Transcript of Nicole Thornhill New

A wife left stranded by her husband soon realizes he's gone missing.

He was very reliable, so the fact that he wasn't answering his phone, she knew something was very wrong.

She was positive that he just would not have walked out of her life totally. She noticed a really strong smell of bleach in the apartment. Things were broken, thrown all over the place.

After a body turns up, detectives must look for clues close close to home.

He's a lazy, inconsiderate brat.

Things weren't great between the four of them in the house.

Is there anything you want to say? In my heart, I thought he was an evil person.

As evidence emerges and suspects are pressed for answers, the grisly details of a man's final hours come to light.

They were going to surprise him and attack him with a samurai sword.

The sword.

[FOREIGN LANGUAGE] He thought he could judge people on who was good and who was bad, and they were going to get rid of him one way or the other.

The small town of Stuart, Florida isn't known as a dangerous place to live. But just after 8:00 PM on April 21, 2008, police receive an emergency call from 47-year-old Kristen Jensen, who's concerned something has happened to her husband Gerald.

We learned from Kristen that she was in the VA hospital to detox off of substances. She made arrangements for her husband Jerry to pick her up. Sunday the 20th was the last time she spoke to him. And she was due to be discharged the next day, the 21st. However, when she was discharged, she kept calling his cell phone. And it kept going to voicemail.

Kristin was initially alarmed because Jerry was very reliable. He was never even late. So the fact that he wasn't answering his phone, Kristin knew something was very wrong.

She was able to make arrangements with the VA to actually have a shuttle transfer her back to her residence.

Kristen tells police when she got home around 5:30 PM, Jerry was still nowhere to be found. But she does find her daughter Nicole with her boyfriend Chris and their newborn baby, who have been living with them.

Kristen had been told by both Nicole and Chris Tomlinson that Jerry had gotten into a fight with somebody on the phone, like around 10:30 at night, and it was on his cell phone, and they were afraid he was going to wake the baby.

They went to the library so that they could log into the Wi-Fi. And when they came back home with the baby, Jerry was gone.

Kristin says it seemed possible Jerry had simply forgotten to pick her up until she noticed something concerning.

Anything that he would have taken with him was still there. And especially with his car being there, his keys being there, his clothes being there, his phone was there, she didn't feel it was normal for him just to walk away. Kristin said She noticed a really strong smell of bleach in the apartment, which she thought was unusual. Also, the bedroom no longer had a door, but the bathroom did.

And so she called the police and reported him missing and said, you know, he wouldn't do this. He wouldn't go away. And, you know, where is he?

At this point, she is more convinced than ever that something bad has happened to Jerry.

Jerry Jensen was born on November 6th, 1959. He spent his younger years in Albany, New York.

He came from a large family with 7 siblings, and then he moved down to Florida. Jerry made his living as an electrician and as a very talented handyman. Friends and family described Jerry as extremely fun-loving. He loved music. Particularly the Rolling Stones. He actually had the band's famous logo tattooed on his chest.

Jerry married, but the relationship didn't last. He was settling into life as a divorcé when he suffered a major setback.

Jerry had an accident and broke his neck.

The recovery was very difficult, and he became more reliant on painkillers.

It was a cycle of going through rehab, being clean for some time, stumbling, going through rehab.

It was around that time he met Kristin Thornhill, a divorced mother of 3 who also struggled with addiction.

My mom, she was in the Marines at one point and got hurt. And I think that might have been where part of her addiction to pain pills set in. And then And she was on disability all of my life.

The two began dating and decided to get clean together.

When I was very young, my mom and Jerry had a bit of a touch-and-go relationship and both struggled with addiction. But they seemed to figure it out along the way, I guess, and ended up getting married. Kind of one of those moments of, I'm going to be OK with this because you seem OK.

But despite Kristin's attempted recovery, the instability at home had left its mark, especially on her oldest daughter, Nicole.

Growing up, things were very chaotic. I was young enough that I didn't really understand what was going on, but my sister did. She didn't get to live with my mom for very long. My dad got to have us on weekends. He came to drop us off, and my mom wasn't home. Eventually, child services came and picked us up and put us back with my dad.

