The air inside the interrogation room was sterile, contrasting sharply with the chaotic, horrifying reality that had unfolded hours earlier. Detective Sergeant Harris adjusted the documents on the metal table, looking directly at the woman sitting across from him. Jennifer Island sat with her shoulders slumped, her breathing heavy. Her fourteen-month-old daughter, Alana, had just been pulled unresponsive from a neighbor’s backyard koi pond. The police had brought Jennifer in for formal cautioning and a detailed interview.
Detective Harris leaned forward, his voice a mix of professional authority and underlying disbelief at the initial reports coming from the scene. He knew the state of the house, but he needed to hear the timeline from the mother herself.
“Jennifer, in your bathroom alone, you got dirty diapers on the floor. You got, you’ve got poop on the floor. Just stepped on pooping in your back. That’s all you’re doing about why your house is filth. You don’t even know there’s shit on the floor.”
Jennifer looked down, her hands twitching slightly in her lap before she spoke, her voice thick with a defensive strain.
“Tell me what happened.”
“What happened was, I can tell you what happened from the time I got up to all this mess happen. Got up at 6:00 a.m. this morning, put them in the shower, and I bathed them real good. I scrubbed them up, got them ready for school. We loaded up about 7:00, 7:05, somewhere in there, and I got him to the school. We sat there until 7:20 when the bell rang, and somebody came and let him get out of the car.”
“You’re driving to school every day?”
“Yes, sir. I drive over there and I pick them up every, every afternoon. I get over there about 1:50 in the… well, I, I actually, my bad, they get out about 1:50, 1:15, and I get there about 12:30 in the afternoon, and, and I sit there and wait. I got them to school and I came back and I made scrambled eggs and bacon. They’re always with me or my husband.”
Detective Harris tapped his pen on the notepad, focusing on her morning routine. The logistics of managing five young children in a single morning required order, something that seemed entirely absent from the photographs of the residence.
“Now, do you bathe all the kids together?”
“No, I, I normally bathe them all separately because it’s girls and boys. But with it being such a rush in the morning times to make sure everybody’s properly bathed and everything else, I just get them all in there, scrub them down real quick, get them out, and get them, you know, uh, dressed and dried and all that good stuff. And then I get them, you know, sat down in the living room on a couch with their book bags on their laps, and they can sit in there and watch, um, Disney Channel, which is usually Mickey Mouse Clubhouse or whatever other cartoon they like to watch. And then I get them to school. And like I said, when I got back home today, this morning, I got home approximately about 7:25, 7:30 roundabout area, and I made scrambled eggs and bacon for the two girls and myself.”
“Okay.”
“We all sat, we sat there and we ate our breakfast, and then, um, I had the two girls in my bedroom with me cuz I had to get in class. So I had them sitting right there with me, and I give them, um, some Graham crackers to keep them, you know, occupied, and put some cartoons on. And so I done my, my class, and they was sitting there, and they…”
“And classes online?”
“Yes, sir. Classes online. And they was sitting there and they was watching their cartoons. Well, when they started getting up and going and playing and everything, I logged out of class, and I was right, you know, I was listening for them. And then I heard them in the living room, so I went in the living room. You know, they was playing in the hallway, and I seen them running back and forth my door, so I didn’t think nothing of it. So I went out there and I sat in the living room, and they got in the living room and I watched them play. And most of the time, I play with the girls when they’re at home. Well, they laid down, both of the girls laid down at about 9:30, 10:00 to take a nap, and they slept for… shoot, she slept until about 11:45, and Alana slept until about 15 after 12:00 today. We get, they, they got up and I told, okay baby, get your shoes on. And I had got my shoes on and everything, and we went out and we got in the van, and it took me a few minutes to get both of them buckled up and appropriately secured.”
“Mm-hmm.”
“And then I walked around, and I… after I closed the door, sliding door, and I walked around, got in the car, buckled myself up, cranked the car, and I started backing up to go to the school. I got over there and I was, no surprise, the first one in line waiting. And I sat there, and I sat there, and I sat there, and I sat there. And me and the girls were listening to music on the radio like we usually do, and, um, 1:55 rolled around, the bell hadn’t rang, didn’t come out yet. Almost 2:00 came around, and here they finally come out the door. Was the first one, he got in the car, came out next, and then creeped around the corner. And I got them all in the car, and I got them all buckled in. We went back to the house. Well, at the time they had homework, so I had them all go in my room where I can keep them all right there in one little section, cuz we all sit, usually come in in the afternoon, sit on my bed, and I go through folders. All of them did great, didn’t have any homework. He didn’t have any homework, had a little bit of math, so I helped her, and then they went back in the living room. And every time I bring them in, I always lock the handle on my, on my front door. And they went in the living room and they started watching her cartoons while I was helping with her homework. Well, Lana was in the room playing, in my bedroom playing, so I knew right where they were, so I didn’t have any problems with that.”
