Murder plot revealed in California woman’s text messages

This story originally aired on Oct. 14, 2023.

It was Jan. 1, 2021, when the San Diego Sheriff’s Department got a call from a man saying his friend, Jade Janks, might have killed her stepfather, Tom Merriman.

Assistant district attorneys Jorge Del Portillo and Teresa Pham tell “48 Hours” correspondent Tracy Smith that the caller “told sheriff’s deputies she confessed to drugging him, suffocating him and strangling him to death.”

The call triggered a search for Merriman. His body was soon found, and Janks was arrested and charged with his murder. But she said she was innocent.

A STRANGE PHONE CALL

San Diego County, California, is an idyllic place — most of the time.

CALLER (to San Diego County Sheriff’s Dept.): Well, I’ve got a situation, last night … A friend of mine asked me to come over. She said that she had possibly killed her stepdad …

CALLER:I stewed on this all night …  I barely slept … and I’m scared to death … I don’t want to be part of this … I didn’t have anything to do with her …

That frightened phone call came in New Year’s Day 2021. The caller said his one-time girlfriend may have committed a murder.

CALLER: I don’t know if she really did this.

Jorge Del Portillo: The sheriff’s department received a call from a guy that said, my friend confessed to me last night that she murdered her stepfather.

San Diego County Deputy D.A. Jorge Del Portillo.

Jorge Del Portillo: He told deputies, “Hey … I don’t know if what she’s saying is true, I didn’t see him, I — but this is something I had to tell the police.” 

The alleged victim was a 64-year-old man named Tom Merriman, who lived in Solana Beach, California.  

Ramona Hamilton: I liked him. I thought he was very nice.

Ramona Hamilton and her husband George were Tom’s neighbors. Ramona knew him better, and she found out Tom also ran an unusual business: a butterfly farm.

Ramona Hamilton: I’m a gardener and I love butterflies.

Pat Flanagan also liked butterflies. He was Tom Merriman’s business partner out at the farm.

Pat Flanagan: He was my best friend.

Tracy Smith: Did he become kind of a butterfly expert?

Pat Flanagan: Oh, he is a butterfly expert.

Tracy Smith: You say, “he is.”

Pat Flanagan: Yeah.

Tracy Smith: You still talk about him in the present tense?

Pat Flanagan: Yeah. I do (emotional).

It was on Dec. 31, 2020, that Tom Merriman was last seen alive. Ramona and George Hamilton saw him in his stepdaughter’s SUV in their shared driveway.

George Hamilton: And he was sitting on this side on the passenger side, with his feet out, and his walker out in front of him and he looked like hell. 

Tom had just spent more than two weeks in the hospital and a rehab center after a bad fall. He also had heart and liver problems.

Ramona Hamilton: He looked awful. I don’t even know if he knew me.

Tracy Smith: But at the time, it just seemed like maybe he got sent home from the hospital, heavily drugged.

Ramona Hamilton: Heavily drugged — yes.

George Hamilton: That’s all we knew. That’s all we knew.

And then George Hamilton saw Tom’s stepdaughter, 37-year-old Jade Janks. Tom Merriman had come into Jade’s life when she was 15, marrying her mom.

Jade and Tom were apparently close; she lived right next door. On this day, Jade had just driven him home.

Ramona Hamilton: He called her his daughter.

Tracy Smith: He called Jade his daughter?

Ramona Hamilton: Yes.

George Hamilton: Right.

Tracy Smith: They seemed close.

Ramona Hamilton: And they seem very close.

Ramona Hamilton: She was fixing dinner for him every night.

Ramona Hamilton: She seemed to take care of him —

Tracy Smith: What’d you think of Jade?

Ramona Hamilton: I thought she was a very pretty woman.

Jade had done some work in Ramona’s apartment.

Ramona Hamilton: She was an interior … decorator. 

Heather Pearce: That’s Jade. … she can be a tomboy and a girlie girl all in the same day. … she can … get herself dirty for work, carrying rocks and concrete in her pickup truck … And … we’re dressed up … ready to go to, like, a nice fancy dinner.

Heather Pearce grew up next door to Jade in San Diego County.

Heather Pearce: Jade was very cool … I loved being around her.

Jade was 13 years older.

Heather Pearce: She’s definitely a little more than a big sister and a little less than a mom … her energy was just very strong … loving and caring and genuine and, so when you’re around her, you feel good.

She also knew Jade’s stepdad, Tom Merriman.

