Mother Believes Her Daughters Are Demons

Mother Believes Her Daughters Are Demons

Introduction

What would you do if your friend or family member was showing clear signs of mental illness after the death of their partner? Would you step in and help? Let’s say you’re a grandparent; you’ve not been in contact with your daughter and grandkids in two years. You’d eventually try to reach out, right? Let’s say your neighbor’s kids were showing serious signs of neglect, and then soon after, all of them disappeared, and your neighbor starts exhibiting bizarre behavior. You’d at least call the police or social services for a wellness check, wouldn’t you?

In today’s story, none of these people did any of these things—aside from a lone social worker whose cries went unheard, which in turn led to disaster.

The nation’s capital is a great place to visit, especially during the springtime when you can catch the cherry blossoms blooming around the banks of the Potomac River. If you’re lucky, Washington, D.C. boasts a lot of amazing things: countless museums that don’t charge a fee to visit, some of the craziest drivers I’ve ever seen, and some of the best Indian food I’ve ever eaten. It’s home to a wide variety of animals that make their home at the National Zoo, so many monuments that are so much bigger in person, and hip neighborhoods that make me wish that I was rich enough to actually live in D.C. And that’s where today’s story takes place.

The case that we have for you today was sent in to us by our listener, Lisa, who sent us an email, as well as another listener, Tish and B, who suggested the same case the following day in our comment section. I know we mentioned previously that we might opt to scale back some of our coverage of cases relating to minors, but full transparency: these cases are the ones that you, the listeners, are overwhelmingly requesting. With this in mind, we will try our best to continue to cover these cases when we can on a case-by-case basis with the utmost respect and care. But please keep in mind that in doing so, we are forced to censor a lot of things in order to abide by YouTube’s Community Guidelines. We feel the same way you do in terms of censorship, but please know that we can’t put the work in to honor your case requests and raise awareness if our channel no longer exists.

The Jax Family Background

Bonita Jax attended school in Charles County, Maryland. She claims to have left school in the sixth grade; however, her mother, May Jax, contested that she left school officially her sophomore year at age 17 when she became pregnant with her first daughter, Britney Marie Jax, on January 5th, 1991. On October 9th, 1996, Bonita gave birth to her second daughter, Tatiana Mecca Danielle Jax, while working as a hairdresser.

In the year 2000, Bonita met a man by the name of Nathaniel Fogle Jr. Together, the couple welcomed their first daughter, Naya, in 2001, followed by their daughter, Asia, in 2002. In 2005, Bonita and her four daughters moved in with Bonita’s mother, May Jax, after being evicted from their home, but moved out soon after due to May not allowing Nathaniel to move in with them.

The family drifted to several different places, including a homeless shelter, before a nonprofit organization helped them move into a row house in Washington, D.C., in August of 2006. However, the family’s good fortune didn’t last long, as Nathaniel Fogle Jr. passed away from cancer on February 19th, 2007. He was only 37 years old and was laid to rest at the Church of God Cemetery in Lothian, Maryland.

After Nathaniel’s death, Bonita grew increasingly isolated. She did not attend his funeral, and family members said that she did not even tell her daughters that he had passed away. According to Nathaniel’s mother, she had come by Bonita’s home several times in order to see her granddaughters, but Bonita would either call her and tell her not to come or simply wouldn’t answer the door.

Neighbors and family members described Bonita as a caring and attentive mother until the period following Nathaniel’s passing. May Jax hadn’t seen Bonita or her four granddaughters since 2005 but has stated that she had no reason to believe they were in any danger. May had made a call to Charles County Social Services in 2006, but only to obtain information regarding the family’s whereabouts. She’s been quoted as saying, “I never saw her mistreat the girls, and the girls never complained about her mistreatment.”

Red Flags and Disappearances

However, a family friend of Bonita and Nathaniel named Lesean Ragin had other opinions. The family had lived with Lesean for a period of time in 2006 prior to finding their own housing. Lesean stated there were frequent arguments between Bonita and her oldest daughter, Britney, and that Bonita would punish her by denying her food and isolating her from her sisters. Lesean also claimed that Bonita and Nathaniel would allow the two youngest to smoke weed while the two parents laughed.

