Twin 16-Year-Old Girls Murder Their Mother After Fight Over Being Late For School

A single mother in Georgia was brutally stabbed to death by her own 16-year-old twin daughters after they claimed they got into a fight with her about school and discipline.

On the afternoon of Jan. 13, 2010, Jasmiyah and Tasmiyah Whitehead seemed distraught when they flagged down a Rockdale County sheriff’s deputy who happened to be driving by their home in Conyers. The girls reported their mother, Jarmecca Yvonne “Nikki” Whitehead, 34, was murdered.

“When we walked into the house, you could immediately see the pools of blood on the carpet, the drag marks in the carpet from the carpet into the master bedroom,” Sgt. Ken Swift of the Conyers Police department said, noting blood spatter covered the walls, ceilings and furniture.

Officers discovered Nikki dead in a bathtub.

“She had been brutally murdered,” Swift said. “This was by far the worst crime scene I’ve ever walked into.”

Interrogation tapes and videos later obtained by WXIA-TV provided more details about what the girls alleged happened. “I heard Jas scream and all I saw [was] blood all over the floor," Tasmiyah said. “I looked and there was blood in front of the door like a line of blood, like someone had dragged her in there like it is on TV.”

But as the questioning continued, detectives began to have doubts about the twins’ stories. Once separated, the teenagers began to tell police differing accounts. Investigators also said the twins had been wearing gloves inside, and once they were asked to remove them, detectives noted they had suffered scratch and bite marks. The girls claimed the marks were from fighting each other as well as self-inflicted because they were nervous.

After an in-depth investigation, Jasmiyah and Tasmiyah were arrested nearly four months later in connection with their mother Nikki’s murder. Eventually the twins confessed to the crime, saying the slaying occurred after they got into a fight with their mother about being late for school and breaking her rules.

A police video shows Jasmiyah claimed that the day of the murder her mother was trying to hit her and her sister with a pot and then was threatening them with a knife.

During the scuffle, Jasmiyah said their mother was “winning the battle with the knife,” so the teen picked up the pot and hit her with it. Her mother, she said, retaliated by biting her. “So I'm trying to punch her, I guess that then Tas stabs her. She stabbed her.”

Jasmiyah continued, “Then I picked up the knife and I think I stabbed her but they wasn't cuts, like they wasn't deep because I couldn't bring myself to do it.”

Police, however, said the victim suffered over 50 stab wounds in the attack.

Jasmiyah claimed before Nikki died, the mother’s last words to her daughters were that “she hates us, she hates us” and “we’re going to jail, we’re going to jail.”

The twins were each charged as adults with voluntary manslaughter, making false statements, and possession of a knife during a crime.

In January 2014, Tasmiyah pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 30 years in prison. The following month, Jasmiyah also pleaded guilty and received the same sentence.

“I’ve lost my oldest child, I’ve lost my first set of grandkids,” said the girl’s grandmother, the victim’s mother, Linda Whitehead. “I always saw them at Harvard or Yale. Never would I have ever imagined that they would be sitting in a jail cell.”