Heather Pearce: I think she always just loved him and cared about him.

Back at Tom’s place in Solana Beach, it was now Jan. 1 — the day after he’d gotten back from the rehab center, the day after the Hamiltons had seen him looking so poorly in the driveway.

This time they only saw Jade in the driveway. She was standing by a pile of trash and boxes.

George Hamilton: I saw her out at the side here with the boxes and cartons … a little while later … there’s a knock on the door … And she come to the door to tell me that she’d made a mess down there … but she’d clean it up later.

It was a few hours later when law enforcement pulled into their driveway.

CALLER (to San Diego County Sheriff’s Dept.): I’m scared to death … I don’t want to be part of this … I didn’t have anything to do with her …

They came to investigate that strange phone call — the one that claimed Tom Merriman had been murdered.

Jorge Del Portillo: They were trying to find Tom. Where is Tom?

Jorge Del Portillo: They walked by this pile of trash in the driveway.

Jorge Del Portillo: They — they knocked on his door. They went inside.

They didn’t find Tom, but they did see his stepdaughter.

Jorge Del Portillo: When they saw Jade Janks driving out of her driveway, they pulled her over, brought her in for questioning and asked that very question, “Where is Tom?”

At the police station, Jade said she was cold, so they gave her a blanket.

DETECTIVE: Well, we’re trying to find Tom … do you know where Tom is?

JADE JANKS: No.

DETECTIVE: His family hasn’t seen him for over 48 hours, so —

JADE JANKS:  He just got released from the hospital yesterday.

DETECTIVE: OK. Did you see him yesterday?

JADE JANKS: Yeah. I picked him up from the hospital.

DETECTIVE: OK. Do you know where he went?

JADE JANKS: No … what can you tell me other than he’s just missing?

DETECTIVE: We don’t know where he’s at, we’re trying to find him.

Eventually they let Jade go, but there was still no sign of Tom. Officers spent all night combing through his apartment looking for clues.

Then, just after the first morning light, one of the officers was walking down the driveway towards Tom’s apartment when she saw that pile of trash.

There’s a wheelbarrow, some boxes and some bags.

Jorge Del Portillo: She removed a trash bag from that trash and immediately saw the silhouette of a man.

Tracy Smith: And there he was. Tom Merriman.

Jorge Del Portillo:  Tom Merriman … laid dead and buried.

HOW DID TOM MERRIMAN DIE?

Jorge Del Portillo: I’ve never seen that. … I’ve never seen a case where a body was buried under a pile of trash in the driveway.

The apparent crime scene was smack in the middle of the driveway of the lush compound just a mile from the beach.

Jorge Del Portillo: He was wearing the hospital bracelet that he was just in the hospital. … the same T-shirt and the same pajamas that he was discharged.

Jorge Del Portillo: As soon as they found the body … they knew we have our suspect, and they made the arrest.

On the morning of Jan. 2, 2021, Jade Janks was arrested and charged with Tom Merriman’s murder. But things were about to get complicated.

Jorge Del Portillo: She lawyered up and didn’t want to answer any more questions.

So, authorities continued to work the case — starting with that phone call.

CALLER (to San Diego County Sheriff’s Dept.):  It sounds like she killed this guy.

That call had come from that friend of Jade’s — a man named Adam Siplyak. He told police she called him to her apartment, and then she asked him for a favor.

ADAM SIPLYAK: … and asked me to move the body with her …

DISPATCHER: OK.

ADAM SIPLYAK: I said, “I can’t help you” … and I never saw the body.

Adam Siplyak may not have seen the body that night, but, eventually, he did tell police that Jade confessed to him. That she had knocked Tom out with an overdose of medicine and then strangled him.

It was a pretty dramatic story. And authorities were confident the autopsy would confirm that story — there would be physical evidence that Tom was strangled to death. But that’s not what happened.

Teresa Pham: I was actually there for the autopsy.

Assistant District Attorney Theresa Pham, who led the investigation, talked to the medical examiner.

Theresa Pham: So, what they found was, unfortunately, not a lot of physical evidence.

Tracy Smith: Right. So, you have this supposed confession of her saying she — she strangled him, but no evidence of strangulation.

Jorge Del Portillo: That’s right.

The final autopsy report said that the cause of Tom Merriman’s death was “acute Zolpidem intoxication.” Zolpidem is the generic name for the sleeping pill Ambien.

Tracy Smith: Is it possible that Tom Merriman died by accident? … he was in poor health. It’s not that many pills that he took.

