Nebraska to Execute Nikko Jenkins for Brutal 10-Day Killing Spree. NO MERCY, Death Row US

The End of the Line for Appeals

A Nebraska spree killer is running out of options to avoid his death sentence. Jacqueline Fernandez joins us with why a judge found no reason to give him a new trial.

“Brian, Aaron. A Douglas County judge rejected Nikko Jenkins’s appeal. Jenkins faces the death penalty for murdering four people in Omaha in 2013.”

In 2020, he raised seven issues to try to change his fate. This week, a judge found none of the issues required further examination or hearings. That includes his claim that his attorney didn’t present evidence of his mental health factors. The judge cited records showing extensive evidence was presented at his trial. The latest ruling also ends Jenkins’s request to fund a mental evaluation, which he requested about four months ago.

In March of last year, Jenkins wrote in a letter to the courts to put him to death and end the appeals. A month later in court, he said he changed his mind. Douglas County Attorney Don Klein called the decision a step in the right direction and a relief that the state can close the door on this case.

10 Days, 4 Victims, and a System’s Failure

In the summer of 2013, four people were shot and killed across three different neighborhoods in Omaha, Nebraska. The victims had nothing in common. Two were young Hispanic men from South Omaha who attended church and supported their families. One was a 22-year-old from North Omaha who thought he was hanging out with a friend. The last was a 33-year-old mother of three who was driving home from her bartending shift at 2:00 in the morning.

What made these crimes unlike anything Omaha had seen before was not just the body count or the speed at which they happened. It was what came before them. It was everything the state of Nebraska knew and chose to ignore.

Nikko Jenkins had spent ten and a half years in the state’s own prison system. He had been locked in solitary confinement for 22 to 23 hours a day. For the last two years of his sentence, he was considered too dangerous to share a cafeteria with other convicted felons. Three separate psychiatrists evaluated him and came to the same conclusion: This man would kill if released. One of them said it in the plainest language possible: “He was psychotic, delusional, and he told me he was going to kill people, and I believed it.” Jenkins’s own mother called the state and begged them to commit her son to a psychiatric hospital. Jenkins himself wrote letters to prison officials, to prosecutors, and to judges, telling them he did not want to be released. He said he was afraid of what he would do. He also said he was going to eat people, specifically Christians and Catholics.

Nobody acted. On July 30th, 2013, the state of Nebraska opened the prison gates and released Nikko Allen Jenkins directly from solitary confinement onto the streets of Omaha. There was no parole officer, no treatment plan, and no supervision of any kind.

The Victims

• 12 days later: Juan Uribe-Pena and Jorge Cajiga-Ruiz were dead in a pickup truck at Spring Lake Park. They were 26 and 29 years old. They had been lured there by Jenkins’s sister and cousin, who pretended to arrange a date. Jenkins walked up to the truck with a shotgun loaded with deer slugs and shot both men in the head. He turned their pockets inside out and left.

• 8 days after that: Curtis Bradford was dead behind a garage in North Omaha. He was 22. He had met Jenkins in prison and considered him a friend. They had taken a photo together and posted it on Facebook less than 24 hours before Jenkins shot him in the back of the head.

• 2 days later: Andrea Krueger was dead in the road at 168th and Fort Streets. She was 33. A wife, and a mother of three—Jaden, Ava, and Hartley. She had just locked up the bar where she worked and was driving home. Jenkins and his uncle rushed her vehicle, pulled her out, and Jenkins shot her four times. His sister Erica, who was behind the wheel of the getaway car, called him afterward—not to express horror, but to complain: “Why didn’t you move that body into the ditch? That was stupid.”

Four victims, 10 days, a family of criminals working together like a unit, and a state that had every warning imaginable and did nothing.

Jenkins confessed to all four killings in an 8-hour interrogation. He said the murders were sacrifices to Apophis, an ancient Egyptian serpent god. He provided details only the perpetrator could know. Then, he filed a $24 million lawsuit against the state of Nebraska for releasing him.

His family fell with him. His sister Erica received life in prison. His mother Lori received 10 years for buying the ammunition. His uncle Warren received 40 years. His cousin Christine received 20 years.

Senator Ernie Chambers, during the state investigation that followed, said what the correctional system would never admit: “If Nikko’s request for commitment had been granted, if his mother’s request had been granted… four people would still be walking this earth.” —

The Levering Legacy

Before we examine whether the system failed or whether Nikko Jenkins was always destined to destroy, there is a story that needs to be told. A story about a family that descended from a tribal leader who once stood before Congress and fought for his people’s land rights. This is the case of Nikko Jenkins. Let us begin.

In the early 1900s, the Levering family name carried respect across Nebraska. The source of that respect was one man, Levi Levering, an Omaha tribal leader with influence that stretched from the reservation town of Macy, Nebraska, all the way to Washington, D.C. In 1911, Levi became the first Native American commissioner to the Presbyterian General Assembly. Nine years later, in 1920, he stood before members of Congress and successfully lobbied for legislation to protect tribal members’ rights to their land. He was a man who understood systems, institutions, and how to work within them to protect his people.

Levi Levering built a legacy rooted in service. He earned the trust of both his community and the broader political establishment. His name became synonymous with dignity and advocacy. The family settled in Omaha, and for decades, the Levering name continued to carry weight.

But as the 20th century moved forward, the family began to fracture. Poverty settled in. Alcohol became a constant presence in Levering households. Drug use followed. The structures that Levi had built—the respect, the community standing, the connection to tribal identity—began to erode. Each generation drifted further from the foundation he had laid.

By the 1970s and 1980s, the Levering descendants in Omaha were no longer known for advocacy; they were known to police. Traffic violations piled up. Theft charges accumulated. The crimes were mostly nonviolent at first: petty offenses that cycled family members through the Douglas County court system and back onto the streets.

Among the Levering descendants who grew up during this period was a girl named Lori Jenkins. Lori was young when she had her first child. Her boyfriend, David A. Magee Sr., was 15 years older than she was. He was 31; she was 16. They never married. They fought constantly. And in 1986, in Denver, Colorado, Lori gave birth to her second child, a boy she named Nikko Allen Jenkins. He entered the world on September 16, 1986, the second of what would eventually be six children.

Within a few years, the family moved from Denver to Omaha, settling into the broader Levering nook on the city’s north side. Nikko would inherit the Levering blood, the Levering name, and the Levering legacy. Not the legacy Levi Levering had built, but the one his descendants had created in its place.

A Childhood Rooted in Chaos

The household Nikko grew up in was defined by conflict. David Magee, Nikko’s father, had his own criminal record, including a conviction for terroristic threats. Lori was accumulating charges of her own. The two of them fought, not just with words. Lori described the relationship in plain terms: “Me and Nikko’s dad, we had a lot of violence in our relationship.” Both parents filed protection orders against each other at different points. The children witnessed this violence as a daily occurrence. It was not an event; it was the atmosphere. Nikko’s extended family on his mother’s side reinforced the same patterns. His uncles were convicted felons. One of them, Warren Levering, was later convicted in Oklahoma of assault with a dangerous weapon, kidnapping, and domestic abuse by strangulation. Warren fathered seven children with six different women across states. Another uncle was on parole. The adults in Nikko’s life modeled a world where aggression was the default response to every problem.

On September 24, 1993, 7-year-old Nikko Jenkins brought a loaded .25 caliber handgun to Highland Elementary School. He was taken into custody. The incident made local news.

The following year, when Nikko was 8, Lori took him to a doctor for a psychiatric evaluation. The evaluation revealed problems that ran far deeper than a single act of bringing a weapon to school. The clinicians who examined Nikko documented a child consumed by anger and fear. He had suicidal thoughts. He had homicidal thoughts. The evaluators noted one statement in particular: “He speaks much about taking a gun and shooting his peers.” This was an 8-year-old boy describing fantasies of mass violence in clinical terms. There was more. Nikko had been accused of chasing his sister around the house with a butcher knife. He had told family members, “I wish I were dead and I wish you were dead.” The evaluation painted a picture of a child in profound psychological distress. A child whose environment had already pushed him past the point where normal developmental interventions were likely to be effective.

The mental health system of the early 1990s did not respond to Nikko Jenkins with the urgency his case demanded. He was evaluated, his symptoms were documented, and then he was sent back to the same home, the same family, and the same conditions that created those symptoms.

Escalation and the Juvenile System

As Nikko moved through elementary school, his behavior continued to deteriorate. He began skipping school regularly. His absences were not the kind that stemmed from laziness or apathy; they were the absences of a child already operating outside the boundaries of normal childhood. The school system referred him for placement, and Nikko was sent to a group home in Papillion, Nebraska—a supervised residential facility where troubled children lived together under the care of staff trained to manage behavioral problems.