Nicole hadn't grown up with her mother. As a matter of fact, Kristin's addiction issues led her to be estranged from Nicole for a large part of her childhood.

4 years after Kristin and Jerry's wedding, Nicole reached out to her mother to reconnect.

When Nicole was turning 18, graduation was coming, my dad lost his job. And so because of that, we weren't able to get a house that we were supposed to move into. My dad told me I was going to go live with my aunt and uncle. And so Nicole not really having anywhere to go, my mom let her go live with her and Jerry. My sister's relationship with my mom had always been a little bit rocky. But Nicole just loved my mom. Any opportunity she got, she just wanted to go stay with my mom growing up.

00:07:48

Shortly after Nicole moved in, she met Chris Tomlinson on a social networking site devoted to artists.

When my sister was a teenager, she was just very sad. So she turned to art. And she found a website called DeviantArt. And so she would post all of her artwork on there.

Christopher Tomlinson was in his early 20s and into— Gothic, very dark kind of art. And that spoke to Nicole. And she was the one who actually reached out to him.

My son met Nicole Thornhill online while he was in the Army, stationed in Germany, and instant fall in love. And we're trying to talk him out. You don't know this girl. You haven't even met her. But he said he loved her.

But Chris and Nicole's online relationship grew stronger during his deployment. So when he returned to the States, they were eager to be together.

Chris was now stateside in California. However, Nicole was in Florida living with Kristen and Jerry. In late 2006, Chris decides to go meet Nicole for the first time in person.

Chris came to see her for 2 weeks. He was very outgoing and was very showy.

Just 8 months after meeting online, 18-year-old Nicole announced she was moving back to California with 23-year-old Chris.

Jerry and Kristen wanted to support her. And decided not to stand in her way.

In California, the couple struggled to make ends meet, and their financial troubles only got worse.

Nicole called Jerry and Kristen to give them surprising news that she is pregnant and that she's due the following March.

Nicole was— 18 and unmarried and didn't know what to do. They ran out of money and didn't have anywhere else to go.

Kristin and Jerry say, absolutely, come live with us. Move back to Florida. And that's what Nicole and Chris decide to do. When they first move in, everything's going well. But as the baby is getting closer to arriving, tensions start to rise.

Although Kristin was overjoyed by the birth of her grandchild, that happiness was short-lived. 6 weeks later, a relapse landed Kristin back in a rehabilitation center for 4 days.

Jerry would visit her every day while she was there, and they were planning on him picking her up. So when she was released and he didn't show up, that's when she decided to call the police department.

Since Jerry has been missing for less than 24 hours, police aren't convinced a missing persons report is necessary.

You know, typically, when a grown person disappears, they don't jump right in unless there's some real fishy circumstances.

The police department did an attempt to locate, which is usually for an adult that just can't be found. There was no reason to think there was any foul play. They just couldn't be found at that time. Kristin was very adamant that something bad something bad had to have happened to Gerald. She was positive that he just would not have walked out of her life totally.

Jerry's keys were right there on the counter. His favorite pair of jeans that he always wore out were still there. His shoes, everything was there. Something was very wrong.

Coming up, evidence suggests Kristin's suspicions may be correct.

The apartment had been, in their words, ransacked.

And a statewide search comes to a gruesome end.

They found what they believe to be traces of blood.

Police in Stuart, Florida have been on the lookout for 48-year-old Jerry Jensen. Since his wife Kristin reported him missing more than 48 hours ago. According to his stepdaughter and her boyfriend, Jerry disappeared shortly after having a heated exchange over the phone on the night of April 20th.

Police canvassed the apartment complex, but this really didn't turn up much.

Police investigating missing persons cases with people who have substance abuse problems, they will consider the fact that sometimes substance abuse situations manifest with people being gone for days at a time while they're going on a binge.

In an attempt to determine whether Jerry started using again, officers asked Kristen who Jerry may have confided in. She suggests they speak with a man named Kevin. One of Jerry's closest friends.

Kevin had actually spoken with Jerry just the day before he went missing. And there was nothing that seemed off. He had no plans to leave town.

According to investigators, Kevin said the only problem in Jerry's life was his living situation.

