Lately, I’ve noticed a bunch of people hitting my posts about convicted murderer, Jennifer Kszepka. I have wondered why they’ve been visiting. It’s true that I did write a few posts about her. I was fascinated by her case when it happened.

I grew up in Gloucester County, which is where, on June 7, 1992, Jennifer Kszepka and her high school classmates, Dominic Hendrix and Michael Gaumer, attacked and killed her father, Jerome, and sister, 21 year old Ranae. When Jennifer’s mother, Linde, came home from work at about 11:00 PM, they tried to kill her, too. By all rights they should have succeeded, as they fractured her skull. But Linde survived, and ultimately helped them escape by giving them what little money she had and letting them take her car.

At the time, I was less than two weeks from turning 20, and was home from college for the summer, working at Busch Gardens in nearby Williamsburg. I hadn’t even been a graduate of Gloucester High School for two years, at that point, although the anniversary was just nine days away. Here was a sensational case about three GHS students who had committed two unspeakably horrible murders, robbery, and attempted murder of a third person. It was definitely shocking to hear and read about this gruesome case out of my little hometown.

I remember how the story was in the newspaper– The Daily Press— every day. Local journalist, Matthew Paust, updated the citizens of Gloucester daily, as law enforcement officials searched for Kzepka, Hendrix, and Gaumer. My parents were then subscribers, so I read his stories about the case. The trio of teenagers were finally apprehended in Eureka, Nevada, when a police officer stopped them for speeding. They were then flown back to Virginia, and ultimately given long prison sentences. Kszepka and Hendrix each got life plus 90 years, while Gaumer, who had less of a role, got 60 years for clubbing Jennifer Kszepka’s mother.

Jennifer Kszepka, who was 16 years old when she went to prison in Virginia, has been incarcerated since the early 1990s. I did a quick check to see if there had been any recent news about her case. I haven’t seen any new articles about Jennifer Kszepka or her victims.

I still don’t know why people have been researching Kszepka… however, in my own search for more information, I did stumble across a couple of things yesterday that I hadn’t previously seen. The first item was a blog post Kszepka wrote from prison. She is participating in a prison journalism project, and has written two pieces for a Web site by that same name. I had already read a post she wrote in August 2022, but she also posted in March 2023. The more recent post, which was about her first night in prison, was especially poignant to me. Because she was so young when she was sentenced, prison officials decided it would not be safe to put her in general population. They decided to put her in solitary confinement, instead, where she apparently remained until she turned 18.

Kszepka wrote that many of the people in solitary confinement were severely mentally ill or deemed troublemakers. She was there because she was still, technically, a child… although she had been tried and convicted as an adult. She craved a glass of cold milk. She asked a guard, who showed her some compassion, but denied her what she wanted. So there she sat in the dark, keeping company with roaches and other pests. As horrific as her crimes were, I couldn’t help but feel some sympathy for her.

The second thing I found was a bit more salacious. In 2015, a show called Killer Kids did an episode about Jennifer’s case. I tried to watch it on Apple TV, but the only way to do that was to subscribe to a true crime channel that isn’t available in Germany and wouldn’t work with my VPN. No one had uploaded it to YouTube, either. But then, late last night, I found it on Dailymotion.

It was very strange to watch a dramatized version of Jennifer Kszepka’s case, which featured people I remembered from Gloucester. Matthew Paust was interviewed, as was former Gloucester County Sheriff, Mike Nicely, and Commonwealth Attorney William Shaw III. The narrator, who has a salacious tone to her voice, repeatedly mispronounces Gloucester, saying “Gl-ow-ster”, instead of “Gloss-ter”. It would have been good if someone had told the narrator how to properly pronounce the name of the county. But then they showed shots of the Gloucester Courthouse area, which is about a mile from where I grew up.

I especially perked up when Matthew Paust starts to describe what Gloucester is like– or rather, what it was like in the early 90s and throughout my childhood there in the 1980s. Paust explained that in our high school, from which I graduated in 1990, there were two groups of people: the “preps” and the “grits”. That is true. It was definitely true when I went there, and obviously, it was still true in 1992, when Jennifer, Dominic, and Michael were going there. The “preps” were the popular kids who were headed to college and a white collar life. The “grits” were those who were not college bound and, perhaps, would be working on the water, living in an area called Guinea.

Guinea is an interesting part of Gloucester for a lot of reasons, but the main reason I think it’s interesting is because it has its own dialect. Most of the people who live there are descendants of Cornwallis’s British Army of the Revolutionary War, and for many years, they were so isolated that they had their own unique manner of speaking. When we moved to Gloucester in 1980, there were parts of the county in which you couldn’t understand a word of what some people said. Nowadays, I think the Guinea dialect is a lot less prevalent. Anyway, when I was a student at the high school, the “grits” tended to be people from there or the vicinity… not necessarily people who weren’t going to be attending college.

Paust made it sound like the “grits” and the “preps” were the only two groups at the high school. That really wasn’t the case when I went to Gloucester High School. I certainly wasn’t considered a “prep”, although I was most definitely college bound. I had friends who were in what some people might call a “trenchcoat mafia”– they were alternative and wore black trenchcoats. I wasn’t in that crowd, but I did hang out with people who were. When I was in high school, I was a horse girl… and kind of a loner. I had other friends who were also “horse girls”… and probably more in the “prep” group. I did enjoy hearing Paust explain the “grits”, though… in kind of a simplified way, for those many viewers who aren’t from Gloucester.

