Smithfield man who claimed magic powers gets life in prison for human trafficking
A Smithfield man who has served time for killing one man and still faces charges in a 22-year-old homicide case will spend the rest of his life behind bars on unrelated human trafficking charges, according to federal authorities.
Jonathan Lynn "Max" Jenkins, 48, was found guilty in March of conspiracy to commit sex trafficking; sex trafficking by force, fraud and coercion; sex trafficking of a minor; using the internet to promote a prostitution business enterprise; and possession of a firearm by a convicted felon. U.S. District Judge James Dever III sentenced him Wednesday to three consecutive life sentences and ordered him to pay $418,361 in restitution.
According to evidence presented during a five-day trial, Jenkins and a co-conspirator prostituted many women and girls between November 2014 and October 2015. After luring the women with promises of food, shelter and a better life, Jenkins and his co-conspirator manipulated and controlled their lives, isolating them, withholding food and keeping all of the money they earned.
Jenkins beat and choked the victims, sometimes to unconsciousness, and he emotionally and psychologically abused them, authorities said. Among other threats, he claimed to have magical powers that allowed him to hunt them down and kill them. He sexually assaulted the women and even tried to kill a man who helped one woman escape, authorities said.
Dever described Jenkins as “an extraordinarily dangerous human being” and called his crimes a “form of modern-day slavery.”
Jenkins pleaded guilty in April 2006 to second-degree murder in the 1998 shooting death of Joseph Richard Vestal Jr. in the Clayton Estates Mobile Home Park. He served an eight-year sentence and was released in January 2014.
He also is charged with first-degree murder in the April 1999 death of Elton Demond Whitfield. Whitfield's body was found in a field near Lake Myra Road in Wake County a month after he went missing from his Clayton home.
