Bad Girls (29 page)

Regardless, Bobbi was obviously taking great pleasure in performing cunnilingus on Jen seemingly while Jen was in the bloodiest period of her menstrual cycle. They were having a ball. Both girls enjoyed this moment (with Bob Dow watching).

“Those were the most disgusting photographs I had seen within the entire bunch,” said prosecutor Mike Burns, who seemed to be repulsed by this act more than anything else. “We couldn’t believe what we were looking at.”

“Chocolate,” Bobbi Jo said later. “That is chocolate—not blood!”

The prosecutor was looking at black and white photos and assumed it was blood. But Bobbi had spread chocolate over Jen after being asked to by Bob Dow.

Have you ever looked at [any of] the photos?
Bobbi asked me one day in a letter. She was referring to all of them in their entirety—namely, the gangsta-style photographs of her, Jen, and some of the other girls, posing with knives and guns. Bobbi had seen a few photos of herself holding weapons and couldn’t believe what she was staring at. For the life of her, she could not recall posing for the photos. She had no recollection of Bob taking them.

“The drugs, the booze . . . ,” Bobbi told me.

Blackout.

“Look, you ever seen some of those pictures?” Bobbi’s mother, Tamey Hurley, asked me. “There was some photos of the girls having sex with the guns! Weird.” Tamey started crying. Then, in a whisper, she added, “That’s my baby right there—but that’s
not
my daughter. Even though she took those girls to Bob’s for those parties, Bobbi Jo gave them a place to hang out, something to eat, a place to sleep if they needed it. She got them off the street.”

“I was
very
high,” Bobbi explained. “I don’t remember a lot of things sometimes because I was so intoxicated on every drug on the streets.”

Could Bobbi have not remembered what happened that day Bob was murdered? Could she have been in a blackout?

Bobbi told me she and Jen were as sober as squirrels; they hadn’t yet started partying. This fact had never been in dispute.

If an observer happened to take a closer look at that one rather filthy, intimate (a word I hesitate to use in this context) moment of Bobbi and Jen’s life together that those bloody photographs documented and then backtracked, an interesting dynamic emerged. Just a few short years before this rather gruesome and graphic sexual act, Jen was a different person, a very young, juvenile. And yet, similarly, there were the rumblings of a teen psyche forming into that murderous, conniving, lying scoundrel Jen would soon become.

At one time, years before meeting Bobbi, Jen was someone who it would be difficult to believe would ever participate in an oral sex act so incredibly adult. Jen’s journal, which had become the one true “friend” she counted on to explore her thoughts and feelings, depicted a young, boy-crazy teen—a girl living for and hanging on to every moment of her social life. On the one hand, these were adolescent diary entries, portraying a typical heterosexual teen caught up in the wonder of that world, chasing a good time. Some of the entries seemed entirely innocent and naïve. Yet, on the other hand, as passages were read and examined, a disturbed child with severe psychological problems emerged as her life—without self-realization—spiraled out of control.

For example, Jen would meet boys by the fence near her grandfather’s pasture (when she spent time there away from home or her aunt and uncle’s) and have a chat or just hang out. She’d go skateboarding and to the movies. She’d play basketball. Or sometimes she would just watch the boy she liked play sports. Her journal proved how vulnerable and characteristically juvenile—and maybe even purely archetypal—Jen’s thoughts and behaviors were at one time.

She seemed so, well,
normal.

[Billy] was flirting with me
was a typical entry on any given day.

Jen would write about three other boys she had her eye on and hoped would notice her. Then, in a moment of pure panic, she’d write:
I called my boyfriend’s house 3 times.... Maybe [he] doesn’t want to talk to me?
Then she’d follow that up with a line of self-doubt and blame, noting,
Maybe I said something wrong. . . .

In one specific entry, Jen went on to say she “hoped” her boyfriend wasn’t going to break it off with her because she “had feelings for him.”

Jen wrote several times how she felt all that any boy ever wanted was sex—and she wasn’t averse to giving it up. All she wanted, in return for that sex, was love. And she was willing to do anything for that comforting feeling of being treasured, cared for, and respected by another human being.