Paust also spoke about the mentality in Gloucester regarding people who were “locals” from there, and “come heres”, and how the “come heres” were treated, especially in school. I related to that myself. My parents moved to Gloucester when I was 8 years old, and even though I was born in somewhat nearby Hampton, where some of my classmates were also born, I was considered a “come here.” It took time before I wasn’t considered a new kid, and other kids stopped bullying me. I don’t know what Jennifer Kszepka’s experiences were at GHS, but I think it’s possible that she got bullied, too, and that might have had a devastating effect on her.

A lot of people moved to Gloucester because it’s near places like Newport News Shipbuilding, Fort Eustis, and the Naval Weapons Station. Prior to 1996, there was no toll on the George P. Coleman bridge, a double swing bridge that goes across the York River. The cost of living was then relatively low. So we got a lot of “come heres” moving to the county… many of whom stayed a few years and eventually left. My parents stayed there for almost 30 years, before they moved to a retirement community in Fort Monroe, Virginia. I think by the time they moved, people considered them “locals”. I think people thought of me that way sooner, because I went to school in Gloucester and grew up with a lot of people who still live there today.

I was kind of surprised by how sensationalized the story about Kszepka was. I mean, yes… people were very shocked by it when it happened, and this show did air on Lifetime Movie Network. And based on what the police officers who investigated said, it was a very violent case, and the three teenagers deserved to be prosecuted for what they did. However, they made Jennifer Kszepka sound like she was akin to an unrepentant whore. I don’t know her personally, but I’ve been following her case for over 30 years now. From what I’ve seen, she’s been involved in a number of prison programs like training dogs to be rehomed and the aforementioned prison journalism project. She may have been a rebellious teenager, capable of extreme violence, but she doesn’t come across to me as a dangerous criminal now.

Some criminals can’t be reformed and are a danger to everyone. I don’t really get that sense about Jennifer Kszepka. She doesn’t seem like Jessica Wiseman, for instance, a Middlesex County teenager who convinced her boyfriend to help her murder her parents when she was 14 years old. Her boyfriend, Chris Thomas, got the death penalty and was executed by the Commonwealth of Virginia at age 26. The murder hadn’t been his idea. He was only 17 years old when it happened, and he hadn’t wanted to go through with it. But he wasn’t strong enough to deny his girlfriend, who was determined to kill her parents, and had even spread drug paraphernalia around her parents’ home. Although Jessica had been the one to kill her mother, Chris confessed to both killings, and he paid for that with his life. Wiseman ended up going to juvenile hall and was released on her 21st birthday. She changed her name and went on with her life.

Wiseman seemed like a truly manipulative criminal to me, while Jennifer Kszepka comes across as more like someone who was depressed, mixed up, and rebellious, but would eventually grow out of it. But, I also realize that my impression is only based on what I’ve read and seen over the years. I could be wrong.

The officials who worked on Kszepka’s case did mention that Kszepka’s father, Jerome (Jerry), was an alcoholic and had been drinking the night of his death. Jerry Kszepka was a retired Army Master Sergeant who had worked at Fort Eustis. I never met the man myself, but I am the daughter of a retired Air Force officer who was also an alcoholic. I know what it’s like to have to live with an alcoholic. When you combine that particular disease with prior military service, you can quickly enter asshole territory. In my experience, alcoholics can become verbally, physically, and emotionally abusive in a hurry, and that behavior can come on very suddenly. When you have to live in that environment, especially when you’re a minor in a rural, politically conservative county in Virginia, it can make you feel helpless and desperate. I don’t know if this is how Jennifer felt, but I wouldn’t blame her or be surprised if she did feel that way.

This isn’t to say that I think Jerry deserved to die for being an alcoholic and, potentially, a controlling asshole. But, as someone who grew up with a father like that, I understand how challenging it can be to be forced to tolerate it… especially when you are a teenager with mental health issues yourself, and your brain isn’t yet fully developed. Clearly, this trouble was developing over time, and there were some warning signs. They were apparently ignored until tragedy struck.

Because this crime occurred before 1995, Jennifer Kszpeka, Michael Gaumer, and Dominic Hendrix are/were eligible for parole. Parole was abolished in Virginia in 1995, which means that inmates who have been convicted of felonies in Virginia must serve at least 85 percent of their sentences before they can be considered for release. They can also earn good-time credits to shorten their time. At this writing, the three involved in this murder case have been considered for parole. Michael Gaumer was granted parole in 2017.

The last time Jennifer Kszepka and Dominic Hendrix were considered for parole was in February 2023. Both were denied. I think it’s unlikely that they will ever be released, but again, I could be wrong. Virginia did, after all, abolish the death penalty. I never thought I’d see that happen, either. And yet it did.

I’m glad I managed to see that episode of Killer Kids. It was definitely surreal to see my little Podunk hometown featured on a show like that, although Gloucester has been in the news for other reasons. For instance, a Supreme Court case involving transgender high school students came out of Gloucester several years ago, when Gavin Grimm, a transgender man, sued the Gloucester County School Board for the right to use the boys’ bathroom. Although Grimm graduated from Gloucester High School years before the case was argued, the case eventually went before the Supreme Court and Grimm ended up settling for $1.3 million for his legal fees. So… maybe Gloucester is coming up in the world, now…

Well… it’s a lovely Saturday, and I think Bill wants to go out and do something. So, I’ll end this post and get on with the day. Maybe this writeup will be useful to the many folks who seem to be looking for information about Jennifer Kszepka’s case.