Within the peaceful, tranquil beachside community of Solana Beach, California, a shocking murder rattled the residents in December of 2020 when a 37-year-old woman murdered her 64-year-old stepfather.
Jade Janks was born on October 14, 1983 to parents Jenny & Steve Janks in Texas. When Jade was 10-years-old, her parents divorced & two years later, in 1995, Jenny remarried a man, 39-year-old Tom Merriman.
During the initial years of Jenny & Tom’s marriage, Jade was not particularly close with Tom, but over time, they began to form a trusting & caring relationship. Jade eventually saw Tom as a trusted father figure in her life who she could rely on for support & guidance. In return, Tom treated Jade as if she were his own. Two years after Jenny & Tom were married, they welcomed their son & Jade’s half-brother, Cash in 1997. Despite having different fathers, Cash & Jade developed a close sibling bond when they were young.
Over the next decade, life wouldn’t be quite so smooth when the relationship between Jenny & Tom became more & more tumultuous. In 2002, when Jade was 19, Tom filed for divorce from Jenny after he claimed that she had been increasingly violent & verbally abusive. Tom said that she had been abusing alcohol & possibly meth while Jenny accused him of using meth. Jenny also indicated that Jade was using heroin at the time & because she wasn’t sober, her mom wouldn’t allow her to live under her roof. During 2002-2008, Jenny & Tom divorced & remarried each other multiple times. Despite the rifts between Jenny & Tom, Jade’s relationship with her step-father remained strong & Tom would call Jade his daughter while Jade called Tom her dad.
As time went on, Tom began to struggle with addictions with both alcohol & sleeping pills. In 2013, Tom opened Encinitas Butterfly Farms, a non-profit organization that focused on the conservation & study of native butterflies where he served as the co-founder. In April of 2020, during the height of the COVID pandemic, Jade decided to move into the house next door to Tom so that she could be there for him as he dealt with his substance abuse issues; for many years, Jade had served as the caregiver for her step-dad. They lived on a quiet street less than a mile from the ocean on Nardo Avenue.
One of Tom & Jade’s neighbors, Ramona Hamilton, invited Tom over for dinner one evening & he explained that he always ate dinner with his daughter, Jade who helped take care of him & did the cooking. Ramona knew Jade because Jade was an interior decorator who had done some work in Ramona’s apartment.
On December 15, 2020, 64-year-old Tom had a bad fall at home & was admitted to Scripps Hospital in Encinitas, California where he spent two weeks being treated for his injuries as well as alcohol withdrawal. He was then transferred to a rehab center. On top of his injury, Tom also had underlying heart & liver problems.
During Tom’s stay at the hospital & rehab after his accident, 37-year-old Jade headed over to Tom’s house to help him by cleaning. It was December 23rd & when Jade moved on to clean Tom’s home office, she stumbled upon photos on his computer that shocked her to the core. As she busied herself around his desk, the computer monitor, which had previously been in sleep mode, suddenly came to life. She saw that the monitor featured a screensaver photo of a woman’s breasts. As Jade continued to view the photo, she realized, in horror, that she was actually looking at a photo of her own breasts after she noticed her birthmark. She quickly logged onto the computer & soon discovered hundreds of nude photos of herself. As she continued clicking through photo after photo, she realized that many of the hundreds of photos of herself had been taken when she was under eighteen & had been taken from her laptop. The photos had been sorted into folders with explicit names based on the body part featured.
Jade realized that most of the photos had been taken consensually with former partners, but never shared with anyone. She could not wrap her head around how Tom had gotten access to the photos, but assumed he had gotten access through her computer as well as her missing digital camera. Jade felt shell shocked, violated & betrayed by what she uncovered that day because she had viewed Tom as a father figure since she was fourteen. She said that she was so sickened by the discovery that she couldn’t even touch her own skin. She felt terrified to be alone, to use the bathroom or to change her clothes & she felt like she needed someone to look out for her to ensure that she was safe.
Jade texted a friend about what she’d found on Tom’s computer & indicated that she was beyond freaked out & that she was unable to shower alone since many of the photos she saw on Tom’s computer were of her in the shower. She said that she was vomiting at the idea of even looking at the shower. She told her friend that she was sleeping with a knife in her nightstand just in case Tom was released early from the hospital.