Jennifer shifted again, her narrative moving closer to the critical window of time when the child went missing. Her tone remained oddly conversational as she brought up mundane details about television programming.
“Well, I checked on, T asked me to check when his show was coming on, which was called Rise of the Guardians, which is a cute show for kids. I don’t know if you’ve seen it.”
“I haven’t seen that one yet.”
“But it’s a really adorable show. Every day he bugs me a hundred times, is Jack Frost on, is Jack Frost… no, baby, I don’t know, I’ll have to check. And so it came on at 4:20. So I told him, sit down in there and just a minute, when I get done with this. She finished her homework and she went in there, and I had checked on the TV when I got done with her, and it took me maybe about five minutes to type in ‘Rise’ on, on the TV, and it popped up Rise of the Guardians at 4:20, cuz I have Cox’s Cable and I’ve got the box and you can type in…”
“Why take so long to type it in? You said minutes roundabout time.”
“Because when you push in one letter, it pauses to try to search for every available name that starts with R, and then you have to go through and you have to click in because it’ll tell you how many possibilities there are, like 2, 3, 4, 800 possibilities, right? And then you type in a little, a little bit more of that, and the possibilities start going lower and lower and lower. Well, I got in ‘Rise’ and it came up with like 45 different titles, so I found Rise of the Guardians, which is right there practically on top.”
“Mm-hmm.”
“Clicked on it and it said the first showing was at 4:20 this afternoon.”
“Okay.”
“So I went into the living room, I got it on channel 203, which was HBO. We all sat down in the living room and we watched the movie. Well, it got to the point where, um, the Sandman was fighting off, um, evil dreams that, um, the Boogeyman had caused the children to dream, and it was actually called the children’s fear. They was black horses, scary little things, and he was hitting him with his gold dust and, and, and just knocking him out. Well, that’s the time that I got up and went to my bathroom to go pee and change my, my stuff, which I’m going to be straightforward, I’m not even going to hide the words because I’m pretty sure you’ve heard it all. I have, um, where I keep my tampons so my kids cannot find them, and my pads is in the cabinet that’s right behind my bathroom door.”
“Mm-hmm.”
“Not, not the first bathroom door, but where the toilet is, there’s a cabinet right behind the toilet door, and that’s where I keep them so they can’t find them. So I go in there, I grab me a maxi pad, which is the little thin ones… usually I don’t wear the thin cuz I don’t like them, and I grab me a tampon, and I go in the bathroom, and it literally takes me at least one minute to walk to my bathroom, get what I need, and get into the toilet, and get all this down, get on the toilet, do my, my business. True enough, I pee, wipe, change everything out, and that takes me another about four to five minutes, which leaves, gets me in there and leaves me in there about five, six minutes.”
“Mm-hmm.”
“Then I’ll walk back out, which is about a minute to walk back into the front, cuz of course you’ve seen I had to walk around the door, the bed, and all that crap. So I walked back in there and the front door is open.”
“Was gone?”
“Gone. I had ran, um, down the hallway as I was walking up, and said that they were gone. So that there told me, okay, the door’s open, they’re gone. So I ran up there and I realized she was telling the truth. I just went to the restroom. Where’s everybody at? Out there, just come and collect. Okay, baby, you’re the oldest, I asked you keep an eye on when I went to the bathroom, why are they out there and you’re in here? He didn’t even answer, so I ran out the door and they ran over to me.”
“Where were they at?”
“They was at the neighbors, at that little koi pond, because he said they can come over and watch them feed them. Which, you know, I don’t have a problem with them watching them feed them, but at least let me know that they’re going to watch the gentleman feed them, cuz he won’t let them get close to it. And they didn’t let me know where they went, so I ran out the door and they were over there.”
“Well, by what time was this, you think?”
“Honestly, I didn’t even look at, look at the clock, but on my phone, because I always have my phone on me because my husband calls. All I can do is give you a guesstimated time, which is probably anywhere between 5:10 and 5:20 okay, this evening.”