Jorge Del Portillo: Certainly, it’s possible … but the evidence belied that notion. This was no accident.

But even if the autopsy didn’t point to strangulation, investigators say other evidence clearly pointed to murder.

Tracy Smith: Jade’s cellphone was a gold mine.

Jorge Del Portillo: It was a gold mine.

Jade’s phone was full of texts.

Tracy Smith: How would you categorize those text messages?

Teresa Pham: Suspicious.

Jorge Del Portillo: Incriminating.

Teresa Pham: A plan.

According to prosecutors, that plan was to get rid of Tom Merriman one way or another.

Investigators say it all started on Dec. 23 — that’s about a week before Tom’s body was found. Tom was in the hospital after that bad fall. Jade says she was cleaning up his apartment when she found something.

Teresa Pham: So, she’s at Tom’s apartment. And his laptop, I guess, must have been in sleep mode or something like that, but she knocked into it, and it woke up. … And on the screensaver is a nude photograph of her in the shower.

And there was more. Much more.

Teresa Pham: She must have had his password. So, once she was able to get into his laptop … was when she was able to find, a lot more of nude photos of her.

Tracy Smith: Hundreds.

Teresa Pham: Hundreds.

Jorge Del Portillo: These were photos that she took willingly with her partner at the time. Some were of her in the shower naked.

Authorities don’t know how Merriman got those pictures, but Jade says she never gave them to him, and prosecutors say she panicked.

Jorge Del Portillo: In her words, she was beyond freaked out. That’s what she wrote to a friend, that she couldn’t shower alone, that she was vomiting at just the idea of looking at a shower based on what she had discovered.

Jorge Del Portillo: She’s sleeping with … a knife on the nightstand just in case he comes early home from the hospital.

According to prosecutors, that’s when Jade launches her plan. How? One of her friends connects her with a guy. A guy the prosecutors called “The Fixer.”

Jorge Del Portillo: There’s a text message where he tells Jade,” if you have a problem, I could fix it for you.” And that’s how we came up with the label, “The Fixer.”

The so-called “fixer” was a man named Alan Roach.

Tracy Smith: Who is Alan Roach?

Jorge Del Portillo: Alan Roach is a guy — He’s a security guard. … That’s what he does. … but I think he makes himself out to be someone else that he’s not.

Teresa Pham: We were thinking Jade views him as the character in “Pulp Fiction” — someone that you reach out to when you want one of your problems fixed. And that’s what he was, he was the fixer.

Tracy Smith: He was the fixer.

Tracy Smith: Is Alan a hit man?

Jorge Del Portillo: He is not a hit man. And — but what’s important is, what does Jade think Alan is.

Prosecutors say Jade wanted her fixer to help her get rid of Tom.

Jorge Del Portillo: She had a plan that she stuck to.

Tracy Smith: The plan was murder.

Jorge Del Portillo: The plan was murder.

JADE JANKS TAKES THE STAND

It was now December 2022 — two years after Tom Merriman’s body was found under that pile of garbage — and Jade Janks was about to stand trial for his murder.

Tracy Smith: Let me just ask you flat out, did Jade Janks murder her stepfather Tom Merriman?

Marc Carlos: Jade has maintained her innocence throughout this entire, uh, incident.

Jade’s attorney, Marc Carlos, insists this was not a murder, and says Jade had no reason to kill her stepfather.

Marc Carlos: Finding nude photos of yourself on a stepfather’s computer would make you angry, you know, might make you break off relationships with him. … But enough to kill somebody? I don’t think so.

He says Tom’s death was an unfortunate accident, brought on by his poor health and self-administered prescription drugs.

Marc Carlos: I think he took the medication himself. … He had multiple substances in his system. I think he made a cocktail of the drugs that he had with him and had a bad reaction to it and caused his — his death.

At trial, Jade was supported by family and friends, including her biological father, Steve Janks, and her longtime friend, Heather Pearce.

Heather Pearce: Tom was a mess, an absolute mess for a long time … there’s no way that she had like a plan and first degree and all of that. I was like, there’s no way because that’s not Jade.

Prosecutors Jorge Del Portillo and Theresa Pham were worried the jury might feel that Jade herself was the victim.

Teresa Pham: She’s a sympathetic defendant.

Jorge Del Portillo: She is.

Teresa Pham: I mean she found naked photos of herself on her stepdad’s computer.

Jade takes the stand to tell the jury what happened in her own words.