The group home was meant to provide structure and stability. It did neither. Nikko assaulted other children in the facility. He was aggressive, unpredictable, and resistant to authority. In February 1998, when Nikko was 11, he was forced to leave the group home after whipping another child with a clothes hanger. The placement had failed.

By age 12, Nikko attacked someone with a knife. The incident triggered his entry into the juvenile justice system in a more formal capacity. He was bounced between his parents and state-run youth detention centers. Each placement ended the same way: with another act of violence, another escape attempt, another failure to find a setting that could contain him. His probation was eventually revoked.

In August 2001, at 14, Nikko was sent to the Youth Rehabilitation and Treatment Center in Kearney, Nebraska, a state-run lockdown facility for juveniles whose behavior is too severe for foster care, group homes, or standard probation. It is the last stop before adult prison. He spent approximately six months there before being returned to his family in 2002.

The return home was immediate chaos. Shortly after arriving, David Magee reported to authorities that Nikko had threatened him with a shotgun. The father was afraid of his own son, and Nikko was only 15 years old.

That same year, Nikko committed two armed carjackings. The first targeted a woman in the Regency area of West Omaha, a shopping and residential district where people did not expect to be confronted at gunpoint. Nikko approached the woman, threatened her with a weapon, and took her vehicle by force. He was not alone; his sister Erica and another relative, Velas Levering, were with him. The second carjacking followed a similar method: a victim selected, a weapon displayed, a vehicle taken.

These were not impulsive acts committed in a moment of panic. They were calculated crimes carried out by a teenager who had already demonstrated a willingness to use violence to get what he wanted. And they revealed something important about how Nikko operated: he did not work alone. He worked within a network of family members who participated in his crimes and provided support. At 15, the pattern was already set.

The carjackings did not go unsolved. Investigators identified Nikko, Erica, and Velas Levering as the perpetrators. Nikko was arrested and charged. Because of the severity of the crimes—armed robbery involving weapons and direct threats against victims—prosecutors pushed for the case to be handled outside the juvenile system. Nikko was 15 at the time of the carjackings, but the state argued that his history of violence, his failed placements, his prior weapons offenses, and the calculated nature of the crimes made him unfit for juvenile court. The court agreed.

In 2003, at the age of 16, Nikko Jenkins was tried as an adult and sentenced to prison. The sentence he received was substantial: between 18 and 21 years, depending on how the various counts were calculated. For a teenager, it was effectively a lifetime.

He had entered the juvenile system at 7 with a loaded gun at school. He had been evaluated, placed, removed, placed again, and removed again. He had threatened his own father with a shotgun. He had committed armed carjackings with family members. Each step had escalated from the one before it, and now the escalation had reached its logical conclusion. The message from the court was clear: Nikko Jenkins was too dangerous for the juvenile system and too violent for the community. The only place left for him was an adult prison.

Solitary Confinement and the Levering Network

The cells in Nebraska’s restrictive housing units varied in size. In the newer facilities, they measured roughly 9 by 18 feet. In the older control unit at the Nebraska State Penitentiary, they were smaller. The furnishings were minimal: a bed, a toilet, a sink. The inmate ate in the cell. He slept in the cell. He existed in the cell. The one hour of daily recreation time, when it was provided, took place in a small enclosed area.

Nikko did not handle isolation well, but then again, almost nobody does. Research on the effects of prolonged solitary confinement consistently shows that it exacerbates existing mental health conditions and can create new ones, even in individuals who enter isolation without prior psychiatric history. For someone like Jenkins—a young man with childhood trauma, documented homicidal thoughts, and untreated mental health issues—extended isolation was not a path toward rehabilitation. It was a pressure cooker.

Inside the walls of the correctional system, Nikko Jenkins became exactly what the institution feared most: an inmate who could not be controlled. He assaulted other prisoners. He participated in gang activity. He tattooed himself and others—a violation of prison rules. He crafted a weapon from a toilet brush handle. Each infraction added time to his disciplinary record and kept him locked in restrictive housing.

The years passed. Nikko moved from the youth facility to adult institutions within the Nebraska correctional system. He was transferred between facilities because his behavior warranted it. At each stop, the pattern repeated: aggression, discipline, isolation, more aggression.

And Nikko was not the only Jenkins behind bars. Erica Jenkins had been charged alongside Nikko and their relative Velas Levering for the 2002 Regency carjacking. She was a minor at the time—a teenage girl who had helped her brother threaten a woman at gunpoint and steal her vehicle. The juvenile court processed her case, and Erica was sentenced to time in the Nebraska juvenile correctional system.

From the moment she entered custody, Erica made it clear that confinement was not going to change her. She was not a girl who sat quietly in her room and waited for her release date. She confronted staff. She clashed with other juveniles in the facility. She carried the same explosive temper that defined her brother’s behavior, and she directed it at anyone who stood in her way.

Erica had grown up watching the same violence Nikko had watched. She had absorbed the same lessons from the same household: that aggression was how you got what you wanted, that authority existed to be challenged, and that the people around you were either useful or in the way. The Levering household had not made a distinction between its sons and its daughters when it came to exposure to trauma. Erica had seen her parents fight. She had seen her relatives arrested. She had seen drugs and alcohol destroy the adults who were supposed to protect her. And she had responded to all of it the same way Nikko had: by becoming dangerous.

As she moved through the juvenile system and eventually into adult corrections, Erica built a reputation that preceded her. She was not someone the other inmates ignored. She was physical. She was confrontational. She was willing to escalate any situation to its most violent conclusion without hesitation. Guards learned to watch her carefully. Other inmates learned to stay out of her way.

What set Erica apart from many of the family members who cycled through the system was her apparent enthusiasm for violence. This was not a woman who committed crimes out of desperation or survival. She gravitated toward direct physical confrontation the way other people gravitated toward habits they could not break. She assaulted other people. She intimidated those around her. She operated with a volatility that made her unpredictable even to those who knew her well.

Her relationship with Nikko was the most significant bond in her life. The two siblings maintained contact when possible through letters, through the occasional overlap at facilities, and through the family network that connected them even when walls separated them. The bond between them was not a source of stability or positive influence. It was a bond forged in the same environment that produced both of them. An environment where violence was currency and loyalty meant participation in harm. They understood each other’s capacity in a way that nobody else in the family did.

The other family members who orbited around Nikko and Erica during this period carried their own records and their own patterns. Their uncle, Warren Levering, was in his 50s. He had been in and out of prison for decades. His record included a conviction in Oklahoma for assault with a dangerous weapon, kidnapping, and domestic abuse by strangulation. He had fathered seven children with six different women across five states. Warren was not a mastermind or a leader. He was a follower—a man who had spent his life engaging in criminal behavior and who gravitated toward whoever was directing the action.

Their cousin, Christine Bordeaux, had been convicted of nearly 30 crimes, including three felonies. In 2009, the Omaha housing authorities sanctioned her after her son and a friend were caught shooting a BB gun at people from her residence. Bordeaux was not a violent offender in the same mold as Nikko or Erica, but she was deeply enmeshed in the family network and willing to play her part when called upon.

Their mother, Lori, occupied a unique position. She was not a direct participant in violence in the way that Nikko, Erica, or Warren were, but she was the connective tissue that held the family together. She provided logistical support. She purchased things the family needed. She was present, available, and compliant. Where Nikko and Erica were the fists, Lori was the hand that opened doors and carried bags.

The Descent into Madness and Ignored Warnings

By 2009, Nikko had been locked inside the Nebraska correctional system for 6 years. Erica was still incarcerated at a separate facility, serving her own sentence and accumulating her own record of violence behind bars. The family was scattered across prison cells and Omaha streets. But the connections between them held firm, and inside his concrete cell, something was shifting in Nikko Jenkins. Something the prison doctors were only beginning to notice.

Prison doctors prescribed him psychiatric medication. The medication was meant to control the mood swings, the outbursts, and the increasingly erratic behavior that had worsened year after year. But the doctors never gave him a definitive diagnosis. They treated symptoms without naming the condition. Some staff believed Jenkins was mentally ill. Others believed he was faking. Nobody committed to an answer, and nobody ordered the kind of comprehensive psychiatric evaluation that could have settled the question.

In December 2009, Jenkins stopped taking his medication. He refused it. Under prison policy, inmates could not be forcibly medicated unless they posed an immediate danger at that specific moment. Jenkins was volatile, but he was not in active crisis—at least not by the system’s definition. So, the refusal was noted in his file, and nothing changed.

That same year, Jenkins’s father, David Magee, died. Nikko received the news inside his cell. There was no grief counseling. There was no therapy session. There was no conversation with a professional about what it meant to lose a parent while locked in solitary confinement. The news came, and he absorbed it alone.

