I cannot claim to have been one of the people fixated on the Kenneka Jenkins death investigation. Her tragic demise in a freezer at the Crowne Plaza Hotel in Rosemont was grisly. Like others, however, I connected to the tragedy even though I didn’t know the young lady. The facts and details as they have filtered out never struck me as being totally forthcoming and truthful. The “missing pieces” have all pointed to an attempt to lay blame and cause without indicting anyone as the villain, with the exception of the hotel.
What about the couple who rented the hotel room with the stolen credit card? I’ve seen the video but the names haven’t been blasted about for me to know who they are. Or the woman, Irene, in the dark glasses at the hotel, whose riveting “live” broadcast has faded from the spotlight. The males who were at the party who were fraternizing with those underage girls (especially in terms of alcohol). The “friends” of Kenneka who had her purse, cellphone and the keys to her car, but not her!
Years back, I worked as a waitress. We had a huge walk-in freezer, and to this day I can still recall the manager saying that we could never be locked in it because it also opened from the inside. That vivid memory was one of the first comments I made when the news of Kenneka’s death was reported. I imagined the freezer to be a huge edifice that, once inside and in the dark, was so big she might have not been able to find her way back to the door.
So I was surprised when the death scene photos came out and the freezer was such a small room. Even drunk and on drugs and stumbling about, there seems to be no valid reason for her to have remained in the freezer without finding her way back out. I am curious if the door to the freezer slams closed easily and how difficult would it have been for Kenneka to simply turn around and grope for the door? Why do her clothes look more like someone else pulled at them? Why is just one breast exposed if the so-called phenomena of “paradoxical undressing” was in play? And the dirty hexagon pattern on her gym shoes — where, how and why did it get so high on the side of both her shoes? Young people don’t let their gym shoes get marks on them.
I am not surprised, nor am I happy, that Kenneka’s death investigation has been declared “over.” Death is never good for business (unless it’s the funeral industry) and this death generated a plethora of negative publicity. The hotel had to be losing revenue due to the ongoing investigation. That economic loss is apparently the reason so-called community activist Andrew Holmes made the remarks he did to try and defuse the momentum of people marching and demanding answers. Yet in many ways the newest photographic images have renewed interest in the case as people analyzed each and every bit of data that has been made public.
So to all the amateur crime sleuths, keep up the good work!
