Hello, lovely True Crime Dimes! You might’ve deduced from its title and the fact that it’s a true crime podcast that the show will cover potentially upsetting content. In addition to detailed accounts of all manner of horrendous acts, this podcast will also entail the vital and varied use of curse words, BIPOC allyship, love for the LGBTQ+ community, using people’s correct pronouns, and other pretty liberal shit. If any of that’s gonna upset you, exit now.
This is Trigger Warning, a true crime podcast. I’m your host, Jen O’Malley… and you’ve been warned.
I had a fantastic and much-needed vacation – thankfully before any of the storms hit – but now it’s time to return to the fascinating and horrifying side of human behavior that continues to fuel true crime shows everywhere.
How many times have we heard this story: an underage girl dates an older guy, her parents have concerns, and the girl decides her parents have to go? Enough that it’s become a true crime trope, even though it’s actually pretty rare. I mean, only about 2% of all homicides are parricides and “virtually all existing literature” shows that nearly 90% of parricide offenders are boys. But in today’s episode, I’m gonna tell you about two girls who saw their parents as obstacles, keeping them from what they wanted most.
Athletic, smart, 16-year-old Sarah Johnson was dating high school-dropout, drug-dealer, suspected gang member, and undocumented immigrant, 19-year-old Bruno Santos. Her parents definitely did not approve, and their relationship caused more than a few heated family arguments. But shit really hit the fan Labor Day weekend of 2003, when Sarah’s parents found out that she’d lied and spent the night at Bruno’s apartment. Sarah’s dad, Alan, went to pick her up. He told Bruno to stay away from his daughter and threatened to report him to police for statutory rape, which might have led to Bruno being deported. Sarah, in turn, was grounded and her car keys taken away.
But by 6:30 AM on Tuesday, September 2nd, Alan and his wife of 20 years, Diane, were found dead in their home in Bellevue, Idaho. According to Sheriff Walt Femling, “There was blood and hair on the carpet. It was on the ceiling. It was on all the walls. There was part of a skull cap in the hallway.” Alan had been shot twice in the chest; Diane in the head.
Sarah claimed that an intruder murdered her parents. A gun shot woke her up and she fled, knocking on several neighbors’ doors until someone answered. That was her first version, anyway. The next was that she was awake and heard arguing before shots were fired and she fled. Another was that she was awake, heard arguing, heard a shot, ran to her parents’ bedroom, but fled from the house when she heard a second shot.
There was no evidence of a break in. A .264 caliber rifle, later shown to be the murder weapon, was found at the scene; its scope found on the bed of the person renting the Johnson’s guesthouse. Knives were found at the foot of Alan and Diane’s bed and in Sarah’s older half-brother Matt’s room. In a trash can outside of the Johnson residence, police found a bloody garment with ammunition in the pocket, a left-handed leather glove, and a right-handed latex glove. They were taken into evidence and sent off for testing.
The rifle belonged to Mel Speegle, the Johnson’s guesthouse tenant. It and his other guns were kept in an unlocked closet in the guest house, along with ammunition. Mel had been out of town at the time of the murders. The only fingerprints on the rifle, scope, and ammunition belonged to Mel himself or his friend who’d handled the gun previously. Matt was away at college. Bruno had a solid alibi.
Police continued to investigate until, six weeks later in mid-October, results were back from the evidence testing. The bloody garment that had been found in the trash can outside of the Johnson’s home was Sarah’s pink bathrobe. It was covered in blood and bone fragments, with DNA from her and both of her parents on it. Paint chips on its inside matched paint from the shirt that Sarah was wearing the morning of the murders. The left-hand leather glove had gunshot residue on it. The latex glove had Sarah’s DNA inside.
During their investigation, police also found the matching right-hand leather glove from a pair that was usually kept in Diane’s SUV, the magazine of a 9mm handgun wrapped in a bandana, two .264 caliber shells, and Sarah’s car keys (you know, the ones that had been taken away from her as punishment) – all in Sarah’s bedroom. Plumbers recovered a plastic shower cap that had been flushed down the toilet. Oh, and on the morning of the murders, a physical examination of Sarah discovered linear bruising on her left shoulder, consistent with gun recoil.
Sarah stole Mel’s gun from the guesthouse, which she had access to and had visited in the days before the murder. She woke up on Tuesday, September 2nd, 2003, pulled the shower cap over her hair, put her pink bathrobe on backwards, and quietly made her way to her parents’ bedroom. Alan was taking a shower and Diane was still sleeping. Sarah shot her mother in the head at close range. When her father heard the noise and ran out of the bathroom, Sarah shot him just above the heart. He bled to death on the floor.
Sarah then put the knives at the foot of the bed and in her brother’s room – apparently to suggest gang involvement? – flushed the shower cap, ditched the robe and gloves in the trash can, put the rifle scope on Mel’s bed – to set him up; Plan B, I guess – then ran to the neighbors’ to make a frantic 911 call.
