The ruse would be the sex that Bob had asked Jen for earlier inside his truck.
Jen claimed Bobbi outlined the plan in detail as they drove toward Bob’s. And while she listened to Bobbi’s plan for her to commit murder, Jen supposedly snapped back, “No! It’s
not
going to work.”
What changed her mind, Jen later said in court, was Bobbi’s “continuing of insisting that I
needed
to do it. Just the idea of me and her being apart if . . . if I didn’t do this for her.”
Here’s where Jen’s version of a motive falls apart, however. Jen later said under oath that Bobbi never “threatened to leave” her if she
didn’t
go through with the murder.
“Not verbally,” Jen clarified after being asked to explain how vulnerable she felt while heading toward Bob Dow’s on that day. “She [Bobbi] did not say that. But in a sense, she was saying, if I didn’t do this for her, then, yes, she would leave me, that there would be no
us.
Because Bob was the one person that was getting in the way of us being together.”
One of the problems with this statement is that Jen could not recall Bobbi ever specifically saying, “
You
kill him, or
we’re finished.
” It was simply a “feeling” Jen got from Bobbi.
Then there’s the whole issue of them leaving Bob’s with their belongings. They could have easily stayed at Bobbi’s grandmother’s house. Bobbi had never felt threatened by Bob; and neither had Jen, for that matter. Moreover, did Bobbi really care if she and Jen split up? Bobbi was sleeping with a half-dozen females at the time. There was no ticking clock for them to leave the party house. Bob wanted them to stay, yes. But he never held the tapes over their heads, blackmailing them with releasing them, or giving the girls an ultimatum. Furthermore, whenever Bobbi wanted to get away from Bob in the past, she’d simply head over to her grandmother’s and stay a few days. But Bobbi always went back to Bob.
Why?
The drugs.
The booze.
The job.
The girls.
Perhaps Jen was in one of her “reading Bobbi’s mind” modes, which she was accustomed to, after getting high? Who knows?
Regardless, what’s utterly imperative here became a question Jen could not answer: How could Bob Dow keep these two girls apart? He didn’t have that much power over them. All they had to do was leave—which both Jen and Bobbi agreed later they were in the process of doing on that day and the day before, anyway. Jen could always crawl back to her father, Jerry. Killing Bob for the sake of “being together” made no sense in the scope of their relationship or their lives.
In any event, Jen and Bobbi later agreed that when they arrived at the house, Bob was home. But as they walked up the sidewalk toward the front door, Jen later said, Bobbi “handed me the gun and I stuck it in . . . my pants and my back.”
(It’s important to note here that both Bobbi and Jen’s second statements align with this scene. They both agreed on this part of the murder narrative at the same time they were asked.)
“Just as we planned to do,” Bobbi said. “We had a story. We were sticking to it.”
Throughout that brief period after a decision had been made to kill Bob, Jen claimed, Bobbi was “continuing” to say “that he needed to die . . . just the statements of her saying that that [was] the
only
way we could be together.”
Following Jen’s version, Bobbi knocked on the door.
(Why would Bobbi knock on this door? She came and went, in and out of the party house, at will. In Bobbi’s second version to police, she claimed to have waited outside while Jen walked into the house alone.)
Also, according to Jen’s version, Bob opened the door. He didn’t speak. Instead, he turned and walked back to where he had gotten up from. Bob didn’t look so good. A U.S. Navy veteran, having repaired aircraft and aircraft carriers, after being treated recently at the Dallas Veterans Affairs (VA) Medical Center for a reported “leaky” heart valve, Bob had been put on a waiting list for heart surgery. On some days, he looked pasty and moved around lethargically. He didn’t have a lot of energy. Add to that all the dope and alcohol the guy consumed, and Bob Dow was probably a good candidate for an early death.
According to Jen, she and Bobbi didn’t say much as they walked in.
Bob went back to lying down on the mattress in the living room, saying, “I’m not feeling well.”
Jen later claimed Bobbi said, “I need to talk to you, Bob.” She stood over the man, looking down at him. Jen stood by her side. All part of a plan they had designed and whipped up before entering the house, Jen claimed.
Bob got up begrudgingly, mumbling something to himself. Then he and Bobbi walked into the back room of the house through the kitchen. Jen stayed behind in the living room.