Another friend stated that Bonita once drove Britney to May Jax’s house in Waldorf, Maryland, and left her there, but May wasn’t home, and Britney was left unattended on the porch for 10 hours. At one point, one of Bonita’s friends even drafted a custody agreement hoping to remove Britney from Bonita’s care.

A neighbor noted that in March of 2007, Bonita had taken the neighbor’s daughter along with Bonita’s own four daughters on a trip to McDonald’s. The neighbor attested that Bonita’s daughters always looked clean and done up, and Bonita always took great pride in making sure their hair looked nice. However, when the neighbor saw the family, the girls were wearing white t-shirts with rags on their heads. Bonita also told the neighbor that her food stamps were being discontinued, and she was reluctant to file for them as the paperwork was just too much for her to handle.

Soon after, Bonita’s oldest daughter, Britney Jax, went missing. Britney’s boyfriend, LeRoy Kelly, claimed that he saw Britney for the last time in March of 2007 after Britney had been absent from school for about a month. LeRoy also stated that Britney seemed a little sad. After their brief visit, Britney stopped responding to LeRoy’s calls to her cell phone or messages to her MySpace account, which was a huge cause for concern. The mid-2000s was the dawn of social media, and teenagers and young adults were glued to their MySpace accounts. This alone was a massive red flag.

A Social Worker’s Pleas Ignored

As a result of her absenteeism, in April and May of 2007, social worker Kathleen Lopez made repeated attempts to verify Britney’s safety. At the time, Lopez was an employee of Booker T. Washington Charter School, where Britney was a student. On April 27th, Lopez visited the Jax home with a police officer and another school employee, but Bonita Jax refused to allow them inside. Lopez noted that she saw the two younger girls in the living room and that they appeared unkempt. So, over the next several days, Lopez made repeated calls to the Child and Family Services Agency (CFSA) and the police department.

As a result of her calls, Sergeant James LeFranchise finally made a visit to the Jax family home on April 30th, 2007, and he spoke with Bonita in her front yard. However, LeFranchise did not file a report for this visit until January 9th, 2008, which was over 8 months after his visit. At the time the visit was made, such reports were not required.

In the initial report, he said that he had seen only the three younger girls on his visit. He filed a follow-up report on January 13th that said he thought he had seen Britney as well. He reported the girls, including Britney, appeared clean and well-fed, healthy, and playful. However, later the sergeant changed his story. He said that he had not seen Britney at the house at all. He said that he had not been told to look for a teenager and assumed that he was there to check on the three younger girls, even though he spoke with Lopez on his cell phone while he was at the Jax home.

On May 10th, Lopez wrote a letter to the Youth Social Services Division of the Washington, D.C. Superior Court, expressing her fear that Britney Jax was being held hostage. However, social workers did not investigate her concerns. Instead, they left notices on the door of the Jax family home, eventually assuming that the family had relocated to Charles County, Maryland, and closed the case without doing anything to confirm that they did indeed move to Charles County.

Bizarre Behavior and Eviction

In May of 2007, Bonita moved all the furniture from her house into the backyard and started losing weight. She told another neighbor, whom she often asked for water and cigarettes, that she had cancer. During the summer, Bonita’s neighbors smelled a foul odor in the area, which some guessed was a dead rat.

The last person to see any of Bonita’s daughters was a neighbor and family friend, Taiwana Richardson, who delivered Social Security checks to Bonita twice a month. Taiwana stated that she saw the two youngest girls in the family’s living room in June of 2007 but claimed she had not seen Britney Jax for several months. A singular source indicated that Bonita may have pulled all four of her girls from their respective schools under the guise of homeschooling, which is a common theme in these cases. However, due to a lack of concrete evidence, we cannot confirm this as fact.

During the summer and into early fall of 2007, the D.C. Water and Sewer Authority disconnected the service to the Jax home due to non-payment. Soon after, the Potomac Electric Power Company disconnected service as well.

