Rebellious Teen Twins Kill Mother to Avoid School

0:00 Welcome to No Tears. For black girls. A true crime series created, written and produced by award-winning writer Jon Reedberg and hosted by Samantha Paul. We begin today with a single mom in Georgia savagely murdered and discovered by her twin teenage daughters in the bathtub. The clues will lead detectives to the most surprising suspects of all. Nikki Whitehead's tragic end was the final chapter in a troubled life. She named the girls Tasmaya and Jasmaya, Taz and Jazz for short. For 12 years, the trio lived with Nikki's grandmother, but Nikki wanted more for her daughters. She worked long hours and saved up enough to move the girls to a better neighborhood in Conyers.

0:46 Nikki enrolled Taz and Jazz and Dance and Music lessons, determined to give them opportunities she never had. In 2000, 25 year old Nicky met 55 year old truck driver Robert Head. Before long, she and the girls moved in with Head in Conyers, GA Tasmia and Jasmaya were both honor roll students and Girl Scouts. Their great grandmother, Della Frazier, initially raised the girls. Frazier said that Whitehead sporadically drifted in and out of her children's lives. In 2007, when the twins were 13, Whitehead requested custody of them. Whitehead and the twins instantly clashed. Frazier said that the twins viewed their mother's attempts to control them as hypocritical.

1:32 The conflicts devolved into physical altercations that landed them in counseling and juvenile court. Frazier regained custody only to have Whitehead return it on January 5th, 2010. The girls protested the decision, but the court ordered them and their mother to live together for a two week trial period. Fights erupted when Nikki set boundaries, like taking away Taz's phone privileges. You're 14, you can't talk to 17 year old boys or stay out late. Nikki lectured, but the girls saw it as a declaration of war. Officer Myra Scruggs arrived after one of the many blowout arguments at the house.

2:13 She took in the girls designer clothes, spotless rooms and well kept hair. These girls had a good home, Scruggs observed, but Taz and Jazz complained about their mom's rules and demanded to live with their great grandmother instead. After interviewing the family officer, Scruggs felt a dark unease. The girls acted innocent and sweet, but genuine fear flickered in Nikki's eyes. She knew those girls meant trouble. Together, Scruggs recalled, both girls had jumped, Nikki punching and beating their mother. Nikki barely managed to escape and redial 911 as Officer Scruggs raced back. But Taz and Jazz spun a different story, accusing Nikki of abusing them.

3:01 The evidence told the real tale. Deep scratches marred Nikki's neck and chest. Not a mark showed on either girl. I didn't believe a word out of their mouths. Scruggs said. Even more chilling was the utter lack of remorse the girls showed after brutally assaulting their mother. The family chalked up the conflict to a defiant teenage phase. But those early arguments paled in comparison to the final 911 call from the Whitehead home. Tazz and Jazz had returned home from school to find Nikki dead in a blood soaked bathtub, stabbed over 80 times, her spine severed. But as the case unfolded, suspicion shifted to the two unlikely culprits, Nikki's own daughters. Discovered by her twin teenage daughters in the bathtub. And the clues will lead detectives to the most surprising places of all.

3:58 The tragic end for Nikki Whitehead was the last chapter in a troubled, difficult life. She was literally born in prison, her mother doing time for drug possession. Nikki was raised by her grandmother, who had a tough time keeping her on the straight and narrow. She didn't have what you call a curfew. Nikki was able to come and go as she pretty much pleased. And at only 17 years old, Nikki ended up pregnant with twins. She named them Tasmia and Jasmia, known as Taz and Jazz. For 12 years, the trio lived with Nikki's grandmother, but Nikki dreamed of giving her daughters a better life.

4:40 Nikki worked hard and eventually the three moved about 20 miles away to Conyers, GA. The young mother wanted her girls to have advantages that eluded her, putting them in dance and music classes. Nothing but the best for her baby girls. She did their hair, their makeup and for Nikki, when it came to her kids, it was always a celebration. The girls were also straight A students with hopes of one day going to Harvard, but their path to success was dramatically diverted when the girls hit high school. It was difficult for them to start hearing and accepting the word no. Teenage Taz and Jazz bitterly resented their mother's discipline. The rage boiled over when Nikki took away Taz's cell phone. When she let it be known that you're 14, you can't talk to 17 year old guys and you can't be on the phone at a certain time and you can't stay out or whatnot, that's when I think it became a battle.

