Jerome Dennis

Overview

Jerome Dennis was a paroled rapist who was charged with five murders and four rapes in East Orange and Newark after authorities said the crimes began in December, less than a month after his release. He pleaded not guilty at his arraignment.

He was later described as having pleaded guilty to killing five women and assaulting two others in East Orange. He was sentenced to life in prison on March 2, 1993.

Timeline

• Nov. 6, 1981 — Jerome Dennis was arrested with an older brother, William, on the night of the third attack.
• Dec. 12 — A 26-year-old woman was raped; she survived the attack.
• Dec. 16 — Robyn Carter, 41, of Newark, had her body found in Newark.
• Feb. 17 — Elizabeth Clenor’s mother reported her missing.
• Feb. 22 — A 23-year-old woman was attacked.
• Feb. 28 — Jerome Dennis pleaded guilty to killing five women and assaulting two others last year in East Orange.
• Mar. 2, 1993 — Jerome Dennis was sentenced to life in prison.
• April 14, 1992 — Authorities charged Jerome Dennis with five murders and four rapes.
• April 15, 1992 — A report described Jerome Dennis as a model inmate and parolee while he was in prison and during parole, while he was accused again.
• April 18, 1992 — Jerome Dennis was charged with an additional count of attempted murder and assault.
• Aug. 28, 1991 — Maria Ferguson’s body was found in an abandoned building before Jerome Dennis’s release.
• Nov. 19 — Jerome Dennis was paroled from the state prison at Yardville after serving the mandatory minimum 10 years of a 30-year sentence for rape, criminal restraint and armed robbery.
• 1981 — Jerome Dennis was initially charged in Essex County and was sentenced as an adult.

Background

Jerome Dennis was held in prison since he was 14 in 1981 and was described as a seventh-grade dropout. He had run-ins with the law even before his arrest on rape charges in 1981.

During the 10 years in prison for rape, he attended vocational cooking classes and a Bible study group and held two jobs after his release under a parole program that provided intensive monitoring.

He was employed for several months at the Pleasantdale Bakery, described as a kosher bakery on Pleasant Valley Way in West Orange. Employees said he worked as a porter, was quiet and diligent, and that they knew he had been in prison. He also worked part time at a cleaning job in an East Orange Burger King.

The offence

Authorities said Jerome Dennis was charged with five murders and four rapes in East Orange and Newark. The authorities said the deaths and attacks began in December, less than a month after his release.

Victims and attacks described in the charges

• Rape and survivor
  • A 26-year-old woman was raped on Dec. 12 and survived the attack.
• Deaths and bodies found
  • Robyn Carter, 41, of Newark — her body was found Dec. 16 in Newark; it was not clear how she died or how long she had been dead.
  • Jamillah Jones, 16, of Beech Street — she was found dead of stab wounds at 2:49 A.M. on Main Street at North Maple Avenue by an East Orange police officer.
  • Elizabeth Clenor, 30, of Crawford Street — she was found at 6:14 A.M.; the mother of two children, she had been reported missing on Feb. 17; she died of a blow to the head, according to the Medical Examiner.
  • Stephanie Alston, 30 — at 4:04 P.M. on Friday, her body was found.
  • Another victim — a body was found decomposed beneath foliage near Oraton Parkway and Route 280 West the next afternoon; this victim had not yet been identified.
• Assault survivors
  • A 23-year-old woman was attacked on Feb. 22.
  • Authorities said Jerome Dennis was charged with attempted murder in the attacks on the two women who survived.

Deaths under investigation not listed in the initial charges

The deaths of two other women under investigation by the task force were not listed in the charges made against Jerome Dennis at the time of the initial charging.

• Maria Ferguson, 27, of East Orange — identified over the weekend; her body was found Aug. 28, 1991, before Jerome Dennis’s release.
• The other victim — whose body was badly decomposed; it had not been identified; her body was found last Wednesday. Both bodies were discovered in an abandoned building about a mile from the area where the other victims were found or attacked.

Investigation

A task force of law-enforcement agencies investigated the deaths, and the authorities said Jerome Dennis was the suspect identified by two East Orange women he was also accused of attacking.

Officials refused to comment on motive, how victims were selected, possible links between Jerome Dennis and the women, whether witnesses came forward, or any details about Jerome Dennis’s early life or prison record. The only common thread officials said was the race of the women and Jerome Dennis, who were black.

Testing included samples of Jerome Dennis’s hair, blood and saliva. Officials did not state when a grand jury would be convened.

The task force consisted of representatives from the state police, the East Orange police, the Essex County Sheriff’s Department, the New Jersey Transit Police and the Newark Police Department, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation had been asked to join the task force.