A little over one week after Jade made the shocking discovery, it was New Year’s Day 2021 & police at the San Diego County Sheriff’s Department received a call from a man named Adam Siplyak. He explained that his friend & former girlfriend, Jade Janks, may have possibly killed her stepdad.
Adam explained to the dispatcher that Jade had called him over to her house the night before, on December 31st & confessed that she had killed her stepfather & asked him if he could help her move the body. She said that she had drugged him, suffocated him & strangled him to death. Adam said that he had no idea what truly happened & hadn’t actually seen Tom or his body to confirm if he was alive or dead. Soon after she made her request, Adam quickly left her house. Adam said that he barely slept that night as he thought about what to do until he ultimately called the police to report what happened.
Police began contacting friends & family members of Tom, but no one had seen him. The last time Tom had been seen alive was on New Year’s Eve, December 31, 2020 when neighbors Ramona & George Hamilton saw him in Jade’s SUV on the shared driveway. George said that Tom was sitting in the passenger seat with his feet out & a walker in front of him; he elaborated that Tom “looked like hell.” Ramona agreed to the point that she wasn’t sure if Tom even recognized her at the moment. It was her understanding that he was coming home from the hospital & he was likely heavily medicated at the time.
The next time Ramona & George saw Jade, it was the next day, New Year’s Day 2021 & Jade was standing in the driveway by herself amongst a pile of trash & boxes. George said that a short time later, Jade knocked on their door to let him know that she had made a mess on the shared driveway & assured him she would clean it up later. Hours later, they saw law enforcement arrive.
On January 1, 2021, officers arrived for a welfare check & noticed Jade driving away. They pulled her over & asked her to come to the station to answer questions. Jade willingly came in & explained that she’d picked Tom up from the rehab center & she was unaware of where he was at the moment. At that point, she requested a lawyer & refused to speak further. She was allowed to go home, but there was still no sign of Tom.
Hours later, police returned with a warrant to search Jade & Tom’s apartments, but saw no sign of Tom. They spent hours combing his apartment for clues. As the sun rose on January 2, 2021, the police now had more light to see their surroundings outside. At about 7 am, an officer walked down the driveway towards Tom’s apartment & noticed a pile of trash amongst a wheelbarrow. On closer inspection, they saw the silhouette of a body & this is where they found Tom’s body, wrapped in a blanket & covered with trash, tools & a stack of empty cardboard boxes smack dab in the middle of the driveway area between Jade & Tom’s two homes. He was still wearing the hospital bracelet, t-shirt & pajamas he wore on the day he was discharged. Jade was immediately arrested & charged with her stepfather’s murder.
Jade pleaded not guilty, but evidence, however, painted a clear picture that Jade was responsible for Tom’s death. When investigators unlocked Jade’s phone, they found that her text messages gave a full timeline of her murder plot & its execution. They found messages between Jade & a freelance security guard named Alan Roach, who she’d met through a friend on Facebook. Jade first reached out to Alan on the day she discovered the nude photos of herself & in one message, he wrote, “If you have a problem, I could fix it for you.” Because of this, the prosecutors decided to refer to him as “The Fixer” as they described his role to the jury in this case. Police discovered that in reality, Alan Roach was not a hit man, but rather a man that makes himself out to be someone that he is not.
Jade’s trial began on December 21, 2022, just about two years after Tom’s murder. Jade maintained that she had nothing to do with Tom’s murder & his death was simply a result of his own poor health & the use of off-label prescription drugs. Jade maintained that she only contacted Alan Roach so he could be there when she confronted Tom when they came home from rehab. She said that she wanted Tom to just go away & leave her alone.
Jade explained that on December 31st, in spite of her feelings, she was still doing everything she could to help Tom. He began calling her at 6:45 am on New Year’s Eve & seemed very preoccupied with medication, saying he needed to get codeine. When she got him from the rehab a little after 11 am, he had a large bag of medications with him that included Ambien. As soon as Tom got into Jade’s car, she said that he began helping himself to both his medication as well as Jade’s. Jade then stopped at a shopping plaza & texted Alan to come meet her. She went to a couple of stores while she waited for him to text her back. She said she had recently started a house project so she was getting the supplies that she needed which included gloves, towels, a nylon cord & some spray paint.
