The mother of four girls whose bodies were found decomposed in a Southeast Washington row house was charged with their deaths Thursday.
Authorities accused Banita Jacks, 33, of killing her four daughters sometime between May 2007 and last month, and keeping their bodies upstairs in a two-story Anacostia row house until U.S. Marshals stumbled on the gruesome scene Wednesday morning.
The bodies of the four girls were so decayed that the D.C. medical examiner could not positively identify them, but police are working under the assumption that the deceased are Jacks’ four daughters: Brittany Jacks, 17, Tatianna Jacks, 11, N’Kiah Fogle, 6, and Aja Fogle, 5. Court documents list the children by name as the victims. Jacks told detectives during interviews that she had not killed the children, and that they were possessed by demons.
She said the children began dying in their sleep one at a time, all within a seven-day period, sometime last summer. She said the youngest died first and that she placed them on the floor of the bedroom side by side. The oldest girl was kept separate in another bedroom.
Jacks told detectives that she didn’t call fire or police departments because she didn’t trust either agency and she was afraid that the emergency officials would cause her problems, documents said. She said that
she had not fed her children for a long time before their deaths.
Wearing a crinkled synthetic white jumpsuit and old bluesandals, Jacks appeared disoriented during a court hearing. She slumped over a wooden table and appeared to struggle to remain upright.
Authorities say Jacks stabbed her oldest daughter three times in the abdomen, and that the three younger girls likely died of asphyxiation or poisoning. The youngest suffered a traumatic blow to the back of the head and had rope or cord marks on her neck.
Jacks faces 30 years in prison for each of three counts of felony murder and one count of first-degree murder while armed. When deputies arrived at the home Wednesday, they encountered the overwhelming odor of decay. Jacks let them in, then ran upstairs and sat at the top step to block the marshals. One of the deputies got past Jacks and discovered three girls laying face down on the floor.
The scene inside the home was so traumatic that three deputies who discovered the bodies were meeting with trauma counselors.
A family failed by the system?
» Entered a homeless shelter briefly in 2007
» Medicaid office maintained an open case file
» Daughters pulled from two charter schools, little follow-up
» Child welfare receives report, can’t locate family