“Did y’all started watching the movie, you said it was 4:20?”
“Yes, sir. Yes, sir. Anyway, they got into the house, and it’s like I left Lana in the living room, and it’s like, okay, I never leave her in the living room, I always take her with me or have… she always follows me everywhere I go. She apparently went out with them. Well, I thought she had…”
Detective Harris raised his hand slightly, stopping the flow of her speech to ensure the sequence of events was perfectly clear. The timeline was tightening, and discrepancies were beginning to emerge regarding where the toddler was believed to be.
“Let’s back up for a second. When need, um, I just want to make sure I’m like keeping track here. After you get down in the bathroom and you walk back up front, who’s up there laying on the floor watching TV and, and little bits gone, which front door’s open?”
“Yes, sir. Okay, Alana, she usually goes and hides and lays down and goes to sleep. She’ll pass out, and beside the couch, she’ll go behind the table in the living room and pass out on the floor. She’ll, excuse me, she’ll go and she’ll curl up in the boys’s closet, go to sleep. She’ll climb up bed and go to sleep. She’ll find someplace comfortable to go to sleep if she gets tired. That’s where I thought she was. I ran through my whole house searching for her. I ran outside, I was looking for, I looked out the back. They can go in the backyard cuz it’s fully fenced. She wasn’t there. I looked everywhere. My neighbor came out out of his pond. I grabbed her as soon as I seen her, and the only thing that I thought was I seen images of people off of ER on TV when I was a little girl trying to do CPR or doing CPR, and I tried. She still wouldn’t move. She wouldn’t breath. I tried to say, but she wasn’t coming back through. Neighbors made up, they tried helping me, and they got the other kids in the house so they wouldn’t be out there being frantic, and then some of the neighbors called 911 for me before I can try to keep doing CPR order.”
“Okay, now is in the house and house so, or outside?”
“Yes, sir, you walk outside and see…”
“Yes, sir.”
“And you called them back to you?”
“Yes, sir, and they came back and they went inside.”
“Okay, they came back to you and they went inside, and then they didn’t say nothing about the baby being out there or nothing?”
“Cuz usually they say is outside. And after I done search the whole house, I said, ‘Guys, where’s the baby?'”
“Did you ask them to help you?”
“Yeah, the kids were running through the neighborhood helping me and everything else. And then after I done searched across the street in little dark pile over there and in the little woods and trees over there, and in the backyard, and behind the fencon area in the backyard, finally tells me that there was a bab… there was a baby doll in the pond. And it’s like, they don’t have baby dolls, so I go over there and look and I didn’t see anything. He came, the fellow that lives there came outside and reached up underneath the bridge that he has there, pulls her out.”
Jennifer’s voice cracked slightly, though she quickly returned to an analytical tone, expressing bewilderment at the sheer probability of the tragedy rather than broken grief.
“That’s actually crazy if you think about it. Alana walked out of the front door, there happened to be an area where there was a bit of water, you know, the size of a pond, and she drowned. She was one years old. What are the chances of that happening? Ripip.”
“And you’re outside at the neighbor’s house when this happens?”
“And I was on the phone with my dad, Jeff. But he pulled her…”
“When did you originally called you to begin with?”
“When I seen her, she wasn’t in the house. I called him to come over and try to help me find her, because Lana never, ever, ever leaves my side. Never. Either I have her in my arms, she’s in her walker following me around the house. But she just learned how to walk, and forun she’s getting around pretty good. I mean, she doesn’t… oh, she’s been walking since she’s been like literally 11 months, and she’s, she’s trying to run her little fat stubby legs just to get up and go too, bless her heart. She was, she was doing so good. She was walking beautifully. She was just starting to say ‘mommy’ real good, and, uh, I was actually just fixing to start potty training her cuz she was walking really good, so that meant she could walk to the potty. And so when I was on the phone with my dad, I said, ‘Look, I can’t find the baby. The baby’s missing. I can’t find her. I can’t… I’ve looked in the house, I’ve looked in the backyard, I can’t find her. The kids are even help them try to look.’ Well, I’ve looked everywhere, everywhere. I even went to, to the neighbor houses and in case they seen, you know, s her and brother inside their homes. She’s not in there. She’s, she’s nowhere to be found. And then he comes over there and he pulls her out of his little… I call it Japanese quick, cuz that’s what the fish look like. Man-made Japanese koi pond tank, whatever you want to call it, pulls her out, places her on the bridge. I go over and I snatch her, and I put her on the ground.”
