52 Lock Up: Jodine Serrin

Welcome back to 52 Lock Up, I am your Appletini Cadma of Bitten Apple TV. 52 lock up is a series I started to talk about one of my biggest passions of true crime. A new episode on every Cadmaniac Monday for 52 Mondays. Hope you guys enjoy, be sure to comment feedback, like and subscribe. And just in case for those curious, viewer discretion is advised. There will be no gross details but I will discuss the crime. Thank you.

Today’s episode begins with Jodine Elizabeth Serrin was born November 21st 1967 in Los Angeles California to Arthur and Lois Serrin. She had siblings named Michael, Nancy, Barbara, Carole and Chuck Serrin. She grew up in Walton Hills Ohio and graduated from Bedford High School in 1986.

She had a love for making flower arrangements when her family moved to Carlsbad, California that she ventured out to earn a certificate in floral design. Jodine had a incredible passion for animals especially her horse Sam and cat Angel. It is said that her favorite hobbies were horseback riding, ice skating, biking, crafts, kayaking and taking very long walks on the beach. She held a deep passion for helping others especially homebound senior citizens; could be because she was also diagnosed on the spectrum of schizophrenia. I was unable to find additional details about her diagnosis but I will quickly say schizophrenia lays on a spectrum, it is a mood disorder and thinking disorder. When schizophrenia is active in a person, the symptoms can include delusions, hallucinations, disorganized speech, trouble with thinking and lack of motivation. However, given how active she was I am taking a gander that it may not have been as active in her; again I her mental illness is referenced but there are few details to find out about it.

Nowadays schizophrenia is referred to as a spectrum of it’s own. There are 3 prominent schizophrenia spectrum disorders which include Schizoaffective disorder that is similar to full blown schizophrenia with strong mood episodes like bipolar disorder or major depressive disorder. There is also Schizophreniform disorder which is identical to schizophrenia but the duration of the symptoms space out between the time frame of a month to six months. Schizotypal personality disorder, is similar to schizophrenia but the episodes the person goes through are not as frequent or intense. The person with this diagnosis can be shown a way to be aware of the difference between their distorted concepts and experiences versus reality.

Although she was high functioning, she still depended on her parents for other details in her life like driving to and from appointments; she loved returning the favor to others who needed help as well. If I had to take a guess I am thinking maybe she fell into the category of schizotypal personality disorder or schizophreniform; but I am purely guessing based on what others have said about her because she was described as a sweet, low profile young girl.

Let’s continue on with her story, She was also supported with the National Alliance for the Mentally ill (NAMI), which is an organization that was founded by Harriet Shetler and Beverly Young. It is a US based advocacy group that identifies their missions as a way of providing education, advocacy, support, public awareness for people and their families that are affected by mental illness; in order for the diagnosed individual to be able to build a strong life. Her passion to help others was met with her favorite of walking when she would join the Walk-A-Thon fundraiser for a bevy of groups each year. She had best friends at Mariposa and the Copper Hill Friends Group because of the time she spent there helping. She had a very happy close relationship with both of her parents. Whenever her parents called, she always answered and kept in close contact with them; meaning they talked every day.

Jodine is living her best life and giving back to others. On February 14th 2007 Art and Lois stepped out for a romantic dinner at a local restaurant and to watch a movie. By 10 p.m. they were curious about their daughter because they had not heard much from her for the day. Lois wanted to check up on her. They arrived to her apartment at 10 p.m. at their daughters condo at Swallow Lane. They approached the door and knocked on it, but there was no Jodine answering it like usual. The parents could see that the lights were on in the apartment so they knock again; and again there was no answer. They attempted to use their spare key but the door was stuck on a latch. They become overwhelmed with concern and find a way to kick the door in and rush inside.

They rushed into the apartment and headed straight to their daughter’s bedroom and unbeknownst to them they startle a semi naked man on top of Jodine in bed. Her parents gasp feeling like they walked in on their daughter having sex; they turned right around and walked back outside waiting for the couple to appear. They told them to get dressed and they waited outside, it seemed like it was forever for Jodine to surface with her lover to meet her parents at the door. Time continues to pass and the parents became concerned again and walked back into the bedroom again but this time the man was gone and they realized that their daughter was dead. She was apparently so cold to the touch which indicated that she had been dead for hours.

For those curious about the time frame, it takes about 12 hours for the human body to be cool to the touch and 24 hours to be cool to the core; while rigor mortis begins after 3 hours until 36 hours after death. This is meaning that their daughter had to be dead at least within the last 12-24 hours of 10 p.m. , deducting time from the last time someone had spoken to her; that would provide a time frame of when the murder potentially happened.

It seemed that Jodine was bludgeoned and strangled to death. However, what the parents actually walked in on was not consensual sex but rather the perpetrator committing necrophilia; which is often described as a sexual attraction to corpses, paraphilic disorder involving recurrent and intense sexual interest in corpses. There are a lot of variations of this disorder and still currently being studied to properly produce a cohesive classification of this…necrophilia. Based on the time frame and what he was found doing, the perpetrator would fall under homicidal necrophiliac where this is a person who is capable of having sexual intercourse with the living but would be willing to kill a person to satisfy their sexual need to have sex with a corpse.

