Jennifer Blake

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With no seller fees, you keep every dollar you earn. [MUSIC PLAYING] A missing grandmother is found brutally murdered. I'm going, oh my god. It shocked me when I've seen it on the news. The cause of death was a combination between strangulation and suffocation. Also, it was evidence that the body had been burned. The evidence points to someone the victim knew well. Whoever had dumped her used items for the house. She was going through a divorce with her husband. Somebody that she was really close with told her to get a divorce. The investigation takes detectives from the suburbs of Virginia to the backroads of North Carolina. Exposing family secrets, a deadly cover-up, and a master manipulator. Their car was stuck in the first house. They saw it was my house. In guarantee, they killed her, and she was in the trap. There's one victim who's named an enemy indictment. But the truth is, is that there were many victims. You do this long enough. You realize that evil doesn't have a zip code. [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] December 14, 2000. It's the week before Christmas in Chesapeake, Virginia. But not everyone is caught up in the holiday spirit. A church friend of 46-year-old Kathy Cranec becomes concerned after she fails to show up for a prayer meeting. [MUSIC PLAYING] The last time she was seen by the friend was December 10. She had some plans with her, and some other different appointments had been missed, and so she made calls in about the missing person. Officers are sent to Kathy's house to follow up on her concerned friend's call. They're met by Kathy's 25-year-old daughter, Jennifer Blake, who says she's been staying there with her two young children for the past three months. The statements made by Ms. Blake was that she had actually seen her mother the night before on that Wednesday, and that she had gotten into a red vehicle with an unknown person. It struck her as odd, but not anything that she questioned at the time. But Jennifer says she hasn't heard from her mother since, and she is now feeling uneasy. The person to file, the missing person report was her daughter, Jennifer. But talking with Jennifer, it is a matter of what statements were made to you. Did she say she was coming back? And didn't she state who she was going with? Jennifer was stating that she had no idea who she was leaving with or where she was going at the time. Jennifer welcomes officers inside, and they take a quick glance around the kitchen. There's just trash left around. The kitchen is dishes are undone, which was not as reported by a friend, the way Kathy kept her house. She said she kept a neat house, a clean house. She wouldn't have left it that way. There was items such as her glasses left behind. She doesn't leave or expect to be going freely at the time and not take these items with her. With growing concern from friends and family, the officers call for backup. At the time, I was a detective for Chesapeake Police. Patrol asked for assistance on this to start moving forward with the investigation of the missing person. The start of it is, obviously, getting another victim and getting to the other people around the victim. Kathy Craneck had lived most of her life in the service of others. She was born and raised in New Jersey. Hillside. Her maiden name was Yager. She never went to college, graduated high school. She's got two sisters-- Alene and Maureen, Maureen's the youngest, Kathleen's the middle, and Alene's the oldest. A born nurturer, Kathy helped care for her younger sister. And as she grew older, she dreamed of having a family of her own. When she was just 19, Kathy married a sailor in the US Navy, named Michael Craneck. They were both from the same neighborhood in New Jersey. He was in the military. His best friend was dating her sister, and that's how they met. And then the following lived. You got to take nine more deployments almost every other year, so he was deployed a lot. Kathy gave birth to their first child, Jennifer, in 1975, while they were stationed in Puerto Rico. Four years later, they had a son, Michael Jr. Being in your military, you're going to move around a lot. So coming up, I moved a lot of the states into the pier, Chesapeake, Virginia. When I was probably about eight, I grew up here, and we've been here ever since. My mom was a stay-home mom, her personality, happy, go lucky. Kathy found it difficult having her husband away so much, but through the hard times, she always had her faith to lean on. She was always real big in the church. We had to go every Sunday when we were young. She followed it with all her heart. She would go to church every Sunday. The church was more than just a community to Kathy. It also became a calling. Kathy worked as one of those phone counselors for the Christian broadcast network, 700 Club. She was basically like, you would call if you had problems, you could talk to somebody they would pray for you. That was basically what she did. I don't think it paid very much, but she liked doing it. Basically, my father took care of her financially. They had a home in suburban Chesapeake, two car garage. It was a working class, two middle class, quiet neighborhood. By the early 1990s, her