Sarah was taken into custody on Halloween of 2003 charged with two counts of first-degree murder. Her 5-week trial began in February 2005. She maintained her innocence and stuck to the intruder story. Testimony included witness after witness recounting Sarah’s coldness after the murders, how she went to volleyball practice the next day, how she was more concerned with her hair and nail appointments than the fact that her parents were dead. Her aunt explained how Sarah would roll her eyes and act disgusted any time someone expressed emotion over the loss of Alan and Diane. Girls who were in jail with her described how preoccupied Sarah was with the inheritance, at first assuming she’d get all of it since she was a daddy’s girl and her older brother wasn’t “even her dad’s real kid,” then getting pissed when her brother used it on a vehicle, a house, and his wedding.
Needless to say, her family was convinced of her guilt. Pat Dishman, Sarah’s maternal grandmother, told ABCNews, “It takes a lot of evidence to convince a grandma that her granddaughter killed her daughter. I mean, it had to be overwhelming.” She added, “It’s indescribable, it really is, the heartache and the sorrow.”
Sarah Johnson was found guilty by a jury on both counts of first-degree murder and sentenced to two concurrent life sentences, plus 15 years for the firearm enhancement. She continues to fight that decision but remains incarcerated at the Pocatello Women’s Correctional Center in Idaho.
***
Nestled along the Piankatank River in Middlesex County, Virginia is a neighborhood of about 360 acres, aptly named Piankatank Shores. J.B. Wiseman, a waterman, and his wife, Kathy, an assistant manager at her family’s HVAC company, both 33 years old, lived there with their daughter, Jessica.
Douglas Christopher Thomas – Chris – had a childhood filled with love, then heartbreaking loss and neglect. His parents divorced several months before he was born on May 29th, 1973. Chris’ mother gave him to his maternal grandparents for adoption when he was 2, and he was raised by them in Chesterfield County, Virginia, where he thrived. He did alright in school; he played baseball, basketball, and soccer – the usual. But when Chris was 12, everything fell apart. His favorite uncle passed away suddenly, followed in quick succession by his grandparents.
He was sent to live with his biological mother, basically a stranger. Life with her was rough and Chris got into some trouble. Eventually it was determined that it wasn’t a good placement for Chris, so in 1988, he was sent to live with his paternal uncle and aunt, Herbert and Brenda Marshall, along with Brenda’s niece, Lanie, in Piankatank Shores. That’s where Chris met Jessica Wiseman in May of 1990, shortly after he had attempted suicide.
Chris and Jessica’s relationship grew serious and intimate quickly. Her parents didn’t approve and tried to get Jessica to break things off with Chris, but she refused, although Kathy did make Jessica return Chris’ class ring. J.B. even threatened to kill Chris if he didn’t leave his daughter alone. This infuriated Jessica and she said she wished her parents were out of her life. She’d been living with her grandparents and great-grandparents, and Jessica had more freedom at their homes. She hadn’t been living at her own residence because J.B. and Kathy separated briefly and had just recently reconciled.
On Halloween, 14-year-old Jessica and 17-year-old Chris ran away to get married but returned home when they were told that they were legally too young. This prompted J.B. and Kathy to ground Jessica, force her to give the “pre-engagement” ring back that Chris had given her in September, and finally forbid her from seeing Chris again. In an interview with the Southside Sentinel, Brenda revealed that the kids had tried to get married because, unbeknownst to the Wisemans, Jessica was pregnant. Brenda disclosed, “[Jessica] had just learned and confided in me that she was expecting. She didn’t know how to tell them and was afraid her father would kill her.”
A little over a week later, on Friday, November 9th, the Wisemans celebrated their 15th wedding anniversary. By Saturday morning, they were both dead, shot in the face at close range by a shotgun.
Sometime after 4 AM but before 4:27 AM when the Middlesex County deputy sheriff arrived on scene, Jessica Wiseman had banged on the Marshall’s door until she was let in, hysterical and crying for help. Brenda woke Chris up, telling him to get dressed and comfort Jessica while she called the “authorities.”
After the deputy sheriff assessed the scene, the Virginia State Police were called in to assist as they had more available resources than the small county of Middlesex. (For reference, as of 2020, Middlesex had a population of 10,642, compared to nearby Gloucester County with 37,362, York County with 68,389, and James City County with 76,032.)
Jessica told investigators that around 9 PM on Friday, a man she didn’t know came by and talked to J.B. in her parents’ bedroom for over two hours. She overheard the stranger say, “Will you give me a quarter?” and she thought they were maybe arguing about drugs. Jessica reported that she was later awakened by gunshots, and she hid on the far side of her bed where she saw a “tall dark shadow of a person” moving down the hall with something in his left hand. She heard Kathy crying, “Help me, help me” and saw her mother’s hand on the door frame of her bedroom when a third shot rang out. After waiting for the intruder to leave, Jessica jumped over her mother’s dead body and fled the house, running about half a mile to the Marshall’s for help.
