12 Years on Death Row — Nebraska Still Won’t Execute Him | Nikko Jenkins | True Crime 

12 Years on Death Row — Nebraska Still Won’t Execute Him | Nikko Jenkins | True Crime 

He’s had power over my life for 4 years. He don’t get that power today. Emotions run high as the man convicted of brutal murders in 2013 is sentenced to death. He told the state he would kill. The state opened the door anyway. Nebraska State Prison, July 30th, 2013. A corrections officer walked down a hallway, reached a cell door, and opened it.

 The man inside had spent the last several months writing letters to prosecutors, to judges, to parole board officials. He had begged psychiatrists. He had begged his own lawyers. He had looked people in the eye and said the words plainly, “If you release me, I will kill people.” The officer opened the door anyway. 11 days later, four people in Omaha, Nebraska, were dead.

Three separate attacks, four different lives ended. None of them had ever heard the name Nikko Jenkins. And the state that released him, the same state that had written warnings on file, the same state that had received formal psychiatric recommendations against releasing him, the same state whose own parole board assistant had sent an emergency email saying, “This man scared her to death.

” That state said it had no choice. His sentence was complete. They had to let him go. That single fact will stay with you long after this video ends. Stay with me. Nikko Allen Jenkins was born on September 16th, 1986 in Denver, Colorado. Second eldest of six children. Son of David Magee Sr. and a woman named Lori Jenkins.

 Before you understand what Nikko Jenkins became, you need to understand what he was handed before he ever took his first step. >> [music] >> His maternal bloodline traces back to a man named Levi Levering, a distinguished Native American tribal leader. >> [music] >> The the Native American Commissioner to the Presbyterian General Assembly in 1911, a man who successfully lobbied the United States Congress to protect his people’s land rights.

 That was Nikko Jenkins’ great-great-grandfather. By the time Nikko was born, that legacy had been buried under generations of drugs, >> [music] >> domestic violence, criminal charges, and neglect. His father, David McGee, had a history of violent crimes. >> [music] >> His mother, Lori, struggled with addiction.

 The house Nikko Jenkins grew up in was not a home in any protective sense of that word. Court documents obtained years later revealed what was happening inside those walls. Trauma, [music] substance abuse, violence, sexual violence, night terrors in a child who could not [music] sleep safely in the one place he was supposed to be safe.

 Nikko Jenkins was 7 years old when Nebraska first [music] intervened. He had brought a loaded .25 caliber handgun to Highland Elementary School. He was removed from his home, at age 8, placed in foster care. At age 8, [music] his first inpatient psychiatric evaluation at Methodist >> [music] >> Richard Young Hospital. He was 8 years old.

 Those records documented conduct disorder, antisocial personality markers, trauma responses, and rage. They documented a child who had been failed before he ever had a chance to fail himself. He cycled through group homes. He was expelled repeatedly from schools for fighting and disappearing. At age 12, he attacked someone with a knife.

 [music] At 14, he was placed in the Youth Rehabilitation and Treatment Center in Kearney. At 15, Nikko Jenkins committed two armed carjackings. He was sentenced to prison. He was 15 years old. In his entire childhood, through every psychiatric evaluation, >> [music] >> every foster placement, every group home, every juvenile detention.

 Not once had he received the sustained mental health treatment that every professional who examined him said he needed. Not once. On November 11th, 2003, Nikko Jenkins entered the Nebraska Correctional Youth Facility. He was 17 years old. His sentence, [music] 16 to 17 years. What followed was not rehabilitation.

 What followed was what happens when you take a deeply disturbed [music] teenager, put him in a box, keep him in solitary confinement for years at a stretch, and release him when the calendar says his time is done. Between 2004 and 2012, Jenkins was disciplined 71 times, assaulting inmates, participating in a prison riot, destruction of property, crafting a weapon from a toilet brush.