Jade says that ever since she met Tom when she was a teenager, they maintained a strong bond.

JADE JANKS: It’s hard to come by somebody you just feel that you can trust completely. And I did feel that way. … I referred to him as my father and he could call me his daughter.

Which is why, Jade tells the jury, it was so devastating to find those photos on Dec. 23 while Tom was in the hospital, and she was cleaning his apartment.

JADE JANKS: I bumped the mouse on his desktop computer and it — it shook the screen awake and I looked and there’s a picture of female breasts on the screen. … And I look … and … those — those are my breasts. … I — I just — I couldn’t believe it. I — I was in complete shock.

Jade describes finding even more on Tom’s computer.

JADE JANKS: There was a rolling screen, like a slideshow of pictures of me that was taken over the years.

MARC CARLOS: OK. What type of pictures were they?

JADE JANKS (crying): They were naked photos.

MARC CARLOS: OK, do you, did you ever give naked photos to, uh, to your stepfather?

JADE JANKS: No.

MARC CARLOS: I mean, did you ever show him naked photos of yourself?

JADE JANKS (crying): No.

Tracy Smith: And how did he get these photos?

Marc Carlos: Jade doesn’t know.

Tracy Smith: These were photos that Jade had taken of herself?

Marc Carlos: Jade and various boyfriends.

MARC CARLOS: Have you ever made any, uh, sexual overtures toward your stepfather?

JADE JANKS: No. No.

MARC CARLOS: Did you tell him that you had, uh, nude photos of yourself?

JADE JANKS: No.

MARC CARLOS: You never showed him anything similar to those, correct?

JADE JANKS: No, he was my dad.

Tom was still in the hospital, but Jade says she didn’t feel safe.

MARC CARLOS: You were afraid that he was going to come back and find out that you had found the photos, yes?

JADE JANKS: Yes.

MARC CARLOS: And you were worried about how he might react toward you.

JADE JANKS: Yes.

MARC CARLOS: Right. And he lived next door to you.

JADE JANKS: Yes.

And that’s why Jade says she got in touch with Alan Roach, who worked in security, the day she found those photos.

MARC CARLOS: So, why did you think that you needed somebody like Alan Roach?

Jade pauses as she considers her answer.

JADE JANKS: I — I was — I was scared. I mean, when I first saw the photos, I — I couldn’t even use the bathroom. … I just felt so disgusting. I couldn’t shower either. I was just scared. … I was scared of being, you know, nude and vulnerable. And I just — I wanted somebody to just look out for me and make sure that, you know, I was safe.

Over the next few days, Tom was moved from the hospital to a rehab center, and Jade felt she had to act.

JADE JANKS: I can’t continue just living next door to him and not feeling safe or feeling like this. I mean, I have to do something.

MARC CARLOS: When you say, “I needed to do something,” did you need to kill him?

JADE JANKS: No! … I wanted Tom to just go away and leave me alone.

According to Jade, Alan Roach was planning to come over after she brought Tom home, to help her confront him.

JADE JANKS: I wanted Alan to basically, you know, explain to him this — this is not OK. Or I could explain it, but Alan just be there just in case.

Jade says that on Dec. 31, in spite of her feelings, she was doing everything she could to help Tom who, she says, seemed preoccupied with finding medication.

JADE JANKS: He started calling at about 6: 45 in the morning and he’s asking me to get him codeine, which I don’t really understand. … He says that he hasn’t, I think, slept and he wants to rest.

Jade took Tom out of the rehab at a little after 11 a.m. He had a bag of medication with him, including Ambien. Remember, the autopsy says Ambien is what killed him. Jade says, almost as soon as Tom got into her car, he also helped himself to her prescription medicines.

JADE JANKS: He kept saying things, “did you have any painkillers, is thi,s it? Oh, here” and then he just kind of took it.

Jade says Tom seemed fine when she stopped at a shopping plaza and texted Alan Roach to come meet her. She went into a couple of stores while she waited to hear back.

JADE JANKS: I was just getting started on a, um, a house project, so I just went to go get supplies and kind of shop around

Jade bought gloves, towels and a nylon cord—and some spray paint. She says these items were for a painting project.

JADE JANKS: I — typically, I lay plastic down … and kind of enclose it so that I’m not getting paint on all the, the foliage.

Jade still hadn’t heard back from Roach and took Tom home. She says Tom was now too groggy to walk on his own, and she couldn’t get him out of her car. She says she