children were teenagers. And Kathy found herself with a new set of challenges. My sister, we just, I would say, walled coming up. You know, both of us were really. As far as like taking the classes and passing, she was always really smart. She never really went though. She dropped down the 11th grade, I believe. She never graduated. My sister and my mom, their relationship, I wouldn't say it was ever real close. They weren't fighting every day, but they weren't exactly best friends either. After dropping out of high school, 18-year-old Jennifer moved out. Soon after, Jennifer followed in her mother's footsteps when she met a sailor named Richard. They did get married. And she ended up having a daughter. But she was just raised in Europe, because her husband was out to sea. The distance proved to be too much. And after three years, Jennifer filed for divorce. When she broke up with her first husband, she came back to stay with my mom to help her out with her kid. And then she remarried while she was staying with my mom. And then she moved back out again. She ended up having another daughter. And then that relationship ended up splitting up when she moved back again. While Kathy hoped for more stability in her daughter's love life, she remained the matriarch her family could rely on. By 2000, Kathy had settled into a comfortable routine, dedicating her days to the church and evenings to her family. Kathy appeared to be very close with her grand children. She loved him the death. She had a nice job. People thought, well, of her. But you drive by people who live normal lives all the time. And you really don't know what's going on behind those doors. Now, it's been nearly 24 hours since Kathy's daughter, Jennifer, says she saw her get into a car with an unknown person. With still no sign of Kathy, the Chesapeake police have begun an investigation. Last time. that Ms. Blake, it stated she'd seen her was the day before was that Wednesday. She had no further information about when she'd be back or this person was. At that point maybe we're talking less than 24 hours so that gives you more hope about a missing person when you're only 24 hours outside of having been seen. The police had called me the next day and asked me if I had seen her and it had been like two days since I had talked to her so I kind of knew something was wrong right then in there. It was definitely not ordinary for her to just not be in contact with me. So I was contacting anybody I could trying to find out if anybody had heard from her. I think the big question at the time was of course where was Kathy? Was she okay? How quickly can we find her? Coming up. Investigators uncover concerning evidence at Kathy's. Kathy's vehicle is dirty covered with mud. Some way it apparently got stuck in the mud somewhere with it. And toxic family dynamics start to surface. They had been a fair type thing. She was pregnant with someone else's child. 46-year-old Kathy Cranick has vanished and investigators have only one clue so far. The red car her daughter Jennifer saw her getting into on December 13th. There was no specification of of make or model not knowing anything about who the driver was. The only way to really follow up a look at would be to look at those associated with Kathy. It makes more sense when you're looking for a missing person to start closer to home. When a missing person is married detectives usually begin by questioning the spouse. But they discover that after nearly 30 years together Kathy and Michael were calling it quits. They weren't actually legally divorced yet. They both had lawyers and they weren't working on it. Somebody that she was really close with with the church basically like told her to get a divorce with my father and I just think she probably listened to it a little too much. I think maybe they probably had like another month before it was actually like final in on paper for both of them. Detectives are all too familiar with ex-husbands retaliating against their wives. But when they check Michael's DMV information they find he doesn't own a vehicle matching the description given by Jennifer. The police department did make contact with the husband and talked to him about the last times that he had seen her communications that they had had and looked into him as two possible opportunities. Whether or not there was any motive at the point but we wrote him out early in the investigation. On December 16, two days into their search for Kathy, investigators returned to her home to search for new leads. Kathy's vehicle was parked in the driveway. The interior of the vehicle was dirty covered with mud and the outside was dirty as well to the point that mud and grass and other items were caked up underneath of the vehicle. But we don't have any information that Kathy had been driving it herself. With Jennifer still staying at Kathy's home, investigators question her about the car. Jennifer had kept in contact with me because I think she wanted to know where we were at with the case. And when questioned at that particular time, Jennifer advised she'd been driving it but didn't know how it became muddy. So we had soil and plant samples taken from it sent off to the lab to try to get an idea where might have been stuck. And that led us to start to work