Kevin tells police that Kristen and Jerry had been under a lot of stress. And this stress was mostly caused by Nicole's boyfriend, Chris Tomlinson, who had just moved in with them. Jerry told Kevin that Chris was unemployed. He wasn't really making an effort to take care of Nicole or the baby as a father.

Jerry and Kristen didn't have a lot of disposable income. They were both living on fixed incomes with disability. And so they weren't in a position to have two, let alone three, more mouths to feed.

Kevin actually felt that all this stress with Chris is what actually led to Kristin's relapse.

Police wonder if the stress caused Jerry to relapse as well. When police follow up with Kristin on April 25th, she admits Jerry had started taking some pain medication again.

He did have a prescription for them, but sometimes he would get them from a friend of his. If he couldn't get his prescription filled or if he ran out.

But she found his prescription drugs, and there were still some pills in the bottle. This was a clear sign that he wasn't leaving to go find more drugs.

Another thing uncovered during her search of the home left Kristin certain of foul play.

Kristin said the only things missing was— the comforter off their bed, and Jerry. But the bathroom door was broken. The apartment had been, in their words, ransacked. Things were broken, thrown all over the place.

Kristen says when she asked Nicole and Chris what happened, they said they found the apartment that way when they came home from the library.

They thought that this is something that Jerry had done. In a fit of rage based on whatever phone call he was on.

She said that her and, uh, Christopher went ahead and tried to clean up the house as best as they could because she knew her mother was coming home the next day and didn't want her mom to be upset with the mess.

This new information leads Kristen to think that whomever Jerry may have been in the fight with on the phone could be the person that came over to the apartment and maybe assaulted him, or even kidnapped him.

She just had a gut feeling something bad had happened to him.

Police release Kristin, requesting that she keep in touch with any additional information. Since Jerry is an adult who has been missing for less than a week, investigators can't take any serious steps until additional evidence surfaces.

Unless police see some sort of foul play involved, police are usually very guarded and measured about how they investigate missing persons cases. Another thing to add in Jerry's case is Jerry's history of substance abuse.

The wife was having a hard time with the way the police department was handling the case. She started calling supervisors, and the supervisors started contacting the Criminal Investigations Division to make sure that this case was going to be assigned.

My sergeant decided that the investigative unit would look into it and was able to put together— it's called a locator poster, and we used to put them out for missing people. So it had his description on it, like height, weight, body piercings. Tattoos, that type of stuff. And it goes out statewide.

The case gets elevated where a full-blown missing persons report and a notification to all state agencies is released. Essentially, everybody in the state of Florida is on the lookout.

It wasn't more than an hour or two after that poster went out, I got a call from the Palm Beach County Sheriff's Office telling me they believe they found Gerald Jensen in a landfill.

By April 25th, 2008, less than a week has passed since Jerry Jensen was reported missing from his South Florida home. But police in West Palm Beach County think they might have found him after responding to a 911 call.

911, where's your emergency? Calling from Solid Waste Authority, Palm Beach County, Manjaro Road. And we believe we have found a body.

OK. In our Class 1 landfill.

They're not 100% sure who it is.

[FOREIGN LANGUAGE] The man who found it drives a bulldozer. He was looking around and he saw an arm.

The body was not in great shape when they found him. The machinery there at the landfill that turns the garbage has big spikes on the tires, and it tends to tear things up.

It was going to be impossible for investigators to identify it through facial features or dental records.

Fortunately, the body still has some distinguishing marks.

They were able to see some tattoos, and the tattoos that they saw matched the ones on my poster. [SPEAKING SPANISH] So they sent the body found to the medical examiner's office. And try to do a fingerprint comparison.

They were able to make a positive identification of Gerald Jensen through a fingerprint.

The medical examiner is also able to determine the cause of death.

We learned that Gerald Jensen's body had been stabbed multiple times and that his throat was slit. So therefore, it was deemed to be a homicide.

Two of the detectives went back to speak with Kristen and Nicole and Chris and just see if they could figure out any more information.

Investigators begin by speaking with Jerry's wife, Kristen.

We did break the news to her that Gerald was deceased and that he'd been found in Palm Beach County. She took it very hard and was very upset. And hysterical at that point in time.