“What’s on the bridge?”
“It, it, it’s just a little man-made, small man-made bridge that goes over the little pond, and it had like, um, a… like a little garden room or something on it, but it… I mean, there’s still room on the bridge to move around and walk or, you know, which you don’t walk on it cuz it’s just for sight, it’s just to look. And he places her on the bridge. I go over there and I grab her, and I try… I beat on her back, I bounce her, I lay her on the ground. I don’t know what I’m doing on CPR. Only thing that I thought was I had to move the tongue and open the airway. I put my hand in her mouth and I pull her tongue down and forward, pinch the nose, and I breathe, and I started pushing her chest. G comes out of her nose. At the time, she was probably already gone, but I still wanted to try. I didn’t know, she’s my baby. Mm-hmm. I conceived her in Hawaii, to be honest. That’s where Alana came from, Hawaii. I don’t know what else I could have done.”
Detective Harris moved the discussion toward the layout of the home and previous security issues, looking to establish whether this was an isolated lapse in supervision or a chronic pattern of neglect.
“I heard one of the kids earlier say that they have a play door they can go out of. Do you label or name the doors, or the back door?”
“The back door, it’s fenced in and they know that all the doors, you know, all the gate doors, which is there’s a double one over here to where you can drive into the backyard and there’s a small one over here where you can walk through it with a lawnmower or a garbage can or just walk through it, and all of them’s closed at all times. So they know that they can go out in the backyard and play as long as they don’t mess with grill, which is under the little canopy thing back there, and they play nice, and that’s the play door.”
“Okay, and they go out the back door. Have you had any problems with them opening or going out front door without you knowing about it?”
“Only a couple of times, and that’s, um… see, one time was when I was in the bathroom like today, and then another time was, I think I was giving Alana a bath and I went outside to the neighbor’s house, they went, they was out back.”
“How long was that?”
“Um, we’ve been at this place for four months. It was like the second month that we was there that they, they first did it, and then it was like last month they did it twice.”
“Now, what type of, um, what type of discipline do you utilize in the house with, for minor?”
“They get on the wall.”
“What do you mean, get on the wall?”
“They, they stand on the wall like this far away from it, so their nose ain’t touching it to where it won’t make them go cross-eyed. They have their hands behind their back.”
“They’re just standing up facing the wall?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Okay.”
“And they have their hands behind the back to where they can’t be playing with the wall and all that stuff. And they stand there for anywhere between three to five minutes, sometimes it’s a little bit longer because they want to stand there and they want to talk and dance, but that’s minor.”
“Um, what, what would be something minor that would get them there?”
“Throwing stuff, um, like a shoe or, um, a ball, which I don’t have any balls in the house anymore. They used to have little balls in the house, like, um, the little $1.50 balls you find at Walmart, little bitty balls. Um, they would have those inside and I told them no more balls in the house. Um, um, or if they start fighting, they would kick each other or hit each other, that’s wall time. If they start fighting to the point where it’s an all-out brawl, like, I mean, inmate-type fight… I mean, punching back and forth, fist in the face…”
“And who’s doing that do it?”
“I mean, they, they fight pretty harsh when they get mad. They get us for anywhere between three to five minutes. But the wood that you seen outside is like a little man-made paddle, and I give them one L five seconds, they know I’m in business, they get on the wall for that. Now, if, um, they start fighting and throwing and running out the doors when they know they’re not supposed to, they… and they go to their room for an hour. If they persist on doing it, they stay in their room for the rest of the day.”
“Now, has it, has any of the neighbors talk to you or voiced any concerns about the kids out?”
“No, I haven’t had any of the neighbors come up and, and even say, ‘Hey, welcome to the neighborhood,’ you know, nothing.”
“Now, how often are they in the front yard playing?”
“I don’t allow them in the front yard to play. But I mean, you, you allow them to go… you do allow them outside, though, because they, they go and watch the feeding of the koi, right?”
“But I watch them walk over there when they go over there.”
“So how often does that happen?”
“So, mm, not too often. They, they’ve only been over there like literally twice to watch him feed his fish. Just twice. And today, when like I said, I was in the restroom, I came out and they were over there. I ran outside and they were over there, so they snuck over there today.”
“Mm-hmm.”