in investigation, searching different fields within a fair radius within the city of Chesapeake. The search continues for several days with no results and Kathy's family begins to fear the worst. I was trying to find out if anybody had heard from as far as other family members in the friends that I knew her number. It was like a week that went by where we didn't really know. We got really scared. When you get five days, six days, seven days in, the hopes of finding her, it gets very slip. All her specifications and information is provided into a state database. Picture from put out. We've got a crime line number for the city. And so that information was put out to request help from the public. On December 25th, Kathy's loved ones spend the day worrying instead of opening gifts. But on the next night, December 26th, nearly a hundred miles away in Northampton, North Carolina, a patrol officer makes a gruesome discovery. I was working night shift on the 26th and basically the shift was kind of quiet. I decided to um, you know, check out the side roads. Sometimes when I go back there, I might catch somebody back there doing drugs so he would catch somebody back there doing something that didn't got no business doing. As I was driving around, I had to look to my right and I saw this figure covered up in a white sheet in the wooded area. So I got out the car with my flashlight and walked up. I touched it and I said, oh my god, this feeling feels like a body. I called dispatcher let me know what I had. The rest of the officers came and helped me. The victim body was stiff, you know. And as we uncovered the sheet, the see who the person was, that's all. She was a white female. She didn't have gunshot wounds, no stab wounds. She just had marks around her neck. It looked like she'd been screaming. The victim has no identification on her, but within a few days, the Northampton Sheriff's Department finds a possible match. We sent out a confirmation saying that we located a person through each agent within at least a one to 200 mile radius. Through our reports and the information, the hair color of the length was correct, you know, her age, female. So a lot of the education specifications over her size and height often and matched. They got back with us and he came down and identified and said that she'd been missing. On December 27, 2000, an autopsy confirms that the body found in North Carolina belongs to 46-year-old Kathy Craneck. The Michael Zamer's office on this case came back and state of the cause of death was a combination between strangulation and suffocation. So now we believe it's a personal act. The autopsy also reveals signs the killer tried to destroy any trace evidence left behind. Those evidence that the body had been burned. The fire might have gotten rid of fingerprints and fibers, but it left another clue intact. There have been a sock stuffed inside of her mouth. We believe someone puts in her mouth so that she cannot be heard screaming. We sent off to have a check for DNA that became a very key part, their piece of evidence into case. After evidence was uncovered during Kathy Craneck's autopsy, investigators hope the DNA results from the sock can be matched against potential suspects. Now that the missing person's case has turned into a murder investigation, authorities returned to the last place she was seen. As we were searching the house, we went through everything and within the garage, there was obvious signs both between smell and visually noticeable within the garage that there had been a fire. It appeared to have been a fire done within a container, so it connects the dots with the body having been burnt and this occurred in the house. Inside the home, detectives find evidence connected to the murder. Kathy's body was covered as she, it was distinctive. As we were searching through the house, I know we went through a closet. It was a distinctive pattern on one particular set of like pillowcases or a cover that was there and it clicked. I was like, "I've seen those before." So it connects back. Here's our victim missing from that house and it appears whoever had dumped her at that location used items from the house. As investigators, The educators are wrapping up the search inside. They find a notebook that seems to be Kathy's. We found, like, basically a no-pad, there was multiple attempts to start the writing of an eviction letter to Jennifer. The eviction details are dated December 7, just three days before Kathy disappeared. To find out why Kathy wanted to evict Jennifer, detective circle back to Kathy's church friend who connects them with her attorney. Paul Hedges was an attorney for Kathy, but also a close family friend. So he knew a lot of information, and he told us Kathy and Jennifer had had conflicts back and forth, different fights and arguments. Kathy had been told by the attorney that the appropriate way to evict an adult child out of the house had been there for a length of time was to actually serve her with a notice. Kathy's attorney tells investigators that the problems between Kathy and Jennifer have been going on for many years. My sister's always been like, "Just a little off. She's just lied a lot." I never knew nobody that's just lied, just to be for conversation. She was always