According to the Nebraska Department of Correction Services, Nikko Jenkins is a convicted serial murderer who was given the death penalty in 2014 for four killings in Omaha. According to the Death Penalty Information Center, there has been ongoing discussion among mental health experts who have evaluated Jenkins since his conviction over whether or not he is mentally ill.
According to court documents made public by the DPIC, several psychiatrists are of the opinion that he has been dealing with at least one serious mental disorder since he was a young child. Others claim he’s lying to avoid the death penalty, and he discovered as a young boy that rationalising his actions by blaming voices or hallucinations kept him out of trouble.
Jenkins’ competence will be a key factor in determining whether the state can execute death row inmates. He is still now on the execution row. Jenkins has reportedly being medicated forcibly for the past two years, but his lawyer claims that doing so is wrong in order to make Jenkins competent enough to be executed by the state.
NIKKO JENKINS’ MURDERS WERE A FAMILY AFFAIR
Nikko Jenkins, who was 15 when he committed two armed carjackings, was sentenced to 10 years in jail starting in 2003, per the Associated Press.
He lured Juan Uribe-Pena and Jorge Cajiga-Ruiz with the help of his cousin and sister, who claimed they were going to perform sex acts with the men as prostitutes, just eleven days after he was released from prison in 2013, according to court documents. Shotguns loaded with deer slugs were used to shoot both males in the head, and their wallets were taken.
Eight days later, Curtis Bradford was murdered by Jenkins and his sister, Erica Jenkins. Consequently, the prosecution claims “When they arrived at the scene of the crime, [Jenkins’ sister] shot the victim once in the head. Jenkins then said, “This is how you do it,” before firing a shotgun projectile made of deer meat.” (Erica was found guilty as well.)
Jenkins then murdered Andrea Kruger, a bartender, barely two days later. Kruger was allegedly kidnapped by Jenkins, his uncle, sister, and cousin on the evening of August 21, 2013, as she was making her way home from work. Jenkins allegedly forced her out of her SUV so they could use it to “rob or jack other individuals,” according to the prosecutor.
NIKKO JENKINS’ PROBLEMS STARTED WHEN HE WAS JUST A 7-YEAR-OLD BOY
NIKKO JENKINS’ PROBLEMS BEGAN WHEN HE WAS JUST A 7-YEAR-OLD BOY It was not unusual for Jenkins’ family to be associated with criminal activity. The entire Jenkins family, which includes both of his parents, has seven offenders, according to Omaha’s KETV.
The youngest of Lori Jenkins and David Magee’s six children, Nikko, began displaying violent tendencies and possible mental illness in elementary school. Jenkins reportedly brought a loaded.25 calibre handgun to school at the age of 7 according to People Pill.
According to court documents, Jenkins’ mother took him to the hospital when he was 8 years old “due to comments of self-harm and increased hostility toward others.” After being accepted, he stayed for 11 days. Dr. Jane Dahlke, a psychiatrist, examined him and determined that he had oppositional defiant disorder and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.
Jenkins claimed to have experienced auditory hallucinations and voices ordering him to steal at the time, according to Dahlke’s testimony in court. He claimed he would encounter “dark spirits” and had dreams in which his dad would have shot his mother.
Jenkins allegedly stopped attending school on a regular basis when he was 11 years old, the same year that he was expelled from a group home for violent behaviour on multiple occasions. He had used a knife to stab someone when he was 13 years old. He was found guilty of two armed carjackings when he was only 15 years old. He was imprisoned until his release in 2013, after which he began on a killing rampage.
NIKKO JENKINS SAYS AN EGYPTIAN SERPENT GOD GIVES HIM ORDERS
The Egyptian snake god Apophis, who according to mythology represents evil, chaos, darkness, and devastation, is one of the voices Nikko Jenkins says has lingered with him.
Chalonda Jenkins, Jenkins’ ex-wife, claims that Nikko informed her that he has been receiving instructions from the Egyptian serpent god Apophis since he was a young boy.
It was “just this voice that said, if you do what I want you to do, if you follow my dictates, then I’ll make sure you’re secure and make sure you’re okay,” Chalonda told KETV 7 of what her spouse at the time had said to her.
Jenkins pleaded not guilty and acknowledged committing the shootings in 2013, but in court, he asserted that Apophis had given him the order.
Jenkins remarked, “It was not planned. Like the other victims, I was driven there by the demonic force.”
Jenkins, according to The Guardian NG and the Omaha World-Herald, cut out his tongue and penis when he was incarcerated to make them appear more serpentine as a kind of worship for Apophis. Then, he covered his entire cell with blood. His tongue required nine stitches, while his penis required 27.
NIKKO JENKINS HAS BEEN DIAGNOSED WITH MULTIPLE MENTAL ILLNESSES
Numerous doctors and psychologists have evaluated Nikko Jenkins’ mental state over the course of decades, and extensive court papers detail their findings. Jenkins received a “psychosis not otherwise specified” and bipolar disorder diagnosis from one physician in 2009.
Another person chose to diagnose their post-traumatic stress disorder and schizophrenia as “Axis I” disorders. Jenkins was examined by Dr. Bruce D. Gutnik numerous times over the years, beginning in 2011, and was given the diagnosis of “Schizophrenia, Continuous, Severe.”
In November 2013, when Gutnik met Jenkins again, he maintained his initial prognosis, stating that Jenkins now had “schizophrenia versus schizoaffective illness, depressed type, and rule out personality disorder otherwise not described.” Jenkins was seen by Gutnik once more in May 2014, once more in April and December 2015, and once more in June 2016. The inmate, according to the psychiatrist, was crazy.
Jenkins’ repeated self-mutilations of his penis, according to court documents, were evidence of Jenkins’ psychosis, according to Gutnik, who also claimed that someone would “had to be quite out of touch and psychotic to be able to not react to that amount of agony.”
Jenkins, though, has a history of self-harm. Jenkins’ prison suicide attempts must now number in the double digits, her attorney reportedly told NBC 6. He used a pointed wall tile that was removed off the wall in March 2019 to slice at his eye and neck. He attempted to cut his own throat once more.
SEVERAL PSYCHIATRISTS THINK JENKINS IS FAKING MENTAL ILLNESS
Jenkins has been identified by Gutnik and a few other psychiatrists and psychologists as having a variety of mental diseases, but some believe Jenkins is malingering or fabricating his symptoms. He does have certain mental issues, but they don’t believe they are serious enough to render him incapable and prevent the death penalty from being applied.
The court document states that “Jenkins undoubtedly displayed aberrant conduct. However, a few of specialists thought he was faking it. Scores on a test showed that they were pretending to have a mental condition…”
The document goes on to list ten mental health specialists who either say he doesn’t have a “major mental illness” or who say that whatever mental health issues he does have don’t involve psychosis but rather antisocial personality disorder or “narcissistic and borderline traits,” though they believe “he malingerered other symptoms.”
Jenkins began to create “fanciful stories to try to excuse his behaviour and not be held accountable for it” as a child, according to psychiatrist Y. Scott Moore, and all of his symptoms have been made up ever since.
Whether Jenkins is deemed competent to be executed is currently moot because, according to the Omaha World-Herald, the state’s supply of medicines for lethal injection expired in 2018 and no steps have been taken to replace them.