Since Kristin was in rehab at the time of Jerry's death, she is directly ruled out as a suspect. Now investigators point their questions toward the other members of the household.

Kristin admitted that things weren't great between the 4 of them in the house.

How you like Chris?

I don't. What don't you like about him? He's a lazy, inconsiderate brat. I wish Nicole could see it, but she can't.

Chris didn't do anything. He wouldn't get a job. He sat and played video games all day. And every time my mom would nag Chris, my sister would go to Chris's defense.

Kristen tells detectives she even suspected suspects Chris might be AWOL.

He supposedly just got out of the Army, and he just came straight here, and he can't show me his DD-214. You don't believe him?

Not at all.

She did not believe that he was discharged from the Army. She kept requesting his DD-214 discharge papers, and he would not provide it to her.

You're supposed to go through the debriefing and all that. He said no. He left. He was to go to Texas and either be arrested or kicked out of the Army. Fortunately, they kicked him out with no jail time or any of that.

How did Jerry get along with Chris?

He didn't at all. They barely spoke.

What about with the baby? How's he as a father?

He's good.

Is he protective of the baby?

Mm-hmm.

How did Nicole get along with Jerry?

She was calling Jerry Dad, and things were just great. And then all of a sudden, Chris shows up.

Okay.

Yeah, she doesn't want to call him Dad anymore.

Investigators then asked Kristen what what she thinks happened to Jerry. Nicole and Chris told her Jerry had been on an angry phone call that evening. She still believes whoever was on that call came looking to settle the score.

He went running in the bedroom to hide or something, and they kicked the door down and beat the shit out of him. Okay, that's it. Any idea who he was talking to?

I still can't figure out how it could have [FOREIGN LANGUAGE] While I was starting my interviews, Detective Gerwin was working on getting a search warrant for the records for Gerald's cell phone. And the search warrant came back with a list of calls and times.

Gerald wasn't on the phone that night. That was a lie.

Armed with this information, Detectives bring Nicole and Chris in for questioning. They start with Nicole.

We asked her several times how positive she was the time of the fight was around 10:30. The fact that it was on a cell phone, not a house phone, that they went to the local library. And she was very adamant that she was correct. Once we informed her that that could not possibly have happened because that phone hadn't been used, I asked her, if there was anything more that she wanted to tell me, and she blurted out the whole story.

Coming up, a shocking confession.

They started slugging down the hallway.

[SPEAKING FRENCH] That had to be a so terrifying way to die, someone coming at you with a sword in a confined space. He didn't deserve that.

After Nicole Thornhill discovers that investigators know she and her boyfriend haven't told the truth, she agrees to come clean about what really happened.

Both Nicole Thornhill and Chris Tomlinson weren't getting along with the parents.

She pretty much confirmed the same thing that Kristen had told me, that Things were tough between the 4 of them. And she was worried with it because they had a baby in the house, what was going to happen next.

According to Nicole, one of their issues was their religious differences.

I asked her what her religion was. And she told me that she was new to the Wiccan religion, but Christopher had been in it his whole life. And he was considered a high priest.

Wicca is a modern pagan movement often associated with witchcraft, something Jerry couldn't accept.

Jerry didn't understand their Wiccan lifestyle. They really couldn't get through to him.

But Chris and Nicole felt the Jensens' behavior left no room for judgment.

They felt that, um, with their drinking and both of them using prescription drugs, that it wasn't a healthy situation to raise their child in.

Nicole says that ultimately the household became extremely toxic, and she and Chris started to consider drastic measures.

Money may have played a factor in their decision, but she said that it just made things a little easier when they weren't there.

When did you two start talking about wanting to get rid of him? Days, weeks?

2 months.

Nicole says their first plan involved drugging him.

I mentioned, um, knocking him out with sleeping pills, making it look like a suicide because they both do some of the Drugs. So we went to Walmart and he bought some of those weird generic sleeping pills.

So you guys never saw an effect when you put the pills in their drinks?

Nothing happened.

When that didn't work, they resorted to a more brutal method, and Kristen's time away at rehab provided the perfect opportunity.

The plan was that Chris and Nicole were going to surprise him, and Chris was going to attack him with a samurai sword that he kept in the house.