Jen clearly had no trouble going out with one “guy,” even though she wanted to be with another. She’d talk about making out with one and “really” liking him, but having on her mind two or three others she wanted to be with. She would plead to the pages of her journal for help in making a decision:
I wish God . . . would tell me who to go with.
This sort of boy-crazy aggressiveness went on during all of the years she kept a journal.

As Jen began to butt heads with her father, Jerry—especially over him trying to discipline her for disappearing all day and staying out all night—she had given up on any chance of a traditional life, which she had yearned for so badly when she first started keeping the journal. It was easier for Jen, she soon realized, to give in to that demon seed she believed her mother had implanted in her rather than fight it. Her own promiscuity became the central focus of her daily life. One of her sisters had been dating a specific boy. Jen was chasing another boy, but she wanted the boy her sister dated, writing,
I’m mad [at her], but I can wait 4 my turn.

Jerry had tried to track Jen down one night. He wanted his daughter to go home and “wash the dishes,” a simple, domestic, daily chore most kids do without much prodding.

Jen told him she’d found a job and couldn’t. Then, mocking her father, she wrote how she had lied to Jerry and gotten away with it, bragging,
What a dumb ass!

After attending church services one day, along with a few friends in a quasi–youth group she hung around, Jen pledged to stay pure until marriage. Then, however, she laughed about it later that night in her journal. She said how she could or could not follow along, but she had broken the covenant already. So what the hell? Why bother even trying anymore?

What also began to emerge near this time was how Jen figured out that she could manipulate people—especially boys—through sex in order to get what she wanted, and there were very little ramifications from it. There was one boy, for instance, she knew to be dating another girl at the same time. She despised him for lying to her face about it. Not saying anything to the boy, she wrote,
But he is cute & got some $$.

In entry after entry, Jen showed her lack of self-esteem. She did not understand that she was being treated poorly by friends, boys, and even her own siblings—mostly because she allowed it to happen. Yet, Jen didn’t have the social or psychological skills to notice or react properly to what was going on around her.

Then tension and bitterness among Jen, her siblings, and Jerry was evident. She didn’t seem to get along with them, unless they were obeying her rules. Audrey became a sister Jen found moody, but she was also someone Jen looked up to in many ways. She’d blast Audrey in one entry, and then write how she “wished” Audrey, who’d visit her from time to time, “would stay forever,” ending the entry by stating how much she “loved” her.

Jen would write in passing about a family member hitting her, perhaps feeling she deserved it. Again, her lack of self-esteem was completely honest and pure. It was disheartening to see a girl so mixed up and confused about her feelings and not getting any professional help to deal with what was going on in her life.

We’re going to see mommy today,
Jen wrote one day, referring to a Sunday visit to the prison.

There was a boy—out of what seemed to be a half-dozen she was seeing at any given time—Jen believed was too good for her. She was overwhelmed by how “cautious” he was when they had sex. Describing how he used
condoms + rubs lotion on it so if the girl didn’t doch
[sic]
that it would stink or something
made Jen feel special, as if he actually cared for her. And although she’d go out driving with him and they’d have sex, Jen was a bit skeptical about “going out” with the same kid exclusively. She convinced herself that he was
too
good for her. She wrote how she didn’t want to get too close to the boy, because he was soon leaving town. Besides that, she added, he made her laugh; which, to her, was a sign that they were actually right for each other and becoming close. And this frightened her.

In the next entry, a day later, Jen talked about how she snuck out of her house late that night to go see this same boy. Another boy had picked her up to give her a ride. And wouldn’t you know, while on the way to see the boy she liked, Jen stopped off and had sex with the boy who gave her the ride.

As one spring approached, Jen and her friends from church hung out at a lake. She wrote how one boy, after she and another friend stripped for him and his buddy, whipped out his penis, as if trying to impress them. But, she wrote, how she could “really care less” about the size, “big or not.” In the next breath, she talked about how she cared mostly about what was “on the inside.” She reconciled that feeling y writing,
That is not what I usually look at.