Side note, depending on the freshness of a corpse you can get an std from the corpse, or pregnant. I need a second, because I can’t process that and it makes no sense. I’m not judging…yes I am, I am wholeheartedly lying through my teeth right now. I am completely judging; like why? I’m sorry I’m getting side tracked let’s finish Jodine’s story.

When investigators came to the scene of the crime, they struggled with finding an entrance point; which lacked in evidence. No windows in the bedroom had been broken or forced open and there was no sign of forced entry at the door. Despite this, investigators refused to rule out a forced entry. As for an exit point, after Art and Lois left the bedroom, they went to a section of the condominium where they were unable to see the bedroom door or front door indicating that the killer had brazenly snuck out the front door. Nothing in the condominium appeared to be missing, ruling out a robbery gone wrong. Unknown male DNA was found at the crime scene but when ran through the state database, it turned up no matches.

No forced entry, no abrupt forced exit. I am taking a gander at it indicating they were let into the apartment because she knew him, under false pretenses, or had a copy of her key; either way Jodine was watched prior to this attack. It couldn’t have been that sporadic. Police are confident that Jodine knew her killer as well. A neighbor of Jodine, Samantha Raymond, would tell police that she saw a man running down an embankment near her apartment on the night that Jodine was murdered. She said that due to the speed he was running at, she couldn’t get a clear picture of his face. The police do not have much. They have a found time frame of when she was found dead, the last time she was heard from alive, an unidentified necrophiliac man running, and DNA left at the scene. There was even a $52,000 reward on information that led to the arrest of this man.

Everyone is focused that this had to be someone that Jodine knew. Art told police that he thought he recognized the man as somebody Jodine knew through her circle of disabled friends. He said that if it was this man, he didn’t have a car and used public transport or a bicycle. When this man was identified, he provided a DNA sample which did not match that found at the crime scene and he was ruled out. Now they are back to square one, they keep hitting back to it over and over. The case goes cold for a solid 10 years.

Parabon NanoLabs is DNA technology company that is developing the next-generation therapeutic and forensic products by leveraging the enormous power of DNA. One of their latest breakthroughs in 2017 was their snapshot DNA analysis services with services like Genetic Genealogy: Identify a subject by searching for relatives in public databases and building family trees. And DNA Phenotyping: Predict physical appearance and ancestry of an unknown person from their DNA. Kinship Inference: Determine kinship between DNA samples out to six degrees of relatedness.. They were able to transform the perp’s genetic material found at the crime scene into a digital image of the suspect. This advanced process predicts an unknown suspect’s skin colour, eye colour, hair colour, gender, ancestry, and face shape. investigators turned to two new and complementary technologies: phenotyping and forensic genealogy. According to its analysis, the suspect has fair to light skin, green or blue eyes, blonde or brown hair and some freckles. They found that He was likely in his 30s to 40s and of Northern European descent. After a digital image was put together on the 10th year anniversary the police released this photo in order to track down the killer.

Matching this with who her parents saw in Jodine’s bedroom was a heavyset man with a large stomach and disheveled hair. They estimated that he was around 5 feet 8 inches to 6 feet tall. This technology provided hope that they would find the killer.

It turns out the killer was a man named David Mabrito. The one-time Oceanside resident is dead now, from suicide six years ago. Mabrito was 38 at the time of Serrin’s slaying in 2007. His death, at age 42, came shortly before the fourth anniversary of her death. Investigators don’t know if Serrin and Mabrito knew each other, but they don’t believe so. They were unable to tie to the two together. There are no definitive comments about his suicide.

There is little said about David Mabrito outside of the discovery of his DNA matching the crime scene.

Hope you guys enjoyed watching 52 lock up with me and learning about Jodine Serrín.

References

https://www.10news.com/news/suspect-in-2007-valentines-day-murder-of-mentally-disabled-woman-identified

https://www.reddit.com/r/UnresolvedMysteries/comments/srt4qp/valentines_day_2007_15_years_ago_jodine_serrin/

https://www.nbcsandiego.com/news/local/jodine-serrin-carlsbad-cold-case-murder-suspect-david-mabrito/168412/

https://patch.com/california/poway/missing-and-wanted-valentines-day-murder-haunts-parents-of-disabled-carlsbad-woman-poway

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/blame-the-amygdala/201901/the-building-blocks-necrophilia

https://justice635.wordpress.com/victim-profile/

https://morbidology.com/the-unsolved-valentine-murder-of-jodine-serrin/

https://snapshot.parabon-nanolabs.com/

https://hopeway.org/programs/diagnoses/schizophrenia-spectrum-other-psychotic-disorders

https://ohhowpeculiar.tumblr.com/post/170881425171/art-and-lois-serrin-leave-their-hometown-of

https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/news/public-safety/sd-me-serrin-solved-20181113-story.html

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/rape-murder-suspect-identified-11-year-cold-case-based-new-n936016

https://northcountydailystar.com/suspect-identified-in-11-year-old-cold-case-homicide-of-jodine-serrin/

https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/news/public-safety/sd-me-serrin-solved-20181113-story.html

https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/sdut-work-continues-to-id-jodine-serrin-killer-2015feb13-story.html