"They were all discussing it," she said. "Mostly Kim and [Jillian]. I think it was [Jillian] who said it." When asked about what happened to Gorenman's fruit after the murder, Marjorie said, referring to herself, Kim, and Jillian, "I believe we ate that."
In addition, Marjorie told the courtroom that she and the other girls had ingested some combination of alcohol (possibly Hennessy), weed, and crystal meth that night. That lent no credibility to her already shaky memory. She couldn't recall the model of the car she was driving. She didn't know what time she had been interviewed by investigators just a few days before the hearing. She wavered a lot.
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The prosecution wasn't relying on Marjorie's testimony alone, though. One of the pizza parlor guys, Talal Jaber, and Sanford had told cops about how Jillian told them the murder was only supposed to be a robbery. Jaber and Sanford backed off those statements at the hearing, but the damage was done.
When the hearing concluded six days later, the D.A. — perhaps because the girls were so young and the case so complicated — offered plea deals. And the defendants, who would have been looking at 25 years to life if they went to trial (where there was no telling what new evidence might come out), certainly had incentive to accept.
The prosecution believed that Felicia brought the gun, Jillian brought Gorenman, and Kim pulled the trigger. That, combined with the overwhelming amount of evidence Jillian had delivered against herself, determined the varying sentences offered in the plea bargains.
Kim was offered 21 years for voluntary manslaughter and use of a deadly weapon. Felicia was offered eight — six for voluntary manslaughter and another two for providing the gun. Jillian — who had cooperated with police, and who had not provided or used the gun — was offered 11 years for voluntary manslaughter. Marjorie, the lookout, was free to go. She's now engaged, employed, and living a quiet life with her fiancé.
Jillian was shocked and offended to be offered a worse deal than Felicia, who had provided the murder weapon. Still, she took the plea. "I'm terrified by our justice system," she says. "Innocent people get convicted every single day, and I just broke."
At 24 years old, Jillian has been incarcerated since May 5, 2005. She'll be at the county jail for another couple of months, and then she'll be transferred to a women's prison, where she'll be among the youngest and most vulnerable inmates. With credit for time served, she'll be there for about seven years, which, she's quick to point out, is nowhere close to as long as the Gorenmans will be without their son. Still, it's a while.
She'll pass much of her time reading, she says, and is already devouring the Twilight series, about a young woman who falls in love with a vampire. It's not scary, she says, which is the only reason she can read it. She hates scary movies and violence and gore. Sanford backed this up in court: "I get pissed off and smack the cat and she's crying about it," he once announced. She does come off like a softie, and even Pera says she believes Jillian feels genuinely sorry about what happened.
The biggest tragedy of all, Pera says, is clearly that of the Gorenman family. But the situation of the throwaway girls is also tragic. "They are these kids on the street, living adult lives," she says. "Kids that are raised in dysfunctional families like they were have very short childhoods. I think childhood is so painful for them that there's a tendency to want to grow up quicker just to get away."
Although she disputes Marjorie's damning testimony and points out inconsistencies, Jillian does admit she made mistakes. On the night that Kim kicked the woman while attempting to rob her, Jillian says she wishes she had challenged her more about the violence. On the night of the murder, she wishes she had been more alert and less afraid.
Although she owns up to lying to investigators and sugarcoating the story here and there, Jillian still denies having any knowledge that Gorenman would be robbed or shot that night. When asked if she would believe her own story if she heard it from somebody else, she doesn't hesitate. Her voice is unwavering, her big brown eyes intensely focused. "Being through this, I would," she says.
Whether you believe Jillian or not, she certainly seems to believe herself.
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