Wilbur Lee Jennings

Jennings was born in 1940 in Shreveport, Louisiana in a family with three other siblings. Four years after his birth, his parents divorced, after which his mother left Louisiana and resettled in California, while the children stayed in Shreveport with their maternal grandparents. In 1948, Wilbur's mother took the children with her in Los Angeles, but two years after that, they moved to the small town of Selma. Wilbur attended the local Selma High School, from which he graduated in 1958 - during his tenure there, he was active in sports and was part of the school track and field team. He was regarded as an upstanding citizen with no criminal record, with most of his friends and acquaintances describing him in a positive light. After leaving school, however, he didn't continue his education and was forced to engage in low-skilled labor. During this period, Jennings changed jobs frequently, but more frighteningly, began to exhibit a voracious sexual appetite. In the summer of 1961, he raped his neighbor, Gladys P., but the incident wasn't reported to the police. A few months later, he returned to her house and both parties had an argument, during which Gladys pointed a gun at him, which Wilbur managed to knock out of her hands. Several people witnessed the quarrel, including Gladys' grandmother, and after a while, Jennings beat and raped her again. This time, she reported him to the police, but he pointed out that the Gladys had attempted to kill him and even named the witnesses, so the girl's claims were put under scrutiny. Ultimately, the charges were dropped, with the rape victim leaving the area for good. The following year, Jennings lured a 14-year-old schoolgirl he knew into his car, under the pretext of giving her alcohol. He then took her to the city's outskirts, where he attacked and subsequently raped her. The schoolgirl reported it to the police, succeeding in having her assailant arrested. Jennings plead guilty and was convicted: during his imprisonment, he was described as an exemplary prisoner, for which he was paroled in early 1966. That same spring, he attacked Dale Drake and Mary Richardson on the shores of the Kings River, raping Mary and beating Dale at gunpoint, causing him serious head injuries and fracturing his fingerbones in the process. After the rape, Richardson managed to flee, after which Jennings himself also fled the scene. However, since the couple had memorized his license plate, he was soon identified and captured. Wilbur was found guilty of violating the terms of his parole, assault and rape, and was thrown in jail again, where he remained until 1977. During his detention, he met Betty Burrell, whom he offered to live with when he was released. She refused his offer, and a few days later, Jennings appeared in front of her house and attacked her with a knife. Burrell resisted fiercely, prompting one of her sons to come out with a baseball bat to fight off the attacker, making him flee. He was put on a wanted list, but evaded capture. Some time later, he burgled into the house of Burrell's neighbor, Rosemary Graham, where, threatening both her and her husband Henry Jones with a weapon, he was informed of Betty's new home address and demanded Jones take him there. However, after a few minutes, the car was stopped by police officers on the freeway, after which Jennings was arrested again and new charges were brought against him. In exchange for dropping the assault charges against Burrell, he pleaded guilty to assaulting Henry with a firearm and seemingly expressed remorse for his actions. As a result, he was given a light prison sentence, which he served in the county jail.

After his release, Wilbur returned to Selma, staying with relatives and finding work. During this period, he began to spend a lot of time with pimps and prostitutes, with a number of whom he periodically cohabited. On August 21, 1983, Jennings lured Karen Robinson into his car and drove her to the outskirts of town, where he raped and killed her. Robinson's half-naked body with signs of sexual assault was discovered the next day in one of the irrigation ditches. The autopsy found the cause of death to be drowning, but before that, the victim had received numerous blows to the head resulting in bleeding. While examining the crime scene, an empty can of Budweiser was found. After they talked to Robinson's pimp, the authorities were informed that the day before her disappearance, she spoke to Wilbur Jennings, an acquaintance of his who owned a red Ford. A number of other witnesses confirmed that she had gotten into a car with a similar description of Jennings', which eventually culminated in his arrest. However, no evidence was found that could incriminate him, and they were forced to release him.

On July 21, 1984, Jennings visited the local Hunt's Club in Selma, where he met an acquaintance named Jacqueline Frazier, who engaged in prostitution. He paid for her services, driving her to the outskirts of the city, where he proceeded to beat her with a blunt object, rape and sodomize her, before finally drowning her in one of the canals. Her partially nude body was found three days later. She was found clad only in her underwear, with several empty cans of Budweiser scattered around the area. In the course of the investigation, several suspects were questioned, including Wilbur, who had been spotted by a customer at the bar who had seen him talk to the victim on the night of her disappearance.