Weeks later, another death hit the family. Nikko’s grandmother, Norma Anne Levering, passed away on December 12, 2009. The corrections department granted furlough to both Nikko and his sister Erica, who was incarcerated at a separate facility, to attend the funeral. Officers handcuffed and shackled both siblings for transport.

At the funeral home, a guard uncuffed one of Nikko’s hands so he could use the restroom. In that moment, Nikko and Erica attacked. The assault was sudden and coordinated. One struck first, the other followed instantly. Officers eventually restrained both of them, but the guard sustained injuries. Additional charges were filed against Nikko, including assault on a correctional officer.

The attack confirmed two things: First, Jenkins was willing to assault anyone, not just other inmates, but armed corrections officers representing the authority of the state. Second, he and Erica could act as a unit without warning or planning, as if violence between them required no discussion.

The assault charges triggered a transfer. Jenkins was moved from the state prison system to the Douglas County Jail. It was there that he met Dr. Eugene Oliveto. Oliveto was a psychiatrist employed by Douglas County Corrections to evaluate inmates with mental health concerns. He had years of experience working with incarcerated populations. He knew the difference between genuine mental illness and inmates performing symptoms to work the system. He had seen both.

He sat across from Jenkins and listened. Jenkins told him he heard voices. He said the voices came from Egyptian gods, specifically from Apophis, the serpent god of chaos in ancient Egyptian religion. He described commands he could not resist. He described urges that consumed him. And then he told Oliveto directly that he was going to kill people.

Oliveto believed him. “He was psychotic, delusional, and he told me he was going to kill people. And I believed it,” Oliveto said. Oliveto recommended that Jenkins be committed to the Lincoln Regional Center, Nebraska’s state psychiatric hospital designed to treat individuals who posed a danger to themselves or others due to mental illness. In his professional judgment, Jenkins met every criteria for commitment.

Nothing happened. Jenkins was not transferred to the regional center. He was not placed in any psychiatric treatment program. He was processed through the Douglas County Jail on the assault charges and sent back into the state prison system—the same system that had kept him in a box for 6 years without treating the illness Oliveto had just identified.

After the Douglas County Jail, Jenkins was transferred to Tecumseh State Correctional Institution, where he was assigned to Dr. Natalie Baker-Heiser, a contract psychiatrist. Baker evaluated Jenkins over several months and reached the same conclusion Dr. Oliveto had: Jenkins was exhibiting symptoms consistent with a serious psychiatric disorder, including hearing voices he attributed to Egyptian gods.

As his release date approached, Baker-Heiser grew alarmed and wrote a formal report recommending civil commitment to the Lincoln Regional Center. She submitted the report to her superior, Dr. Mark Weige, the assistant behavioral health administrator for Nebraska’s prison system. Weige read the report and buried it. He believed Jenkins was faking his symptoms to sue the state for money. He did not share the report with his own boss, Cameron White. He did not share it with the state ombudsman.

Meanwhile, a third professional, mental health coordinator Denise Gaines, independently changed her mind about Jenkins after initially believing he was faking, and wrote a letter to the parole board urging mental health treatment upon release.

Three separate mental health professionals had now sounded the alarm. None of their warnings resulted in action.

And then Jenkins himself started begging. In the months leading up to his scheduled release date, Nikko Jenkins did something that most inmates facing the end of their sentence never do: He asked not to be let out. Jenkins wrote letters to prison officials, to prosecutors, to judges. The content was alarming. He told anyone who would read his words that he did not want to be released. He said he was afraid of what he would do if he was sent back into the community. He described urges he could not control. He framed these urges in the language of his claimed deity, the Egyptian serpent god, Apophis.

Jenkins’s mother, Lori, also reached out. She contacted authorities and requested that her son be committed to the Lincoln Regional Center. A mother is telling the state that she is afraid of her own child, that she believes he is mentally ill, and that releasing him will result in harm. Her request is not acted upon.

The Release and the Reassembly of the Network

On July 30, 2013, Nikko Allen Jenkins walked out of the Nebraska State Penitentiary. He was 26 years old. He had been in the correctional system for ten and a half years. He had no housing plan. He had no parole officer assigned to check on him. There was no supervision of any kind.

For the past two years inside the prison, Jenkins had not been allowed to interact with the general population because staff considered him too dangerous to be around other inmates. He ate alone. He exercised alone. He existed in isolation because the institution could not trust him to share a cafeteria with convicted felons. And now that same institution was releasing him into a city of nearly 500,000 people with no restrictions, no monitoring, and no plan.

Jenkins returned to Omaha and reconnected with his family. His mother, Lori, was still in the area. His sister, Erica, had completed her own prison sentence and was back on the streets. His uncle, Warren Levering, had recently been released from an Oklahoma prison where he had served time for assault with a dangerous weapon, kidnapping, and domestic abuse by strangulation. His cousin Christine Bordeaux was living in Omaha with her own record of nearly 30 convictions.

One by one, the pieces of the Levering family network clicked back into place. The family was reassembled. Within days of his release, Jenkins was partying and socializing. He reconnected with people he had known before prison and met new acquaintances.

But beneath the socializing, there was a practical problem: money. Jenkins had no income. He had no employment history. He had spent his entire adult life behind bars. He possessed no skills that translated to legitimate work. What he did have was a family willing to help him get what he needed through the only methods they had ever known.

Lori Jenkins helped her son acquire weapons. Despite being a convicted felon herself—a status that legally prohibited her from purchasing firearms or ammunition—Lori walked into a gun outlet and bought Brenneke Classic Magnum 12-gauge shotgun slugs. These were not ordinary rounds. They were heavy, high-powered projectiles designed to bring down large game at close range, commonly known as deer slugs. Each slug was a solid piece of lead capable of devastating damage.

The purchase was captured on the store’s surveillance cameras. Nobody reviewed the footage. Nobody flagged the sale. The transaction was completed, and Lori walked out with ammunition that would be used within days. Jenkins also obtained a 9mm handgun and a revolver. The exact chain of acquisition—who bought what, who handed it to whom—was pieced together by investigators months later.

What mattered in the moment was that within days of walking out of prison, Nikko Jenkins was armed with a shotgun, a handgun, and a revolver, surrounded by family members ready to follow his lead, and operating without a single point of contact between himself and the state that had just released him.

Spring Lake Park: The First Strike

While Jenkins was arming himself on the north side of Omaha, two men on the south side of the city were living lives that had nothing to do with the Levering family or the Nebraska prison system. They had never heard the name Nikko Jenkins. They had no reason to. Their names were Juan Uribe-Pena and Jorge Cajiga-Ruiz.

Juan Uribe-Pena was 26 years old. He lived in the South Omaha community, a neighborhood with a large Hispanic population and a strong sense of cultural identity built around family, work, and faith. Uribe-Pena was a member of Our Lady of Guadalupe Church, one of the neighborhood’s anchor institutions. By all accounts from neighbors and fellow church members, he was a quiet man who kept to himself. He did not draw attention. He did not cause problems. He worked, he worshiped, and he lived his life without conflict.

Jorge Cajiga-Ruiz was 29 years old. He was married to a United States citizen. He had a young child. He also had a girlfriend whose mother told reporters that Cajiga-Ruiz and her daughter had two little boys together. He sometimes went by the name Jorge Gonzalez. The white Ford pickup truck he drove was registered under that name. Cajiga-Ruiz was embedded in the South Omaha community alongside Uribe-Pena. The Mexican consulate confirmed his ties to the area and his family connections. He was a working man with young children who depended on him. He supported his family. He maintained relationships. He was present in the daily life of a neighborhood that counted on people like him to show up, contribute, and keep things running.

These two men existed in a world completely separate from the one Nikko Jenkins inhabited. They went to work. They came home. They spent time with their families and their friends. They had no criminal records that would put them on anyone’s radar. They had no enemies. They had no debts to dangerous people. They were ordinary men whose only mistake was being in a place where the Jenkins family decided to go hunting.

On the evening of August 10, 2013, Uribe-Pena and Cajiga-Ruiz went out together. It was a Saturday night; they visited a bar in South Omaha. While there, they were approached by two women who suggested meeting up at another location. The women were forward and convincing. The men agreed. The two women were Erica Jenkins and Christine Bordeaux.

They were operating on instructions from Nikko. The plan was simple: lure the men to a secluded location so Nikko could rob them. Erica and Christine played their roles without hesitation. They gave the men a location: Spring Lake Park, a public park near 18th and F Street. The park had a city swimming pool and was quiet at night. It was the kind of place where two men might reasonably expect to meet two women without drawing attention.