But – surprise, surprise – that story didn’t line up with evidence in the Wiseman residence. To start, J.B. was found in bed. According to the state medical examiner, he’d been shot in the face through the upper lip, with the buckshot severing his spine. “The entire load went into the brain.” If you’ve been arguing with someone over drugs, is your entire family just going to crawl into bed and go to sleep with the person still, what, just hanging out in your house?
Kathy was found in the hall outside of Jessica’s bedroom. She’d initially been shot in the face while in bed, where the bullet destroyed the left side of her face but didn’t kill her. She managed to make it to Jessica’s room but was shot again. The position of Kathy’s body indicated that the shot had come from inside her daughter’s bedroom.
After hours of questioning, Chris and Jessica finally confirmed that they conspired to kill her parents. Trial testimony indicates that they’d been planning since at least November 6th. Apparently, Jessica was going to signal to Chris with her bedroom window: if it was down, go back home; if it was up, the plan was a go.
According to Chris, he left his home with the shotgun – a Browning automatic with a 28-inch modified barrel – and saw that Jessica’s window was open. He went to it, loaded the shotgun, then passed the weapon through to Jessica, and climbed in after it. He and Jessica laid on her bed for hours, so long that he almost fell asleep. They even got into a bit of a spat because Chris tried to back out; he wasn’t going to shoot her parents.
So, Jessica retrieved a box of drugs and paraphernalia, sneaked into her parents’ bedroom, and spread it out on the floor in an attempt to make the eventual murders look like a “drug rip off.” It was also an attempt to coerce Chris to commit the murders, as Jessica told him that if J.B. saw the drug box, he’d kill them. (Never mind that she just as easily could’ve gone back in there and removed the things, but, you know, not fully developed brains.)
Chris indicated it was at that point that he went into the hallway and fired into J.B. and Kathy’s bedroom twice. He then ran back to Jessica’s room, hiding on the far side of her bed, but could hear Kathy. Chris said that when Kathy appeared in the doorway, Jessica screamed, “Oh god! Shoot her again!” And he did.
A Virginia State Police Special Agent testified that Jessica told him, “No one will ever understand, but I had my reasons.”
Jessica was charged with two counts of first-degree murder, while Chris was charged with first-degree murder and capital murder. In Virginia, when more than one person is killed in one criminal act, it classifies as a capital offense, which carries a maximum penalty of death.
17-year-old Chris was tried as an adult. He pleaded guilty to first-degree murder and use of a firearm for J.B.’s death and not guilty to capital murder and use of a firearm for Kathy’s. Chris was sentenced to 65 years in prison for the murder of J.B., plus 2 years for use of a firearm. He was convicted of Kathy’s murder and was sentenced to 4 years for use of a firearm and death, based upon a finding of “vileness.”
By Virginia code, “vileness” meant that the offense was “outrageously or wantonly vile, horrible or inhuman in that it involved torture, depravity of mind or an aggravated battery to the victim.” “Aggravated battery” was defined as “a battery which, qualitatively and quantitatively, is more culpable than the minimum necessary to accomplish an act of murder.” The court clarified that, “while a single gunshot wound, causing instantaneous death, does not constitute an aggravated battery… multiple gunshot wounds may constitute an ‘aggravated battery’… where there is an appreciable lapse of time between the first shot and the last, where death does not result instantaneously from the first.” That code was repealed July 1st, 2021.
When Chris was sentenced to die, the world lost its shit. According to an article by Dennis Bernstein in 2000, “failure to abide by international treaties and [United Nations] conventions regarding the execution of youthful and child offenders has made the United States a pariah state. Amnesty International reports 191 states have joined a ‘global consensus against executing child offenders.’ The United States has earned the ‘shameful distinction of leading a tiny and dwindling group of states.... only five countries outside the United States are known to have executed child offenders since 1990.’ In that decade, the U.S. has executed 10 child offenders, more than the five other countries combined. Chris Thomas' execution means the United States is the first country in the world to execute a juvenile offender who claimed that such an execution violates international law and well-established fundamental norms of international human rights. Two more death row inmates convicted of crimes as minors are scheduled to die this month – Steve Edward Roach in Virginia on [January] 13th and Glen Charles McGinnis in Texas on [January] 25th.”
"’This would mark the first time since the death penalty was reinstated [in 1976] that so many juvenile offenders would be executed in so short a period,’ William Paul, president of the American Bar Association, wrote to Virginia's governor, Jim Gilmore. ‘In our view, the execution of people for crimes they committed while children are unacceptable in a civilized society.’"
An article from The Guardian reported, “only Iran, Nigeria, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, and Yemen appeared with the US on a list of countries that have executed juvenile offenders in the past 10 years. Thirty-eight of the 50 states have the death penalty. It can be imposed at the age of 16 in 18 states, including Virginia; at 17 in five states, including Texas; and at 18 in 15 more.”