The investigation was being coordinated by Mr. Lenz, who was also head of the homicide squad in the prosecutor’s office.

Arrest

Jerome Dennis was arrested Sunday morning before dawn at his home in East Orange.

He lived at 254 North Walnut, described as a three-family Victorian house.

Trial

Arraignment and plea

During his arraignment before Judge Joseph A. Falcone of Superior Court, Jerome Dennis stood in the courtroom with his manacled hands shielding his face. He spoke only when the judge asked him for his Social Security number and pleaded not guilty to all the charges through his court-appointed public defender, Joseph Kracora.

Bail was set at $2 million, pending a grand jury indictment.

Earlier conviction that placed him in prison

Jerome Dennis was paroled from the state prison at Yardville on Nov. 19, after serving the mandatory minimum 10 years of a 30-year sentence for rape, criminal restraint and armed robbery, according to the Essex County prosecutor’s office.

The prosecutor said Jerome Dennis was initially charged in 1981 in Essex County and was sentenced as an adult.

Jerome Dennis entered the criminal-justice system 11 years earlier as a teen-ager, after committing three rapes in Newark in the fall of 1981.

He was arrested with an older brother, William, on Nov. 6, 1981. William Dennis was still in prison at the time of the later reporting.

In 1983, Jerome Dennis and William Dennis were convicted in Newark of two rapes and an attempted rape in Newark. William Dennis was sentenced to 30 years without parole and was at East Jersey State Prison.

Sentencing

Jerome Dennis pleaded guilty to killing five women and assaulting two others last year in East Orange. Prosecutors said they would drop 30 lesser charges. Prosecutors said they would ask Judge Joseph A. Falcone to sentence him to life in prison with no possibility of parole for 60 years. Judge Falcone set March 12 as the date for sentencing.

Jerome Dennis was sentenced to life in prison on March 2, 1993.

Appeals

No appeal information was included in the provided material.

Outcome

Jerome Dennis was charged and later pleaded guilty, and he received a life sentence.

Aftermath and related charges

Special task force continued work

As one of the victims, 16-year-old Jamillah Jones, was buried, the special task force continued work.

Citizens were urged to call a 24-hour hotline, (201) 676-0406.

Additional attempted-murder charges

Jerome Dennis was later charged with an additional count of attempted murder and assault.

The Essex County prosecutor announced he had been charged with:

• An additional count of attempted murder and assault.
• A third charge of attempted murder that was described as an April 3 attack on a 32-year-old Newark woman who was stabbed in the neck; she was treated at a hospital and released.

Prosecutors said both women who survived the attacks identified Jerome Dennis in police lineups.

Another man charged for a separate murder

Another East Orange man, Curtis Lee Stone Jr., was charged with the murder of Maria Ferguson, 27, whose body was found in August in an abandoned building on Washington Street. Officials said Ms. Ferguson had been strangled.

Other details

Jerome Dennis’s arraignment was covered with limited information released by officials. The acting Essex County prosecutor Peter J. Francese spoke at a news conference and rejected questions beyond identity of the suspect and victims.

Francese** said: "not just plucked out of the thin air."

At City Hall, Renee Boone said: "All the media was after them," and "I think what they needed was a suspect fast."

A quote from a prosecutor about the arrest in 1981 described it as "bizarre." The prosecutor Richard Banas said: "bizarre." He also said the boys were "bragging." Banas said they "They told the police what they were doing, on the tape-recorded police phone system," and that "They were bragging." Banas said the boys described the attack in obscene detail and asserted that two Newark police officers were also involved.

An East Orange police officer discovered the body of Jamillah Jones.

Local commentary included Troy Cofield, a superintendent who worked for the owner of the house next door, saying: "We still got a woman out there who's an unsolved murder," and "It makes you feel odd that it's in your neighborhood and even odder that it's next door. I have a wife and two kids and I had told her not to go out alone."

Robert Egles, executive director of the state parole board, said: "There are cases where someone is paroled and convicted, and you go back and with hindsight you can see it was a problem waiting to happen." Egles also said: "But the file is 100 percent, nothing missing. It's hard to see how this alleged behavior will end up being explained."

Mario Paparozzi, supervising parole officer for the New Jersey Bureau of Parole, said Jerome Dennis’s parole officer was "surprised and shocked."

An official familiar with Jerome Dennis’s case, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said Jerome Dennis was also required to continue psychological treatment or counseling that he had begun in prison, and he apparently complied.

A spokesman for the Essex County prosecutor’s office, Ray Weiss, said he did not know when a grand jury would be convened. Ray Weiss also said the third charge described an April 3 attack on a 32-year-old Newark woman who was stabbed in the neck.