On January 9th, 2008, at around 10:00 a.m.—the date that Sergeant LeFranchise conveniently filed his report on the Jax family home, over eight months after the actual date of his visit—U.S. Marshals came to Bonita’s home on the 4200 block of 6th Street Southeast to serve her with an eviction. The mother came to the door wearing only a white t-shirt with brown smudge marks on it and refused to allow them inside. When the U.S. Marshals identified themselves, Bonita attempted to shut and lock the door, but one of the Marshals placed his boot in the doorway, and they forced their way inside the dark home.

The Grisly Discovery

The U.S. Marshals said they could immediately smell an odor that they described as rotting meat, like stink bait, which they thought was rotten or spoiled food. They began scouring the home and made their way up a dark staircase, during which Bonita made attempts to slow them down or block their path.

As they reached the top of the staircase, the U.S. Marshals observed the bodies of the small girls laying in the first bedroom. They were placed side by side and were in an advanced state of decomposition. The three were lined up according to age, each wearing a white t-shirt. The body of Britney Jax was in another upstairs bedroom, unclothed and lying on the floor in a pool of blood. Underneath a white t-shirt near her body, what appeared to be a metal steak knife was recovered.

Medical examiners who examined the bodies determined the three younger girls had been strangled and that Britney had been stabbed repeatedly, but due to the bodies’ high level of decomposition, examiners were unable to definitively attribute these injuries as causing the girls’ deaths. It was estimated that their bodies had remained in the home for at least two weeks before they were discovered.

Bonita told police that her daughters were possessed by demons and that each of them died in their sleep over the course of a 7 to 10-day period. Asia died first, then Naya, then Tatiana, and finally Britney. Bonita claims that the sisters found Asia’s death to be funny. According to Bonita, Naya died the next night, followed by Tatiana, who, by Bonita’s admission, had green stuff pouring out of her nose and mouth. She claimed that the weaker the girls got, the weaker the demons got. Soon after, Britney died as well.

She claimed that she put all of the furniture outside for trash pickup because the demons had infiltrated everything in the house. A direct quote from Bonita is: “Spirits and demons have a different smell, so little by little I had to get rid of everything.” She reported that all the deaths occurred sometime before the electricity in her house was disconnected, which records indicate was September 5th of 2007, which was four months longer than the estimated time of death that the medical examiner surmised. In the end, pathologists concluded that the girls had been deceased for at least seven months.

The medical examiner was able to determine that Britney actually died first, as her body was nearly skeletonized and was beginning to seep through the hardwood floor. Based on evidence found at the scene, it was believed that Britney actually was being held hostage in the home. Her bedroom door was locked from the outside, and a bedsheet covered her window that overlooked an alleyway. Britney wasn’t even allowed to use the bathroom, and human waste was discovered in the bedroom closet.

Bonita told police that she kept Britney in her room so she wouldn’t influence her sisters. She described a chaotic life after her live-in boyfriend of seven years, Nathaniel Fogle Jr., died of cancer in February of 2007. She claimed that Nathaniel appeared to her in a dream and told her that all four girls would be taken from her. A quote from Bonita was: “To stop my suffering, Nathaniel took them, but they would be resurrected.” Bonita said Nathaniel told her in the dream that for the two of them to be together again, she would have to suffer.

Bonita claimed that she never tried to call authorities to remove their bodies because she didn’t trust the agencies and because she thought if she notified emergency personnel, that would cause her more problems. She also noted that she had not fed her daughters food for a substantial period of time prior to their deaths.

Trial and Aftermath

Bonita was arrested on 12 charges, which included premeditated first-degree homicide, felony homicide, and cruelty to a minor. Her trial began on July 15th, 2009, and was held in the Superior Court of the District of Columbia. She pleaded not guilty and rejected any sort of insanity defense, so Judge Frederick H. Weisberg was the sole arbiter of her fate.

