THE mum of a daughter said forensics revealed the truth of her daughter’s murder after her boyfriend claimed it was a tragic car accident.
In April 2007, the body of Jenna Watkins, 21, was discovered on a mountain road near the wreckage of a crashed car in South Wales.
It was originally thought that Jenna had died in a fatal road accident and had been thrown from the vehicle – but upon closer forensic examination, a darker truth started to emerge.
Dr Richard Shepherd, a former Home Office forensic pathologist, told the BBC One Wales series: The Truth About My murder that her injuries did not align with this version of events.
Jenna had been in the car with her then partner Jason Shaddick, 28 and the pair lived together in the market town of Neath.
On that fatal evening, the pair had attended a party in Port Talbot before they both left following an argument.
The 21-year-old was later found face down with her belongings strewn across the road around her while Shaddick had vanished without a trace.
Dr Shepherd told the BBC that Jenna’s injuries, including bruising across her head and legs, were not consistent with being thrown from a car.
He told the BBC that the initial theory of a car crash was “just not adding up”.
Family liaison officer, Inspector Emma White, added: “It didn’t appear that she’d been thrown from the vehicle, just looking at the windows and things like that.”
Dr Shepherd later suggested “strangulation” after forensics revealed devastating injuries to her larynx.
Shaddick turned up at Neath police station following an appeal but refused to answer any questions put to him.
He later claimed that the reason for the crash was because Jenna had assaulted him and he was acting in self-defence.
And that when he tried to calm her down by putting his arm around her, he accidentally killed her.
Jenna’s mum Pauline said she had received a final call from her daughter on the night of April 21, 2007 as Jenna was in the car before the phone went dead.
She told the documentary: “About 10 to one, she rung me screaming and crying. I said ‘are you strapped in?’ She said no. I said ‘strap yourself in’, because I could hear the car going. And he’s driving like a madman.”
She also told Inspector White that she had previously found a broken necklace outside her home that belonged to Jenna, suggesting Shaddick had ripped it from her.
On the surface, Jenna and Shaddick were sociable and known as the “Hollywood couple” according to Pauline because of their smart appearance.
But she said Shaddick was controlling and police later discovered that he had two previous convictions for assaulting one of his ex-girlfriends.
Pauline labelled him as “nasty” and said he was “awful, possessive”.
She added that she once pleaded with her daughter to come home, saying “he might kill you”.
Dr Shepherd also found that Jenna’s post-mortem revealed old bruising on her body while marks on her face suggested Shaddick was lying when he said he was being attacked by her.
“Her body shows how she desperately tried to defend herself. But she was beaten and bitten, and then strangled in a headlock which ended her life in seconds,” he said.
Shaddick was convicted of Jenna’s murder in November 2007 and was put behind bars for life with a minimum term of 13 years.
He was later released in February 2021.
