Vicki Smith, Jason Wiggins, and Dorothy Siddle were employees at the Cracker Barrel Restaurant in Naples, Florida when they were killed on the morning of November 15, 1995, during the commission of a robbery. Police found the victims on the floor of the freezer and all three victims had their throats slit. Siddle was found with her hands bound with electrical tape behind her back. Both Wiggins and Smith still had electrical tape hanging from their left wrists, however; it appeared to have come free from their right hands.
Bloody shoe prints led from the freezer, through the kitchen, and ended up in the office. The office safe was found open and was surrounded by cash and plastic containers. Behind the restaurant there were scattered bills, a knife, a knife case, a pair of bloodstained gloves, an air pistol, and shoe prints leading away from the restaurant.
Brandy Jennings and Jason Graves knew the victims through their previous employment at Cracker Barrel. Three weeks after the murders, Jennings and Graves were apprehended and jailed in Las Vegas, Nevada for the robbery and murders. Jennings initially blamed Graves for the murders, but admitted his participation in the planning and in the perpetration of the robbery itself. Jennings admitted wearing gloves during the commission of the robbery. Jennings acknowledged that he used his Buck knife to cut the electrical tape after binding the victims’ hands, but claimed that he must have put the knife down after using it because he does not recall seeing it after that point. Jennings stated that he saw the dead victims on the floor of the freezer and that he slipped in the blood, but he does not recall falling, getting his clothing and hands bloody, or subsequently washing the blood off of his hands in the kitchen sink. Jennings told the police that it was Graves’ air pistol and Jennings then directed the police to the canal when evidence of the crime had been discarded. Items eventually recovered from the canal included: gloves, clothes, shoes, socks, packaging from a pellet air gun, a money bag marked “Cracker Barrel”, money bands, a clear garbage bag, and rocks which were weighing down the bundle of evidence. An expert testified that the bloody footprints in and around the Cracker Barrel matched the prints on the shoes that belonged to Jennings, which were pulled out of the canal.
After being confronted by police with inconsistencies in his story, Jennings stated in a taped interview that, “I think I could have been the killer. In my mind I think I could have killed them, but in my heart I don’t think I could have.”
Jennings made comments to several people about his dislike of victim, Siddle. Jennings also previously made comments about robbery and witness elimination. Jennings had stated that robbery was an easy way to get money and the best way to get away with it was not to leave witnesses.
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