Jury shown photos of murder victim's decomposed body
Mandy Jo Jenkins is seen in a handout photo. Her boyfriend, Joseph DeFelice, is charged with murder. Credit: Handout
A little more than a month after a man shot a North Amityville woman to death in a Halloween products warehouse and drove off with her body, police found her decomposed remains next to a Dead End sign and a cemetery in North Lindenhurst, a detective testified Thursday.
The remains of Mandy Jo Jenkins, 30, were wrapped in two tarps and dumped in the brush at the end of Frank Street, Suffolk police Det. John Kellman testified during the trial of Jenkins' boyfriend, Joseph DeFelice, 34. He is charged with second-degree murder and is accused of helping his friend, David Newbeck, 36, kill her in August 2010. Newbeck, of Massapequa, will be tried later.
Prosecutors say DeFelice let Newbeck into the apartment he shared with Jenkins in the warehouse and that Newbeck shot her four times in the head and once in the chest. DeFelice's attorney, Richard Stafford of Bohemia, has said Newbeck acted alone.
Testifying before Suffolk County Court Judge John Toomey Jr. in Riverhead, Kellman said that when the tarps were unwrapped at the morgue, "the victim inside was in an advanced state of decomposition."
Jurors saw pictures of Jenkins' body as it was found, with duct tape around her ankles and a sweatshirt taped over her head. DeFelice turned his head from the screen displaying the photos.
Kellman said a bullet was found in Jenkins' skull and another in her left hand, during questioning by Assistant District Attorney Robert Biancavilla. Although the body was in fragile condition, he said enough remained to identify her.
A tattoo of a flower was still visible on her chest, and Kellman said the middle finger of her left hand still had a fingerprint, which he said he matched to fingerprints on file.
Earlier, Kellman narrated a video of the Halloween warehouse apartment where Jenkins was shot. In the cramped room that she and DeFelice shared, a grim reaper mannequin faced a couch with blood spatter on it.
Kellman said he had to wait to photograph an adjacent room until a Rottweiler was taken out of it. Biancavilla told jurors in his opening statement that DeFelice took the dog outside when Newbeck arrived to kill Jenkins.
'I'm going to try to avoid it' A trip to the emergency room in a Long Island hospital now averages nearly 4 hours, data shows. NewsdayTV's Virginia Huie reports.
'I'm going to try to avoid it' A trip to the emergency room in a Long Island hospital now averages nearly 4 hours, data shows. NewsdayTV's Virginia Huie reports.