 In 2009, his father [music] died while he was in prison. That same year, Jenkins and his sister Erica, also incarcerated at the time, were given a furlough to attend their grandmother’s funeral. During that funeral, after a guard uncuffed one of Nikko’s hands so he could use the restroom, >> [music] >> both siblings attacked the guard together. They were restrained.

 They were returned to their cells. That same [music] year, Jenkins told a prison psychiatrist that he was hearing the voice of an ancient [music] Egyptian serpent god. The god’s name was Apophis, and Apophis, Jenkins said, was giving him commands. Now, here is where this case becomes something different [music] from every other case you have ever followed. Dr.

 Eugene Oliveto, a psychiatrist with 40 years of experience, evaluated Nikko Jenkins and later told the Nebraska legislature directly, >> [music] >> Nikko Jenkins was among the most dangerous individuals he had encountered in four decades of psychiatric work. [music] He believed without any doubt that Jenkins would kill people if released.

 He formally recommended Jenkins be sent to a state psychiatric hospital. That recommendation [music] was documented. It was sitting in the file. It went nowhere. Dr. Natalie Baker-Heaser, the contract psychiatrist at Tecumseh State Prison, also grew alarmed as Jenkins’ [music] release date approached. She filed her own formal recommendation that Jenkins be civilly committed to a mental health facility instead of being released into the community.

 [music] Also documented. Also in the file. Also ignored. Because the prison’s own behavioral health administrator had decided Jenkins was faking every symptom. He was so certain of this that he withheld Baker-Heaser’s >> [music] >> recommendation from his own boss. Meanwhile, in his cell, Jenkins was cutting his own face open with a floor tile.

 He was exercising naked in solitary confinement. He was drinking his own bodily fluids because he believed it would increase his serotonin levels. He was writing letters to the Nebraska Parole Board. Those letters said he was going to eat people, specifically Christians and Catholics. One of those letters reached a Parole Board administrative assistant named Trudy Clark.

 [music] She was so disturbed by what she read that she sent an emergency email to the Corrections Mental Health Director. She wrote, [music] word for word, “This email is written from a personal level only. Why isn’t Nikko Jenkins in the mental health unit? The board is getting letters [music] from him that he is going to eat people.

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 As a taxpayer, this guy scares me [music] to death.” That email was sent two months before his release date. In 2013, 11 other Nebraska prisoners went through civil commitment proceedings. The legal process where prosecutors seek to send a dangerous inmate to a psychiatric hospital instead of back onto the streets, >> [music] >> Nikko Jenkins was not one of those 11.

Jenkins’ own mother had contacted the Johnson County Attorney’s office trying to get her son committed before his release. The day after his mother made that request, the very next day, >> [music] >> prison officials transferred Jenkins to a different facility in a different county, moving him out of the jurisdiction that had been actively working to commit him.

 On July 30th, 2013, the state of Nebraska opened the prison door and released [music] Nikko Allen Jenkins into the city of Omaha. He had told them exactly what would happen. They released him anyway. >> [music] >> If you are still watching this video right now, stay, because what the next 11 days look like is something no one who was there has ever been able to fully describe.

August 11th, 2013, 5:01 in the morning. A patrol officer making his rounds came upon Spring Lake Park near 18th and F Street in Omaha. He found a white Ford pickup truck parked near the public [music] swimming pool. Inside were two men. Juan Uribe Pena was 26 years old. Jorge Cajiga Ruiz was 29. Both had been shot once in the head with a 12-gauge shotgun.

>> [music] >> Their pockets had been turned inside out. Jorge Cajiga Ruiz had raised his hand to block the shot. The bullet went through his hand and through his skull. They had been lured to that park that night by Jenkins’ sister Erica and cousin Christine [music] Bordeaux, who had promised the men they were coming to meet women.

 They had no idea what was waiting in the dark. Juan Uribe Pena and Jorge Cajiga Ruiz had no connection to Nikko Jenkins, no history, no dispute, no reason. They were in the wrong place on the 11th day of his freedom. August 19th, 2013, 7:00 a.m. in the morning. A man coming home from a night shift at a convenience [music] store found a body on the ground outside a detached garage near 18th [music] and Clark Street.

