Sharon Hill cold-case killer sentenced to life in prison
The sentence puts an end to a 12-year case that for years perplexed Delaware County investigators and may have remained unsolved had it not been for forensic evidence.
Izena Goudy, who was convicted in the 2007 beating and stabbing death of a Sharon Hill man a decade after the crime, was sentenced Tuesday to life in prison without parole.
The sentence put an end to a long-running case that for years perplexed Delaware County investigators, and might have remained unsolved had it not been for forensic evidence.
In May 2007, police were called to Gary Jenkins’ Sharon Hill home for a wellness check and found the 45-year-old beaten and stabbed, his body wrapped in a comforter on the floor. A bloody 30-pound dumbbell was found near his body, they said. The medical examiner determined that the manner of death was blunt-force trauma to the head and multiple stab wounds
For seven years, Goudy, now 35, of Brooklyn, N.Y., wasn’t on investigators’ radar. But then Goudy pleaded guilty to felony assault in an unrelated case in Brooklyn, authorities said, and was required to submit DNA to the Combined DNA Index System (CODIS), the FBI’s DNA index.
Delaware County investigators were soon notified of a match between Goudy’s DNA and DNA found in Jenkins’ Reese Street home. Officers obtained a search warrant for additional DNA samples and traveled to New York to collect them. During that trip, authorities said, Goudy told investigators that a girlfriend had once lived with Jenkins, and that the girlfriend’s mother had dated him.
After interviewing the girlfriend and others, authorities said they believed Goudy killed Jenkins as part of a burglary gone wrong.
In 2017, Goudy was charged with first- and third-degree murder, criminal homicide, and possessing instruments of crime. In May, a jury found Goudy guilty of first-degree murder.