Death of Nikki Whitehead

Jarmecca Yvonne "Nikki" Whitehead (April 18, 1975 – January 13, 2010) was a 34-year-old beautician and mother of 16-year-old identical twins, Jasmiyah Kaneesha and Tasmiyah Janeesha Whitehead. On the afternoon of January 13, 2010, she was found dead in the bathroom of her home in the gated Bridle Ridge Walk subdivision in Conyers, Georgia. She had been beaten with a vase and stabbed repeatedly.

Whitehead had met Robert Head, a truck driver, in 2000, and she and her daughters subsequently moved in with him in Conyers. The twins, both honor roll students and Girl Scouts, were initially raised by their great-grandmother, Della Frazier, who described Whitehead as a sporadic and random presence in the girls' lives. In 2007, when the twins were 13, Whitehead sought custody of them, leading to conflict; Frazier said the twins viewed their mother's attempts at control as hypocritical. The disputes escalated into physical altercations, counseling, and juvenile court appearances, and custody shifted back to Frazier before Whitehead regained custody again on January 5, 2010. The girls objected, but a court ordered a two-week trial period of the mother and daughters living together. Whitehead was killed eight days later, on January 13, 2010.

The twins stated they discovered their mother's body. A medical examiner characterized the killing as a crime of passion unlikely to have been carried out by a stranger. Whitehead's boyfriend was cleared through DNA testing. Investigators cited evidence, including bite marks attributed to wounds inflicted by the mother during a struggle, implicating the twins. They were arrested four months after the killing, on May 21, 2010, and charged with murder. Both initially pleaded not guilty.

In January 2014, Tasmiyah pleaded guilty to voluntary manslaughter and other charges and was sentenced to 30 years in prison. One month later, on February 7, 2014, Jasmiyah pleaded guilty to the same charges and received the same sentence. Having already spent over three years in jail prior to sentencing, both sisters had become eligible for parole in 2017.