really smart with like booksmars, but she just wasn't good with like social skills. Kathy had told the attorney, "Paul, Jennifer is devious. She was deceptive. She told lies when she had to tell lies, so it was definitely textbook pathological. It was a point of she did everything to make herself better in any kind of light, in any kind of situation." But the conflict didn't stop at lies. My sister would be doing whatever she wanted, whether my mom wanted to or not, you know, like leaving out the house if she was grounded. When I was younger, my sister would put her hands on my mom. When I got old enough, I would intervene, but there was a lot of altercations. Despite their history, Kathy allowed Jennifer to move back in so she could help care for her first granddaughter. But in 1999, things took a turn for the worse. When Jennifer began dating a man named Corey Jackson, while she was engaged to another man. She was pregnant with a second child when she met Corey. They worked at a restaurant, I believe. He was a dishwasher and they had an affair type thing. Jennifer's lifestyle was not well received by her devout mother. I knew that my mom was fed up with her. She would tell me that my sister wasn't going to work. The kids would get off the bus, she would be sleeping, she wouldn't be out there waiting for her to bus stop. She was smoking weed at the time, my mom wanted her to leave, and I knew she wanted my sister to do more for the kids. Still, Kathy was reluctant to do anything more than scold her. She was more worried about the kids than anything else. I imagined that if it wasn't for the grandchildren, Jennifer would have probably been out there sooner. Kathy's attorney says she laid down rules for Jennifer to follow, which included no boyfriends in the house unless Kathy was home. But in November, she discovered Jennifer had been smuggling Corey in late at night. He was accessing the house through an open window and just coming and going on different dates, staying the night. So this is all going on without Kathy's knowledge. It was one time when she came home early and caught Corey in the house and was living it about it. For Kathy, it was the final straw. Kathy had got no point that enough was enough and Jennifer needed to start fending for herself and taking care of herself. I think it was one of those tough love you need to grow up and get out. When there was also statements made that Kathy was going to potentially be called in some of the custody cases coming up with Jennifer and the father of one of Jennifer's daughters. And that Kathy was willing to testify in court that she was probably not the best person to have custody of the children. ♪ ♪ Investigators think the new intel from Kathy's attorney points to a potential reason to commit murder. If Kathy is going to testify in court and potentially cause Jennifer to lose custody of the kids, that's definitely motive. She pretty much burned every bridge by them. I think when she found that one on my mom actually told her, "Look, you're not doing nothing." "You got to go," and she got really scared. Because she knew she had nowhere to go. So it starts to connect to the dots. This occurred in the house. Who else was in the house at the time? Who had access? Who had been there? Who had voted? The evidence really pointed towards Jennifer and her involvement. ♪ ♪ Coming up, a potential witness steps forward. There was young lady and a gentleman with her. They said that their car was stuck in the field. And investigators hear the details of a grizzly murderer. She decided that her number one option would be to get a hammer and to end her life with it. ♪ ♪ After learning about Kathy and Jennifer's rocky history, investigators considered Jennifer Blake to be a prime suspect in her mother's murder. With one of their feuds surrounding Jennifer's boyfriend, Cory Jackson, detectives dig into his background as well. He was wanted on crimes of a violent nature, such as a robbery and abduction, which obviously put racist vision and be closely related to the case that we're working here. ♪ ♪ So we contacted the sheriff's office down there. The detective said the name Cory Jackson, right? I said, "Yeah, I know Cory." And he said to do, "Yes, sir." I knew Cory and I knew his sister. 'Cause I bleed his sister and myself attending the same school. And I told him that Cory stayed on Capitol Road, which is the half a mouth and quarter. Body was found. ♪ ♪ However, the evidence is still largely circumstantial, and detectives know they need something more substantial to lead directly to the crime. This leads back again to the vehicle because we didn't know how it became muddy or. and obviously it appeared to have been stuck. If Jennifer and Cory used Kathy's car to move her body, then it could be the key to proving their guilt. We put out information about how do you see this car? Following that, we did get calls and contacted by a family that had seen the vehicle and been contacted by the occupants of the vehicle. We were able to interview them. ♪ ♪ The caller is Linda King. And she tells police that on December 11th, she was home with her son when there was a knock at the door. I answered it. There was a young lady, a gentleman with her, and a baby. It was kind of chilly out there. And