Chris took the blame for the double murders back in 1990. But since, Chris has claimed that Jessica masterminded the killings and that she was the one who fired the second shot to Kathy. According to Bernstein, “Several federal court decisions and new evidence support [his] claim.” For instance, in 1999, “two women who had served time in juvenile facilities with [Jessica] said that she admitted she had killed her mother” and a third came forward in 2000. In an affidavit, the last woman explained, “[Jessica] also told us, in no uncertain terms, that she had killed her own mother, but that Chris had taken the rap for it because he loved her so much.” If that’s what really happened, Chris should not be sitting on death row, as his crime no longer qualifies as a capital offense.
Due to Virginia law at the time, which has since been changed, 14-year-old Jessica had to be tried as a juvenile. She was convicted and held in a juvenile detention facility until her 21st birthday on July 26th, 1997, when she was released and went on her merry way.
Jim Spencer wrote on June 18th, 1999, regarding Jessica: “As far as the state of Virginia is concerned, she finished paying her debt to society two years ago. She's free and clear in her early 20s with most of her life ahead of her.
For a spoiled brat who at 14 plotted to have her mom and dad shot to death in their sleep, that's living large.
Nevertheless, here she came Tuesday, as self-absorbed and clueless as ever, as her ex-teenage lover, Chris Thomas, faced lethal injection for pumping a load of buckshot into her parents:
‘After hearing what the media has to say, it is obvious that their only goal, after all these years, is still to sell a paper,’ she said in a written statement distributed a day before Thomas was scheduled to die. ‘I've never killed anyone nor have I manipulated anyone to do it for me.’
At this point, Wiseman gets to determine her own fate. Her chosen role of victim plays as credibly as Roseanne cast as Heidi. She has not served a single day of truly hard time for two of the most grisly, senseless murders this area has ever seen.
She spent roughly seven years in juvenile detention. She got to go to kiddie jail because the state code said she was too young to be tried as an adult. That meant living in a ‘learning center’ rather than the penitentiary; it meant the state could not hold her past her 21st birthday.
Because she was tried as a juvenile, the records of her case are not only confidential, the clerk of the juvenile court in Middlesex County, where she was tried, can't even acknowledge that there was ever a case against her.
Legally, Wiseman is not considered a convicted felon. Only a recent overhaul of the juvenile justice statutes in the state code keeps her from being able to buy a gun.
Meanwhile, testimony from her 1991 trial crashes headlong into her current protest that she was not the mastermind or trigger woman in her parents' death.
Wiseman talked with Thomas about plans to kill her folks because they didn't want her and Chris to continue dating. Wiseman had plenty of opportunities to save her parents. She availed herself of none. She never went to the police. She never warned her mom and dad. She wanted them dead.
Wiseman opened the window to her bedroom on the night of the killings so Thomas could climb through with a… shotgun. She knew why he came. She was only a few feet away when he aimed at her sleeping father and pumped a lethal load of shot into him. She was close by when Thomas turned the gun on her mother but didn't kill her. Wiseman was right there when her wounded mother clambered out of bed and staggered toward her daughter's room.
What 14-year-old Jessica did when reality set in, when the fantasy of young love gave way to explosions of gunfire that tore the flesh from people who had provided and sustained her life depends on whom you believe. Two of Wiseman's detention center cellmates now say she admitted that she, not Thomas, fired a second shot that killed her mother. News that her former cellmates made those accusations under oath obviously prompted Wiseman to issue her statement that she shot no one.
If Wiseman pulled the trigger, Thomas should not be sitting on death row. The circumstances of this crime required that Thomas kill two people before he qualified for capital punishment.
If the Supreme Court kicks his case back to circuit court on a technicality, it will be interesting to see who calls Jessica Wiseman as a witness, the defense or the prosecution. In a new trial she can save Thomas' life simply by testifying in court that she shot her mom. Because she has already been convicted and served her time in her parents' deaths, prosecutors say she will never have to serve another day in jail for that admission.
But even if Wiseman didn't shoot her mother and won't testify that she did, her posturing this week should make any judge or juror think twice about sentencing Thomas to die.
‘No one,’ she wrote, ‘neither the media nor anyone else, seem to understand that the remorse I feel over the loss of my parents is my own personal affair. It is between God and myself.’
That sounds great until you understand that while she may not have shot her wounded, helpless mother, she stood by as her boyfriend did.
The bottom line is this: Somebody killed Kathy Wiseman by blowing away half her face from a few feet away, and one of the people responsible is walking around free.
That has nothing to do with selling papers; it has to do with getting away with murder.”
Chris Thomas was executed on January 11th, 2000, at the age of 26, less than an hour after then-Governor James Gilmore rejected a request to commute his sentence to life without parole.
That’s it for today, y’all. There’s a lot going on across the world right now – I feel like I’ve been saying that for 3 years – so I hope that all of you are safe, warm, dry, and fed. If you are, please consider doing something for those who aren’t, both humans and animals. You can donate your time or funds to disaster relief, you can hold or contribute to a food or blanket drive, you can go to the local dollar store and create a few care packages to keep in your vehicle and pass out as needed. And of course, you can always contact legislators to advocate for help and change.