5:42 And it was clear Nikki was losing control of her beautiful princesses. Find your family one. Where's your emergency? Just listen to this frantic 911 call. When she discovered Jazz had snuck out in the middle of the night to meet her boyfriend, I. Just woke up and my daughter's gone at the house. How old is your daughter? Oh no. At 13, two once sweet and obedient girls suddenly morphed into two twin terrors. Officer Myra Scruggs responded to a call from Nikki after yet another blowout. I talked with the girls at great length trying to figure out what was going on. I actually went in the bedroom with the girls in a closet full of beautiful name brand clothes, beautiful shoes, their hair was Immaculate.

6:24 I mean, these girls really had a good home. At the time, the twins told officers Scruggs they didn't want to live with their mother and insisted on moving back with their great grandmother where the rules were relaxed. Nikki said they wanted their way and it just wasn't going to happen. But after interviewing Nikki Taz and Jazz, Scruggs says she had an unsettling feeling. The girls seemed very innocent, very sweet, but the look in Nikki's face, she was fearful of those children. She knew that they worked together. After a few hours, everything appeared to have calmed down.

7:04 The girls were just ready to go to bed. And maybe we'll just call, you know, their great grandmother tomorrow. We can go see her. And they left it like it was all OK. But Officer Scruggs had a gnawing feeling that something just wasn't right. Instead of leaving the subdivision, she stayed. Close. I just knew it wasn't over. Within I would say 3 or 4 minutes, I could hear screaming coming from the direction of the house. Both of them jumped on her and the two of them began to beat her. Nikki manages to get away and calls 911 again. Officer Scruggs rushed back to the house. Nikki's running out of the house with a cordless phone in her hand, hysterical. She said as soon as I left that the girls had attacked her. Taz and Jazz tell an entirely different story. The twins said that once they went back in the house after we left that their mother became abusive with them, told them that they were not going anywhere and started to beat them.

8:01 But Officer Scruggs said the physical evidence clearly showed Nikki was the victim. She had scratches on her neck, scratches on her chest and she was hysterical. The girls, on the other hand, had no marks on them, no indication that really they had been in any kind of an altercation talking with them. I didn't believe a thing that the girls had said. Even more disturbing, she recalls the girl's eerie calm after the attack. You could have been 2 strangers and there would have been more emotion shown. This time, Taz and Jazz are taken into custody and charged for years. The two are in and out of court, ordered along with their mother to undergo counselling. But in fact, a previous court order had actually forced the twins and their mom to live together for a trial period. It was a living hell for her only because the kids did not want to be back with her.

8:57 Most family members talked about the resentment for mom to a rebellious teenage phase, but the early spats were nothing compared to the last time cops are called to the house, the girls in absolute panic. As I was pulling out to get to the gate, the young lady stopped me saying someone had killed her mother. It was late in the day, just after school, when Taz and Jazz returned home to find a horrifying scene. Nikki Whitehead is lying dead in a blood soaked bathtub and a swirl of questions. Who could have done such a horrendous act? Cops immediately take the twins in, mostly to console their grief. Investigators carefully navigate the situation, but they need answers.

9:51 When I walked in the front door, it was the first time I'd ever been on something as horrific as that. You walked. In and what? What happened? The kitchen? On the surface, it seemed almost unlikely the two young girls could be suspected of such brutal violence, and police soon heard something eyebrow raising about Nikki directly from Jazz and Tazz. Nikki was dating two different men. She lived with Robert and that she also had a boyfriend named Joe. The twins had indicated that Robert had overheard her speaking to the other boyfriend on the phone and indicated that Robert had confronted Nikki about the infidelity.

10:42 The first cops wondered if a love triangle may have led to Nicky's demise, but they were also too perplexed about the odd behavior of Jazz and Taz. In the back of the hamlet we saw one of the twins bite her arm. We stopped her and asked her hey, what are you doing? And she explained that she does that when she gets upset. Inside the interrogation room, Tazz can be seen on surveillance camera rocking back and forth, comforting each other and even sharing a kiss. Then a startling comment takes Detective Ken Swift completely off guard. These two girls were hugging each other and when I said, you know, what can I do to make this easier for you? They turned and looked at me and they said can we watch CSI? The hairs on the back of my neck stood straight up. Essentially it was right then and it was like something was very, very off.