When Jade didn’t hear back from Alan, she decided to take Tom home. She said when they arrived, Tom was too groggy to walk so she drove him back to rehab for help. When she got to the rehab center, she explained what was going on & said they wouldn’t let her inside because of their strict COVID guidelines. Jade said she left & took Tom back home where she still couldn’t get him out of the car. In the meantime, Alan texted back & said he couldn’t come over, but he would send his friend to help, a man named Brian Saloman. She’d never met him & when he arrived, Jade said that he wouldn’t help her & left right away. This was when she called her friend Adam who came later that evening. She said that when Adam came over, she was tearful & said that she just needed to get Tom into his house. Adam got upset & left, according to Jade. This, of course, does not line up with what Adam told police. Jade claims that she never confessed to killing Tom to Adam & that Adam was only distressed by how Tom looked which is why he wouldn’t help her.
Jade explained to the jury that when they arrived home, she was unable to get Tom out of the car because he was so sedated from self-medicating. Jade said that she left Tom in the car to sleep off his meds & made sure he had a blanket & a pillow. When she checked on him on New Year’s Day, she tried to pull his leg from the car when his pajamas lifted & she felt how cold his skin was. This was when she realized that the worst had happened & that he was dead. She explained that despite the fact that he was deceased, she continued to try to get him into his house. She began to panic, wrapped him in a blanket & piled things around him so it looked like a pile of debris. When asked why she hadn’t just called 911, she said she was scared that she would be blamed for his death.
Of course, the police were aware of the fact that according to Adam, Jade had drugged & then strangled Tom to death. A plastic bag was found in Jade’s car that contained her DNA on the outside & Tom’s on the inside & is believed to have been used in an attempt to suffocate Tom. It’s theorized that the bag was taking too long so Jade manually strangled Tom to death. However, the autopsy saw no findings of strangulation to prove this point & Tom’s cause of death was ruled “acute Zolpidem intoxication.” Zolpidem is the generic name for the sleeping pill, Ambien. However, the prosecution pointed out that Jade was lying to cover the fact that she had drugged & suffocated Tom since her DNA was found on Tom’s Ambien prescription while Tom’s DNA was not.
When the prosecution was questioned as to how it could be proven that Jade had strangled Tom when the autopsy didn’t find any indications of strangulation, they pointed out that a person can be strangled without leaving marks or signs of injury in its wake when a victim is already passed out or incapacitated. It would only take four pounds of pressure to cut off the blood supply to Tom’s head which is less than the pressure that would be applied in a handshake which is about 11 pounds of pressure. They showed that the motive was Jade’s rage after discovering the nude photos of herself on Tom’s computer.
Prosecutors used Jade’s text messages as a clear path to prove premeditation, planning & murder. The text that was very critical was a text Jade sent to Roach at 11:30 am after she picked Tom up from rehab, “I just dosed the hell out of him.” The prosecution pointed out that a text of this nature would normally mean that someone gave another person a lot of drugs & she responded that the words were “poor phrasing.”
In her next text, she said she was stopping at Dixieland to stall which was understood that she was buying time while the drugs kicked in & made Tom fall asleep. At 12:39 pm, about an hour later, she texted, “I can’t carry him either back to my car or to his house. I’m not strong enough. Can you come, like right now?!” At 2:59 pm, she texted that Tom was waking up & she wasn’t sure how long she could control her temper. At 4:12 pm, she texted, “BTW, he is waking up & getting way more aggressive.” At 4:28 pm, “He is super medicated. I can’t keep a kicking body in my truck.” At 4:30 pm, “He’s waking up. I’m about ready to club him.” And at 4:35 pm, “He is very aware. And I’m on my own.” As the day wore on, the texts continued to become more & more desperate in nature. She agreed that the text messages could appear very suspicious.
The last text Jade sent Roach was at 5:33 pm on January 1, 2021 when she was actively being pulled over by police to be asked about Tom’s whereabouts, “Lose my number. I’m getting pulled over.”
Prosecutors also believe that the items Jade purchased for her so-called home improvement project was actually a murder kit. It was clear to prosecutors that Jade’s plan began to crumble as she panicked when Tom began to wake up & Alan still hadn’t come over. Alan told her he wouldn’t be coming but his friend, Brian Saloman would & he would help bring Tom into the house. Brian said that when he arrived, Jade told him, “I want you to bring him inside, strangle him & I’ll take care of the rest.” Brian quickly left without doing anything for Jade. The defense argues that it’s highly unlikely that Jade would confess something of this nature to someone she had never met before.
