A Philadelphia man has confessed to murdering his ex-girlfriend who went missing in 2003, and whose remains were recently found in a storage unit.
The victim’s ex-boyfriend, Jade Gillette Babcock, 49, of Belmont Barracks, Philadelphia was arrested and is charged with abuse of a corpse, tampering with evidence and obstruction of justice. The Philly DA office requested he be held without bail due to the likelihood of homicide charges.
“May those who have been missing and mourning Brenda Jacobs for years know some peace in the very near future,” said D.A. Larry Krasner on Wednesday.
ABC reported that the remains were found at the Safeguard Self Storage facility in Northeast Philadelphia on Monday at 3:30 p.m. It is being reported that it was over 200 miles from where the victim was last seen.
It is not clear if Babcock was the one who rented the storage unit.
NBC reported that state police received a tip on the disappearance of Brenda Jacobs, a mother of two children from Montoursville, who went missing on December 29, 2003. The Philly DA’s office reported that although Jacobs has been missing since 2003, her family reported her missing in 2013.
Officials reportedly acted on a tip and searched a storage unit near Westmoreland Street and Frankford Avenue Monday afternoon., and found human remains. Although police did not publicly identify the body, the family told outlets that they belonged to Jacobs.
Although her body has been found, family members still want answers.
Randy Jacobs, Brenda’s brother, told NBC “there’s always going to be questions.”
“Where did he kill her? When? Those are the kind of answers that we would want,” Jacobs said.
Besides familial concerns, residents and other storage unit customers expressed their concern about the body going unnoticed with ABC.
Catherine Daily, a local resident, told ABC, “It’s scary! Having a dead body across the street from you and you don’t know how it got there, who put it in there.”
A customer of the storage units, Nelsa Jiminez, told ABC that, “It’s hard for them to see, to check the actual units because you have your own key.”
Jiminez added, “Only the person who owns that right now has the key to that unit.”