 Curtis Bradford, 22 years old, shot twice in the back of the head. Once with a revolver, once with a shotgun slug. Bradford had served time in prison with Jenkins. [music] Jenkins had once called him my little homie. They had taken a photograph together on Facebook. Within 24 hours of Bradford’s murder, Jenkins and his sister, Erica, had called Bradford that night and told him the three of them were going to commit a [music] robbery together.

Curtis Bradford showed up. They took him to that garage and shot him in the back of the head. When Erica pulled the trigger first, Jenkins told her she had not done [music] it right. Then he fired again. Erica Jenkins would later be heard saying she was upset that her brother had stolen her first kill. Curtis Bradford’s mother, Valita Glasgow, >> [music] >> sat in that Douglas County courtroom through four years of hearings and delays and motions.

 When it was finally her turn to speak, she said this, “I held him. I kissed the exit wound in his head. How do you cure evil? Because I don’t know. This is evil beyond grasp.” August 21st, 2013, somewhere around 2:00 in the morning. Andrea Lynn Roberts Krueger was born on November 21st, 1979. She was 33 years old.

 She had a husband named Michael Ryan Krueger. They had married on August 9th, 2008 in Omaha. They had [music] three children ages two, somewhere in between, and 13. She was a bartender. That night she had finished her shift at the Deja Vu Lounge near 178th and Pacific Streets. On her way home, she stopped at a McDonald’s drive-thru. Her youngest child was sick.

She was going home to take care of a sick 2-year-old. Jenkins and his uncle Warren, Levering, had spotted her SUV at that [music] McDonald’s drive-thru. They followed her at the intersection of 168th and Fort [music] Streets. They blocked her vehicle. Jenkins pulled Andrea Kruger out of the driver’s seat. He shot her four times.

 Two shots to the face, one to the neck, one to the shoulder. He left her body [music] lying in the middle of the road. He drove away in her SUV and abandoned it [music] in an alley 12 miles from where he killed her. A deputy sheriff responding to a shots fired call found Andrea Kruger’s body at 2:15 in the morning. Her youngest daughter was 2 years old.

 That little girl has no memory of her mother, not a single one. Her mother, Terri Roberts, would later stand before three judges and say, “He killed a part of each of us the morning he killed Andrea. Each of them deserves to have their mother in their life, to have their mother wipe a tear from her cheek as she watches each of them stand at the altar.

Andrea deserves to be remembered by more than just pictures and stories. [music] He took all of this and more away. That breaks my heart apart.” Four people, 11 days. [music] Juan Uribe Pena, Jorge Cabrera Ruiz, Curtis Bradford, and Andrea Kruger. Not one of them had to die. Every single official with the power to stop this had been warned in writing.

 On August 29th, 2013, Jenkins was arrested on an unrelated terrorist [music] threats charge. Investigators had already been building the case. Surveillance footage from a gun outlet showed a female associate purchasing Brenneke Classic Magnum 12-gauge shotgun slugs, the exact unusual [music] ammunition used in the killings. Cameras along the route had captured the path to Andrea Kruger’s abandoned SUV.

 On September 3rd, Jenkins called investigators himself. [music] Said he had information about the Kruger murder. In an 8-hour interview that same evening, Nikko Jenkins confessed [music] to all four killings, and then he told them why. He said the murders were sacrifices, offerings to Apophis, the ancient Egyptian serpent god of chaos and destruction.

 Apophis had commanded him to kill. He had obeyed. He was charged with four counts of first-degree murder. Prosecutors filed for the death penalty. What followed in Douglas County Courthouse was unlike anything Nebraska had seen before. Jenkins filed motions to represent himself. The judge allowed [music] it.

