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Gruesome Matricide: Twin Daughters, Tas and Jas, Arrested for the Murder

By John Kays

The twin daughters (Tasmiyah and Jasmiyah) of a Conyers, Georgia beautician, Jarmecca "Nikki" Whitehead, were arrested and charged with their mother's murder. The murder occurred back on January 14th, when the twins staged a scene; they ran out of their home, after supposedly discovering their mother's brutally beaten and stabbed body, and flagged down a Rockdale County Sheriff's deputy, who just so happened to be in the area serving a warrant. The twins were screaming 'bloody murder' for help in the street at the top of their lungs.

These twins, Jasmiyah and Tasmiyah, have been charged with the brutal beating and stabbing of their very own mother. What could possibly be their motive? Was it money? And what role is played in the 'psychology of twins' that would lead down this path?

Tasmiyah and Jasmiyah's exact motive for killing their mother is unknown. Police are not disclosing specifically what physical evidence they have in their possession that ties the twins definitively to this vicious murder. But clearly, they must have some physical evidence, such as fingerprints or bloodstains on clothing, because there were no eyewitnesses to the Jan. 14th tragedy.

The twins, Tas and Jas, were once very sweet, well-behaved young girls, but had in recent memory gotten unruly and wild. They had actually physically assaulted their mother about a year and a half ago. Since that time they had been living with an 80 year old, elderly great-grandmother. Recently, they had been acting unruly at the great-grandmother's house also.

Tas and Jas had been stealing money and a friend and former boss of Nikki Whitehead's, Michelle Temple, says that the twins had stole $200 from her as well. The great-grandmother must have feared for her own life, because she had to put a dead-bolt on her bedroom door. The twins put on two very different faces, one photo shows them dressed up for a social event, looking quite innocent and pretty. In stark contrast, their mug shot shows two mean and defiant young girls in the grips of juvenile angst.

Again, with regard to a possible motive, Nikki's boyfriend for ten years, Robert Head, a truck driver for Krogers, paints a very different picture. Head says that a family member put them up to it, possibly bribing them with money. Robert, last night on Jane Velez-Mitchell's Issues, hints that it's the great-grandmother (no name has been given yet) who put the twins up to it. Details are yet still murky in this regard.

A pattern of behavior of acting out, however, is emerging more clearly. Michelle Sigona, an investigative reporter, (on JVM's Issues) delineated two other incidents that occurred in early January, just after the twins had moved back in with their mother. The police had to be called out to the house twice for some type of altercation (between twins and mother). These are warning signs of what was to come.

The psychology of twins is interesting in the sense that maybe they could conspire together to do such a bad thing to their mother. And one wonders whether maybe their inexplicable morph from good behavior to deviant and even violent behavior is somehow related to their mutual communication as twins. An interesting analogy was brought up last night (on JVM) by way of the Menendez Brothers (Lyle and Eric), wealthy twins from Beverly Hills, who shot-gunned their own parents to death, then casually went to a movie to reduce their stress.

Lyle and Eric Menendez's motive was money, and this leads me to suspect that Robert Head is right; money must be the motive pushing the button of Jas and Tas also. But just how wealthy was Nikki Whitehead anyway? The television footage makes it seem like she lived in an average middle class neighborhood, not opulent by any means! But I agree with Robert Head, some adult must have been planting poison seeds in these teenage twins' heads, or perhaps just exacerbating (Iago in Othello) already existing, seething hostilities.

Another parallel with the Menendez brothers crime (patricide and matricide) is the careful planning, the premeditation involved to carry out their crime. But I do sense some carelessness (with Tas and Jas), since the GBI crime lab has clear physical evidence linking the twins to the slaying. But look at the acting involved, running out in the street and screaming 'bloody murder,' flagging down a police officer, then telling a tall tale of coming home from school and finding their mother dead in a pool of blood.

Friends of Nikki Whitehead were immediately suspicious of the twins; they fooled no one really. But what was their motive in killing their own mother? Matricide is a heinous crime in our culture, a taboo that is not meant to ever happen. Has our culture changed? Has a propensity for violence in our youth reared its ugly head in larger ways? That is, are there forces within our culture that are falling apart, becoming unhinged? Or is this an individual oddity of twin psychology malfunctioning? Much ground to cover. (sources-The Atlanta Journal-Constitution and Jane Velez Mitchel's Issues)

John Kays identifies timeless remnants from our past that will endure, or be admired by future generations.