Jen believed she found true love one day, but she “didn’t know how” to tell the boy. She drew a heart—several, actually—in her journal with her name and his on the inside. She was enamored with this particular boy. She dreamed of him waking her up “every morning.” Then, while she was not thinking about her feelings or expressing them to the boy, something happened. He asked her out, but the relationship didn’t last more than a few days. Jen sabotaged it by blaming her sisters, saying how they disapproved, and so she was probably better off without him.

One morning, she awoke, terrified, from a “bad dream” of becoming pregnant and having a baby.
I hope that is not a sign,
she wrote. She reckoned that she couldn’t be pregnant because
I’m on my period,
but then she questioned that:
At least I hope I’m not.

Another day and another “crush” on a boy. She wasn’t about to tell this one, though, and resigned to keep the crush to herself. There had been too many boys leading Jen on and letting her down:
I’m just a . . . girl with only a broken heart and no one to fix it.
She “wished” she could tell this boy how she felt; but she was terrified of being rejected, so she opted not to.

As she continued to write about her feelings, what became obvious was how Jen longed for attention and open displays of affection. These types of gestures made her feel wanted and loved. It was all she talked about sometimes: that need to be loved (unconditionally) by someone who didn’t care what other people thought.

No sooner would Jennifer write about how important love was to her, than she would go out and smoke “3 bowls” and she “could not stop laughing.”

Jen figured out quickly that drugs were a way to forget about what was missing most in her life, along with what she had gone through. She even went so far as to write how proud she was of herself for “going one day and night” without screwing a boy.

She was fifteen years old at the time.

There was a long stretch where all she did was complain to her journal about this boy and that boy, and how—not being able to help herself—she’d cheat on one with the other. That lack of morality broke Jen down and hardened her to be able to commit bigger sins, and she didn’t comprehend how it was happening. She understood that she could do more harm to those she loved and those around her without feeling the effects. She became cold and callous and seemed to enjoy not feeling guilt for the things she did. It became easier to be bad—in other words, the more she put it into play. It got to the point where Jen wrote:
Jerry Jones better watch out for me.
It was a clear warning. She felt her strength was in her tenacity to be strong and not have to show or deal with emotion. As this period of her life carried on, Jen became hypermanic, requiring only a few hours’ sleep per night. She would often wake up before sunrise, after falling asleep that same day at two or three or four in the morning; and then she would go to school all day without feeling the least bit tired.

All [my current boyfriend] wants is to [screw], she noted a few days before her sixteenth birthday. Then, as an afterthought, or as a solution to that dilemma, she wrote:
I want to get high tomorrow. . . .

Hard as it might have been, Jen tried going days without having sex, but she always gave in to temptation. In many cases, she didn’t even know the boy’s surname, and she didn’t care if one of her friends was dating the same boy. To Jen, the need to stuff those painful feelings of being inadequate, unloved, and not good enough by using drugs and sex as a numbing agent was greater than the need to do the right thing. She became hyper-sexualized, a clear symptom of bipolar disorder.

“[Someone in Jen’s family] prostituted her to men for drugs when she was thirteen,” one law enforcement official told me.

If true, this became a good explanation as to why promiscuous sex was not only a weapon and bartering chip to get what Jennifer Jones wanted, but a way for her to forget about and deal with the stressors of life. It was an emotional release. Without Jennifer even realizing it, the sex became a “getting even” with the abuser type of situation. Moreover, as most studies bear out, poor and low self-esteem and promiscuity go hand in hand. Researchers routinely find one associated with the other.

Sexual abuse leaves many scars, creating feelings of guilt, anger, and fear that haunt survivors throughout their lives,
writes Dennis Thompson Jr. in
Everyday Health,
a quote that could be attributed to Jen or Bobbi, really.
Adults who have undergone sexual abuse as children commonly experience depression and insomnia. High levels of anxiety in these adults can result in self-destructive behaviors, such as alcoholism or drug abuse, anxiety attacks, and situation-specific anxiety disorders.