Was a California TV Producer Involved in the Mysterious Death of Her Sister?

When a concerned family friend called police to the home of Jill and Wendy Blackstone in Studio City, California in March 2015, paramedics were met with a bizarre scene: Jill, in a back bedroom of the home, disoriented and talking with slurred speech.

“She claimed that she fell on her way into the house and didn’t remember anything until she woke up with the heat of the sun on her face,” said prosecutor Gretchen Ford on Snapped, airing Sundays at 6/5c on Oxygen.

Jill later told officers she crawled from the front yard to her bedroom, and called her friend, veterinarian Tracy Reis, who then called police.

“[Tracy Reis] said it was just silent when she was talking to Jill, and said, ‘Where’s Wendy and where are the dogs?’ and Jill had stated to her, ‘I think they’re dead in the garage,’” said Johnneen Jones, former LAPD detective, on Snapped.

When responding paramedics checked in the garage, they found Jill’s sister, Wendy, laying on the ground dead, with a dead dog next to her. Charcoal was burning in a grill, and two other dogs were still alive.  

Was it a suicide? A murder-suicide that failed? An accident? Police were left baffled, until they spoke to Jill Blackstone.

“Maybe part of me just snapped,” she told them in the hospital. “I don’t know. I don’t know what that feels like to snap.”

Wendy Blackstone had a degenerative, genetic eye condition called retinitis pigmentosa, as part of a symptom of Usher syndrome. She also had hearing loss as part of the syndrome. She lived in New Jersey, but often visited her sister, a successful talk show producer, in Los Angeles.

“When we were producing talk shows together, Jill took it upon herself to ask Wendy, ‘Hey, come live with me,’” Anthony Faire, a former co-worker of Jill's, said on Snapped.

Jill Blackstone.

As police investigated the home after Wendy’s death, they found notes taped to the trash cans and Post-It notes around the home that pointed them toward a suicide, or a failed murder-suicide.

“The notes talk about what you’re going to find inside the garage,” Steve Castro, former LAPD detective supervisor, said on Snapped. “You’re going to find two females that do not want to be resuscitated. This is what you’re supposed to do with the bodies. This is what you’re supposed to do with the dogs.”

On Jill’s desk was a binder labeled “Last Will and Testament for Jill and Wendy.” Officers also found keys to cars and passwords for computers, as well as a note that said, “Wendy is loved. Know that.”

“I found that to be very suspicious in regard to why anybody would write that down about Wendy,” Jones said.

When police interviewed Jill Blackstone in the hospital, they were surprised by her demeanor.

“She was just talking about her career. It’s impossible to miss that she’s smiling, happy, delighted to reminisce about it,” Ford said.

“For someone that had just gone through this event, who had lost a sister, I would have expected to see someone that was more on the grieving side,” Castro added.

Jill indicated to police that she took care of her sister, despite her own health battle with lupus.

“Wendy is disabled. She can’t do anything without me. She can’t drive. She can’t go anywhere. She’s socially isolated. She can’t work,” Jill said in the police interview.

But an autopsy on Wendy showed other than the blindness and deafness from her condition, she was in good health.

“She was a 48-year-old woman in exceptionally good physical shape who worked out 45 minutes a day on a treadmill,” Ford said. “She was slender, athletic, well-muscled, no disease evidence. No health issues.”

Friends also disagreed with Jill’s analysis of her sister and questioned that Wendy would commit suicide.

“Jill’s description of Wendy as being an invalid who was completely reliant on Jill was upsetting … that wasn’t the case at all. Wendy could take care of herself,” said John Wenberg, Wendy’s friend, on Snapped. “When I heard there was some evidence Wendy had tried to kill herself, I kept telling the detective that, ‘There’s no way that she did this.’ Wendy was not a negative person. She didn’t like to dwell on the bad things.”

Jill told police that the night of March 13, she and her sister made a fire, then moved the fire into the garage because they grew cold. She claimed she left to go back to the house to get marshmallows, then passed out in the driveway and didn’t know what happened after that.

But police questioned why notes were placed everywhere.

“[Jill] goes on and says, ‘Those notes were placed there days before because I was really struggling and I was just trying to obtain the courage to possibly do something that I could never do,’” Castro said. “I think it was clear to both of us at that point that Jill ended Wendy’s life without any knowledge to Wendy. Wendy had no idea of this murder-suicide pact that she was doing.”

As police spoke to Wendy’s friends, they found out a few weeks before her death, she said her sister gave her a cookie that tasted bad.

“Wendy had told her friend she went to bed that night, and she couldn’t get up,” Jones said. “She felt like she was drugged, and she said, ‘Something was in that cookie.’”

Police believed Jill did a trial run of drugging her sister. Wendy’s autopsy showed Xanax in her system, which was only prescribed to Jill, not Wendy. An FBI analysis of Jill’s computer also showed she may have been planning her sister’s death.

“In her search engine, three different topics: suicide by gun, carbon monoxide, and poisoning,” Castro said.

Jill Blackstone pled no contest to voluntary manslaughter and animal cruelty.

“At no point did I see any remorse from Jill. She convinced herself that this was an accident, when she knew very well this was not an accident. This is exactly the result that Jill wanted," Castro said.

Jill was sentenced to eight years in prison and was released in March 2024.

“The mystery is, did Jill Blackstone accidentally survive, or did she produce this scene and plan to survive the whole time?” Barbara Schroeder, podcast host, said on Snapped. “Only Jill Blackstone knows exactly what happened that night in that garage.”

Watch all-new episodes of Snapped on Sundays at 6/5c on Oxygen and streaming on Peacock.