“And later I found my baby in this pond. Well, actually, my neighbor pulled her out of the pond, but I mean, I found her there when he pulled her out. I should have had her with me. I should have picked her up and literally took her to the bathroom with me.”
Detective Harris turned the pages of his file, shifting focus to the environmental photographs taken by the responding officers. The internal conditions of the home suggested severe structural neglect that went far beyond an untidy house.
“Looking at the house, um, you know, in the bedrooms, one of the things that I noticed immediately that none of the beds in the, in the house, including your room, had any sheets on the bed. The kids’ mattresses…”
“We actually just recently got a mattress for the boys’s beds, and they don’t like sleeping in their beds. So they all… the reason you see blankets and everything in my floor, it’s because they bring their blankets in there and they crash in my floor. Whether I tell them to get in their beds or not, they bring all of their, their fitted sheets and all their blankets in my room, and they crash in my floor. The boys crash on one part of on the floor, and the girls usually bring the blankets in there, but they crawl up in the bed with me.”
“Well, you didn’t have sheets on your bed.”
“That’s cuz I had took them off to wash them. It was in the laundry room to be washed, and 99% of the stuff that was in the laundry room, the kids have put down in the hallway to try to soak up some of the water that they flooded the bathroom and got in the hallway.”
“Now, you say that the, that, that they’re sleeping in the room with you, um, there is literally… this, this is what I usually sleep in, but there’s literally trash all over your floor in your bedroom.”
“They eat their food on top of… they bring their snacks in there and they eat it and throw their paper there. I have, um, tried to go through there and clean it up, but I had to get the front cleaned up before I can get the back cleaned up. We’re, we’re not talking about…”
“We’re not talking about just a little bit of stuff, Jennifer. In your bathroom alone, you got dirty diapers on the floor, you got, you got poop on the floor. Just stepped on pooping in your…”
“I haven’t seen the poop, but the dirty diaper was in the garbage can.”
“Well, between the garbage can that’s in where the toilet is by the sink, it’s, I mean, it’s… I don’t even know how that got there, I mean, I always put it get on the floor.”
“All I can say, if, if there was poop on the floor, most likely it was other day he had diarrhea.”
“No, this was not diarrhea.”
“I don’t know, because I always, whenever they go to the restroom, I give them a little bit of privacy because you don’t want nobody standing over you while you’re taking a crap or taking a le… I mean, I, I guess that…”
“But we’re not talking about, we’re talking about the floor in your, in your bathroom, right?”
“Well, the clothes that’s in there, they took off for the past couple of days. They was fixing to go into the washer today.”
“And I understand there’s five kids and they all produce a lot of clothes, you know, daily, a lot. Okay. But do you think your house is suitable?”
“No, I mean, like I said, I’m, I’m out of cleaning supplies. The only thing that I actually do have is laundry detergent, and I had all my laundry done before yesterday.”
“The cleaning supplies, that’s, that’s one thing that’s, you know, the mop the floor and, and maybe, maybe do the dishes, clean the stove. That’s got nothing to do with the filth of trash that’s between your room and bathroom.”
“My bathroom and my bedroom was going to be clean today, like I was saying. You know, the kids wanted to watch their movie, and when I got them in bed tonight, I was going to clean my room while they was asleep.”
“How long have your room been that way? That, that didn’t happen in a week. Them kids are surprise you, um…”
“They’ve had crackers, they’ve had candy, which I got them Laffy Taffy candy.”
“Mm-hmm.”
“Um, they’ve had chips, they’ve had all kinds of stuff, and they bring it into my bedroom and they eat it, cuz usually I have them come in my room and watch cartoons while I’m in my room.”
“Well, you, you know, the trash, the, the food trash is one thing, but there’s just trash, and then inside, inside the playpen, there’s more food and trash.”
“I don’t know how the food and trash got in there, because I, I always have that clean for the baby. Come on, I’m serious. The baby…”
“How could you…”
“The only thing that’s supposed to be in there is the blankets that agree. That’s what’s supposed to be in there that I have laid out for the baby to lay on and one to cover up with at night. That’s, that’s all that I know that was in there.”
“When’s the last time you looked in there?”
“She was in there today, which I do know. However, one of the kids threw a bottle or something in there today. This food, I don’t know how the food got in there, because I don’t feed her in there. I feed the kids in the kitchen at the table or in the high chair.”
“Look, I understand…”
“Oh, I a talk about the high chair.”