Christopher decided they were going to stay up all night and attack Gerald when he woke up first thing in the morning. So Nicole said about 7 o'clock they could hear him moving around, and Christopher told her to take the baby and go outside for a walk.

Nicole says when she returned Chris told her Jerry was dead.

Tomlinson said he came out of the room with the sword, confronted him, stabbed him in the front.

The sword?

Yes. There's a wall there.

Okay.

Did he tell you how many times he stabbed him? I think he said 3. I think he ended up running him into the— Bathroom door. I have not looked at the broken door. And I'm pulling that earlobe out of his body, and I had to look away. Okay.

Where's the knife that Chris used?

Under the bed.

That had to be such a terrifying way to die, knowing that You know, someone coming at you with a sword in a confined space. They didn't deserve that.

Nicole said that they then took a tarp and wrapped Gerald's body in it and then wrapped him in the comforter from her mother's bed and put him in the bathtub so they could clean up the mess in the bathroom and the hallway. They bagged everything up, then drove it over to the dumpster on site and threw everything in the dumpster.

Detectives are immediately sent to the apartment to confirm Nicole's claims.

The detectives found a set of swords that were underneath the bed. They found what they believed to be traces of blood on the sword.

Investigators also find evidence in the kitchen of the couple's earlier attempt to drug Jerry.

I opened up the cabinet and saw a bottle of tequila. I could see the bottom had white powder soot in the bottom with a little bit of blue color to it. These were the pills that were crushed up. I opened up the refrigerator and found a half gallon of partially consumed milk. I could see blue soot in the bottom, which was also indicative of of the sleeping pills. So those were collected for evidence.

While the crime scene unit was searching the house, they did find a Walmart receipt.

What was interesting about the receipt, it showed that the sleeping pills were purchased on April 22nd, the day after the murder.

Detectives confront Nicole with the new evidence.

You had told us that the two of you had been planning something for Jerry. Had you ever planned something for your mom?

Yeah.

What was that?

Pretty much the same thing.

The same thing how?

To get rid of her.

Nicole Thornhill has just confessed she and her boyfriend conspired to murder her stepfather, and they intended to kill her mother next.

Okay, how are you gonna do it with her?

I wanted to do the sleeping pills because She had just done it so many times before, trying to kill herself. She tried to do it in front of me.

Why'd you want to get rid of her?

I can't stand her anymore.

According to her and Chris's 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.

You're going to go to jail, OK? You're being charged with first-degree murder.

Am I ever going to be able to see Chris again?

I doubt it.

What about my baby?

The way that both Chris and Nicole felt that they had been impacted as children with parents leaving, that's what they did to their own child. Their baby's life is now essentially changed forever.

After they're finished questioning Nicole, investigators sit down with Chris, who was being held in a separate room. Unaware of Nicole's confession, Chris is sticking to a very different story.

I asked him how he felt about Gerald. He didn't like the way Gerald acted by yelling and fighting and drinking and the drugs. I asked I asked Christopher about the Wiccan aspect of it, and he told me that he was a high priest. He believed that he could see auras around people, and he did not think people with a bad aura should be allowed to live in the same world as his child.

00:32:49

When investigators tell Chris they found Jerry's body, he acts surprised.

He was found in a landfill in Palm Beach County. How does that make you feel? That really sucks. I don't wish anybody dead, even if they are the biggest asshole in the world. Um, did you do anything to him? No.

You have no idea how he got in that landfill?

No.

But Chris changes his tune when he learns about Nicole's confession.

He was killed in that apartment. There's no question. And we're going to be able to prove that. Now, how it's portrayed is up to you. I'd like to know what your side of the story is.

Chris, what happened?

Can I have some water? Sure.

We got him a drink. And then after, he told us that, yes, there had been a fight, but it was self-defense.

When did this happen? Early morning, I was in the kitchen getting breakfast to go to the bedroom, and he came out and started yelling like he was ready to fight, which has happened more than once. I instinctively grabbed the weapon, and, you know, he lunged at me, and I kicked him back into the hallway, and I tried to run out the door, and he grabbed me. Just— I lost it. You lost it? What do you mean? You got to describe that for us. I just turned around and tried to break out of it and ended up stabbing him.