Thank you so, so much for listening! Until next time, Dimes.
This is Trigger Warning, a true crime podcast. I’m your host, Jen O’Malley… and you’ve been warned.
I had a fantastic and much-needed vacation – thankfully before any of the storms hit – but now it’s time to return to the fascinating and horrifying side of human behavior that continues to fuel true crime shows everywhere.
How many times have we heard this story: an underage girl dates an older guy, her parents have concerns, and the girl decides her parents have to go? Enough that it’s become a true crime trope, even though it’s actually pretty rare. I mean, only about 2% of all homicides are parricides and “virtually all existing literature” shows that nearly 90% of parricide offenders are boys. But in today’s episode, I’m gonna tell you about two girls who saw their parents as obstacles, keeping them from what they wanted most.
Athletic, smart, 16-year-old Sarah Johnson was dating high school-dropout, drug-dealer, suspected gang member, and undocumented immigrant, 19-year-old Bruno Santos. Her parents definitely did not approve, and their relationship caused more than a few heated family arguments. But shit really hit the fan Labor Day weekend of 2003, when Sarah’s parents found out that she’d lied and spent the night at Bruno’s apartment. Sarah’s dad, Alan, went to pick her up. He told Bruno to stay away from his daughter and threatened to report him to police for statutory rape, which might have led to Bruno being deported. Sarah, in turn, was grounded and her car keys taken away.
But by 6:30 AM on Tuesday, September 2nd, Alan and his wife of 20 years, Diane, were found dead in their home in Bellevue, Idaho. According to Sheriff Walt Femling, “There was blood and hair on the carpet. It was on the ceiling. It was on all the walls. There was part of a skull cap in the hallway.” Alan had been shot twice in the chest; Diane in the head.
Sarah claimed that an intruder murdered her parents. A gun shot woke her up and she fled, knocking on several neighbors’ doors until someone answered. That was her first version, anyway. The next was that she was awake and heard arguing before shots were fired and she fled. Another was that she was awake, heard arguing, heard a shot, ran to her parents’ bedroom, but fled from the house when she heard a second shot.
There was no evidence of a break in. A .264 caliber rifle, later shown to be the murder weapon, was found at the scene; its scope found on the bed of the person renting the Johnson’s guesthouse. Knives were found at the foot of Alan and Diane’s bed and in Sarah’s older half-brother Matt’s room. In a trash can outside of the Johnson residence, police found a bloody garment with ammunition in the pocket, a left-handed leather glove, and a right-handed latex glove. They were taken into evidence and sent off for testing.
The rifle belonged to Mel Speegle, the Johnson’s guesthouse tenant. It and his other guns were kept in an unlocked closet in the guest house, along with ammunition. Mel had been out of town at the time of the murders. The only fingerprints on the rifle, scope, and ammunition belonged to Mel himself or his friend who’d handled the gun previously. Matt was away at college. Bruno had a solid alibi.
Police continued to investigate until, six weeks later in mid-October, results were back from the evidence testing. The bloody garment that had been found in the trash can outside of the Johnson’s home was Sarah’s pink bathrobe. It was covered in blood and bone fragments, with DNA from her and both of her parents on it. Paint chips on its inside matched paint from the shirt that Sarah was wearing the morning of the murders. The left-hand leather glove had gunshot residue on it. The latex glove had Sarah’s DNA inside.
During their investigation, police also found the matching right-hand leather glove from a pair that was usually kept in Diane’s SUV, the magazine of a 9mm handgun wrapped in a bandana, two .264 caliber shells, and Sarah’s car keys (you know, the ones that had been taken away from her as punishment) – all in Sarah’s bedroom. Plumbers recovered a plastic shower cap that had been flushed down the toilet. Oh, and on the morning of the murders, a physical examination of Sarah discovered linear bruising on her left shoulder, consistent with gun recoil.
Sarah stole Mel’s gun from the guesthouse, which she had access to and had visited in the days before the murder. She woke up on Tuesday, September 2nd, 2003, pulled the shower cap over her hair, put her pink bathrobe on backwards, and quietly made her way to her parents’ bedroom. Alan was taking a shower and Diane was still sleeping. Sarah shot her mother in the head at close range. When her father heard the noise and ran out of the bathroom, Sarah shot him just above the heart. He bled to death on the floor.
Sarah then put the knives at the foot of the bed and in her brother’s room – apparently to suggest gang involvement? – flushed the shower cap, ditched the robe and gloves in the trash can, put the rifle scope on Mel’s bed – to set him up; Plan B, I guess – then ran to the neighbors’ to make a frantic 911 call.
