'Megan Wants a Millionaire' murderer found dead after 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 in Hope, saying she needed a room for at least three days, maybe longer, and paid cash through Sunday. Outside, a man waited in a 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 the motel room, 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.

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.

“I opened the door wider and he was 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.

But a permanent motel resident who lives next door to the one where Jenkins killed himself, said he suspected once the police arrived that the dead man was Jenkins.

“He was the first one who questioned whether it was him or not,” said Walker, “he questioned it right after the police came, and he was right.”

“I’m still stunned.”

The discovery marked the end of another chapter in an increasingly bizarre story that drew media attention from across North America.

Even Duane Chapman, better known as Dog the Bounty Hunter for his efforts to track down fugitives on the popular television show of the same name, had said that he would join the search for Jenkins if asked by Canadian authorities.

The story began to unfold Tuesday when police in Buena Park, Calif. — a community about 30 kilometres southeast of Los Angeles — named Jenkins as a person of interest in the death of his ex-wife, Jasmine Fiore.

The badly beaten and mutilated body of the 28-year-old former model was found stuffed into a suitcase in a garbage bin in Buena Park on Aug. 15.

Her teeth and fingers had been removed to hinder identification.

The Orange County coroner had to use the serial number on her breast implants to determine it was Fiore.

RCMP Sgt. Duncan Pound said members of the forensic unit used fingerprints to confirm it was Jenkins.

Reached shortly after the news broke Sunday night, his mother, Nada Jenkins, said she still believes her son is innocent.

“I think he panicked, my little boy, and we had to protect him, even now that he’s dead,” she said, sobbing.

She said the situation has been very hard on the family, which now needs time to grieve and will be seeking some counselling.

“I was paranoid this would drag on forever,” she added.

As Jenkins hid out at the motel, an international manhunt was narrowing in on B.C.

Police agencies on both sides of the border had focused their attention on the Pacific Northwest after Jenkins’ boat was located in a marina at Point Roberts, Wash. His SUV and an empty boat trailer were found in Blaine, Wash. At the time, agencies speculated he had walked across the border into Canada.

The U.S. Marshals Service announced a $25,000 award for information leading to his arrest.

Earlier Sunday, RCMP confirmed Jenkins had gained entry into Canada, but would not say how he crossed the border after he reported Fiore missing.
The romance between Jenkins and Fiore was brief and tumultuous.

They met in Las Vegas in March, shortly after Jenkins finished filming a reality television show that had him competing with other millionaires for the affection of a model.

They married quickly, but, according to Fiore’s mother Lisa Lepore, that marriage was annulled within months.

The couple later reunited.

They checked into a San Diego hotel together on Aug. 13. Jenkins left alone the following morning.

Fiore was not seen alive again.

While the search for Jenkins has come to an end, the investigation is not yet over.

RCMP’s Pound said officers are still trying to determine the sequence of events that got him to the motel in Hope.

“There are questions about how he got to be there,” he said.

He would not comment on the woman the motel manager described as slim, about 115 pounds, five foot nine inches tall and in her early to mid-20s.

The murder charges against Jenkins have been dismissed and there are no other suspects in the case, said Farrah Emami, spokeswoman for the Orange County district attorney’s Office.

The Buena Park Police Department will continue investigating to see if anyone helped Jenkins after the murder and before he was found.

Source: The Vancouver Sun