The strange story of the murdered Playboy model and the fugitive reality show contestant has come to an end. 32 year-old Ryan Jenkins, a murder suspect and contestant on postponed VH1 reality show “Megan Wants a Millionaire,” was found dead of an apparent suicide on Sunday in a motel outside Vancouver, British Columbia. The strangled and mutilated body of his ex wife, Jasmine Fiore, 28, was found in a suitcase in a dumpster in Orange County, CA on August 15. Her teeth and fingertips were removed, and she was identified by the serial numbers on her breast implants. Jenkins, a Canadian native, was the subject of an international manhunt.
The search for a former Calgary man accused of killing his ex-wife — in a case that captured international headlines — has ended after the discovery of his body in a motel in Hope.
Ryan Alexander Jenkins, 32, was found hanging from a belt in a room at the Thunderbird Motel.
Jenkins was found dead Sunday morning when a motel manager decided to check on the room rented three days earlier.
Jenkins had been charged with the murder of his ex-wife, Los Angeles swimsuit model Jasmine Fiore, on Thursday.
The same day, a woman checked into the Thunderbird Motel, saying she needed a room for at least three days, maybe longer, and paid cash through Sunday. Outside, a man waited in a silver PT Cruiser with Alberta licence plates.
Kevin Walker, the manager at the secluded budget motel, couldn’t remember the woman’s name and said RCMP have seized the slip of information she filled out for the hotel room. He could see there was a man in the vehicle but thought nothing of the fact he didn’t come in, he said.
After entering unit two, a single room with a double bed, the mystery woman stayed for about 20 minutes, then left.
Walker said he never saw her vehicle again.
In the days following, Walker said he saw a man walk past his own balcony at the motel — a man who would later turn out to be Jenkins.
“But he didn’t look like the Ryan Jenkins I’d seen on TV,” he said. “He looked like a man at the end of his rope, not the muscle-bound macho man you saw on TV.”
The man, he said, had a sunken face and looked thinner than Jenkins looked in the photos released by the police and others that appeared on television news programs.
On Friday and Saturday there was very little activity at the room, with Walker noting that no one seemed to be coming and going.
Then on Sunday, when no one came to check out by the required time of 11 a.m., Walker went to the room.
“I thought maybe they left the key in the room and just left,” he said.
After knocking and saying ‘hello’ without a reply, he used a second motel key and opened the locked door, just a crack.
He saw an open laptop sitting on the bed and a few other things, said the still-shaken man.
“As I was pushing the door open, I smelled death,” Walker said. “And then, as I kept opening the door, there was death staring at me.”
He said he saw a man “hanging from the coat rack by a belt.”
Walker reeled back from the horrific sight, returned to the office to call the police.
“After I swung the door open and saw him hanging there — I didn’t notice anything after that.”
Even then, he wasn’t sure who the man was, going back to his own room to scan newspapers to see if the face of the dead man in the room matched those of the fugitive from Calgary.
[From VancouverSun.com via WeSmirch]
People Magazine has some quotes from a friend of Megan Hauserman, the star of the show in which now-deceased Jenkins competed to date her, “Megan Wants a Millionaire.” The show has been postponed indefinitely, and Megan is said to be “devastated” by the news of the murder. The source explained that “She got to know Ryan through her show, and she is shocked and saddened by the week’s events.”
Jenkins was convicted of assaulting a girlfriend in Calgary in 2007. He was sentenced to 15 months probation and ordered to undergo counseling and sex addiction treatment . VH1 issued a statement after the murder that they use an outside firm to run background checks on all contestants and that Ryan wouldn’t have been chosen for the show if they were aware he had a prior conviction. “Obviously, if the company had been given a full picture of his background, he would never have been allowed on the show.” Maybe these reality shows will tone it down in the future, or maybe they’ll just make sure they use contestants who are based out of the US and easier to trace.
This is a very sad story and one that seems unfinished in a way. Fiore’s family will not be able to see justice served now that her assumed murderer has committed suicide.
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