Sarah was taken into custody on Halloween of 2003 charged with two counts of first-degree murder. Her 5-week trial began in February 2005. She maintained her innocence and stuck to the intruder story. Testimony included witness after witness recounting Sarah’s coldness after the murders, how she went to volleyball practice the next day, how she was more concerned with her hair and nail appointments than the fact that her parents were dead. Her aunt explained how Sarah would roll her eyes and act disgusted any time someone expressed emotion over the loss of Alan and Diane. Girls who were in jail with her described how preoccupied Sarah was with the inheritance, at first assuming she’d get all of it since she was a daddy’s girl and her older brother wasn’t “even her dad’s real kid,” then getting pissed when her brother used it on a vehicle, a house, and his wedding.
Needless to say, her family was convinced of her guilt. Pat Dishman, Sarah’s maternal grandmother, told ABCNews, “It takes a lot of evidence to convince a grandma that her granddaughter killed her daughter. I mean, it had to be overwhelming.” She added, “It’s indescribable, it really is, the heartache and the sorrow.”
Sarah Johnson was found guilty by a jury on both counts of first-degree murder and sentenced to two concurrent life sentences, plus 15 years for the firearm enhancement. She continues to fight that decision but remains incarcerated at the Pocatello Women’s Correctional Center in Idaho.
***
Nestled along the Piankatank River in Middlesex County, Virginia is a neighborhood of about 360 acres, aptly named Piankatank Shores. J.B. Wiseman, a waterman, and his wife, Kathy, an assistant manager at her family’s HVAC company, both 33 years old, lived there with their daughter, Jessica.
Douglas Christopher Thomas – Chris – had a childhood filled with love, then heartbreaking loss and neglect. His parents divorced several months before he was born on May 29th, 1973. Chris’ mother gave him to his maternal grandparents for adoption when he was 2, and he was raised by them in Chesterfield County, Virginia, where he thrived. He did alright in school; he played baseball, basketball, and soccer – the usual. But when Chris was 12, everything fell apart. His favorite uncle passed away suddenly, followed in quick succession by his grandparents.
He was sent to live with his biological mother, basically a stranger. Life with her was rough and Chris got into some trouble. Eventually it was determined that it wasn’t a good placement for Chris, so in 1988, he was sent to live with his paternal uncle and aunt, Herbert and Brenda Marshall, along with Brenda’s niece, Lanie, in Piankatank Shores. That’s where Chris met Jessica Wiseman in May of 1990, shortly after he had attempted suicide.
Chris and Jessica’s relationship grew serious and intimate quickly. Her parents didn’t approve and tried to get Jessica to break things off with Chris, but she refused, although Kathy did make Jessica return Chris’ class ring. J.B. even threatened to kill Chris if he didn’t leave his daughter alone. This infuriated Jessica and she said she wished her parents were out of her life. She’d been living with her grandparents and great-grandparents, and Jessica had more freedom at their homes. She hadn’t been living at her own residence because J.B. and Kathy separated briefly and had just recently reconciled.
On Halloween, 14-year-old Jessica and 17-year-old Chris ran away to get married but returned home when they were told that they were legally too young. This prompted J.B. and Kathy to ground Jessica, force her to give the “pre-engagement” ring back that Chris had given her in September, and finally forbid her from seeing Chris again. In an interview with the Southside Sentinel, Brenda revealed that the kids had tried to get married because, unbeknownst to the Wisemans, Jessica was pregnant. Brenda disclosed, “[Jessica] had just learned and confided in me that she was expecting. She didn’t know how to tell them and was afraid her father would kill her.”
A little over a week later, on Friday, November 9th, the Wisemans celebrated their 15th wedding anniversary. By Saturday morning, they were both dead, shot in the face at close range by a shotgun.
Sometime after 4 AM but before 4:27 AM when the Middlesex County deputy sheriff arrived on scene, Jessica Wiseman had banged on the Marshall’s door until she was let in, hysterical and crying for help. Brenda woke Chris up, telling him to get dressed and comfort Jessica while she called the “authorities.”
After the deputy sheriff assessed the scene, the Virginia State Police were called in to assist as they had more available resources than the small county of Middlesex. (For reference, as of 2020, Middlesex had a population of 10,642, compared to nearby Gloucester County with 37,362, York County with 68,389, and James City County with 76,032.)
Jessica told investigators that around 9 PM on Friday, a man she didn’t know came by and talked to J.B. in her parents’ bedroom for over two hours. She overheard the stranger say, “Will you give me a quarter?” and she thought they were maybe arguing about drugs. Jessica reported that she was later awakened by gunshots, and she hid on the far side of her bed where she saw a “tall dark shadow of a person” moving down the hall with something in his left hand. She heard Kathy crying, “Help me, help me” and saw her mother’s hand on the door frame of her bedroom when a third shot rang out. After waiting for the intruder to leave, Jessica jumped over her mother’s dead body and fled the house, running about half a mile to the Marshall’s for help.
But – surprise, surprise – that story didn’t line up with evidence in the Wiseman residence. To start, J.B. was found in bed. According to the state medical examiner, he’d been shot in the face through the upper lip, with the buckshot severing his spine. “The entire load went into the brain.” If you’ve been arguing with someone over drugs, is your entire family just going to crawl into bed and go to sleep with the person still, what, just hanging out in your house?
