Nikki and Her Twin Killers

​When Jarmecca Yvonne Whitehead, who went by Nikki, was only 18 years old, she gave birth to twin girls. She named them Jasmiyah Kaneesha and Tasmiyah Janeesha, Jas and Tas for short. When Nikki was 25, she met Robert Head, a 55 year old truck driver. Nikki and the girls moved in with him shortly after they started dating. It’s unclear at what point Nikki lost her daughters, but they spent much of their younger years under the care of their great-grandmother, Della Frazier. While living with Della, the girls were honor roll students and participated in girl scouts. Nikki was a bit sporadic and would randomly pop in to visit the girls, but she didn’t have a consistent presence in their lives. 

​All that changed in 2007. The twins were 13, and Nikki wanted a chance to really be their mom. She requested custody through the courts. Her request was granted. Although it may not have been the best decision. Jas and Tas complained that Nikki was too controlling and also a bit of hypocrite. But are there any 13 year olds that don’t complain about their parent’s rules? However, their conflicts quickly escalated into physical altercations. The arguments resulted in court mandated counseling and juvenile court appearances. 

​With all the hostility in the home, Della Frazier was able to petition the courts and regain custody. Unfortunately, the arrangement with Della was only temporary. Most of the time the courts make every attempt to keep families together that are willing to put in the effort, and in January of 2010, they once again awarded Nikki custody of the girls. Della protested the decision. Jas and Tas protested the decision. But the court stood by their decision for the girls to return to Nikki. However, this time, they put a two week trial period in place. During that trial period, Nikki was murdered. 

​On January 13, 2010, a Rockdale County Sheriff's Deputy just happened to be driving through the Whitehead’s neighborhood in Conyers, Georgia, when two distressed young women flagged him down as he was passing by. Jas and Tas were extremely upset and stated that they had come home from school and found their mother dead in the tub.  

​When the officer entered the home, he was immediately hit by the strong smell of blood in the air, that metallic copper iron smell. There were pools of blood around the living room and kitchen. So much blood, that it had quit soaking into the carpet. There were lines of blood where the body had been dragged around and into the tub. Blood was splattered on the walls, furniture and ceiling. The officer said it was by far the worst crime scene he had ever walked in to. He found Nikki in the bath tub. Right where the girls said she would be. Nikki had been stabbed 50 times. Her lungs were punctured, her jugular vein severed and her spinal cord injured. She had also been bitten and punched. 

​Jas and Tas were visibly shaken during the interrogation. The detectives were comforting and tried to console the teen girls. The twins described the crime scene that they walked into like something they had only seen on of a TV show. Initially, the police believed them. But as the crime scene was investigated, they couldn’t find any signs of breaking and entering. Leading them to believe that Nikki knew her attacker. The medical examiner even said it looked like a crime of passion. That changed the direction of the investigation. 

​They decided to separate the girls who they had been questioning together. Once separated the detectives began to doubt their stories. Their stories started to develop inconsistencies and the account of what happened started changing. It was easy to confirm that the girls had not been at school all day. The girls had been wearing gloves. It was January and cold outside, but even in the interrogation room Jas and Tas had left them on. The detectives asked them to remove their gloves. It was not really a surprise to find scratches and bite marks covering their hands. 

​However, the girls quickly offered an explanation. They claimed the scratches probably came from them fighting with each other. They also claimed that they both dealt with being nervous and biting their hands brought some kind of calming relief. The explanations could have been true. The girls were known to physically fight and some people do bite themselves, or cut themselves, to feel a sort of release. They couldn't say the girls’ explanation was a lie or make them feel bad for the reasons they gave, so they just continued their investigation through other sources. 

​The girls were allowed to go with Della and continued to deny any involvement. Blood from the crime scene was collected and the DNA was tested. Nikki’s boyfriend was cleared, his DNA did not match. Although the DNA did produce a match. Three matches to be exact, Nikki, Jas and Tas. Implicating the twins… they were present at the time of their mother’s murder. 

​In May of 2010, four months after Nikki’s death, her 16 year old twins, Jasmiyah Kaneesha and Tasmiyah Janeesha were arrested and charged as adults with voluntary manslaughter, making false statements and being in possession of a knife during a crime. The detectives had placed microphones in the police cars in the event the girls said anything incriminating after the arrest. The girls were angry, almost taunting the police. Jas kept asking about the bite marks. Tas questioned why she was being arrested if they had not found a murder weapon with her fingerprints on it, even challenging them to find it. 

In 2014, the twins finally quit denying any involvement and pleaded guilty accepting a lesser charge. They were sentenced to 30 years in prison and sent to different prisons to serve their time. 

​Now that the truth was out, they could give their account of really happened on that cold and bloody January day.

Jas and Tas woke up late for school. They were fighting with Nikki about them being late, again. They said Nikki complained that they didn’t follow her rules and she was angry. They claimed she grabbed a pot and tried to hit them with it. At some point she grabbed a knife and started to threaten them as she was yelling. Jas said that Nikki lunged at her so she grabbed the pot and hit her mom with it. Jas said when Nikki fell, she latched onto her chest and bit her. Then Jas grabbed a vase and broke it over Nikki’s head, so she would quit biting. Both girls started punching Nikki but she was still fighting back, scratching them and trying to bite their hands. Tas grabbed the knife off the counter and started to stab Nikki. Eventually Jas grabbed the knife from her sister, and stabbed Nikki a few more times. They drug their mom’s body into the master bathroom and put her in the tub. Nikki was still alive at that point. The girls said she was yelling at them about how much she hated them and that they would go to jail for what they were doing to her. It’s not documented how long she was in the tub before Jas and Tas flagged down the officer driving by. They could have called the police at any time, but it appears they wanted to make sure that she was dead and could not be resuscitated or helped. 

​Della Frazier continued to stand by her great –granddaughters describing them as loving girls. 

But Nikki’s friends disagreed and said they were not at all shocked by what the girls did. Could Jas and Tas really have been that different depending on if they were living with Della or Nikki? Did living with their mom really bring out the evil in them? Or did their great-grandmother just refuse to see it? We all have a breaking point, but that doesn’t mean that we are all going to commit murder when we reach it. 

​Matricide is fairly uncommon. The murder of a mother at the hands of her own children. Actually, less than 1% of all homicides are matricide related. And most of the time when they are, the mothers were killed by a son. So what caused two 16 year old daughters to not only kill their mother, but to do it in such a violent and brutal way? We may never really know exactly what happened, only the story the twins tell. According to the American Society for Positive Care for Children, 36% of women in the US prison system were abused as children. And the numbers for children physically or psychologically abused every year are staggering. Yet, there is very little research on how many parents live in homes with abusive teenagers. We know it exists. And we know that it sounds like the relationship between Nikki Whitehead and Jas and Tas was violent, unhealthy and chaotic. What we will never really know, is who the real abuser was in this sad story that ended with such an uncommon and murder.