Grim Reality: Jasmine Fiore and Ryan Jenkins

By Anastasia Leshchinskaya

Introduction

Jasmine Fiore

Jasmine Fiore was last seen alive at a poker party at a San Diego hotel on the night of August 13, 2009. Together with her husband, Ryan Alexander Jenkins, Fiore made an appearance at the party after attending a charity event at the Del Mar Hilton. On August 15, Fiore's naked and mutilated body was found stuffed into a suitcase in a dumpster in Buena Park, a city about 20 miles southeast of Los Angeles. Her nose had been broken, her fingertips cut off, and her teeth had been wrenched out, evidently in an attempt to thwart identification efforts. Those efforts were for nought, however: the body was quickly identified as that of Fiore, a swimsuit model, by the serial numbers on her breast implants. She was 28. By August 20, Jenkins was charged with the murder in Orange County, and the U.S. Marshals were offering a $25,000 reward for tips regarding Jenkins' whereabouts. A wanted poster was released, describing Jenkins as "armed and dangerous." However, authorities would not get the opportunity to interrogate Jenkins about any motive behind the murder. On August 23, Jenkins was found hanged — an apparent suicide — in a motel in his native Canada. With the prime suspect gone, investigators could only work to fill in the missing pieces of a disastrous love affair that ended just as suddenly as it began.