“Who, who, who sits in there? Which kid?”
“Alana usually does.”
“When’s the last time you look at that high chair? And I understand putting food on the high chair so the baby can eat off of it and that, hey, fine. That thing was filthy.”
“I clean it out at least twice a week, and that there is just the ramen noodles from yesterday.”
“You clean the high chair twice a week? Not the tray?”
“Oh, okay, the tray I clean every night, every night. But the seat usually don’t get all that dirty unless she has ramen noodles or grits or rice.”
“Mm-hmm.”
“And, you know, I clean the seat and the little foot thing down there, whatever you want to call it, footstool whatever, at least twice a week cuz that’s when it gets eeky. But the tray, it has two parts of the tray and I, I watched both of those every night.”
Detective Harris pressed harder, confronting her with the documented history of protective services involvement. This was not a localized incident of bad luck; it was a continuation of failures that had drawn the attention of multiple state agencies.
“Jennifer, this is not in reference to the kids, this is not the first time that you’ve had issues, correct?”
“It’s not.”
“And I’m, I’m sure that you’ve been talked to about these same issues before, is that correct?”
“On some of the cases, yes. And I’ve always, always went through and I’ve scrubbed my house and I’ve got it to where… but you can’t do it when you’re expecting somebody.”
“Well, I, I mean, I understand having a house that’s lived in because you’re there and the kids are there and, and life is busy. A lived-in house is one thing, but a house that’s filthy with roaches, that you have kids and you have feces on the floor, you’ve got food… there’s literally food stuck to the walls. You think that’s acceptable?”
“No, that… that is beyond, uh, uh, beyond a lived-in house, that’s just filth, wouldn’t you agree?”
“I, I totally agree.”
“And I mean, soap and water will not get it off. I have tried soap and water.”
“Huh, your fingers will get the food off the wall. This, there’s cheese stuck to one of the doors, and that wasn’t just put there today.”
“I haven’t seen that.”
“That’s because your eyes aren’t open, because you’re not looking. You probably blindly walk in your room and step over all that trash in your room every day. Why do you think we’re fostered, we’re placing foster homes tonight?”
“Because of a lot of drowning at my house.”
“A lot of drowning, I’ll be, be honest with you, is only a part of it. But the majority of it is because the filth of your house. And not only because of the filth is because this is not your first time. Didn’t you just go to court?”
“Yes, sir.”
“What were you told?”
“I was told to keep my nose clean, and that’s what I was trying to do. I was told by the judge that I owe $1,554, take parenting classes, and don’t get in trouble with the law at all.”
“Well, this ain’t getting in trouble with the law.”
“Well, it kind of is.”
“But we’re talking about the quality of life and health children, that’s what this is about.”
“Well, I mean, I have the living room clean, and, and the kids’ rooms are clean, they just don’t have like… there ain’t nothing in there.”
“What do you mean? I guess you can say they’re clean, there’s nothing in there.”
“Well, it was the other day I had them clean them. They had…”
“But they take everything out of their rooms and just throw it in your room then?”
“No, they had, um, old papers they took in there, and they looked through and they scattered them one piece at a time in different directions, cuz they would look at them and throw it. That’s just how they do. There barely a toy in that house.”
“I know. I, I mean, you know, that’s not essential, you know. Thankfully, the lights are on, there’s some food in the fridge, those…”
“That’s yeah, I had to call my husband’s boss to get that. I had to call him to wire me couple hundred dollars so I can get that.”
“Why are you having a…”
“Listen, listen to my question for a second, okay? Why are you having problem just maintaining a decent acceptable level of cleanliness in the house and providing the…”
“Providing not really an issue, it’s the keeping the clean house. Like I said, I’m not that good of somebody to keep a clean house, and I think it’s a lot of depression because I’m overweight and a bunch of other stuff on me, not being able to do too much. But there really is no excuse for it, there really is none. And I, I’m ashamed of it, and only thing I can do is clean that sucker up and keep it clean from this day forward. No more issues with anybody. The house stays clean and it stays immaculately clean, not just picked up clean. I mean, there is no excuse for an ny house, there shouldn’t be no nasty house whether you have kids or not. And I’m sorry it’s like that. I… there is no excuse, I’m not even going to be as you, there is no excuse. But I do fight being depressed because I am overweight, and that’s not an excuse, though, you know.”
“You have kids.”
“I do.”