 He spoke in tongues during court proceedings. He howled as prosecutors described how his victims had died. [music] He laughed. He carved the word Satan into his own forehead. He cut his own tongue. He mutilated himself repeatedly throughout the proceedings. Each incident triggering new delays, new competency hearings, new evaluations.

From the gallery, Terry Roberts and Velita Glasgow sat through all of it. During one break, Jenkins turned to no one in particular and announced loudly, “When is the prosecutor going to break it to these families that >> [music] >> I’m going to be exonerated? I just think it’s inconsiderate.

 It’s inhumane to put these victims’ families through this.” >> [music] >> Terry Roberts stared at him, mouth open. Her husband sat stone-faced beside her. Psychiatrists disagreed for years over whether Jenkins was genuinely mentally ill or performing >> [music] >> illness to avoid the death penalty. The courts concluded the same thing every single time.

>> [music] >> Nikko Jenkins understood exactly what he was doing. On April 16th, 2014, guilty on all four counts. On May 30th, 2017, nearly four years after the killings, a three-judge panel sentenced [music] Nikko Allen Jenkins to death. Four consecutive death sentences, one for each person he murdered, plus 450 years in prison for weapons charges.

 Judge Peter Bataillon read the ruling aloud in that courtroom, “The defendant’s commission of these four murders over a 10-day period is one of the worst killing sprees in the history of this [music] state.” Six members of Nikko Jenkins’ family were arrested in connection with these murders. His sister, Erica Jenkins, sentenced to life in prison for her role in the murder of Curtis Bradford.

 She had pulled the trigger herself. While in custody, she changed her legal name to Illuminati E Goddess Enikko Prestige. She received additional decades for multiple prison assaults and remains incarcerated with a sentence of 163 to 247 years. His mother, Lori Jenkins, the same woman whose home had been documented as a place of abuse when Nikko was a small child, received 10 years in federal prison for [music] purchasing the murder ammunition and helping dispose of evidence.

 His uncle, Warren Levering, present for Andrea Kruger’s murder, sentenced to 40 years. His cousin, Christine [music] Bordeaux, 20 years. The family that produced Nikko Jenkins went to prison alongside him for what he became. The Nebraska State Legislature [music] launched a formal investigation into the Department of Correctional Services.

 The state ombudsman released a 61-page report. It documented every warning, every ignored recommendation, every letter Jenkins had written himself, every email from every official [music] who had tried to raise the alarm. The report’s conclusion was direct. Corrections had failed not just Nikko Jenkins, >> [music] >> but every person he killed.

 Because of this case, Nebraska changed its laws on solitary confinement. Because of this case, a new oversight office was created for the prison system. Because of this case, [music] mental health policies across Nebraska were rewritten. Andrea Kruger, Juan Uribe Pena, >> [music] >> Jorge Cajiga Ruiz, and Curtis Bradford were already in the ground.

 Nikko Jenkins remains on death row at Tecumseh State [music] Correctional Institution. No execution date has been set. In March 2025, he filed a handwritten document with the Douglas County Court. He wrote, “I no longer desire to appeal the death sentence imposed upon me.” He is demanding Nebraska execute him. Nebraska’s last execution was in 2018.

There are 11 men ahead of him on death row. The court say it is not that simple. Andrea Kruger was driving home to her sick 2-year-old when Nikko Jenkins [music] followed her from a McDonald’s drive-thru and shot her four times in the street. Curtis Bradford trusted [music] someone he called a friend and was shot in the back of his head.

 Juan Uribe Pena and Jorge Cajiga Ruiz >> [music] >> were lured to a park in the middle of the night and never came home. And the man who killed all four of them had spent years [music] in a prison cell putting his warnings in writing. Begging the system not to release him. Telling anyone who would listen exactly what would happen if they opened that door.

 They opened the door anyway. If this case stayed with you, drop a comment below. Tell me which moment in this story was the hardest to sit with. This channel covers cases like this one because they deserve more than a headline. Every name, every verified fact, every person who was failed, and every warning that was buried in a file.

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