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Georgia Mom Fatally Stabbed, Bitten by Her Own Teen Twin Daughters: "No One Saw That Coming"
Twins Jasmiyah and Tasmiyah Whitehead, 16, said they'd come home from school to find their mom, Jarmecca “Nikki” Whitehead, brutally killed in a bathtub. What later unfolded shocked investigators.
The city of Conyers, Georgia, was known for its serenity, but on January 13, 2010, the peaceful vibe was shattered when Jarmecca “Nikki” Whitehead, 34, was found stabbed to death in her home.
The grisly discovery was made by her 16-year-old twin daughters Jasmiyah and Tasmiyah Whitehead. One of the sisters had run outside screaming for help from a sheriff’s deputy who happened to be nearby.
“It was an unimaginably brutal crime scene,” Special Assistant District Attorney Titus Nichols said in the “A Mother Murdered” episode of The Real Murders of Atlanta, airing Saturdays at 9/8c p.m. on Oxygen.
Who was Nikki Whitehead?
Nikki was “an amazing person,” Yucca Harris, her longtime best friend, told The Real Murders of Atlanta. “She didn't come from structure, but Nikki got her license and became a hairstylist.”
Nikki enrolled at Bauder College in Atlanta to study fashion in order to expand her opportunities. Her instructor Ronda Anderson described her as “so energized” and “a very loving mother.”
When the twins’ biological father found out Nikki was pregnant, “he bailed” and moved to Canada, Atlanta television journalist Shaunya Chavis told The Real Murders of Atlanta.
What happened to Nikki Whitehead?
Nikki was found stabbed to death in a bathtub with water in it. She was wearing a nightgown “and just covered in blood,” said Greg Carson, a now-retired Conyers Police Department lieutenant. “It was horrific.”
Nikki had multiple lacerations on her forearms and hands, stab wounds to her back and neck, a bite mark on her arm, and defensive wounds. The coroner estimated that she had been killed between 8 a.m and 10 a.m. on January 13, 2010. Sheriffs saw no signs of forced entry that day.
A bloody trail showed that Nikki had been dragged from her bedroom to the bathroom. Investigators found a broken vase and a blood-smeared couch in the living room.
Forensic evidence was collected for DNA analysis, and an impression of the bite mark was taken. "I’ve been in scenes with a lot of blood before, but this was unlike anything I’ve seen,” said Carson. “You can smell it, even taste it.”
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Twins Jasmiyah and Tasmiyah interviewed by police
At police headquarters, the twins described the day’s events. They said they left home at 8 a.m. and walked to school, where they were about 10 minutes late for the opening bell. After school, they found their mother, the girls told police.
Detectives learned from the twins that Nikki’s boyfriend, Robert Head, then 55, also lived with them. Head, a long-distance truck driver, had been at the house the day before, but he wasn’t there now, the girls told officials.
The sisters were released to the custody of their great-grandmother, and investigators sought to contact Head.
Nikki Whitehead’s two lovers questioned
In a surprising development, detectives learned that Nikki was also seeing another man, Joe Carter. He worked in a barber shop next to Nikki’s salon.
“Police believe there are a number of possible motives,” Chavis said. “Did Robert Head find out about Joe Carter? Did Joe Carter get upset about Robert?”
Carter was “grief stricken” when police informed him that Nikki had been slain. He told them that he and Nikki “were lovers for several months,” said Jackie Dunn, a now-retired Conyers Police Department captain.
Video surveillance footage confirmed Carter’s alibi for his whereabouts at the time of the stabbing, so he was ruled out as a suspect.
When detectives made contact with Head, he was distraught about Nikki. He said he knew about Carter and that he and Nikki “had an understanding,” said Chavis.
Investigators confirmed that Head was on the road in Indiana at the time of Nikki’s murder. He was cleared as a suspect.
Surveillance video changes course of the case
Detectives discovered that a gas station across the street from Nikki’s house had surveillance footage from January 13.
As they reviewed the tape, investigators were shocked to see the twins at the service station at 10:10 a.m. The girls had said they'd left home for school at 8 a.m. “We had to see why they were lying,” said Dunn.
During the second interview with police, the twins were questioned separately. “We confronted them with the discrepancies in their stories,” said Dunn.
The police observed that the girls were no longer as cooperative and grieving as they were during the first interview. “They were becoming very dismissive,” Nichols said.
Before concluding their interviews with the twins, investigators obtained blood samples and molds of their teeth.
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Nikki Whitehead’s family issues
A deep dive by police into Nikki’s family history showed past troubles between the girls and their mom.
In June 2008, law enforcement was called to the house. The girls said that Nikki attacked them. Nikki said that the girls attacked her, according to Nichols.
After the incident, a judge decided that the twins should live with their great-grandmother, according to The Real Murders of Atlanta.
“Nikki was just devastated by this,” said Chavis. After nearly two years of fighting to regain custody, Nikki was awarded full custody of her daughters in January of 2010.
The celebration of the twins’ return was short-lived. “The police learned the girls were completely against this,” said Nichols.
“It transcended quickly into Nikki complaining that the girls were threatening her and that she felt scared of them,” said Dunn.
Focused on the twins as possible suspects, investigators searched Nikki's home a second time. In the girls’ bedroom, they found notes in journals that the girls had written to each other.
In the notes, the girls discussed wanting to leave, according to Nichols. Entries from January 5 sent chills down investigators’ backs.
“One wrote to the other, ‘If we don't get rid of her now, we'll be stuck here forever,’” said Dunn. “The second one agreed. That led us to believe this incident was premeditated.”
Who killed Nikki Whitehead?
Crime lab results showed that blood at the scene belonged to Nikki and her twin daughters. Forensic evidence showed that Tasmiyah bit Nikki. Four months into the investigation, bolstered by forensic evidence, timeline discrepancies and journal entries, authorities arrested the twins for felony murder and aggravated assault.
At this point, detectives observed that the sisters weren’t the vulnerable victims they'd appeared to be in January. “They were vile, cussing, nasty, threatening,” said Carson. “Complete Jekyll and Hyde.”
It was an eye-opening twist. “No one could believe that,” said Chavis. “No one saw that coming.”
The girls were afforded a chance to take a plea, and they did. As part of the deal, they had to do a video interview in which they revealed what happened the day Nikki was murdered.
In the chilling video, the twins detailed how they fought with their mother that morning. One girl hit Nikki with the vase and then stabbed her repeatedly, per the recorded confession. The sisters dragged Nikki to the bathtub “kind of like a joint effort,” Tasmiyah said.
Jasmiyah described her mother’s final moments in the water-filled tub. “She went under a couple times and that was it,” she said.
The sisters were sentenced to 30 years in prison with the possibility of parole.
To learn more about the case, watch the “A Mother Murdered” episode of The Real Murders of Atlanta, airing Saturdays at 9/8c p.m. on Oxygen.