Then, according to Jen, Bob stopped before exiting the living room, turned around, and addressed Jen directly. “Look, I’m sorry for saying that earlier. I really didn’t mean it.”
So Bobbi and Bob disappeared for a few moments into the back room and then reappeared in the living room. As part of their plan, Bobbi took the truck, Jen said, and drove down to the corner store at that moment.
Jen said she then sat down on a rocking chair in the living room by the front door and Bob sat across from her on a green chair. At some point, she said, Bob walked over and squeezed her leg.
Jen recalled that Bob said, “I cannot believe you told them.”
(“I had to push my leg down to get him to let go,” Jen told police.)
Jen then got up and walked into Bob’s bedroom, she explained, “to get my purse.”
Bob followed.
(“I picked up my purse, turned around—and Bob shoved me on the bed.”)
“If you don’t [have sex with] me, I am going to kill you,” Bob allegedly uttered between clenched teeth.
Jen took off her clothes.
Bob did the same.
“Now you lay there and don’t move!” Bob ordered.
“He got on top of me,” Jen explained in her first statement to police. “Then he went down to the end of the bed and started kissing my foot, then he moved up and started kissing my leg, and then he got to my private part and started kissing and licking me.”
After that, Bob stood. He said, “I want you to play with yourself.”
“He then . . . got some lotion off the nightstand and straddled me and started playing with himself,” Jen told police. And, almost as an afterthought, Jen then said in her statement that there was loud music playing in the background. So Bob didn’t hear the door open when Bobbi returned from the corner store. But when Bobbi walked in and found them, realizing what was going on, Jen first claimed, in a fit of rage, Bobbi snapped and pulled Bob off Jen. A one-hundred-pound female was, apparently, able to grab hold of a two-hundred-pound male and heave him off the bed.
“He slapped her and they were on the floor fighting,” Jen first explained to police. “I covered myself up and was trying to figure out how to get out of the room.”
Bobbi and Bob got up on their feet. Bobbi pushed him and he landed on the bed.
“I was getting off the bed as Bob was falling on the bed,” Jen claimed.
It was then that Jen said she grabbed the weapon (in fear)—which, she first claimed, was on the dresser next to the bed, but then she later changed this to say it was inside a blanket—as Bobbi and Bob continued to fight on top of the bed. At some point, Bobbi grabbed what Jen described as a “pillow” (it was actually a laundry bag) and placed it over Bob’s face.
(“I leaned over the bed,” Jen told police, “and shot Bob twice.”)
Bobbi backed away immediately, Jen said in her first version, and yelled, “I cannot believe that you just
did
that!”
(This is inconsistent with Jen’s story of Bobbi insisting during the ride over to the house that Jen kill Bob. If Bobbi had designed this plan and provided Jen with the weapon, why would she utter that statement?)
Jen walked around to the other side of the bed and Bob was shaking, trying to raise his arm in a gesture for help, apparently sensing what was coming next.
(“I started shooting again,” Jen told police.)
Bobbi then grabbed the gun from Jen and screamed, “What are you doing?”
(Again, this would be an odd choice of words
if
Bobbi had been the mastermind behind this crime.)
Jen said she got dressed while “she [Bobbi] got into his pants and got his wallet out and took his money, checked his other pockets and got a . . . a bag of weed out.”
“Hurry up and get dressed ’cause we gotta leave!” Bobbi screamed at Jen right then, according to Jen’s version.
Jen said she “dropped the gun on the floor” (a gun, she had said, that Bobbi grabbed from her earlier). But as they were shuffling around the room after the murder, looking for things to take, Bobbi walked over to the second bed in the room and took the blanket.
(“Bobbi Jo just got it,” Jen recalled for police, “and picked up the gun with the blanket.”)
“We need to hurry up and get out of here,” Bobbi said. She tossed the keys to her grandmother’s truck at Jen. “You drive it back to Graford and I’ll follow in Bob’s truck.”
“I need to stop at my dad’s house,” Jen said she suggested.
CHAPTER 36
Y
OU’VE JUST READ
what was Jennifer Jones’s first version of Bob Dow’s murder. Jen’s
second
version led up to things in the same manner. But then, as Bobbi and Bob walked back into the living room after going off to have that chat by themselves in the kitchen, Jen claimed Bob looked at her and said, “I need to talk with you.”