Bonita Jax was found guilty on all charges with the exception of the first-degree homicide of Britney, due to the fact that the presiding judge could not prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Britney’s wounds were not self-inflicted or if they occurred during a struggle with her mother. Following the verdict, Bonita was sentenced to 120 years in prison on December 18th, 2009—30 years for each of her daughters. The presiding judge rejected a motion from her defense team that called into question Bonita’s earlier refusal to use an insanity plea, and also rejected the defense’s suggestion the sentences should run concurrently.

In the aftermath of the deaths of the Jax-Fogle daughters, Mayor Adrian Fenty announced findings of a preliminary investigation of District agency involvement and previewed reforms to take place in District government operations in response to the tragedy. In April of 2009, the D.C. Office of the Inspector General released a report implicating not only the CFSA but several other local government parties for failing to meet their obligations in the Jax case and potentially preventing the four deaths. The report also faulted an overall lack of coordination and communication between the various agencies involved with the family.

To enhance agency communication and coordination, Mayor Adrian Fenty proposed legislation which was passed into law. This legislation amended the District of Columbia confidentiality rules to make them less rigid and more aligned with what is permitted under the federal privacy laws such as HIPAA and FERPA. Additionally, a rule requiring police reports when checking on the welfare of a resident was instituted in the wake of the Jax-Fogle case. As a result of this case, six employees from the Washington D.C. CFSA were fired for failing to take action to help the girls before it was too late.

Remembering the Victims

Like many cases involving minors, not much is generally known about the actual young people that lost their lives here. Older sisters Britney and Tatiana share a gravesite and memorial stone at the Sacred Heart Cemetery in La Plata, Maryland. They were 16 and 11 years old at the time of their deaths, although some sources claimed that Britney was 17 due to the fact that her exact date of death is uncertain.

Naya was 6 years old at the time of her death, known by her family as “Chunky Monk,” and attended Meridian Charter Public School, where she enjoyed learning to speak Spanish. Naya loved coloring, drawing, jumping rope, and playing with her dolls. Her favorite TV shows were SpongeBob SquarePants and Dora the Explorer.

Asia was just 5 years old when she was discovered deceased along with her three older sisters. She attended the same school as her sister Naya, and both of them shared a lot of the same hobbies. Her family nickname was “Red Baron.” But sadly, burial details as well as dates of birth for both Naya and Asia are just not available. In fact, none of the sisters have an actual obituary outside of FindAGrave.com.

In May of 2013, the District agreed to pay $2.6 million to settle a lawsuit brought in the deaths of the Jax-Fogle sisters, with the money going to those the city described as the legal heirs of their estates. As part of a settlement, the D.C. Attorney General’s office said those who have sued have agreed to donate part of the money to Safe Shores, a nonprofit charity devoted to the needs of those affected by child abuse and neglect.

Final Thoughts and Channel Support

This case was hard to find information for—very detailed, intricate information. But one thing that stands out to me in this case, compared to other cases we’ve done that are similar, is the fact that Bonita Jax received no psychological evaluation. It is surprising to me. Now, I’m not here to say that she should or should not have gotten off on an insanity defense. We just don’t have the information to that, and in order to conclude that, one would have to undergo a psychological evaluation, which is quite common in these court proceedings. I think they really did her a disservice by not even exploring what her mental stability was and at least providing that evidence one way or the other.

Now, while it should be mentioned that the demons that Bonita claimed were in her daughters is a part of official news sources, I was watching an interview with Mitch Credle—I hope I said your name correctly—and he was one of the detectives who interviewed Bonita Jax. He claimed that during the interview, she never once mentioned anything about possession or anything supernatural. She just said that her daughters were asleep and they didn’t wake up. So take that for what it is.

Now again, this isn’t to say that Bonita should have gotten insanity or not, but I’m someone who wants all the facts when it comes to a case like this, as I’m sure most of you do. And in this case, I don’t feel we got all of the facts. As it stands right now, Bonita will be spending the rest of her life in prison. (Sorry about Prada.) She will be spending the rest of her life in prison, as she was sentenced to 120 years, and the likelihood of appeal is highly unlikely, in my opinion.