As testimony advances, many questions remain

'I'm so mad, I could just pull her body out of the ground,' a friend said defendant Jenkins told him.
By ED RUNYAN
VINDICATOR TRUMBULL STAFF
WARREN -- About half of the prosecution's witnesses have testified, giving the jury in the David Jenkins murder trial a big chunk of evidence to consider.
But without the remainder of the witnesses, it is difficult to tell what direction Trumbull County Prosecutor Chris Becker is headed with some of the questioning he has pursued so far. Becker is expected to call his last witness by midweek.
Jenkins' trial began last week in Trumbull County Common Pleas Court and continues today. If convicted of murder, Jenkins, 43, faces a sentence of 15 years to life. He is a former Harding High girls basketball coach, former associate pastor at New Jerusalem Fellowship Church and former recreational director at the Rebecca Williams Community Center.
The 11 witnesses who have testified have mostly been the close friends of the Jenkins family who quickly mobilized a search for Deana Jenkins after an eerie phone call from her at 6:30 p.m. May 20, 2004, saying she needed help at home right away. The Jenkins' two children, Desirae and Durrell, also testified.
The first five witnesses after a DNA expert were Deana's close friend, Bernadette McElroy, and two couples who spent a lot of time with Deana and David Jenkins: Neil and Toni Heller and Pierre and Karen Osborne.
Each gave similar descriptions of the search for Deana Jenkins and the marital trouble the couple told them they were having. McElroy and Heller said Deana Jenkins told David Jenkins the night before her death she was leaving him as soon as she could save up enough money to move out.
What's not clear
But it was less clear why some of the other questions were asked. For example, Becker asked most of them whether doors at the Jenkins house were locked when they got there. All said yes, though there was disagreement over whether screen doors were locked.
Witnesses were consistent in describing David Jenkins as wearing a blue and yellow Michigan Wolverines outfit May 20. McElroy said he was wearing paint-splattered work pants when she saw him at home with Deana around 6 p.m., however.
Witnesses consistently described Deana Jenkins' car in front of the Jenkins house the evening she was killed and agreed David Jenkins was using his father's white pickup truck most of the afternoon because his son, Durrell, was using David Jenkins' car.
Testimony showed that food was still cooking in the oven and on the stove when friends got to the Jenkins home that afternoon searching for Deana Jenkins.
Clearer was testimony from David Jenkins' daughter, Desirae, and by Karen Osborne indicating David Jenkins was very sweaty at two points that day -- at 7 p.m. when Jenkins picked up his daughter to take her shopping, and an hour or so after that when he emerged alone from the house to speak to several of Deana's friends.
And testimony from several sources said Jenkins had a scratch on his nose the evening of his wife's death. Desirae Jenkins said her father did not have the scratch earlier in the day.
Friends who talked with David Jenkins in the days and weeks after his wife's death described him as being sorry he left the door unlocked to his house when he went out to get duct tape and that this act allowed someone to get inside and kill his wife.
"'I did this. I did this to my wife,'" friend Neil Heller testified Friday of Jenkins' statement to New Jerusalem's pastor, Rev. Alton Merrell Sr., at the hospital later the night Deana Jenkins died. Heller was in the room at the time.
"'By not being there to protect my wife, I did this,'" Heller said Jenkins told Merrell.
Other accounts
Though David Jenkins may not take the stand himself, the jury received second-hand accounts from Pierre Osborne and Neil Heller about May 20 and beyond.
A document filed by David Jenkins' attorney with the court before the trial began indicated that Jenkins was one of two places when his wife was killed: his parents house at 709 Hoyt St. or the community center.
Pierre Osborne related how in a conversation with David Jenkins on June 17, Jenkins said he had acquired letters and post cards from Deana's office at the Child Support Enforcement Agency from three male admirers.
Jenkins told Osborne he was "done crying" for his wife because of the letters. "'I'm so mad, I could just pull her body out of the ground,'" Osborne reported Jenkins saying.
Other testimony
Osborne said Jenkins discussed May 20 with him also, giving the following version of events: After dropping off Desirae at his parents' house, Jenkins played football in the neighborhood with some kids, went home to get fliers for them advertising his painting business, made love to Deana, used duct tape on the area around an air conditioner in his house to keep out ants and worked on fliers for the kids until around 6 p.m.
Osborne said Jenkins told him the next thing he did was go looking for the kids in the neighborhood he had played football with earlier. "The kids had gone, so he [Jenkins] remembered he was to take Desirae shopping, so he went and picked up Desirae," Osborne testified.
He picked up Desirae around 7 p.m., she testified.
Neil Heller said David Jenkins talked with him on the telephone June 19, 2004, and Jenkins told him he was suspicious of McElroy. "'Bernadette knows something. She's setting me up,'" Heller said Jenkins told him.
Jenkins told Heller that when his wife's body was found in the closet, McElroy immediately wanted to call police, not just an ambulance: "'Why would she want to call police? She doesn't even know if she's dead.'" Heller continued.
Heller said Jenkins' version of events from May 20 were the following: He left his father's house after dropping off his daughter, played football with some boys near his house, went home and got some fliers to give to the boys to distribute for him and then walked through the neighborhood looking for the boys.
He said he went home, made love to Deana, used duct tape to keep ants from coming in around an air conditioner, left to buy more duct tape and then went back to his parents' house to shop with Desirae.
Heller said Jenkins confided in him another time -- he doesn't remember the date -- and Jenkins told Heller of his anger toward his wife over the letters. Jenkins picked Heller up at a car repair shop and took Heller to the cemetery where Deana was buried.
"He began talking to [Deana] as if he was upset," Heller testified of Jenkins. "He wanted to know if I was upset with Deana." Heller said he told Jenkins he was not upset with her because she was not there to defend herself.