Her Florida teen boyfriend and she kill her stepfather because of his “bad aura”
Gerald “Gerry” Jensen, 48, and his wife Kristan Jensen accepted Nicole Thornhill, Kristan’s daughter, and her boyfriend Christopher Tomlinson into their house after Nicole was forced to become a teen mother. Nevertheless, Thornhill and Tomlinson, who had both been battling drug addiction for years, devised a plan to try to murder the couple rather than giving them their appreciation.
Prof. of criminology Dr. Bryanna Fox stated on Snapped, which airs Sundays at 6/5c on Oxygen, “According to [Nicole] and Chris’ beliefs, anyone who used drugs was not a good person and couldn’t be around them and they also didn’t want them around the baby.”
When Tomlinson attacked Gerry with a samurai sword, the perilous plot came to a horrific end.
“What they did to their own child was the same thing that both Chris and Nicole felt they had been affected by their parents leaving when they were children,” Fox said. “Their infant’s life has just about changed forever.”
What preceded Gerald Jensen’s horrific death at his home in Florida?
Nicole Thornhill’s early years were challenging. Kristan, her mother, battled substance abuse.
Former Palm Beach Post writer Daphne Duret stated on Snapped that Nicole “hadn’t grown up with her mother.” In actuality, Kristan spent a significant portion of her early years apart from Nicole due to her addiction problems.
Thornhill and her sister Sara were eventually placed with their father on a full-time basis by Child Protective Services.
Things were so hectic while I was growing up, Sara Thornhill remarked on Snapped. “I wasn’t old enough to fully comprehend what was happening. However, my sister did. She didn’t have a long time to live with my mother.
Thornhill moved in with Kristan and her stepfather, Gerry Jensen, when she was eighteen years old when her father lost their house. It was on the social networking site “Deviant Art” that she first met Chris Tomlinson. He served in the Army and was based in Germany. Following his return, they moved to California together and had their first in-person meeting. However, Thornhill became pregnant quickly, and the couple’s finances collapsed. They were welcomed back to their Stuart, Florida home by Kristan and Gerry.
Kristan entered a drug recovery facility after experiencing a relapse six weeks following the birth of their child in March 2008.
Fox stated, “Kristan and Gerry had been under a lot of stress.” “And the main source of this stress was Chris Tomlinson, Nicole’s boyfriend, who had recently moved in with them. Gerry informed [his friend] Kevin about Chris’s joblessness. As a father, he wasn’t really trying to take care of Nicole or the child. Kevin truly believed that Kristan’s relapse was caused by all of this stress he was experiencing with Chris.
In police questioning, Kristan Jensen also accused Tomlinson of being a “lazy, inconsiderate brat” and blamed him for the family’s hardship.
“Chris was inactive,” Sara Thornhill remarked. “He would not be hired. All day, he sat and played video games. Additionally, my sister would always stand up for Chris when my mom would bug him.
Kristan informed law enforcement. Disagreements between Gerry and Tomlinson strained his bond with his stepdaughter.
Kristan told the police, “She was calling Gerry ‘Dad,’ and everything was just great.” Then Chris appears out of nowhere. Yes, she has grown tired of calling him “Dad.”
Regarding religion, Tomlinson and Thornhill clashed with Kristan and Gerry as well.
According to Duret, “Gerry couldn’t understand their Wiccan lifestyle.” “They were unable to communicate with him at all.”
Concerned that her husband was gone, Kristan Jensen called the police soon after 8 p.m. on April 21, 2008. After spending four days in a detox hospital, she had just arrived home to find Gerry gone but Thornhill, Tomlinson, and their newborn baby. Despite his promise on April 20 to take her up from the hospital, he had not done so.
The reason given by Thornhill and Tomlinson was that Gerry had gotten into a heated argument with someone over the phone the night before, so they took their infant to the library. They reported he was gone when they got home.
However, Gerry Jensen’s car, phone, and keys were all still at home. There was a missing comforter from a bed and an absent bathroom door. Additionally, Kristan detected a strong bleach odor in the restroom.
Detectives from Palm Beach County phoned when they found a body in a landfill that matched Gerry’s description, following the police posting posters for missing persons. The identity of Gerry Jensen’s body was verified through fingerprint analysis. He had a cut throat and had been stabbed several times.
Why did Chris Tomlinson and Nicole Thornhill murder Gerry Jensen?
As Nicole Thornhill and Chris Tomlinson had stated, Gerry Jensen was not on the phone the night he vanished, according to Stuart police’s examination of his phone records. Thornhill told the officers everything when they approached her with this knowledge.
She acknowledged that she and her boyfriend had planned to kill her mother and stepfather for two months, and that they didn’t want to raise their child in a drug-filled household.
“I suggested using sleeping pills to knock him out, making it appear like a suicide since they both use drugs so much,” Thornhill told police. “Well, he got some of those weird generic sleeping pills when we went to Walmart.”
Thornhill stated that she and her boyfriend came up with a fresh strategy after the medications didn’t work.
According to Fox, “the plan was for Chris and Nicole to surprise him, and Chris would use a samurai sword that he kept in the house to attack him.”
Thornhill said that while her boyfriend was killing her stepfather, she took the baby for a stroll outside.
Prosecutor Erin Kirkwood stated on Snapped, “Tomlinson said he came out of the room with a sword, confronted him—stabbed him in the front.” “That must have been an awful way to pass away. being aware that, in a small area, someone is approaching you with a sword. He wasn’t worthy of that.
Thornhill acknowledged that she had assisted her lover in tarping and stuffing Gerry’s body into a dumpster.
Under a bed in the apartment, police discovered a sword that had bloodstains on it. However, they also discovered milk bottles and tequila that had traces of sleeping medications, as well as a WalMart transaction that showed sleeping pills were purchased the day after Gerry was killed. Then Thornhill said that she had also attempted to kill her mother.
In police interviews, Thornhill stated, “I wanted to do the sleeping pills because she had just done it so many times before, trying to kill herself.” She attempted to do it in my presence. Now that I can’t bear her,
Tomlinson first denied having anything to do with the murder before acknowledging that he and Gerry had fought, but he insisted it was out of self-defense.
Jaylee Porcelli, a Stuart police investigator, stated on Snapped, “I asked him how he felt about Gerald.” “He didn’t appreciate Gerald’s behavior, which included fighting, drinking, doing drugs, and yelling. He identified himself as a [Wiccan] high priest. He thought he could perceive people’s auras. Furthermore, he believed that those having a negative aura shouldn’t be let to coexist with his child.
A jury found Tomlinson guilty of murder and other offenses in May 2010, and he was given a life sentence plus an additional 60 years in jail.
The mother of Tomlinson, Christine Troughton, stated on Snapped, “Christopher to this day still has not told me in his words why.” And I turn to face Christopher. All of this could have been yours. However, you became close to Nicole. And you were damaged by the Army. So when that culminated, he lost it. And he is never able to recover from it.
Although Thornhill subsequently claimed that Tomlinson had coerced her into plotting and assisting with the body’s disposal, she ultimately accepted a plea bargain and was given a 50-year jail sentence. Her mother begged the judge for leniency at Thornhill’s sentence even though he had planned to kill her.
Sara Thornhill remarked, “Nicole finally got to have the relationship with my mom that she always wanted.” And the other way around. Despite her sadness and grief over what had happened to my sister, my mom and my sister finally enjoyed a wonderful relationship.
2020 saw Kristan Jensen’s passing.
Tomlinson and Thornhill lost custody of their child. It was given a new name and taken in by a foster home.