“And not, not only do you have kids, you have kids that can’t take care of themselves, and, and they kind of look to you to do that. And if you can’t do that and you need help, you need to find a way to ask for help, because they depend on you.”
“I don’t know anybody in this area to ask for help. I mean, I don’t have a phone book at home, I don’t know any numbers out here, and I can’t go just go search on the internet and find numbers. I don’t know anybody.”
“Department with Children and Families, you got all kinds of organizations, you got…”
“Excuse…”
“No, sir. I’m, I’m being straightforward and honest with you. I, you go every day.”
“Yes, sir.”
“There’s people there that can help you. Don’t make an excuse. And that’s, and that’s all, all you’re doing. That’s all you’re doing about why your health is filthy. You don’t even know there’s shit on the floor, and I mean that, and that’s completely unacceptable. It’s a hazard to your health, is a hazard to their health.”
The questioning returned to the pattern of children escaping the home, highlighting previous severe incidents that had occurred while the family resided in Alabama before moving to Florida.
“Now, when they found out where that water was, any time that they disappeared, they did it without me knowing.”
“Yeah, but it wasn’t just a water. It was them landing in the middle of the street as well.”
“It, that there, I was outside with them. I was outside with them, and when they moved off away from me, I called them back over to me, and they came back over there. When they was, when they walked over there, they wasn’t over there all that long, maybe about five minutes, and I called them over. And I had to call them about three times, and I didn’t know how to get over in area where they were. They have little creeks that they crawl under or something in, in the little privacy fence, and they got over there.”
“Jennifer, can’t always be somebody else’s fault.”
“I was at my neighbor’s house.”
“Responsibility.”
“I am taking responsibility. I should let them get away from me.”
“It can’t be somebody else’s fault all the time.”
“It’s not somebody else’s fault, it’s my fault, and I take full responsibility of not 100% keeping my eyes on. I’m not saying it’s anybody else’s fault. I knew that going to be a challenge. They’re going to be sneaky, they’re going to be kids, and they’re going to put risks there that’s going to make me alert. I should have kept them in my sights 100% of the time.”
“You plan on taking them parenting classes?”
“Yes, sir. I would take as many as this state and any state has.”
“You take ones that you’ve been ordered to take.”
“I actually had, uh, looked online earlier this morning before all this mess, and I’ve seen a place out here in Pensacola that does, uh, free court-ordered, um, parenting classes, and I was going to give them a call. And I, I had to get my school done, and then I was going to give them a call, and then I was going to get all that going.”
“How are you paying for school?”
“I’ve, I got a grant. I, I qualified for a grant from, um, the taxes from my husband working.”
“I mentioned earlier that, you know, why, you know, why are you having so much trouble, you know, providing for the kids? You say you’re not. That’s debatable.”
“Well, providing for them, like I was going to tell you, we usually have a pantry full of food and a refrigerator bursting with food. We’re, we rarely have very little food in our home. When my husband came home the last time, his boss told him that he needs to go and take his engineering license test, that was mandatory or he was losing his job. He went out there, he took it, he had four different, um, subjects to do. He passed one, failed three, so he has to retake those in order to get licensed. And that he had to stay in a hotel room down there for three days, cuz the test took three days to do. He stayed down there for three days.”
“Mm-hmm.”
“And I think he said that the room was like $300 a day, so that’s $900 for three days. And then the test, I think he said, was about… I’m thinking anywhere between $150 and $400, somewhere in that bracket. Um, so I, I mean, he went up there with about two grand, and then he had to have the gas to get there, and the gas to get back, and money to eat on while he was there. So I mean, he made, he…”
“So things just got tight?”
“Things just got tight. And like I said, I’m supposed to have it… he gets paid every 1st and 15th of the month. I’m supposed to have his check sometime next week cuz the first is Sunday. I can have this check anywhere between Monday and… or, yeah, Monday and Wednesday, cuz Monday is the second. I can have it anywhere between that. I was going to go up and get literally about two, $250 of groceries so I have pay cash for it. It’s not… you can’t get too much with when you having to pay with cash, when you got a lot of bills and you have to get the cleaning supplies and toilet paper and all that so that we can wipe our hinies.”
“Um, you have a problem budgeting money?”
“Yes, I do. So does my husband, and I’ve been trying to figure out how I can take some kind of a study course to learn how to budget money better and, and, and do it. I mean, I have a massive problem budgeting money, my husband does too.”
“What are you doing with your money 99% of the time?”