Uribe-Pena and Cajiga-Ruiz had no reason to be suspicious. They were not involved in criminal activity. They had no connection to the Jenkins family. They had never heard the name Nikko Jenkins. They were simply two friends who believed they were meeting two women on a Saturday night.

They drove to Spring Lake Park in Cajiga-Ruiz’s white Ford pickup truck. They parked near the swimming pool. The lot was empty. The park was dark. They waited.

The women never showed. Nikko Jenkins did.

Nikko Jenkins approached the truck on foot. He was carrying the 12-gauge shotgun loaded with the Brenneke Classic Magnum slugs his mother had purchased days earlier. He did not speak to the men. He did not announce himself. He did not demand their wallets or tell them to get out of the vehicle. He raised the shotgun and fired.

Each man was struck once in the head. The slugs, designed to bring down large animals at close range, did exactly what they were built to do. Uribe-Pena and Cajiga-Ruiz died inside the truck where they sat. Neither man had a chance to react. Neither man had a chance to run. The entire encounter lasted seconds.

When it was over, Jenkins went through the men’s pockets. He took whatever cash and valuables they had on them. The robbery—the stated purpose of the entire setup—yielded whatever two working men from South Omaha happened to be carrying on a Saturday night. Jenkins left the scene. The truck remained where it was parked near the swimming pool, with both victims inside.

At approximately 5:01 a.m. on August 11, a patrol officer discovered the truck. The officer found two bodies inside the vehicle. The scene was processed by Omaha police detective Dave Schneider, the first investigator to respond.

Schneider arrived to find a scene that told a clear story of targeted violence. Uribe-Pena was in the back seat. The injuries to his head were severe. Massive amounts of blood had pooled on the floorboard and were dripping from the driver’s side door. Cajiga-Ruiz was also in the truck. One of his hands showed evidence that he attempted to block the shot—a reflexive, futile gesture in the face of a weapon fired at close range.

The men’s pockets were turned inside out, indicating robbery. But beyond that, investigators had little to work with in the immediate aftermath. There were no witnesses who saw the shooting. The park was quiet at that hour. There was no surveillance camera footage from the park itself. The identities of the victims were established through the vehicle’s registration and personal identification found at the scene: Juan Uribe-Pena, 26. Jorge Cajiga-Ruiz, 29. Two men from South Omaha. No known enemies. No criminal history that would suggest involvement in disputes that end in violence.

For the detectives working the case, the absence of an obvious motive made the investigation difficult. This did not appear to be a gang-related killing. It did not appear to be a drug deal gone wrong. It did not fit the patterns that Omaha homicide detectives were accustomed to seeing. Two men were dead in a truck in a park, and the only apparent motive was the turned-out pockets suggesting robbery.

The families of both men were devastated. Cajiga-Ruiz’s family included young children who were now without a father. Uribe-Pena’s community at Our Lady of Guadalupe Church mourned one of its members. The community around Spring Lake Park was on edge. Residents who walked the nearby trails and used the park’s facilities were disturbed by the proximity of the violence.

Omaha homicide detectives began their work. They canvassed the area. They checked for cameras at nearby businesses. They interviewed anyone who might have been in or near the park in the early morning hours. The case was active, but leads were scarce. There were no witnesses. There was no surveillance footage from the park itself. Two men were dead in a truck, their pockets turned inside out, and the only thing detectives knew for certain was that someone had used a shotgun at close range and walked away.

Curtis Bradford: The Betrayal

Eight days passed. The detectives kept working. The community around Spring Lake Park remained on edge. And across town on the north side of Omaha, a 22-year-old man named Curtis Bradford had no idea that the friend he had been hanging out with since July was the same person police were looking for.

Curtis Bradford lived in North Omaha, a community that had long faced challenges related to poverty, unemployment, and gang activity. He was 22 years old. He had served time in the Nebraska correctional system, and it was inside those walls that he first met Nikko Jenkins. The two formed an acquaintance behind bars that carried over into the outside world after both were released.

Bradford was young. He was trying to find his footing in a community that offered limited opportunities for someone with a criminal record. His mother, Velita Glasgow, was a central figure in his life—a woman who cared deeply about her son and worried constantly about the environment he was navigating.

When Jenkins was released from prison on July 30, 2013, Bradford was among those who reconnected with him. The two spent time together in the days following Jenkins’s release. They partied, they socialized. At some point during this period, they posed together for a photograph that was posted on Facebook. The photo shows two young men who appear to be enjoying each other’s company. There is no indication of tension or conflict between them. Bradford did not know about the events at Spring Lake Park. He did not know that Jenkins had already taken two lives. He had no reason to be afraid of the man standing next to him in that Facebook photo.

But there were forces at work that Bradford was unaware of. Jenkins’s sister, Erica, had a grievance against Bradford, or more precisely, against people associated with him. Erica believed that friends of Bradford’s were responsible for shooting at her house at some point in the past. Whether this belief was accurate or exaggerated, it had created a grudge that Erica carried with her.

On August 19, 2013, Nikko and Erica Jenkins contacted Curtis Bradford. They told him they wanted to do a robbery together. Bradford agreed to go with them. He had no reason to suspect that the invitation was anything other than what it appeared to be: a proposition from a friend he met in prison to make some quick money.

Bradford walked with Nikko and Erica to a location near 18th and Clark Street in North Omaha. It was an area of detached garages and residential homes. The neighborhood was quiet in the early morning hours. Bradford did not see what was coming. He was walking with people he considered allies. He trusted them enough to turn his back to them.

Nikko Jenkins fired a revolver at the back of Bradford’s head. The shot did not kill him immediately. Jenkins then used the shotgun to finish what the revolver started. Erica Jenkins also fired at Bradford. She shot him in the back of the head. When the violence was over, Erica reportedly expressed frustration, not remorse. She complained that Nikko stole what she considered her opportunity. She had been waiting for this, and she felt cheated that her brother acted first.

At approximately 7:00 a.m. on August 19, a man returning home from a night shift at a convenience store discovered Bradford’s body outside a detached garage at 18th and Clark Street. He called police. Investigators arrived to find Bradford dead from wounds to the back of his head.

The Facebook photo of Bradford and Jenkins, taken within 24 hours of Bradford’s death, was still online. It showed two men side by side. One of them had just ended the other’s life.

Omaha now had three unsolved killings in less than 10 days. The Spring Lake Park double shooting on August 11 and the Clark Street killing on August 19 were being investigated by separate detective teams working out of the same building. The connection between them was not yet apparent. Different neighborhoods, different victims, different methods. Nothing on paper linked a double shooting in a South Omaha park to a single body behind a garage in North Omaha.

Bradford’s mother, Velita Glasgow, was notified that her son was dead. The woman who had spent years worrying about the world her son was navigating now faced the reality she had always feared. Her grief was immediate. Her fight for answers was just beginning.

Andrea Krueger: The Wrong Place, The Wrong Time

Two days later, on the west side of the city, a woman named Andrea Krueger was finishing up another late shift behind a bar. She had no connection to Curtis Bradford. She had no connection to Juan Uribe-Pena or Jorge Cajiga-Ruiz. She had never set foot in Spring Lake Park or on Clark Street. She lived in a different part of Omaha, in a different world entirely. And she had no idea that the same family responsible for the three deaths now being investigated across town was about to cross her path.

Andrea Lynn Krueger was 33 years old. She was a wife. She was a mother of three: Jaden, Ava, and Hartley. She was originally from Valley, Nebraska, a small community west of Omaha. She lived with her family near 144th and Fort Streets in the western part of the city. Her husband, Michael Ryan Krueger, worked during the day at a landscaping business called CM’s A Cut Above. Andrea stayed home with the children during daytime hours and worked nights as a bartender.

She had been tending bar in the Omaha area for years. Her former manager at a bar called On the Rocks, Brian Houston, had known her through her entire adult life. “I knew her when she was single, when she met her husband. I was there for her pregnancies,” Houston said.

In 2013, Andrea worked at the Déjà Vu Lounge, located near 178th and Pacific Streets in West Omaha. She typically closed up the bar and drove home in the early morning hours. Her husband described their arrangement as functional and happy. “We had the best of both worlds,” Michael Ryan said. “I worked during the day. She stayed home with the kids and worked three nights a week.” Friends and co-workers at the Déjà Vu Lounge described Andrea as someone who always had a smile on her face. She was a good friend. She was warm. She was the kind of person people wanted to be around. Stephanie Blackman, a Déjà Vu employee, said Andrea had worked at the bar for about a year and was well-liked by staff and patrons alike.

The Kruegers had recently celebrated their fifth wedding anniversary. Their lives were busy, sometimes exhausting, but stable. Andrea drove home late at night after her shifts, and Michael Ryan got up early for work. They operated on different schedules but maintained a household that revolved around their children.

