Who Killed the Landlord? on ID is investigating the murder of Karen Jenkins, who was killed by her tenant Monique Lee with the help of her brother Gary Lee in Omaha, Nebraska.
Landlord Karen Jenkins was reported missing on October 18, 2010, and when the cops found her remains a week later under the porch of an Omaha home, they opened a homicide investigation.
The investigators soon learned of a troublesome tenant called Monique Lee, who had stopped paying rent to Jenkins and had begun stealing from her employer, who was also a friend of Jenkins.
Jenkins had served Monique with an eviction letter, but just two weeks later, Monique enlisted her brother, Gary Lee, to help her murder her landlord.
Karen Jenkins was strangled by Monique Lee
Gary lured 48-year-old Jenkins to a vacant apartment by posing as a hopeful tenant, where his sister strangled her with a vacuum cleaner cord. Gary held the victim down while Monique sealed her mouth and nostrils with super glue.
In October 2011, Gary pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and agreed to testify against his sister. He was sentenced to 65 to 100 years but could be eligible for parole after 32. At his sentencing, he apologized to the victim’s family and said, “I’m God’s child! God will save me!”
Monique pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity. She claimed that a man called ‘Black’ had threatened to take away her children if she didn’t kill Jenkins. The killer had suffered from schizophrenia since a young age and was bipolar. However, prosecutors argued that Jenkins’s murder resulted from cold-calculated revenge due to the eviction notice.
Watch the Latest on our YouTube ChannelMonique Lee was found guilty and was sentenced to spend the rest of her life behind bars. In January 2013, just a couple of months after Monique began her sentence, she was transferred to a medical facility due to an illness and passed away a short time later.
This isn’t the first time Karen Jenkins’s murder has been investigated on ID; her tragic death was previously featured in 2018 on Broken Trust.
More from Investigation Discovery
Follow the links to read about more murders examined on ID.
Ariel Castro kidnapped and imprisoned, at his home in Cleveland, Ohio, three young women and girls, who he tortured and abused for ten long years. Their nightmare only came to an end when one of the abductees managed a daring escape.
Lawyer Richard Armitage was mysteriously beaten to death in his Kansas City office. The police locked up his business partner Richard Buchli; however, six years later, an appeals judge threw out his conviction and released him.
Who Killed the Landlord? airs at 8/7c on Investigation Discovery.