Kathy was found in the hall outside of Jessica’s bedroom. She’d initially been shot in the face while in bed, where the bullet destroyed the left side of her face but didn’t kill her. She managed to make it to Jessica’s room but was shot again. The position of Kathy’s body indicated that the shot had come from inside her daughter’s bedroom.
After hours of questioning, Chris and Jessica finally confirmed that they conspired to kill her parents. Trial testimony indicates that they’d been planning since at least November 6th. Apparently, Jessica was going to signal to Chris with her bedroom window: if it was down, go back home; if it was up, the plan was a go.
According to Chris, he left his home with the shotgun – a Browning automatic with a 28-inch modified barrel – and saw that Jessica’s window was open. He went to it, loaded the shotgun, then passed the weapon through to Jessica, and climbed in after it. He and Jessica laid on her bed for hours, so long that he almost fell asleep. They even got into a bit of a spat because Chris tried to back out; he wasn’t going to shoot her parents.
So, Jessica retrieved a box of drugs and paraphernalia, sneaked into her parents’ bedroom, and spread it out on the floor in an attempt to make the eventual murders look like a “drug rip off.” It was also an attempt to coerce Chris to commit the murders, as Jessica told him that if J.B. saw the drug box, he’d kill them. (Never mind that she just as easily could’ve gone back in there and removed the things, but, you know, not fully developed brains.)
Chris indicated it was at that point that he went into the hallway and fired into J.B. and Kathy’s bedroom twice. He then ran back to Jessica’s room, hiding on the far side of her bed, but could hear Kathy. Chris said that when Kathy appeared in the doorway, Jessica screamed, “Oh god! Shoot her again!” And he did.
A Virginia State Police Special Agent testified that Jessica told him, “No one will ever understand, but I had my reasons.”
Jessica was charged with two counts of first-degree murder, while Chris was charged with first-degree murder and capital murder. In Virginia, when more than one person is killed in one criminal act, it classifies as a capital offense, which carries a maximum penalty of death.
17-year-old Chris was tried as an adult. He pleaded guilty to first-degree murder and use of a firearm for J.B.’s death and not guilty to capital murder and use of a firearm for Kathy’s. Chris was sentenced to 65 years in prison for the murder of J.B., plus 2 years for use of a firearm. He was convicted of Kathy’s murder and was sentenced to 4 years for use of a firearm and death, based upon a finding of “vileness.”
By Virginia code, “vileness” meant that the offense was “outrageously or wantonly vile, horrible or inhuman in that it involved torture, depravity of mind or an aggravated battery to the victim.” “Aggravated battery” was defined as “a battery which, qualitatively and quantitatively, is more culpable than the minimum necessary to accomplish an act of murder.” The court clarified that, “while a single gunshot wound, causing instantaneous death, does not constitute an aggravated battery… multiple gunshot wounds may constitute an ‘aggravated battery’… where there is an appreciable lapse of time between the first shot and the last, where death does not result instantaneously from the first.” That code was repealed July 1st, 2021.
When Chris was sentenced to die, the world lost its shit. According to an article by Dennis Bernstein in 2000, “failure to abide by international treaties and [United Nations] conventions regarding the execution of youthful and child offenders has made the United States a pariah state. Amnesty International reports 191 states have joined a ‘global consensus against executing child offenders.’ The United States has earned the ‘shameful distinction of leading a tiny and dwindling group of states.... only five countries outside the United States are known to have executed child offenders since 1990.’ In that decade, the U.S. has executed 10 child offenders, more than the five other countries combined. Chris Thomas' execution means the United States is the first country in the world to execute a juvenile offender who claimed that such an execution violates international law and well-established fundamental norms of international human rights. Two more death row inmates convicted of crimes as minors are scheduled to die this month – Steve Edward Roach in Virginia on [January] 13th and Glen Charles McGinnis in Texas on [January] 25th.”
"’This would mark the first time since the death penalty was reinstated [in 1976] that so many juvenile offenders would be executed in so short a period,’ William Paul, president of the American Bar Association, wrote to Virginia's governor, Jim Gilmore. ‘In our view, the execution of people for crimes they committed while children are unacceptable in a civilized society.’"
An article from The Guardian reported, “only Iran, Nigeria, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, and Yemen appeared with the US on a list of countries that have executed juvenile offenders in the past 10 years. Thirty-eight of the 50 states have the death penalty. It can be imposed at the age of 16 in 18 states, including Virginia; at 17 in five states, including Texas; and at 18 in 15 more.”