“I pay my bills. I make sure my bills are paid first. I get, get a couple hundred worth of food like my husband always tells me to, and then some of the times, I, you know, when I’m out paying the bills, I take the kids out to eat as a treat for being good when I have them all with me, and then I get them a toy or something.”
“Well, the toy thing is, they don’t have many toys, Jennifer, they don’t. So you don’t buy them toys?”
“I, I do, I honestly do, but those kids, they, they play with them so much and then they bang them around and they tear them up, so I have to throw them away. They actually recently had…”
“What about clothes?”
“Their clothes, like I said, they just threw a lot of them weighing. I understand that, I understand outgrowing clothes. A lot of their clothes are in my dresser. I, you know, but believe me, they, they outgrow clothes all the time, quickly too, you know. I understand that they don’t have any… I’ve got, got clothes in the dryer, I’ve got clothes in the washer, and I’ve got a lot of their clothes in my dresser, cuz I know if I put them in their bedroom, they’re going to be all over the floor. They’re going to take… what they do is they go in there looking for one item, and they take it and they throw it across the floor. A little more hyperactive than most kids, and their pediatrician in Alabama put them on that. Actually went to, um, the mental health over there for an appointment. He was diagnosed also with ODD, um, I don’t remember what they said it was, but they just said that it causes him to stay angry for a long time when he gets angry. Um, but since I’ve been over here, they did have some when I first got over here and they were taking it, but I had ran out, and the Medicaid that they have, it runs out, um…”
“When did you here?”
“Oh goodness, uh, four months ago.”
“What were the factors that led the DCF in Alabama to remove your children then?”
“Them going to the canal and, um, them being wet from their waist down, because they would be sitting in the water playing in the, in like this much water.”
“Okay, so from then to now, what have you done to safeguard? Because obviously, and this what I’m getting at, obviously they go outside at will, and you always seem to catch them after the fact. Between Alabama, between now over here, there’s been several times where you end up spanking them for going out the door and stuff, out the front door, out the front door. What have you done to prevent that from happening?”
“Pretty much stay in the room with them, and if they go out in the back…”
“Well, obviously that’s not working, we know that because you’re not staying in the room with because there’ll be another front door, so that’s, that’s a was…”
“Well, I, I planned on getting one of those, um, like chain locks and putting it high on the door.”
“Mm-hmm.”
“Cuz you see where the deadbolt and the other lock is, the handle. I was going to put one of those little chain locks up top to where they couldn’t reach it when I got my husband’s money, cuz I don’t have any money right now.”
“But this is not something that just start happening.”
“Well, the other place had it, but they, they figured out how to unlock it because it was not… is not…”
“This hadn’t just started to happen, would you agree with that?”
“Yes, sir, I 100% agree with that.”
“I mean, would you agree that keep safe is, is, is my number one priority, and, and you failed to do that?”
“And I should be doing better with it.”
“And I mean, you…”
“How they know how to unlock…”
“You fail to do that.”
“Yes, sir. They know how to unlock both of those locks. My first…”
“I mean, I can’t put… do you get a hasp, you get a lock, you’re tall enough, and on the door you put it up here.”
“That’s where I planned on putting…”
“They get a step stool, is going to be able to reach it. And when you mean a hasp, just one, one of the little… you know, they make several kind, but kinds that pulled over the door, they keep the lot, the chains, you know. I don’t do… you can even put one of the little slide things to keep the door from actually opening, you know, so that, so you can’t get a crack in the door. I wouldn’t put a chain on, that’s just… I, I would do a hasp or, or a little slide lock, sort of like the lock that my husband has on his. Even a deadbolt, you can put a deadbolt pile on the door, so there’s several different options.”
“Well, I’ve been told not to put a deadbolt up there, um, because the ones my husband was talking about is a key to get in and get out.”
“You, you’ve got several options. The bottom line here is, should you have to do something safe because they’re randomly at will going outside?”
“Yes, sir.”
The audio recording tapered off as Detective Harris finished his notations. The systemic nature of the neglect, the accumulated waste within the household, the ongoing issues with children wandering into dangerous bodies of water, and the severe lack of environmental hygiene had directly culminated in the death of the fourteen-month-old infant. Following the extensive investigation, criminal charges were solidified. In 24, Jennifer Island was officially sentenced to twenty-four years in state prison for her role in the chronic mistreatment of her household and the profound lack of supervision that led directly to her child’s death.