He changed his story several times as to how he happened to have the sword in his possession, where the fight occurred, who hit whom first. And we then told him that we did not believe that's the way the story occurred. And eventually, he came around and told us that they had planned the poisoning first. And eventually, they decided that if Kristen was out of the way at the VA rehab, then they could attack and kill Gerald.

Is there anything you want to say or you can think that we haven't asked you that you think needs to go on the record? In my heart, I felt he was an evil person.

Christopher Tomlinson believed that he could judge people on who was good and who was bad. Once he had made that decision that Gerald was bad, he was going to get rid of him one way or the other.

Chris and Nicole are both arrested for the murder of Jerry Jensen.

I got on the computer and, you know, Googling Nicole's name, Christopher's name, and this stuff came up. And I'm like, I am in such disbelief that my son did this.

With 2 confessions and a list of evidence, prosecutors feel this will be an open and shut case. But 6 days after the arrests, Nicole makes it much more complicated.

Nicole Thornhill was trying to reach out to the historic police department because she wanted to speak to a detective to tell the real story.

Nicole Thornhill has implicated herself and her boyfriend Chris Tomlinson in a plot to murder both of her parents. But now that she's been arrested, she changes her statement.

At this point, she's figured out, after being in jail for a week, that, that she's in a lot of trouble. And so now she's trying to put it all on Tomlinson, and she's claiming that she was scared of him and that he was controlling and that she only helped because he made her help. And it just contradicted a lot of the things that she'd already said beforehand.

The problem is she wasn't even there when the murder occurred, but planning and doing something that would aid and assist prior to the murder could be sufficient and lead you to be just as guilty as if you committed the murder yourself.

A grand jury agrees. They indict both Nicole and Chris for first-degree murder.

We added adulterating a food or drug, which is punishable by up to 30 years in prison. We added attempted murder of Kristen on to both of them.

A judge rules Chris and Nicole are to be tried separately, but Nicole chooses not to face a jury.

What Nicole Thornhill did was, in effect, enter a no contest plea, whereby she did not admit to any of this information. She just acknowledged that evidence was sufficient to convict her.

The deal does not require her to testify against Chris.

We didn't call her as a witness. We didn't think that she would be credible because she'd given so many different statements.

On May 18, 2010, the trial for Chris Tomlinson begins.

The best argument the defense had was that it was self-defense. They couldn't dispute that their guy did it because he admitted to it. But why did you bring a sword into the hallway if you weren't planning to attack him? It was just another one of those inconsistencies that didn't match up to his story.

The jury takes only 3 hours to reach a verdict.

On May 20th, 2010, the jury finds Christopher Tomlinson guilty of first-degree murder, 2 counts of attempted murder against both Jerry and Kristen. In Florida, convictions for first-degree first-degree murder come with an automatic life sentence. So the judge immediately sentenced Christopher to life in prison plus another 60 years.

Christopher, to this day, still has not told me in his words why. And I look at Christopher, you can have all this, but you got involved with Nicole, and the Army messed you up. So all of those combined, he snapped, and, um, he can never come back from it.

When Nicole is sentenced a month later, there is a surprising character witness.

One of the people who show up and ask for leniency for her is her mother.

Kristin looked at her daughter and she said, "I believe in you." My mom continued to be there for my sister because she knew something was wrong. And my mom continued to fight for my sister.

After hearing from Kristen, the judge, did not sentence Nicole to life in prison, but gave her what is almost the equivalent of a life sentence. He sentenced her to 50 years.

Justice was served. However, this will never bring back Jerry, who had done nothing wrong except try to take in to people that were in need of help. And he paid for that with his life.

You know, everybody has their demons. Everybody has their past. It doesn't mean that you should been brutally murdered and thrown away like a piece of garbage. I mean, think about that. What could be so bad that anyone would deserve that?

Kristen Jensen died in 2020. But before her death, she and her daughter managed to make amends.

Nicole finally got to have the relationship relationship with my mom that she always wanted, and vice versa. My mom struggled with her grief and pain over what happened with my sister, but they had a great relationship eventually.