The way she described this scene (that second time), Jen said she knew what Bob meant by “talking.” She claimed Bobbi had cut a deal for them to pay Bob back the bail money: Jen would give the man what he had been asking for since laying his eyes on her. The secret end of that deal Bobbi and Jen had discussed, however, according to Jen, was for Jen to whack the poor bastard while he was having sex with his dream girl—a decision, Jen later insisted, Bobbi had talked her into. (Mind you, this was
after
she pled guilty to murder under a deal, thus setting herself up for a lighter sentence.)
“Let’s just get it over with,” Jen supposedly told Bob. “I’ll do it.”
In her second statement to police, Jen talked about how they walked into Bob’s bedroom. As Bob undressed, Jen took off her pants, underwear, top, and bra. When Bob went to put his pants on the floor, Jen claimed, she slipped the weapon underneath the comforter on the bed for easy access, and so he wouldn’t see it. Then, “I laid down on the bed. And . . . and . . . and he went down on me.”
While Bob was performing oral sex, Jen said, Bobbi stealthily opened the door to see if their plan had been initiated. And when Bobbi realized Bob was performing cunnilingus on Jen (the plan had been put into action, in other words), Bobbi shut the door gingerly and waited in the living room.
As Bob got busy, Jen called him off, saying, “I want to get on top. I want to switch positions.” (One has to wonder about this story. Jen could have shot him right there, while the guy had his head buried in her vagina. Also, would Bobbi need to look in on what was happening to make sure the plan was going forward? It seemed that if Jen’s story was true, the fact that she and Bob walked into the bedroom would have been enough.)
Bob wasn’t about to disagree, according to Jen. One fact that cannot be disputed: When an out-of-shape, “disgusting” forty-nine-year-old man—a guy who liked to photograph young, naked girls (some of whom were minors) after plying them with drugs and alcohol—was having sex with a hot eighteen-year-old he’d dreamed of bedding down since seeing her for the first time, he probably would have done anything she asked of him.
After Bob allowed Jen to get up, he lay back on the bed.
Then Jen straddled him and started to ride.
After a few moments, Jen said, “I want you to cover your face. I want to make believe you’re someone else.” (Jennifer never said she was referring to Bobbi, as others—Audrey and Kathy—would later report.)
Bob grabbed a dirty laundry bag on the floor and placed it over his face.
This gave Jen the opportunity to locate the weapon tucked inside the blanket. As she later testified, “I started shooting.”
After hitting Bob in the face with several shots, Jen said, she jumped off and began shooting in a wild fashion (which was likely how Bob sustained that wound to his arm). She wasn’t aiming. She had little control over the weapon.
As shots rang out, Jen claimed, Bobbi burst into the room. And when she saw that Jen had gone through with their “plan” and was now standing naked, with a smoking firearm in her hand, Jen claimed Bobbi stood there, smiled, and said: “You look sexy holding that gun.”
Jennifer dropped the weapon. She claimed they both robbed the guy of his wallet and weed; then they took off.
“Wow!” Bobbi commented when I asked her about the scene you’ve just read. “I cannot believe all of this.... It’s
not
funny, because I am in prison for
all
of these lies—this ‘big joke.’ Jennifer thinks it’s some sort of movie . . . that she can just tell lie after lie and people will believe her.”
Bobbi has spent many a night crying, thinking back to those moments. It’s overwhelming and frightening, she explained, that someone could make up so many lies and be believed.
“I’m not innocent. I don’t hate Jennifer. I have done bad things. Hurt myself. Hurt others. But can you imagine being in prison, locked up, knowing—
knowing
—you didn’t commit this crime, and nobody is listening to you?”
CHAPTER 37
B
OBBI’S FACE WAS
covered with what appeared to be blood. Her mouth was full of the salty, acidic, bitter bodily fluid. In several of the photographs later seized by the MWPD from Bob Dow’s computer, Bobbi’s face is buried in Jen’s crotch. Bobbi is licking Jen’s vagina, performing vigorous oral sex. The photographs are extremely graphic; but, at the same time, they have this almost surreal quality to them. A viewer of the images has to wonder what the person snapping the photos was thinking at the moment. Was it sexually gratifying and/or stimulating for Bob to watch this sort of sexual interplay and document it on film?