11:39 And cops noticed something even more suspicious. They would cry a lot, but it was tearless crying. When I would ask them to describe their mother, they were very insulting of their mother. During the interview, detectives observed the twins still wearing gloves. I. Need to see. Your hands and. Your arms? What? Happened here to a fight. You can. Fight with As they weaved their story back at the bloody crime scene, investigators uncovered physical evidence. The sinks were completely clean and white. We found shoes in back of their closet that had blood on them. And in Taz's bedroom.

12:19 There's a pair of brown boots that have a significant amount of blood on them. I found a clump of hair. Normally a clump of hair is insignificant in a female's house, simply because there's hair everywhere. But when that clump of hair is attached to a substantial amount of flesh that has been pulled out of somebody's head and then has been wrapped in a napkin and stuffed into the toe of a shoe, you begin to realize that the twins were not telling us anything that was truthful. Investigators quickly determined that they had their main suspects, and Clueless didn't even begin to describe the situation.

13:04 Right now, we've got these trolls. They can. Catch the. Parts of Community take a look at how Taz looks directly at the surveillance camera, knowing she's being recorded giving an award-winning performance. I'm never going to be happy. Now. It's 'cause somebody that felt she took my mom away. From me. Then the lies unravel when detectives retrace their moments on the day of the murder. What time did you all leave the house this morning? We missed the bus, so we hit the. Wall. But surveillance video from a nearby gas station shows they didn't walk to school. They actually hitched a ride from a stranger. We began catching them in lies concerning their time frames or their details.

13:51 They began to be very angry and uncooperative. Detectives separate the twins and being apart seems to work. You think we did it? I don't think I did nothing. Why you say that? Good. It seemed like it. Who? Who's that? Then it just seemed like how y'all questioned nothing. Something just seemed like y'all think we did it prior to testing evidence found at the home. Cops can't hold the girls who are released to their great grandmother. For the next four months, Taz and Jazz lead a normal life, going to school, even attending the prom. Meanwhile, police quietly build their case. We found items in their closet that had blood on them. So when we were trying to distinguish whose blood, you cannot determine between twins because they have the same DNA. And then a startling clue, almost coming from beyond the grave.

14:47 To Nikki's credit, she did not go down without a fight and she left evidence on one of her girls as a marker. Remember when cops saw Taz biting her arm, explaining in a way as a nervous habit? Detectives say she was trying to cover up Nikki's bite mark on her arm. We had a dental examination of Nikki's teeth and they matched it to the bite on the twin. And autopsy results revealed another grim detail. They found human hair between Nikki's teeth. We would smile. That twin was behind Nikki and had her from around the front.

15:30 Nikki's fighting for her life and bit her arm and that's how the hair became embedded in her teeth. On the last day of school before summer break, detectives arrested Taz at home, then head to Rockdale High School to nab her sister Jazz. We decided we were going to arrest them on the last day of school for fear of they were going to take flight out of the country to avoid the charges. The heavy metal doors clanged shut behind Tasmia as she stepped into the cold, sterile confines of Arendale State Prison in January 2014. Her heart raced, palm slick with sweat, as the reality of her 30 year sentence for voluntary manslaughter settled like a weight on her shoulders.

16:17 Just one month later, Jasmaya met a similar fate, her footsteps echoing through the halls of Pulaski State Prison as she began serving an identical sentence. Though the twins crimes bound them together, the Georgia Department of Corrections ensured they would remain apart, their paths diverging as they navigated the labyrinthine prison system. The years stretched out before them, a seemingly endless expanse of time to contemplate their actions and the devastating impact on their family. With over three years already spent behind bars awaiting their fate, a glimmer of hope emerged in 2017 when the sisters became eligible for parole.

17:00 But as the months turned into years, that hope dimmed. Tasmia's tentative parole month remained stubbornly fixed in March 2026, while Jasmaya faced an even longer wait until September 2027. As the twins marked the passing of time with scratches on the walls of their cells, they grappled with the weight of their choices and the realization that their paths, once so intertwined, had irrevocably diverged. The distance between them, both physical and emotional, seem to grow with each passing day, a chasm that even the bond of sisterhood could not bridge. Thank you for tuning in to No Tears for Black Girls, now a part of the Alive Podcast Network, the first Black female owned and operated network dedicated to amplifying Black voices. If you enjoyed this episode, please show your support by following us on the Alive Podcast app, available on both iPhone and Android.

17:59 You can also stay connected with us on social media and YouTube at No Tears for Black Girls or on X at No Tears for BG Remember to stay loved, stay blessed, and stay safe. Until next time.