the baby didn't have no blanket, bottled empty, needed a diaper, changed. They said that their car was stuck in the field and they needed to call a tow truck. Would I let them use a phone and I told them sure. So I let them in. I said, "How did y'all get stuck in the field out there?" And she says, "Well, we were taking this trip across a field thinking we can get to the road and they got stuck." And then as they came out, the first house, they saw always my house. ♪ ♪ Linda says her son Timmy offered to help so they wouldn't have to pay for a tow truck. So she and the woman stayed in the kitchen while the two men went back to the field. She told him what to do. Like, "Go get the babies this. Do that." You know, and he just listened. So he went to get the car out. And we were talking and I gave her a blanket to cover the baby and I made the baby a fresh bottle of milk. I asked her where she lived, and she said, "In Chesapeake." Pretty soon, Timmy and the gentleman with her came back. Timmy said, "All right, they got it out. That was it." They left. They told me, "Thank you very much." I said, "Thank you. Y'all have a nice day." And then, Tim, he says, "You know, Mom, something's weird." And I said, "What?" He says, "Well, the car was just full of mud everywhere." He couldn't lift up a little to where he could scoot it out. So, he said, "I was going towards the back." And he said, "No, stay up front. I got it. I got it. Stay up front." Linda says at the time, neither of them thought much about it. Then, she saw the news report about Kathy's murder. It shocked me when I seen it on the news and said the mother was missing and all this and I was going, "Oh, my God." That's the car, Tim, he just pulled out. And it went, "Timmy, Timmy," and he came out and he says, "What's going on?" I said, "We've got to call the police." He says, "For what?" I said, "You know that car we pulled out?" He said, "Yeah." I said, "They just showed it on TV." Timmy says, "I'm going to you if they killed her and she was in the truck." Investigators visit Linda's home and ask her and her son if they can identify the people they saw from photo line-ups. They showed me photographs and they asked me if these were the two. And I picked her out right off. They were able to identify Jennifer and Corey. At that point, we tied all the information together and went ahead and called for a grand jury. And the grand jury provided indictments on both Corey Jackson and Jennifer Blake. This was determined as premeditated and so the charges that came down was the first to be murdered in charge. So we went ahead and took the indictments, set up and prepared to do any arrest. On January 22nd, 2001, Chesapeake police returned to Kathy Cranex's home with a rest warrant in hand. We knew Jennifer had still been at the house. I'm sure whether or not Corey was going to be there. We went in, only Jennifer was found at the time, Corey was not there. Jennifer was not necessarily surprised if she was even get arrested, but just why there was so many people involved. We had brought in the CPS had to be there to take custody of any children that were there. When investigators question Jennifer, she says they've been told lies about her relationship with her mother. Here from friends and family that Jennifer had been violent to her mother. When you talk to Jennifer, Jennifer talked about her mother in the other direction, potentially violent to her. She brought up that while her father was out at C, the mother physically abused her. The mother had boyfriend's while the father was out and that she would lend Jennifer to those men for sex. Don't know if that's true or that never felt anything to confirm any of that. Although Jennifer admits she and her mother had issues, she insists she didn't kill her. But she claims she knows who did. Jennifer says she came home one day and Corey was in the bathroom with her mother's body on the bathroom floor. Corey had informed her that her father got into an argument with a catty and killed her and that they needed to get rid of the body. She said throwing Corey then did what they could to help you cover this up and assist her father. It's an outrageous claim, but Jennifer says Corey will back her up. However, first detectives need to find him. Information about the arrest was put out in the media and the news and information about the fact that we're still looking for Corey. Corey saw the news, obtained counsel, and apparently upon recommendation the counsel turned himself in. Despite Jennifer's assurances, Corey refuses to talk, so police use a tactic to try and get to the truth. Although the DNA result from the sock found in Kathy's mouth hasn't come back yet, detectives tell Corey it has and it proves that he is the one who killed her. They provide him information about the sock and the items that we have. He made full confession on it and provide us the information and the story of how the two of them had plotted to do something to Kathy. According to Corey, it all started on December 10th. He had gone to the house the night of the tooth and when he came in and saw Jennifer, she was just distraught and crying about how she was being kicked out, how mom's testifying it. They're going to take when kids away, Jennifer explains to him that she