Gerald Jako Pleads Guilty to Two Counts of Murder in Ohio County – Wheeling Intelligencer

GERALD WAYNE JAKO

WHEELING Gerald Jako pleaded guilty to two counts of murder Monday ahead of his trial, which had been set to begin today.

The Wheeling man initially was charged with three counts of murder and two counts of concealing a deceased human body in the 2018 murder of Trevor Vossen and his pregnant girlfriend, Lauren Lulu Cree-Jenkins.

Jako reportedly lured Vossen and Cree-Jenkins to a Wheeling house, killing and dismembering them before burying their remains in Raleigh County, W.Va., with help from his girlfriend, Dana Marie Bowman. Cree-Jenkinss death resulted in the involuntary termination of her pregnancy.

Circuit Judge David Sims ruled in July that Jakos defense was not able to provide any legal authority supporting that the defendants rights under the Fourth Amendment of the Constitution of the United States had been violated, denying a motion the defense had made to suppress evidence from Jakos phone calls made while in custody.

At the pre-trial hearing on July 15, Jakos lawyers argued that Jako had not been given sufficient warning that his phone calls were being monitored while at the Southern Regional Jail, where Jako stayed from August to September 2018. However, Sims found that Jako was provided a written notice that he signed, verbal warning at the beginning of his calls and written notices posted at the locations of phones used by inmates.

Because of these three different warnings provided, Sims found the defendants argument that Jako was not provided with proper notice that phone calls may be monitored, intercepted, recorded, and disclosed and correspondence read without merit.

Denial of the motion to suppress was expected to bear significant weight in the trial, as Assistant Ohio County Prosecutor Shawn Turak used calls Jako made to his girlfriend from jail to convict him of a 2018 robbery.

In the calls, Jako intimidated his girlfriend into refusing to plead guilty.

Prosecutors have scheduled a press conference for Thursday to provide more informationregarding Jakos guilty plea.

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Gerald Jako Pleads Guilty to Two Counts of Murder in Ohio County - Wheeling Intelligencer