On the night of August 20, 2013, Andrea worked her shift at the Déjà Vu Lounge. It was a Tuesday night into Wednesday morning. She was the last employee to leave the bar. She locked up at approximately 1:47 a.m. and walked to her vehicle, a gold 2012 Chevrolet Traverse. Before heading home, Andrea stopped for fast food. She visited a McDonald’s in the area. It was a routine stop, the kind of late-night detour that bartenders and service workers make on their way home after long shifts. There was nothing unusual about the evening. Andrea had made this drive hundreds of times.

At approximately 12:30 a.m. before the bar closed, Andrea spoke with Michael Ryan on the phone. Their daughter Ava was running a fever, and they discussed getting medicine for her. It was the kind of brief, ordinary conversation that married parents have every day. Michael Ryan fell asleep shortly after. Andrea finished locking up, got her food, and began the short drive home.

Her route took her through the residential streets of West Omaha. She was less than 2 miles from her house. At the intersection of 168th and Fort Streets, Andrea encountered a 2005 Ford Taurus. Inside the 2005 Ford Taurus were four members of the Jenkins family. Erica Jenkins was behind the wheel. Nikko Jenkins sat directly behind her. Christine Bordeaux was in the front passenger seat. Warren Levering was in the back seat next to Nikko.

The four of them had been driving through West Omaha looking for someone to carjack. They needed a different vehicle. The Taurus was registered to one of Nikko Jenkins’s girlfriends, and they did not want to keep using a car that could be traced back to them. They were planning to use a stolen vehicle to commit additional carjackings and robberies, particularly targeting people attending an upcoming Lil Wayne concert at the CenturyLink Center on August 20.

Andrea Krueger’s gold Chevrolet Traverse passed through the intersection at 168th and Fort Streets. She was alone in the vehicle. It was after 2:00 a.m. The streets were empty. Nikko Jenkins and Warren Levering jumped out of the Taurus. They rushed Andrea’s vehicle. Jenkins pulled Andrea out of her SUV.

Jenkins fired a 9mm handgun. Andrea was struck four times: twice in the face, once in the neck, and once in the shoulder. She fell to the road. Her body came to rest in the middle of the intersection. Jenkins took the Traverse. Levering got back in the Taurus. The two vehicles fled the scene.

Erica drove the Taurus with Bordeaux still in the passenger seat. As they sped away, Erica called Nikko on the phone. Her reaction was not horror or panic. It was annoyance. “Why didn’t you move that body into the ditch?” Erica said to her brother. “That was stupid.” Andrea Krueger lay in the road at 168th and Fort Streets. She was found at approximately 2:15 a.m. by a Douglas County deputy sheriff who responded to calls from neighbors who heard gunfire and saw a vehicle speeding northbound on 168th Street. Andrea’s mother, Terry Roberts, was one of the first family members to arrive at the scene. She was devastated. She could barely stand.

At 4:00 a.m., Michael Ryan Krueger woke up and looked at his watch. Andrea was not home. This is about as late as it gets for her, he thought. He got in his car and started driving toward the bar. He did not make it far before he was pulled over by police who had already identified his wife as the victim. Officers questioned him for hours.

The next day, Michael Ryan Krueger spoke to reporters. “She didn’t have any enemies,” he said. “She was everyone’s best friend.” He described the void Andrea had left: “As a father and a husband, I have the best of everything, and someone took that away from us.” The question of the children weighed heavily on the family. Ava and Hartley were very young. Michael Ryan told reporters that the hardest part was talking to his kids. He kept it simple: “Mommy is in heaven.” Andrea’s brother, Ryan Roberts, was consumed by anger. “I’m angry. Very, very angry,” he said. “For someone to do something like that… I’d love to get my hands on them.” Roberts also expressed a deeper grief that went beyond anger. He was burdened by the thought that Andrea’s youngest children might not remember their mother. “That’s what’s really sad,” Roberts said. “They’ll never get to know their mother and how great of a woman she truly was.” A funeral fund was set up at the Déjà Vu Lounge. A candlelight vigil was held on the outdoor patio of the bar. Friends left flowers and wreaths near the intersection where Andrea was found. Funeral services were scheduled for Monday at Stonebridge Christian Church.

Andrea Krueger’s vehicle, the gold Traverse, was found later that day. It was located in an alley near 43rd and Charles Streets, approximately 12 miles from the crime scene. Someone had poured gasoline inside and tried to start a fire, but the fire fizzled out. Sheriff Tim Dunning confirmed that the attempt to destroy evidence inside the vehicle was unsuccessful.

Connecting the Dots: The Investigation and Arrest

Omaha now had four unsolved killings in 10 days, across three separate crime scenes. Different victims from different parts of the city. Investigators were working each case. The question was whether these cases were connected, and if so, who was responsible?

Omaha police and the Douglas County Sheriff’s Office were now investigating four deaths across three separate crime scenes: The Spring Lake Park double killing on August 11, the Clark Street death on August 19, and the West Omaha carjacking and killing on August 24. Each case was being worked by investigators, but the connections between them were not immediately obvious. The victims came from different parts of the city. Uribe-Pena and Cajiga-Ruiz were from South Omaha. Bradford was from North Omaha. Krueger was from West Omaha.

Omaha Police Chief Todd Schmaderer later noted that the killer crossed racial, gender, and city boundaries to commit his murders. That diversity of victimology made pattern recognition difficult in the early days of the investigation.

The first break came from ballistics. The ammunition used in the Spring Lake Park killings was distinctive: Brenneke Classic Magnum 12-gauge slugs, commonly called deer slugs, were not standard street ammunition. They were heavy rounds designed for hunting large game. Their presence at the scene narrowed the field of suspects to someone who had deliberately sought out this specific type of ammunition.

When Andrea Krueger’s Chevrolet Traverse was recovered on August 21, investigators processed the vehicle thoroughly. Despite the failed attempt to burn the interior, the evidence inside was intact. Among the items found in the vehicle was an unspent deer slug. The same type of Brenneke ammunition used in the Spring Lake Park killings. This was the link. The same ammunition connected the Spring Lake Park killings to the Krueger carjacking. Two of the three crime scenes were now tied together by physical evidence.

Detective Dave Schneider and his colleagues began working backward from the ammunition. They contacted area hunting and firearms stores to determine who had recently purchased Brenneke Classic Magnum 12-gauge slugs. They combed through sales records and surveillance footage from gun outlets across the Omaha metro area. The search led them to a specific store. Surveillance cameras at the store had captured a female customer purchasing the distinctive ammunition on August 2, 2013, just 3 days after Nikko Jenkins’s release from prison.

Investigators initially believed the woman in the footage was Christine Bordeaux, Jenkins’s cousin. They were wrong about the identity; the buyer was actually Lori Jenkins, Nikko’s mother. But the mistaken identification proved fortunate. When investigators contacted Bordeaux for follow-up interviews based on the surveillance footage, she cooperated.

Bordeaux began to unravel the mystery. She provided information about the motives and methods behind multiple killings. She described the roles played by various Jenkins family members. She filled in gaps that forensic evidence alone could not address.

Meanwhile, additional surveillance footage was pulled from cameras along the route between Andrea Krueger’s last known location and the spot where her vehicle was abandoned. The footage showed movements consistent with someone driving Krueger’s Traverse away from the crime scene. Investigators pieced together a timeline that placed the Traverse moving from West Omaha to the alley near 43rd and Charles Streets.

The investigation was accelerating. Evidence was mounting, but the person at the center of it all had not yet been formally connected to any of the killings. That was about to change.

On August 29, 2013, Nikko Jenkins was arrested on an unrelated charge: making terroristic threats. The charge was separate from the four killings, but it got Jenkins off the streets and into police custody at a critical moment. By this point, investigators had the surveillance footage from the gun store showing a female associate purchasing the deer slug ammunition. They had the ballistic connection between the Spring Lake Park killings and the slug found in Krueger’s Traverse. They had Christine Bordeaux’s cooperation and her account of the family’s involvement. They had footage from cameras along the route to Krueger’s abandoned vehicle. The case against Nikko Jenkins was building rapidly.

Jenkins sat in custody on the terroristic threats charge. Detectives knew they were dealing with the prime suspect in four murders, but they needed more. They needed a confession, or they needed to build a case strong enough to proceed without one.

The Confession

On the evening of September 3, 2013, Jenkins began talking. What followed was a rambling 8-hour interrogation in which Jenkins confessed to all four killings. The confession was not a straightforward recitation of facts. Jenkins wove between moments of clarity and extended tangents about supernatural forces. He told detectives that the killings were sacrifices to Apophis, a deity from ancient Egyptian religion associated with chaos and darkness. He described Apophis as a serpent god who commanded him to carry out acts of violence. He framed the murders not as robberies or personal vendettas, but as religious obligations.

