miles from her house. At the scene officers recovered condoms and condom wrappers. The victim's feet had been tied with a length of white rope. Bruising of her face, neck, torso, arms and legs suggested that the Prues had given Jenkins a severe beating.
Charged with first-degree murder, kidnapping and conspiracy to commit murder, the Prues were held without bond at the Northeast Correctional Facility in St. Johnsbury. They pleaded not guilty. The medical examiner ruled Melissa Jenkins' death as "homicide by strangulation."
The Allen Prue murder trial, following a change of venue, got underway in Burlington, Vermont on October 7, 2014. In her opening statement, Caledonia County state's attorney Lisa Warren told the jurors that the Prues who had been engaged in a sexual relationship with a neighbor, wanted somebody they could "play with" on the night of Melissa Jenkins' murder.
Defense attorney Robert Katims, in his opening remarks, blamed the murder on the defendant's wife. "Patricia Prue strangled the victim," attorney Katims said, "because in her crazy, twisted mind Patricia had become obsessively jealous of Ms. Jenkins. The evidence will show that Patricia Prue strangled Melissa Jenkins without telling Allen she was going to do it, without planning it with him and without Allen Prue agreeing in any way, shape or form with the idea of harming Ms. Jenkins in any way."
The defense attorney informed the jurors that Patricia Prue suffered from multiple personality disorder and had complete control over her weak-minded husband who quit school at age 16. It was the defendant's low I.Q. that allowed detectives to break him down in a seven hour interrogation. The defendant's murder confession, according to attorney Katims, had been coerced and was therefore false.
Following the testimony of the medical examiner, prosecutor Warren played the audio recording of the defendant's confession to the jury. She next called Patricia Prue to the stand who invoked her Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination. A few days later, a Vermont state detective testified that Patricia Prue had used her laptop computer in 2011 to research tips on how to kidnap and rape a girl without getting caught. A search of the defendant's computer revealed that it had been used to shop for a stun gun. (The Vermont State Chief Medical Examiner had testified that a stun gun had been used on the victim the night she died.)
On October 22, 2014, following nine days of testimony and the attorneys' closing arguments, the case went to the jury of six men and six women. After deliberating six hours the jury found the defendant guilty of first-degree murder as well as the lesser crimes. The judge sentenced Allen Prue to life behind bars without the possibility of parole.
On February 12, 2015, Patricia Prue pleaded guilty to the charge of first-degree murder. The next day, at a sentencing proceeding that had been initially scheduled as a mental competency hearing on her former not guilty by reason of insanity plea, Prue apologized to Jenkins' family. She said she wished she had received the mental health help she so desperately needed. "I'm not sorry we were caught," she said to thirty family members present in the courtroom. "I am sorry that it ever happened."
Patricia Prue's attorney, Brian Marsicovetere, used the sentencing hearing to call for more support for mental health services in the state. He said his client suffered from post-traumatic stress and various personality disorders. She also had panic attacks as a result of intense anxiety.
Caledonia County State's Attorney Lisa Warren told the judge that Patricia Prue had spent months plotting Melissa Jenkins' murder. "The couple stalked Jenkins, acquired a stun gun and bought a prepaid cellphone to call the victim and ask for help," she said.
The judge sentenced Patricia Prue to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
I wonder why not First Degree? The intent was there. Just curious...
ReplyDeleteKen,
ReplyDeleteIn Vermont, first degree murder is defined as: "Murder by means of poison, or by lying in wait, or by wilful, deliberate and premeditated killing, or committed in perpetrating or attempting to perpetrate arson, sexual assault, aggravated sexual assault, robbery or burglary.
Good question.
We should all listen to taht inside voice, the gut feeling when something is wrong. This crime was so senseless.
ReplyDeleteJim, Are you going to "write the book"? The trial is underway now in Chittenden County, Burlington, VT and is proving to have interesting legal maneuvers.
ReplyDeleteThis case is shocking on so many levels. This poor young woman Melissa Jenkins was just innocently going about her life before it was intruded upon by two evil people. It seems like it could have been any of us. That is chilling. This Patricia Prue represents the meaning of depraved indifference to human life. She planned this like she was planning an evening supper. She and her lawyer have the nerve to use this as a call for better mental health care. Shameful!
ReplyDeleteThis case is as good an argument for the death penalty for at least exceptional crimes as any I've ever come across.
ReplyDeleteThese two sounded like sick perverts. They just wanted to kill someone or use them as a "sex toy" for their excitement?
ReplyDeleteStudying and researching mental illnesses and unbalanced behaviors is essential in discovering whatever we can to combat this behavior. I sometimes feel there has been an influx of undeveloped souls who have entered this world and we are their learning tools.