Chris took the blame for the double murders back in 1990. But since, Chris has claimed that Jessica masterminded the killings and that she was the one who fired the second shot to Kathy. According to Bernstein, “Several federal court decisions and new evidence support [his] claim.” For instance, in 1999, “two women who had served time in juvenile facilities with [Jessica] said that she admitted she had killed her mother” and a third came forward in 2000. In an affidavit, the last woman explained, “[Jessica] also told us, in no uncertain terms, that she had killed her own mother, but that Chris had taken the rap for it because he loved her so much.” If that’s what really happened, Chris should not be sitting on death row, as his crime no longer qualifies as a capital offense.
Due to Virginia law at the time, which has since been changed, 14-year-old Jessica had to be tried as a juvenile. She was convicted and held in a juvenile detention facility until her 21st birthday on July 26th, 1997, when she was released and went on her merry way.
Jim Spencer wrote on June 18th, 1999, regarding Jessica: “As far as the state of Virginia is concerned, she finished paying her debt to society two years ago. She's free and clear in her early 20s with most of her life ahead of her.
For a spoiled brat who at 14 plotted to have her mom and dad shot to death in their sleep, that's living large.
Nevertheless, here she came Tuesday, as self-absorbed and clueless as ever, as her ex-teenage lover, Chris Thomas, faced lethal injection for pumping a load of buckshot into her parents:
‘After hearing what the media has to say, it is obvious that their only goal, after all these years, is still to sell a paper,’ she said in a written statement distributed a day before Thomas was scheduled to die. ‘I've never killed anyone nor have I manipulated anyone to do it for me.’
At this point, Wiseman gets to determine her own fate. Her chosen role of victim plays as credibly as Roseanne cast as Heidi. She has not served a single day of truly hard time for two of the most grisly, senseless murders this area has ever seen.
She spent roughly seven years in juvenile detention. She got to go to kiddie jail because the state code said she was too young to be tried as an adult. That meant living in a ‘learning center’ rather than the penitentiary; it meant the state could not hold her past her 21st birthday.
Because she was tried as a juvenile, the records of her case are not only confidential, the clerk of the juvenile court in Middlesex County, where she was tried, can't even acknowledge that there was ever a case against her.
Legally, Wiseman is not considered a convicted felon. Only a recent overhaul of the juvenile justice statutes in the state code keeps her from being able to buy a gun.
Meanwhile, testimony from her 1991 trial crashes headlong into her current protest that she was not the mastermind or trigger woman in her parents' death.
Wiseman talked with Thomas about plans to kill her folks because they didn't want her and Chris to continue dating. Wiseman had plenty of opportunities to save her parents. She availed herself of none. She never went to the police. She never warned her mom and dad. She wanted them dead.
Wiseman opened the window to her bedroom on the night of the killings so Thomas could climb through with a… shotgun. She knew why he came. She was only a few feet away when he aimed at her sleeping father and pumped a lethal load of shot into him. She was close by when Thomas turned the gun on her mother but didn't kill her. Wiseman was right there when her wounded mother clambered out of bed and staggered toward her daughter's room.
What 14-year-old Jessica did when reality set in, when the fantasy of young love gave way to explosions of gunfire that tore the flesh from people who had provided and sustained her life depends on whom you believe. Two of Wiseman's detention center cellmates now say she admitted that she, not Thomas, fired a second shot that killed her mother. News that her former cellmates made those accusations under oath obviously prompted Wiseman to issue her statement that she shot no one.
If Wiseman pulled the trigger, Thomas should not be sitting on death row. The circumstances of this crime required that Thomas kill two people before he qualified for capital punishment.
If the Supreme Court kicks his case back to circuit court on a technicality, it will be interesting to see who calls Jessica Wiseman as a witness, the defense or the prosecution. In a new trial she can save Thomas' life simply by testifying in court that she shot her mom. Because she has already been convicted and served her time in her parents' deaths, prosecutors say she will never have to serve another day in jail for that admission.
But even if Wiseman didn't shoot her mother and won't testify that she did, her posturing this week should make any judge or juror think twice about sentencing Thomas to die.
‘No one,’ she wrote, ‘neither the media nor anyone else, seem to understand that the remorse I feel over the loss of my parents is my own personal affair. It is between God and myself.’
That sounds great until you understand that while she may not have shot her wounded, helpless mother, she stood by as her boyfriend did.
The bottom line is this: Somebody killed Kathy Wiseman by blowing away half her face from a few feet away, and one of the people responsible is walking around free.
That has nothing to do with selling papers; it has to do with getting away with murder.”
Chris Thomas was executed on January 11th, 2000, at the age of 26, less than an hour after then-Governor James Gilmore rejected a request to commute his sentence to life without parole.
That’s it for today, y’all. There’s a lot going on across the world right now – I feel like I’ve been saying that for 3 years – so I hope that all of you are safe, warm, dry, and fed. If you are, please consider doing something for those who aren’t, both humans and animals. You can donate your time or funds to disaster relief, you can hold or contribute to a food or blanket drive, you can go to the local dollar store and create a few care packages to keep in your vehicle and pass out as needed. And of course, you can always contact legislators to advocate for help and change.
Thank you so, so much for listening! Until next time, Dimes.