“This is going to be a long night,” Jenkins told the detectives at one point. “When we’re here talking, it just comes out like a computer.” He described the mental state leading up to the first killing: “My head kept pounding. Boom, boom, boom, boom. And I was like, what is going on? And the demonic forces just attacked me.” Jenkins said, “I can’t sleep 36 hours at a time.” Despite the religious framing, Jenkins also provided specific details that only the perpetrator could know. He described the locations. He described the weapons used. He described the sequence of events. He admitted to shooting Uribe-Pena and Cajiga-Ruiz in the head at Spring Lake Park and taking one of their wallets. He admitted to Bradford’s murder, explaining that he had to use the shotgun to finish because the revolver did not kill Bradford immediately. He described the encounter with Andrea Krueger at the intersection of 168th and Fort Streets.

For the detectives in the room, the confession resolved the central question: Nikko Jenkins was responsible for all four deaths. The religious claims about Apophis were noted, but treated as secondary to the factual admissions.

On September 4, 2013, Nikko Jenkins was charged with four counts of first-degree murder. The Omaha community, which had been on edge for weeks, finally had an answer. Police Chief Todd Schmaderer held a press conference. “Our killer is behind bars,” he announced. Schmaderer described Jenkins as an indiscriminate killer who wreaked havoc on the Omaha area since being released from prison on July 30. The chief thanked the community for CrimeStoppers tips that had helped guide the investigation and confirmed that the case was not over. “We know that Nikko Jenkins was not alone,” Schmaderer said. “And our investigation will continue to bring others to justice as well.” Michael Ryan Krueger, Andrea’s husband, responded to the arrest with measured relief. “It’s still an ongoing investigation, and I am confident they will continue to do great work and do what they need to do to bring justice,” he said. “But this arrest does not change anything for us. We are still dealing with this as a family.” The arrest answered the question of who, but it raised an entirely new set of questions. How had this man ended up back on the streets in the first place?

The Family Web

With Nikko Jenkins in custody and charged with four counts of first-degree murder, the investigation expanded outward to the family members who helped him carry out the killings. Six members of the Jenkins and Levering family were arrested in late August and September 2013 in connection with the spree.

• Erica Jenkins was charged with first-degree murder in the death of Curtis Bradford. Investigators had determined that Erica fired at Bradford alongside her brother. She was also charged with conspiracy in connection with the Spring Lake Park killings and the murder of Andrea Krueger. Erica was not a reluctant participant; the evidence suggested she played an active and willing role in multiple crimes.

• Warren Levering, Nikko’s uncle, was charged with first-degree murder and weapons charges in connection with Andrea Krueger’s death. Levering was in the Taurus when the family went hunting for a vehicle to carjack. He jumped out alongside Nikko when they confronted Krueger at 168th and Fort Streets. After the killing, Levering helped dispose of Krueger’s Traverse. Prosecutors say he obtained a gas can from his sister’s house and tried to set the vehicle on fire near 43rd and Charles Streets. The fire failed, leaving evidence intact.

• Lori Jenkins, Nikko’s mother, was arrested on charges related to her role as an accessory. Lori was the one who purchased the Brenneke shotgun slugs that were used in the Spring Lake Park killings. She was a convicted felon, which meant the ammunition purchase itself was a federal crime. Beyond the ammunition, Lori helped dispose of clothing that contained gunshot residue—physical evidence that connected her son to the killings.

• Christine Bordeaux, Nikko’s cousin, was charged with criminal conspiracy to commit robbery. Bordeaux lured Juan Uribe-Pena and Jorge Cajiga-Ruiz to Spring Lake Park alongside Erica Jenkins. She was also in the Taurus during the Krueger carjacking. Bordeaux’s decision to cooperate with investigators proved critical to the prosecution’s case. Her testimony provided the narrative framework that connected the physical evidence to specific actions by specific people.

• Lori Sayles, another sister, was charged in connection with Bradford’s murder and accused of hiding the murder weapon.

The Jenkins family was publicly named and linked together in a web of charges that spanned all four killings. The case drew national attention. It was not just one man committing crimes; it was a family enterprise. Seven convicted felons across two generations, with two more now facing felony charges.

At a press conference, Douglas County Attorney Don Klein laid out the prosecution’s theory. The motive, Klein said, was simple: Greed. Jenkins needed money. He needed vehicles. He needed resources to commit additional crimes. The Apophis claims, in Klein’s view, were either a fabrication or a symptom of a mental condition that did not diminish Jenkins’s understanding of right and wrong. “You look at the brutality of each murder,” Klein said. “The innocence of the victims, the lack of any history or beef with Jenkins. There’s nothing in any of the evidence that indicates these people had any inkling of what was about to happen to them.” The families of the victims reacted to the expanding web of arrests with a mixture of relief and grief. Velita Glasgow, Bradford’s mother, was present at every hearing. Terry and Kent Roberts, Andrea Krueger’s parents, sat in the courtroom listening to every detail. The families of Uribe-Pena and Cajiga-Ruiz met with prosecutors early on but indicated they did not want to attend the prolonged proceedings; their grief was private. The courtroom became a place where two communities collided: the families of the victims seeking justice, and the Jenkins family facing the consequences of a criminal legacy that stretched back generations.

The Competency Circus and Self-Mutilation

In the weeks following his arrest, Nikko Jenkins did not retreat into silence. He wrote. He wrote constantly. He sent handwritten letters to the Omaha World-Herald. He sent letters to prosecutors. He sent letters to judges. The content of these letters was a mixture of legal arguments, religious declarations, and threats.

On November 3, 2013, Jenkins submitted handwritten letters in which he stated that he wished to plead guilty to all counts in the four killings. He wrote that he would protect Apophis’s Kingdom with “animalistic savage brutality.” The tone of the letters alternated between rational legal language citing statutes and case law, and language that read like the manifesto of a person detached from reality.

Jenkins’s public defender, Tom Riley, was navigating a case that presented extraordinary challenges. His client had confessed to four murders in an 8-hour interrogation. His client was writing letters to the media declaring his allegiance to an Egyptian serpent god. His client’s family members were being charged as accomplices. And the question that hung over everything was whether Nikko Jenkins was mentally competent to stand trial.

The competency question was not academic. Under American law, a defendant must be able to understand the charges against them and participate meaningfully in their own defense. If Jenkins was truly experiencing psychotic delusions, if he genuinely believed that Apophis was commanding him to kill, then his competency to stand trial was legitimately in question. If, on the other hand, he was fabricating or exaggerating his symptoms, then the Apophis claims were a strategy rather than a symptom.

On February 19, 2014, Jenkins filed a federal lawsuit seeking $24.5 million from the state of Nebraska. The lawsuit claimed wrongful release. Jenkins argued that his reports of hearing voices from Apophis were repeatedly ignored by corrections officials. He claimed that his mental illness was genuine, that he had a family history of mental illness, and that a doctor at Tecumseh State Prison diagnosed him with schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and obsessive-compulsive disorder. He blamed the killings on the state’s failure to treat him. The lawsuit was a six-page handwritten filing. It was detailed, organized, and demonstrated a level of legal knowledge that is unusual for someone who had spent most of his life in prison without formal education. Jenkins cited specific statutes. He referenced case law. He constructed arguments that, whatever their merit, showed a mind capable of complex reasoning.

On April 16, 2014, Judge Peter Bataillon took up the question at trial. Jenkins had requested to represent himself, and the judge allowed it under the guidance of advisory attorneys. Throughout the proceedings, Jenkins maintained that he acted under the command of Apophis. He spoke in tongues, he howled, he laughed as prosecutors described the details of the victims’ deaths. Judge Bataillon found Nikko Jenkins guilty of all four murders.

The question of competency, however, was far from settled. The sentencing phase, and the question of whether Jenkins would face the death penalty, was about to become its own prolonged battle. Following the guilty verdict on April 16, 2014, Nikko Jenkins was scheduled for sentencing on August 11, 2014—exactly 1 year after the Spring Lake Park killings. The prosecution was seeking the death penalty. The defense was preparing to argue that Jenkins’s mental health issues should spare him from execution.

But the sentencing did not happen on August 11. It was delayed indefinitely because of a hearing to determine Jenkins’s competency to understand the death penalty proceedings against him. The competency question that had shadowed the case since the beginning now took center stage.

While awaiting the hearing, Jenkins was housed at the Nebraska State Penitentiary. And it was during this period that he began a pattern of self-harm that shocked even those who had followed his case from the beginning.

