Testimony starts in stabbing murder trial
By Jim Phillips
Athens NEWS Senior Writer
May 7, 2008
Ronald Hendrickson II “definitely had a plan” to kill his ex-girlfriend Jodi Blankenship, after she told him she was having her new boyfriend stay the weekend at the Nelsonville student-rental house where she and Hendrickson lived.
That's what Athens County Prosecutor C. David Warren told a jury Wednesday morning in opening arguments in Hendrickson's aggravated murder trial, which started with jury selection Monday in county Common Pleas Court.
Warren argued that that Hendrickson, apparently driven by jealousy on April 12, 2007, acted methodically to stab Blankenship with a knife 14 times, killing her.
“He knew (he and Blankenship) had had a romantic relationship before, and he knew her new boyfriend was coming to visit,” Warren alleged. “And he didn’t like it even a little bit. And he was going to make sure that that relationship was not going to happen.”
Warren noted that after Blankenship locked herself in a bathroom following an argument at the rental the ex-couple shared with three other students, Hendrickson went to an electric breaker box and shut off power to the bathroom, then sat “in the dark beside the bathroom door, waiting, waiting.” When Blankenship finally emerged a little before 1 a.m., Warren said, Hendrickson apparently stabbed her to death within five minutes of the time she came out.
Hendrickson and Blankenship, both Hocking College students, had reportedly had an on-and-off romantic relationship for a couple of years, but had broken up about six weeks before Blankenship’s death. Both Hendrickson and Blankenship were 21 at the time of her death.
Hendrickson’s defense attorney, Victor A. Hodge, told the jury he won't dispute that his client killed Blankenship. However, he claimed that he didn't plan to do so. Hodge said Blankenship actually stabbed Hendrickson first, possibly with a pocketknife he had given her as a gift, and Hendrickson then killed her in a kind of panic reaction.
“He’s blocking the doorway” when Blankenship came out, Hodge said. “The statement is made (by Blankenship) to the effect of, ‘Move, I’ve got a knife,’ or something like that.” Though Hendrickson at first dismissed the threat, Hodge said, he suddenly felt “a stabbing pain in his side.”
At this point, Hodge told the jury, “Ronnie goes into a fit of fear and passion, and he reacts... he grabs for the wound, and he grabs for that knife... and a battle, a struggle ensued.”
Warren acknowledged in his opening arguments that Hendrickson did suffer wounds in the altercation, but described them as small cuts, neither of which needed stitches.
Hodge admitted that Hendrickson had cut off the electricity to the bathroom where Blankenship was locked in, talking to her new boyfriend on the phone. However, he said, this was simply an attempt to drive her out of the bathroom so he could talk to her.
He added that arguments in which one or the other of the two locked him- or herself in the bathroom had happened before, and Blankenship had used the same tactic of cutting off the power on Hendrickson in the past, when their positions were switched.
The trial moved into testimony Wednesday after opening arguments, with the state presenting witnesses.
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