In the summer of 1983, Karen Robinson was a 21-year-old woman and a mother living in Fresno, California. She had a seven-year-old daughter named Temika and a father named Lonnie Manning. Friends knew her to frequent the city's G Street area. Tragically, her life was cut short in a brutal act of violence that would later be connected to one of Fresno County's most notorious serial killers.
On August 21, 1983, a friend saw Karen speaking with a man she knew, Wilbur Lee Jennings, as he sat in his Ford LTD. The following day, another witness saw her get into a similar car. She was wearing a red blouse, red shorts, and tennis shoes. This would be the last time she was seen alive. On August 23, her body was discovered in an irrigation pond in a rural area near Easton. An autopsy revealed that she had been severely beaten around her head and face before being drowned. Her red blouse was found around her ankles, and the rest of her clothing was missing.
The investigation into Karen’s murder was handled by the Fresno County Sheriff's Office. Near the pond where her body was found, investigators discovered bloodstains and an empty beer carton. The case was eventually linked to Wilbur Lee Jennings, a man with a long and violent criminal history dating back to the 1960s. Jennings became known as the "Ditchbank Murderer" because he often left his victims in or near irrigation canals and ditches in the rural parts of the county.
During the investigation, Karen’s young daughter, Temika, provided harrowing information to police. When shown a photograph of Jennings, she identified him as a "mean man" and recalled frightening and violent encounters between him and her mother. Temika told investigators she had witnessed Jennings fighting with, choking, and threatening to kill her mother on more than one occasion. This established a history of violence and fear between Karen and the man who would ultimately take her life.
In 1986, Wilbur Lee Jennings was brought to trial for a series of murders. A Fresno County jury convicted him of the first-degree murders of three other women—Linda Johnson, Olga Cannon, and Jacqueline Frazier—who were all killed in 1984. For the death of Karen Robinson, the jury found him guilty of second-degree murder. Jennings was also convicted on numerous other felony charges, including rape, robbery, and kidnapping, related to these and other victims. He maintained his innocence, but based on the evidence and testimony, the jury recommended the death penalty.
On November 20, 1986, Jennings was formally sentenced to death and sent to San Quentin State Prison's death row. Years later, in 2005, advances in DNA technology would link him to two more cold-case murders from 1981 and 1983. While charges were filed in those cases, Jennings was never tried for them. On February 11, 2014, at the age of 73, Wilbur Lee Jennings died of natural causes in the Sacramento County Jail while awaiting trial for one of the additional murders. His death brought an end to a long and dark chapter in Fresno's history, but it could not erase the pain and loss he caused. The case of Karen Robinson's murder is considered solved, closed by the conviction of her killer.
