Girls Gone Wild

When Bobbi Jo Smith and Jennifer Jones left Mineral Wells, they were young and in love. They had a full tank of gas, a case of beer,and the open road ahead. There was only one problem: They’d left their roommate—a 49-year-old amateur pornographer— lying in bed with three bullets in his head.

by Katy Vine

September 2005

(Page 3 of 4)

FROM THE DAY OF THEIR FIRST KISS, Jennifer and Bobbi Jo were inseparable, leaving Audrey furious for a time. Jennifer immediately moved her clothes out of her father’s apartment and into Bob’s living room. Being with Bobbi Jo made her feel as if she had finally found solid footing, a partner to spend her life with. Bobbi Jo, meanwhile, was mesmerized by the attention from this girl who would do almost anything she asked. If Bobbi Jo needed to run some errand, Jennifer went with her. If Bobbi Jo needed to help Bob with his repair service, Jennifer lent a hand. And if Bobbi Jo wanted to do some drugs, Jennifer was ready to partake. 

Drugs became their whole existence. They’d get drunk and high for 48 hours straight. One week of partying led to two weeks, then three weeks. There was Xanax, methamphetamines, marijuana, shots of vodka. They got little sleep and hardly ever ate. And they were never apart. They’d be up all night, coming down after days of partying and constantly telling each other how in love they were. Before long, they were also strung out and paranoid.

Like the night of Bobbi Jo’s nineteenth birthday. They started the partying early in the afternoon at Bobbi Jo’s grandmother’s house with another friend, Darcie (not her real name), smoking meth and taking pills. As Jennifer watched cartoons and Bobbi Jo took a shower, Jennifer began to feel that she could read Darcie’s mind. “I want you to leave Bobbi Jo alone and never come back,” Jennifer heard.

Bobbi Jo thought she heard the voice as well and stormed out of the bathroom. “What the hell are you talking about?” she demanded.

Darcie denied saying anything, but Bobbi Jo wasn’t having any of it. “I heard the whole thing!” In a rage now, she hunted around the house for a notebook Darcie had been writing poems in, sure that she’d discover some hint of magic spells. When she found it, she saw that the pages had all been ripped out. Panicked, Bobbi Jo scoured the house and found that the missing pages had been torn into tiny pieces and stuffed in the kitchen drawers and under the cushions of the couch. Now she was sure that Darcie had put a hex on them. “You’re not coming between me and my girlfriend,” she screamed. “Get out of here!” Darcie took off.

Bobbi Jo ran out and fetched her two-year-old son from a babysitter. She brought him back to the house, where the two of them jumped into bed with Jennifer. Bobbi Jo held Jennifer down. “Don’t move,” she said. “Darcie’s under the bed.” They tried to relax and watch Ren and Stimpy on TV, but they couldn’t concentrate. They sat still on the bed for hours imagining that the doors in the house were opening and closing. They even thought they heard Bobbi Jo’s son’s voice instructing them in baby talk.

“We’ve got to burn the whole place down,” Bobbi Jo said.

“You can’t do that,” Jennifer said.

So they compromised. They gathered everything Darcie had touched—makeup, perfume, pot—and torched it.

BOB KNEW SOMETHING was going to happen to him. He couldn’t explain it, but after he saw how close the two girls were becoming, the feeling was strong enough that he stood on the porch one morning with his first ex-wife and told her calmly and deliberately that he wanted his funeral to be a party, just like the kind he’d have if he were alive. He didn’t want anyone to be sorry he was gone.

For weeks, Bob had partied with the girls and the stream of young women they’d brought by the house. He’d slept with most of them, even Jennifer’s own mother, who was visiting in town and ready to party. Jennifer had refused his constant advances and Bobbi Jo had made it clear that he wasn’t to go near her, but he couldn’t help himself. On the afternoon of May 4, just a few days after they’d had their bonfire, the two girls were hauled down to jail for swiping a $64 watch from J.C. Penney. Bob bailed them out. After he drove them to Bobbi Jo’s mother’s house, he waited with Jennifer in the truck when Bobbi Jo went inside. He was quiet for a minute, staring out the window. “Jennifer,” he finally said, “you know you’re costing me a lot of money.”

“I know,” she said. “I’m sorry. I’m not going to steal again. We’ll get jobs and pay you back.”

“No, you don’t have to do that,” he said, continuing to look away. “I want you to sleep with me instead.”

Jennifer grabbed her purse and jumped out of the truck, then stomped into the house. A few seconds later, Bobbi Jo ran outside screaming. “This is the one girl you can’t have!” she yelled as Bob peeled out.

The next day, she and Jennifer were driving down the road going about 70 miles an hour in Bobbi Jo’s grandma’s truck. Their meth binge had been relentless. They hadn’t slept or eaten now in three days. All of a sudden, the whole world seemed determined to tear them apart. Bobbi Jo had stolen one of Bob’s guns and loaded it with bullets, and now Jennifer listened as Bobbi Jo talked about the need to get rid of him. “I’m never going to be my own person with him around,” Bobbi Jo said. “He’s trying to split us up.”

That idea was too much for Jennifer to handle. Bobbi Jo was the only certain thing she had left. Without her, she’d be right back at her father’s place, with no life. They parked the truck in the driveway, and while they walked up the path to the house, Bobbi Jo gave her the loaded .22. Jennifer tucked the gun in the back of her pants, covering it with her black T-shirt.

When they entered Bob’s living room, Jennifer saw Bob lying on the mattress on the floor. She could tell from the look on Bob’s face that he knew trouble was coming, but he didn’t seem ready to fight.

“I’m sorry for what I said before,” he said.

“It’s okay,” Jennifer said. “I’m ready to pay you back.”

“No, you don’t have to do it,” Bob said, pouting.

“No, I insist.”

Jennifer took him into the bedroom, and as they undressed, she placed the gun between the nightstand and a pillow that was lying next to the bed on the floor. Bobbi Jo waited in the living room, listening to the radio, and turned up the volume on an Eagles song.

Jennifer’s heart was racing, but she acted methodically. After Bob was relaxed, she reached down to the floor and picked up the gun. Then she hid it under the floral-printed covers as she tossed her leg over Bob’s waist. “I want to pretend you’re somebody else,” she told him. Bob paused for a few seconds, then, with a shrug, he pulled a black-and-white-striped pillow over his face.

ANYONE WHO SAW BOB DOW’S STOLEN truck speeding west on I-20 probably imagined that the five women inside were on the great American road trip. They certainly acted the part. They had all the windows rolled down, the stereo blasting country songs. And they were running quickly through a case of beer. “We’re just like Thelma and Louise,” Bobbi Jo said, driving somewhere west of Odessa.

Audrey, Krystal, Kathy, Bobbi Jo, and Jennifer decided early on that they didn’t need any maps. They had destiny. Maybe they’d end up in Mexico! Or Canada! Or, if Jennifer got her way, Washington State! Wherever they went, it would be slowly: Every hundred miles or so they had to pull over to cool the truck’s fickle radiator. Curious state troopers would slow down to survey the truck full of women parked in the emergency lane, but the girls just smiled and waved them ahead, signaling that they had the situation under control. They hobbled along this way for two days, eventually merging with I-10 out in West Texas, then leaving the state behind and crossing into New Mexico. All the while, they took detours whenever the spirit moved them. On one afternoon, after a hot day of driving, someone in the group spotted a decorative pond in front of a large subdivision. They pulled over, stripped down to their skivvies, and took a dip.

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