has been thinking that whole night about ways to kill her mother. Corey said she decided that her number one option would be to get a hammer and to kill her. But Jennifer didn't do that, she enlisted Corey to help her in strangling her mother. Sometime around 5'30" in the morning, apparently Jennifer confronts her mother in the bathroom. They started to struggle. Corey did join in, he said and held her down and Jennifer strangled her. There may have been some noise Corey pulled the sock from his foot and stepped it in, Kathy craning small the quieter down. When Kathy was strangled and choked to death, they wanted to make sure that she was dead. So they dragged over to the tub and buried her head into a tub of water to see if she was still breathing. Corey says once they were sure Kathy was dead, they made plans to get rid of the body. Jennifer goes and buys a trash can at a local hardware store about a mile away from the house. Comes back, they attempt to burn the body into garage, the body does not burn as they expect. Smoke was everywhere, so they decided to load the body into the trunk of the car and and drive some way to dispose of it. The location where she was found, Corey had relatives with living within 10 miles, I believe. So it was an area that he would have been familiar with. They dumped the body, went to stand a hotel and all of this is unfolding around Christmas time and it makes it just horrible, unthinkable story. His confession was probably the most significant item that came to us. So communications with the kind of attorney were made, but a jury trial is always questionable. You never know how a jury is going to act. After confessing to his role in Kathy Cranick's murder, Corey Jackson cuts a deal with state prosecutors. The attorney's office did come to an agreement with him for a plea in order for him to testify against Jennifer in the trial. The charges again at the time were first to be murdered. The attorney's office agreed to deal with them just went over to a second-degree charge in order for him to then testify against the cut of him. When Jennifer's trial begins in January 2002, the prosecution uses Corey's testimony to paint her as the driving force behind her mother's death. I heard him misplaced it. I'm listening to you. It helps time to listen to me. I was trying to get a football and everything was going on right now. So, Ms. Blake asked me to come help her out. I put my hand over the top of her hands and not the rest of the top of her hands. Jennifer was a manipulator and a controller. It was her relationship with Corey kind of poisonous and added to this maybe, but what always would have felt that Corey would never have done anything without her direction or permission. I'd assume he did it because he loved her and he was trying to protect her and family would do anything for her. But Jennifer claims Corey is lying to save his own skin. According to her, Kathy's murder was his idea. It wasn't my idea of my plan or my intention, but I was just as much responsible. Because it happened. I can't survive that. During Jennifer's testimony, she tried to put it all on the Corey. She said that Corey's testimony against her was fabricated and that she just went along with the plan to get rid of the body, because it had to be done. She said that she felt threatened by him, that if she didn't assist him, or if she had talked against him, that she or her shoulder would possibly be hurt. It seems like a case of he said she said, until the prosecution calls another witness to the stand, Jennifer's older daughter. Before the trial, the father of one of Jennifer's daughters said he might want to come talk to my daughter. They interviewed the daughter, and so some of the strongest testimony that came out in court was that of the granddaughter. She rumors being woken up, she testified that she heard her grandmother's voice. It was a statement of Jettiesop. I think that was one of the major turning points in the case, was that a jury of 12 heard a second ago take the stand. The jury deliberates for just over an hour before delivering their verdict. They came back and convicted her first degree murder. I'm sure between Corey's testimony, the granddaughter's testimony, was not difficult, I believe, for the jury to find that verdict. Intercellents was life imprisonment, that the possibility broke. In accordance with his agreement, Corey Jackson pleads guilty and is sentenced in April 2002. Judges did give him the 40 years, but then took another five years off for the cooperation and testimony of the case, so he ended up with 35 years on a secondary murder charge. He's going to be out before he's an old man. Jennifer is going to be in there for life, and that's how that unfolded. You look at her and you don't recognize the type of evil from middle-class background, but you do this long enough, you realize that evil doesn't have a zip code. There's one victim who's named an indictment, but the truth is, is that there were many victims in that whole thing, and a lot of them were children. My mother was a good person, all she wanted to do was help people. She'd go to work every day and just sit on the phone and talk people through their problems. Sad, but I honestly believe she's in a better place. [BLANK_AUDIO]