• In April 2015, Jenkins attempted to carve the number 666 into his forehead. The number is associated with biblical symbolism, but Jenkins made the attempt while looking in a mirror, and the numbers came out backward, appearing as upside-down nines rather than sixes. The failed attempt would be darkly absurd if not for the fact that a man was deliberately cutting into his own face. Jenkins told Judge Bataillon about the incident. He said he carved the number because he was not receiving treatment for his mental illness. He asked the judge to order the Nebraska State Patrol to investigate. Bataillon declined the request.

• On June 27, 2015, Jenkins cut the word Satan into his face. He then cut his tongue, attempting to reshape it into a forked serpent-like shape. The tongue mutilation required medical attention.

• In September 2015, Jenkins went further. He told a judge that Apophis commanded him to alter his body below the waist to resemble a serpent. He attempted to do so. The resulting injury required 27 stitches. Prison officials expressed concern about how Jenkins was obtaining sharp objects, but the source of the razor blades was never definitively established.

• In 2016, Jenkins carved the name Hatshepsut, an Egyptian queen, onto his chest along with symbols he said represented chaos. He used three different colored altered pens to create the design.

These acts of self-harm served different purposes depending on who was interpreting them. Jenkins’s defense team presented them as evidence of severe mental illness—the actions of a man who genuinely believed he was communicating with ancient deities and transforming his body to honor them. The prosecution presented them as calculated moves designed to establish an insanity defense and delay proceedings. Prosecutor Brenda Beadle revealed that Jenkins himself told prison staff he mutilated himself so he could use the insanity defense and embarrass the administration. When Beadle recounted this statement in court, Jenkins laughed. His partner, Chelanda Jenkins, offered a different perspective: “He’s not pretending to be crazy,” Chel said. “He’s real life crazy.” The competency evaluation process stretched on for months. Jenkins was observed by state psychiatrists at the Lincoln Correctional Center. Reports were prepared. Hearings were held. The psychiatric opinions remained split. Some professionals believed Jenkins suffered from schizophrenia and possibly bipolar disorder. Others believed he understood the consequences of his actions and was manufacturing symptoms. Through it all, Jenkins continued his courtroom behavior: interrupting judges, citing case law, speaking in what he claimed was the language of Apophis, and oscillating between moments of lucidity and performances of apparent madness.

The delay was agonizing for the victims’ families. Velita Glasgow, Bradford’s mother, and Terry Roberts, Krueger’s mother, continued to attend hearings. They sat through the competency debates, the self-mutilation revelations, and Jenkins’s outbursts. They waited for the sentencing that kept getting pushed back. Years passed. The families remained.

Systemic Failure: The Legislative Investigation

While the competency battle played out in court, state lawmakers launched their own investigation into the Nebraska Department of Correctional Services under Legislative Resolution 424. The question was not whether Jenkins committed the crimes; that had been established. The question was whether the state’s own system bore responsibility for putting him in a position to commit them.

The witnesses painted a damning picture:

• Dr. Oliveto testified that he diagnosed Jenkins as psychotic and recommended commitment, and was fired for speaking publicly about it.

• Dr. Baker-Heiser testified that she identified Jenkins as mentally ill and wrote a report recommending commitment, and that Dr. Weige buried it.

• Weige himself took the stand and admitted he did not believe Jenkins was mentally ill. When Senator Steve Lathrop pressed him on when he first read Baker’s report, Weige’s answer stunned the room: He read it after Jenkins had already been released and killed four people.

Senator Ernie Chambers delivered the most quoted statement of the hearings: “If Nikko’s request for commitment had been granted, if his mother’s request had been granted, if your suggestion that there be commitment had been granted, he would be right now in a facility being treated, and four people would still be walking this earth.” The committee’s final report concluded that Jenkins received wholly inadequate mental health treatment during his incarceration. State Ombudsman Marshall Lux produced a 61-page report that reached the same conclusion: “This is not a situation where we can look at the department’s mental health system and say that the department did everything that they might have done.” The investigation led to real institutional changes. The Office of Inspector General for Nebraska Corrections was created specifically because of the Jenkins case. A new 34-bed mental health treatment ward was built at the Lincoln Correctional Center. Discharge review teams were strengthened to ensure mentally ill inmates had transition plans before release. New corrections director Scott Frakes, hired in February 2015, pledged to work toward eliminating long-term solitary confinement. “It doesn’t work to change behavior,” Frakes said. The reforms were real, but for the families of Juan Uribe-Pena, Jorge Cajiga-Ruiz, Curtis Bradford, and Andrea Krueger, they came too late.

Sentences for the Family Network

As the investigation into the correctional system proceeded, the criminal cases against the Jenkins family members moved through the courts at varying speeds.

• Erica Jenkins: In January 2015, she was sentenced to life in prison for her role in the shooting death of Curtis Bradford. The evidence against her was substantial. She fired at Bradford alongside her brother, and her own statements to others confirmed her participation. Erica showed no remorse during the proceedings. While in custody, she changed her legal name to Illuminati Egoddess Ino Prestige. The name change was processed by the court without fanfare. Erica did not settle into prison life quietly. In 2019, she assaulted her cousin, one of the same family members who was convicted in connection with the killings. The assault added 20 to 40 years to her sentence, bringing her total to 163 to 247 years imprisonment on top of the life sentence. In 2024, she committed another assault at the Nebraska Correctional Center for Women, adding 20 more years.

• Lori Jenkins: The mother faced federal charges for her role in purchasing the ammunition used in the killings. She was convicted on two counts of being an accessory to murder. She received two concurrent 10-year sentences in a federal prison. An additional 5 years were added in April 2015. Her release is projected for approximately 2028 when she will be around 61 years old.

• Warren Levering: The uncle entered a plea deal. He pleaded no contest to charges as an accessory to murder in Andrea Krueger’s death and to attempted robbery. He received two 20-year sentences, one for each charge, totaling 40 years. However, the plea deal effectively halved his time. Levering was released from an Oklahoma prison in 2020.

• Christine Bordeaux: The cousin who cooperated with investigators was sentenced in March 2016 to 20 years for robbery and conspiracy to commit robbery. Her cooperation with the prosecution was a factor in her sentencing but did not exempt her from punishment.

• Lori Sayles: Another sister charged in connection with Bradford’s murder and accused of hiding the murder weapon had her case processed separately.

The sentences were handed down over a period of years, and each one brought the families of the victims back into the courtroom. Velita Glasgow and Terry Roberts were fixtures at the hearings. They sat through the details. They listened to the legal arguments. They absorbed the reality that the people who helped kill their children were receiving sentences that in some cases would result in their eventual release. The disparity between the sentences was a source of frustration. Nikko Jenkins faced death, Erica Jenkins faced life, but Warren Levering, who helped rush Andrea Krueger’s vehicle and participated in her carjacking, was released after serving a portion of a 40-year sentence. The families did not control the legal process; they could only bear witness to it.

Sentenced to Death

Meanwhile, Nikko Jenkins remained in custody, awaiting the resolution of his competency hearing and the sentencing phase of his case. Three years had passed since the murders. The death penalty hearing had been delayed repeatedly. Jenkins continued his self-mutilation, his courtroom outbursts, and his correspondence with the media.

In 2017, after years of delays, state psychiatrists issued their final determination: Nikko Jenkins was competent to understand the death penalty proceedings against him. The finding did not mean he was mentally healthy. It meant he understood the charges and the consequences. His defense team had argued he suffered from schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, pointing to his self-mutilation, his Apophis claims, and his childhood psychiatric history. The prosecution countered that Jenkins was faking, citing his ability to file detailed legal motions and his own admission to prison staff that he self-mutilated to use the insanity defense.

Judge Peter Bataillon accepted the competency finding and scheduled the death penalty hearing. It took place in early January 2017 before a three-judge panel: Bataillon, Judge Mark Johnson of Madison, and Judge Terry Harder of the Kearney area. The hearing lasted approximately one week. The prosecution presented six aggravating factors, including the planned nature of each killing and Jenkins’s history of violence. Douglas County Attorney Don Klein called it “one of the worst killing sprees in the history of this state.” The defense presented mitigating factors: Jenkins’s childhood abuse, his untreated mental illness dating back to age 8, and the effects of prolonged solitary confinement. They argued Jenkins was a product of the very system that was supposed to rehabilitate him.

The victims’ families were present. Velita Glasgow sat in the courtroom. Terry and Kent Roberts sat nearby. The two mothers from opposite ends of Omaha, different backgrounds, different lives, had formed a bond through four years of shared courtroom vigils. “I think we bonded as mothers,” Glasgow said. “It’s a hell of a thing that we had to meet like this.” The families of Uribe-Pena and Cajiga-Ruiz were not present. They had chosen early on to grieve privately.

