(This entry was first posted at CrimeBlog.US.)
Grayson, Kentucky sits just south of I-64 in Northeastern Kentucky, on U.S. Highway 60. Four-thousand or so souls live in Grayson. It's apparently a safe place, too. City-data.com indicates that in 2004 and 2005, there were no homicides in Grayson, and a total of 3 assaults.
Early in the morning on May 9, 2007, authorities were called to a fire in a residence just outside Grayson. There they found three apparent homicides inside one mobile home.
Jennifer Ison worked over 30 miles to the east of the little Kentucky town in Huntington, West Virginia at Cabell Huntington Hospital in labor and delivery. She had a bit of a commute, for Jennifer lived with daughters Shannah, 10, and Marisa, 4, on New Run Road just outside Grayson.
The single mother and her daughters lived in a mobile home she rented from a relative.
Members of Jennifer Ison's family have told the media that the three dead bodies found in the burning home were Jennifer, Shannah, and Marisa. But investigators say that damage done to the bodies in the fire was so severe that dental records will be used to identify the victims.
Late in the day on May 9, Kentucky State Troopers confirmed to Kentucky media they were indeed dealing with "a triple homicide and arson." Investigation at the scene of the crime will take at least two more days.
Jennifer Ison and her daughters may have been murdered between midnight and 4 a.m. on May 9. Emergency services were called to the fire at Jennifer's home at 4:10 a.m. Someone logged in to Jennifer's MySpace after the clock turned over from the 8th to the 9th.
Online, Jennifer Ison was "jenifer_rn." Her profile and the blog attached to it showed a woman going through changes, at least one of them major. In the "About Me" section of her profile, Jennifer talked more about what she wanted in someone else:
Please I am looking for a friend, confidant,someone to make me happy, make me smile. Someone who will appreciate an educated hard working woman who knows what she wants out of life, how to go about getting it..I want someone to have fun with!! Someone who enjoys life, love, and all the in between stuff. For so long my life was full of sadness, [loneliness] and pain. I have found the strength and [courage] to change all of those things, so now I need to learn to be me, and what my life can be like without all of the [hurtful] negativity of the past. This is all new too me and I look forward to meeting exciting new people... But please be professional, clean, hard working and honest, as I am and want the person I am with to be so also. So please someone show me how to have some fun...Jennifer apparently struggled with her weight. In her blog, she was forthright about this, and emotional. On October 16, 2006, she appeared to be angry about the online dating game:
[Always], always, do you have any other pics,,,Yes but do you really want to see them? Are you afraid that I might be "fat" or not up to standard, how about getting to know me first, before you cancel out the chance based on some biased opinion of what I look like???? I truly do not understand people at all, do you think that what a person looks like is all that matters, let me tell you....NO NO NO it is not!!!! I am a wonderful mother, confidant, friend, lover, and it doesn't even matter that my ass is fat... because I am still the same person and will always be!!! So for anyone interested....please get to know me first before you judge me for my looks...just to let you all in on a secret I am having gastric bypass, in about 3 weeks and am greatly looking forward to losing some weight....but is that going to change who I am on the inside...NO NO NO...I will always be the same person... with regard for anyone who cares to know.. check back on my page when I meet up to your standards...hope your not tooo late....Jennifer,,,PS.. there is MORE TO LOVE here!!!At least two of Jennifer's MySpace friends left supportive comments, but the "comments" link at the bottom of that entry indicated there were 3 comments at one time.
Three days later, on October 19, Jennifer wrote again about the gastric bypass -- a surgical procedure sometimes used to combat obesity when other solutions haven't worked. She'd put a lot of thought into what she was doing, and how it might affect her life:
This will change my life irreversibly..I am so very excited, nervous, terrified, and hopeful. What will it be like???? How will I feel???? My best friend had this surgery in January and has lost 110lb. this is way awesome, how will my surgery go, what will my story be??? Have any of you all been here? Will you share your story with me? Will you give me encouragement, support, direction? There are a number of reasons I have made this decision, all of which are valid, well thought out, reasonable, issues. However I am still uncertain to an extent, as I am a Nurse and have seen the good, bad, and really bad outcomes of this surgery...Jennifer's gastric bypass surgery was set for November 6. This is part of what she wrote that morning:
I am sitting here waiting to go to the hospital, thinking of all of the possibilities good and bad. Most of which make me a little nervous but excited as well. A whole new life is what my best friend who has had the surgery says it will be.. I just am afraid that it may not happen that way, but when I think on the negative side I try to push it away and think positive again, hey I have two beautiful daughters, wonderful family, and friends who need me in their life. So wish me luck, I need it..and if your praying people remember me and my family through this anxious time...Jennifer Ison's final blog entry was posted on April 19, 2007, less than a month ago. She was beginning to see all the positive effects from the November surgery:
I have successfully lost 78pounds to date. Whoo hoo me!! I weigh less now than when I graduated high school and am still losing. This is such an awesome wonderful thing, feeling better, looking better, and being noticed as a person not for some big "fat" girl. Yes I am still overweight, but this surgery has changed my life, for the better!!! I am no longer taking medication for my diabetes or my blood pressure, they are both well under control now. For any of you who know me, then you know my fear of diabetes and how wonderful this is for me. I have been asked would I do it again, my answer would be a resounding YES!!! Would I recommend it to my friends.. YES again!! When you have tried everything and feel like there is no hope left, that is where I was at, now I feel like I have a new life. I feel sooo much better, even my daughters are happy for me. This is wonderful. New pics will be posted in a few days.. look back to see them...At one time there'd been one comment on that last entry. Jennifer, or someone with access to her account, apparently deleted it.
Elsewhere on her profile, Jennifer posted photos of her daughters. In each image Shannah was smiling slightly, perhaps shyly, and Marisa appeared to be thinking of something funny.
She had two beautiful children, lived in a place that never seems to see much violent crime at all, much less murder... how did Jennifer Ison and her daughters come to be in that burning mobile home before dawn on May 9? It's the kind of crime that was either born out of conscious, direct intent or was completely random.
I had to wonder if the missing comments from Jennifer's profile were somehow connected to any troubles she might have had. Most likely not -- several thousand people build personal profiles every day only to think better of the endeavor later and abandon or delete them.
When I read about crimes like this, where children are involved, I also think about crimes like the murders of the Groenes in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho in May of 2005. Until registered sex offender Joseph Edward Duncan showed up two months later with the sole surviving victim from that night, Shasta Groene, no one really knew what had happened. Three people were brutally murdered, two children disappeared, and theories ran towards biker gangs and robberies gone bad -- not a sexual predator so unbelievably brutal that he would bludgeon a family to death just to kidnap two children he wanted to molest. I considered that possibility at the time and rejected it because I couldn't conceive of such a thing.
Now I can. To get an idea of how the monster Joseph Duncan worked, go check out the blog he himself kept for a year prior to his rampage.
Grayson being not far from Interstate 64 could have put the single mother and her daughters in the orbit of a roaming predator, just like Duncan.
Statistics, though, indicate that the chances are good that the person who set fire to the Ison residence in the pre-dawn hours on May 9 was someone who knew Jennifer, Shannah, and Marisa. Perhaps someone close to them. What was Jennifer talking about when she wrote of her life once being full of "sadness, loneliness, and pain"?
The answer to the tragedy there in Grayson may lay behind those words.
Additional links:
- "Co-worker remembers nurse who died in fire," the Huntington Herald-Dispatch, May 9, 2007.
- "Fatal fire ruled homicide," the Huntington Herald-Dispatch, May 9, 2007.
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