On August 15, Jennings drove to Fresno, where he picked up a prostitute named Olga Cannon in his car. He took her to the outskirts of the city, where he beat and raped her, throwing her corpse into a nearby ditch. After the killing, several people contacted the police, claiming that Jennings, a known associate of Cannon, had said that he expressly stated that he'd kill her over payment disputes, after it turned out that she demanded $25 from him for sexual services, while Hispanic clients only had to pay $15. One of the girl's friends saw both her and Wilbur having a conversation on the night of her disappearance. Based on this evidence, Jennings was detained once again and interrogated, but denied any involvement in the murder. Since her body hadn't been located at the time, they were forced to release him yet again. Eventually, Olga's skeletonized remains were found in an irrigation ditch outside of Fresno on December 8 of that year. Due to the state of decomposition, it was not possible to establish a cause of death, although the autopsy found that her jaw had been broken. Like the previous murders, several empty cans of Budweiser were found at the scene.

On September 12, Jennings went to the house of an acquaintance named Linda Johnson, the sister of his friend Flenard. Wilbur had had sexual relations with the girl before, but this time she refused his advances, eventually resulting in an argument between the two, during which Linda was raped. After raping her, Jennings hit her with a steel pipe on the head approximately 18 times. With the help of his friend Leonard Hutchinson, they loaded Johnson's corpse into her car and drove to the outskirts of Fresno, where he dumped the corpse into an irrigation ditch. In order to cover up any trace of the crime, Jennings drove back to Johnson's house, setting both it and the car on fire. The girl's body was found on the same day, after which Jennings' brother contacted the police, saying that Wilbur had confessed to killing Olga Cannon and the other girls. Hours later, the drunk Jennings was detained in his house. While he was being interrogated, investigators noticed that he had scratches and lacerations on his face which he couldn't explain, as well as clothes with gasoline stains on them. He was unable to provide an alibi for the murder of Linda Johnson, for which he was charged with her murder. While examining his apartment, the authorities found a baseball bat, his car's interior filled with dried blood stains, a scrap of galvanized pipe, three rings (one of which was later identified as Fraser's) and a brown wallet, which was identified by family members of Olga Cannon. After Johnson's murder, Jennings' colleague David Pulley contacted the police, reporting that on the day of the murder, near the end of their shift, Wilbur had told he intended to kill Linda, after which he bought several cans of Budweiser and a can of gasoline.

The trial began in 1986. The main evidentiary basis for the prosecution's case were the numerous objects identified by victims' family members, chiefly the baseball bat and pipe with blood stains on them, which, according to investigators, were the likely murder weapons. Aside from that, there were numerous testimonies by Jennings' relatives, friends and acquaintances, in addition to that from the murdered girls' friends as well.

Wilbur himself maintained his innocence throughout the whole process, accusing the prosecutor of putting pressure on witnesses and forcing them to give false testimony.[2]

However, despite his efforts, on November 20, Jennings was found guilty on all charges, and was promptly sentenced to death.[1]

After his conviction, Jennings was transferred to the death row in San Quentin State Prison, where he spent the subsequent years of his life.[3] In October 2005, following the results of a DNA examination, Jennings was linked to the murder of 76-year-old Clarice Reinke, who had been raped and killed in Fresno in June 1983, as well as that of 17-year-old Debra Chandler, who had been raped and murdered in July 1981. Chandler's body, like with Jennings' other victims, had been found in an irrigation ditch outside Fresno. In the Reinke case, authorities found a peculiarity: aside from Wilbur's biological traces, they also found DNA belonging to another man. After further inquiries, it was linked to 64-year-old Alvin Johnson, who was serving a prison sentence for a rape-murder committed in Utah. New charges were brought against Jennings, but he refused to admit his guilt in either of the cases, claiming that the results had been falsified. By that time, he was having health problems, as he had been diagnosed with prostate cancer and diabetes, as a result of which his trial for the murders of Reinke and Chandler was postponed several times.[4]

Ultimately, the criminal case for Chandler began in late 2013, leading Wilbur Jennings to be transferred out ot San Quentin State Prison to the Sacramento County Jail, where he died on February 11, 2014, aged 73, due to complications from his diseases.[5]

• List of serial killers in the United States

• People v. Jennings (1991 Appeal)
• People v. Jennings (1991)
• Supreme Court v. Jennings