Prosecutors say that Jade wanted Tom’s death to appear an accidental overdose, but she couldn’t get his 180# out of the car & into his apartment. She drove to a hospital with Tom deceased in the back of her car, picked up a wheelchair, put it in her car & drove back to Tom’s which is something she fully admitted to. She was questioned as to why, if she suspected Tom was dead in her car at the time she pulled into the hospital, did she not get help for him there. She had no answer for that.
The prosecution’s big concern was that the jury would dislike Tom Merriman enough to vote to acquit or reduce the murder charge to something else. Their goal was to keep the jury’s attention focused on what Jade had done vs. what Tom had done with keeping nude photos of his own step daughter without her knowledge or consent. It was their point that this was Jade’s trial, not Tom’s because Tom didn’t get a trial because Jade was his judge, jury & executioner.
There was never any doubt that Jade was telling the truth in regards to the photos that she found on Tom’s computer. The photo that was set as his wallpaper had been on his computer since August of 2019. They were unable to view any of the other photos on Tom’s computer since Jade destroyed his harddrive after he found them.
Jade explained the hundreds of nude photos that she’d found on her stepfather’s computer & realized that he had been secretly collecting the images since she was only 16-years-old. She said that because she viewed Tom as a father, she had suffered trauma & emotional distress for years over Tom’s predatory behavior. However, her lawyers did not use this as a defense in court.
Neither Adam Siplyak, Brian Salomon or Alan Roach were charged with anything in this case. The defense argued that Adam’s account about Jade’s confession was a lie & that he has no credibility & only wanted to get out of something he thinks might have happened.
Before the trial concluded, the defense pointed out that there was zero evidence to support murder while the prosecution focused on Jade’s text that read, “I just dosed the hell out of him.” As well as the last text that read, “Lose my number. I’m getting pulled over.”
The jury went out that afternoon & were back the next morning to continue their deliberations. The jury came in at 9 am & only 30 minutes later they returned with a verdict. The jury found Jade guilty of first-degree murder. She immediately turned toward her lawyer with a stunned look plastered across her face.
They did not believe the claims that Jade had only planned on confronting Tom rather than murdering him on the night that he died. During her sentencing hearing in March 2023, Tom’s family gave emotional victim impact statements to convey their grief & pain. They requested maximum justice for his brutal murder.
Jade was sentenced to 25 years to life in prison & will be eligible for parole when she is 64-years-old which incidentally happens to be the age of Tom when he was murdered.
Jade’s biological father, Steven Janks, wanted to put the focus back on Tom’s betrayal & how it must have made Jade feel when she discovered that her stepfather, whom she trusted, was a sick, perverted & twisted man. When Jade spoke, she talked about how Tom entered her life when she was at a young age in her early stage of development while she was still trying to figure things out. She said that this manifested into inappropriate touch, coercion, reckless behavior & a complete violation of what she now realizes was years of psychological manipulation. Finding the nude photos of herself on Tom’s computer “shattered” her. She says, “I’m still picking up the pieces & it’s my sincerest hope that over the next few years I can put the pieces back & heal from this trauma. I’m sorry I didn’t act the way I was supposed to that day. I think about it every day since.” Jade maintains that she is innocent of murder & only guilty of hiding Tom’s body after he died from his own overdose.
The prosecution realizes that had Jade’s plan carried out as she intended, she would have likely gotten away with murder. If the police came for a welfare check & found Tom dead in his bed, she would likely be free.
Jade will be eligible for parole in 2038. She is appealing her conviction.
Resources:
- Medium: She murdered her stepdad after uncovering his dark secret: The tragic case of Jade Janks
- CBS News: Did a woman kill her stepdad after finding explicit photos of herself on his computer?
- CBS News 48 Hours: Jade Janks left a trail of clues in the murder of Tom Merriman. A look at the evidence.
- CBS News 48 Hours: Murder plot revealed in Calif. Woman’s text messages: “I just dosed the hell out of him.”
- San Diego Reader: Murder charged on Nardo Street in Solana Beach