Surrounded by six deputies, Jenkins sat quietly through the hearing—an unusual silence from a man known for outbursts. The three-judge panel took the case under advisement.

On May 30, 2017, nearly 4 years after the 10-day killing spree that shook Omaha, the three-judge panel delivered its verdict. Judge Peter Bataillon read from the order signed by himself, Judge Mark Johnson, and Judge Terry Harder. The courtroom was packed. The families of two of the four victims were present. Six deputies surrounded the defendant.

“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 state,” Bataillon read. “This panel finds that the aggravating circumstances as determined to exist justify the imposition of a sentence of death for each murder.” Bataillon then read the sentences individually:

• For the execution-style shooting of Juan Uribe-Pena at Spring Lake Park: Death. * For the execution-style shooting of Jorge Cajiga-Ruiz at Spring Lake Park: Death. * For the murder of Curtis Bradford near 18th and Clark Street: Death. * For the murder of Andrea Krueger at 168th and Fort Street: Death. Four death sentences, one for each life taken. In addition to the four death sentences, Jenkins received up to 500 years in prison for the remaining counts: four counts of use of a deadly weapon to commit a felony, and four counts of possession of a firearm. The total sentence was in every practical sense the maximum that the legal system could impose.

Jenkins was now Nebraska’s 11th man on death row. The sentence was historic. It was Nebraska’s first death sentence since the state’s voters reinstated capital punishment in November 2016 after the state legislature had briefly repealed it.

Douglas County Attorney Don Klein addressed the media outside the courtroom. “I think the court looked at all the evidence and there wasn’t any question as to what the appropriate sentence would be in these circumstances,” Klein said. Inside the courtroom, the reactions of the victims’ families were measured. Velita Glasgow, Bradford’s mother, walked out with a sense of closure that she had waited four years to feel. “He had power over my life for 4 years and I’ve struggled for 4 years,” Glasgow said. “He don’t get that power today.” Terry Roberts, Andrea Krueger’s mother, sat with her husband, Kent. They had attended almost every hearing over the four-year span. When asked how they felt, the response was simple: “We’re just glad it’s over with.” But it was not over. Not for the families and not for the legal system. Under Nebraska law, a death sentence triggers an automatic appeal. Jenkins’s conviction and sentence would be reviewed by the Nebraska Supreme Court whether he wanted it to be or not. The appellate process adds years, potentially decades, to the timeline before any execution could take place. Klein acknowledged this reality: “It could be years before he’s executed.” The prosecutor said the practical obstacles were significant. Nebraska’s last execution took place in 1997 when Robert Williams died in the state’s then-operational electric chair. The state has since switched its method of execution to lethal injection, but corrections officials have struggled to obtain the drugs required for the procedure. Pharmaceutical companies that manufacture the drugs used in lethal injection protocols do not want their products associated with executions.

Jenkins was transported from the courtroom to begin his new existence on death row. The man who entered the prison system at 16, who spent a decade in solitary confinement, who was released despite warnings from psychiatrists, his mother, and himself, and who took four lives in 10 days, was now sentenced to lose his own.

Endless Appeals and the Final Status

Jenkins’s death sentence triggered an automatic appeal to the Nebraska Supreme Court. His defense team argued he should not face execution because of his documented mental illness, citing his suicide attempts, self-mutilation, and the conflicting psychiatric evaluations. On July 19, 2019, the Nebraska Supreme Court upheld both the convictions and the death sentences, finding no reversible error.

The defense took the case to the federal level, and it eventually reached the United States Supreme Court. On April 20, 2020, the Supreme Court declined to hear the appeal. The conviction and sentence stood.

For a time, the legal activity quieted. Jenkins remained on death row at Tecumseh, one of 11 men awaiting execution in Nebraska. The oldest case dated back to 1993, and the corrections department typically processed cases in chronological order, placing Jenkins near the back of the line.

But Jenkins did not stay quiet for long. In May 2024, his legal team filed a motion asking the court to authorize $50,000 to pay a mitigation specialist to examine him. They cited a recent incident in which Jenkins had cut his own neck open to remove what he believed was a tumor. No tumor existed. The families reacted with frustration. Terry Roberts, Andrea Krueger’s mother, issued a public statement: “He’s pure evil and there is no study, no medication, no rehabilitating, and no amount of money that can fix it. He is exactly where he belongs for the safety of every Nebraskan.” Velita Glasgow, Bradford’s mother, called Jenkins nothing but an attention seeker.

In September 2024, his defense team requested a new trial, arguing Jenkins had received poor legal representation during the original death penalty hearing. They claimed his public defender should have urged him to plead insanity or presented evidence that his IQ was too low to justify a death sentence. The motion noted that Jenkins himself had rejected these strategies at trial, telling the judge he was “smarter than that.” Judge Bataillon took the motion under advisement. No decision was rendered immediately.

The cycle of motions, hearings, and delays continued. For the families of the victims, each new filing reopened wounds that never fully closed. His defense attorney, David Tank, argued for funding for expert evaluation, and the prosecutor called it a fishing expedition. Judge Bataillon took the matter under advisement.

Then, in January 2026, a Douglas County judge denied Jenkins’s motions for relief.

Here’s the chapter in proper tense with the updated information: In March 2025, Nikko Jenkins filed a handwritten motion with the Douglas County District Court. The content was unexpected. Jenkins wrote, “I no longer desire to appeal the death sentence imposed upon me. It is my request of the court to assist said defendant in setting an execution date.” He waived any further appeals. He demanded that Nebraska Corrections carry out the sentence.

The motion surprised Jenkins’s court-appointed attorney, Brian Munnelly. “I look at this as just another ongoing inconsistent behavior that is just due to his mental illness,” Munnelly said. Jenkins had never previously expressed a desire to be executed. The request, in Munnelly’s view, was not a sign of rational acceptance but another manifestation of the instability that had defined Jenkins’s entire life.

A hearing was scheduled for April 17, 2025. Jenkins appeared via teleconference from the Tecumseh facility. Judge Peter Bataillon—the same judge who had found him guilty, who had presided over the competency hearings, who had listened to his outbursts and his legal citations, who had watched him carve his own body—presided over the hearing. At the hearing, Bataillon ruled that it was not necessary for Jenkins to be mentally evaluated and denied the defense team’s funding request for a competency examination.

Then Jenkins did what Jenkins always did. He reversed himself. Less than a month after demanding his own execution, Jenkins retracted the request. He said he wanted to continue his appeals. After all, the reversal was not shocking to anyone who had followed the case. Jenkins had spent over a decade oscillating between apparent competency and apparent madness, between cooperation and defiance, between rational legal filings and claims of supernatural communication.

The practical obstacles to execution remained in place regardless of Jenkins’s wishes. Nebraska did not have the drugs required to carry out a lethal injection. The state’s last execution had occurred in August 2018 when Carey Dean Moore was put to death. Since then, the state had been unable to secure replacement drugs. Pharmaceutical manufacturers refused to sell their products for use in executions. There were 11 men on death row in Nebraska. The oldest case, that of John Lotter, dated to 1993. Even if Nebraska resolved its drug procurement problem, the corrections department would typically begin with the cases that had been waiting the longest. Jenkins’s 2017 sentence placed him near the back of the line.

In September 2025, Jenkins’s defense team filed yet another motion, this time claiming that Jenkins was intellectually disabled and therefore could not be executed under the United States Supreme Court’s 2002 ruling in Atkins v. Virginia, which held that executing intellectually disabled individuals violated the 8th Amendment’s prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment. His attorneys argued that Jenkins had not had an IQ test in over a decade and that his trial counsel had failed to present compelling evidence of cognitive impairments during the death penalty hearing. They requested funding for a neuropsychologist evaluation at the court’s expense.

On October 20, 2025, the hearing took place. Jenkins appeared via video from Tecumseh. His defense attorney, David Tank, argued that expert testimony was not only important and relevant, it was essential, and that a proper assessment of Jenkins’s intellectual capacity had never been conducted. The Douglas County prosecutor pushed back, calling the defense request a fishing expedition and arguing that Jenkins should rely on the evidence he already possessed rather than seek additional evaluation. Judge Bataillon took the matter under advisement.

Then, in January 2026, a Douglas County judge denied Jenkins’s motions for relief, rejecting the claims that had been filed over the course of several years, including the arguments of ineffective counsel and intellectual disability.

The legal process continued, but for now, every door Jenkins’s attorneys had tried to open had been closed. The death sentences stood. The appeals had been exhausted at the state and federal level, and Nikko Jenkins remained on death row, waiting in a system that had sentenced him to die.