Jennair Gerardot murder suicide: Jilted wife kill’s husband, Mark Gerardot mistress, Meredith Chapman then self. Love triangle gone bad.
A husband has blamed himself after his wife shot and killed his mistress before shooting herself dead after ‘breaking her heart.’
In an upcoming episode on ABC’s 20/20 it’s revealed Mark Gerardot’s wife, Jennair Gerardot placing tracking devices on the cars driven by her husband of 24 years and his 33 year old mistress, Meredith Chapman.
The woman’s husband had begun seeing the much younger woman after hiring him to work at the University of Delaware and with whom he was having an affair. So incensed had Jennair become, the program reveals the ‘jealous’ wife sewing listening devices into Mark’s clothes to secretly record his conversations when they were apart.
One of those recordings captured Jennair’s rising insecurities.
‘You don’t find me attractive. You don’t want me anymore.’
‘You don’t find me appealing,’ Jennair, 49, told her husband, according to the audio obtained by ABC’s 20/20 for an episode about the case airing Friday at 10 p.m. ET. ‘You don’t find me attractive. You don’t want me anymore. You don’t even like me. You are miserable.’
Referencing Chapman, she said, ‘She lights your fire, she makes you feel young. You’re excited, it’s all fresh. You’re getting to know each other and you are in love with her … ‘
On April 23, 2018, according to police, Jennair donned a wig and rode the train from the couple’s home in Delaware to Pennsylvania, where she broke into the Philadelphia Main Line residence where Meredith, who was estranged from her own husband, lived alone.
There, after cleaning up the glass she’d shattered while entering the front door, Jennair lay in wait to shoot and murder Meredith as she walked in the door. Then Jennair turned her gun on herself in what officials described as a murder suicide.
Mark, who arrived at the home out of concern when Meredith didn’t keep a dinner date they’d made for that night, was outside about 7 p.m. to meet arriving officers who discovered the two bodies inside.
Police who recovered a series of text messages and emails written by the man’s wife said they pointed to revenge as Jennair’s motive.
Mark earlier had confessed the affair to his wife, saying the two had begun counseling in what Mark believed was a step toward an amicable divorce as he continued his clandestine involvement with Chapman.
Could Jennair Gerardot have made another choice?
Meredith, meanwhile, had started a new job as an assistant vice president at Villanova University, where she worked at the time she was killed. She was separated from her husband Luke Chapman, a former Newark city councilman, according to the Philadelphia Inquirer.
As Chapman and Mark Gerardot’s relationship continued, Jennair Gerardot began to see divorce coach Sheila Brennan, who told abcnews her client having a lot of resentment and anger about ‘being tossed away’ and ‘being traded in’ for a younger woman. Brennan said Jennair had a lot of ‘fears about being left financially’ since she had just moved north and still hadn’t found a job one year after losing her last one.
‘You had a man who’s married who’s having an affair with this other woman. His wife knew that. This was a calculated attack,’ Radnor Township Police Superintendent William Colarulo said at a news conference after the murder.
The superintendent said Jennair had been secretly plotting revenge.
‘She broke into the house. She was lying in wait, and then she shot herself. There were emails and text messages indicating what she planned to do,’ Colarulo added.
‘I broke her heart,’ Mark Gerardot explains of his wife. ‘My regret comes back to making her feel like she had no other choice.’
But in reality, Jennair did have a choice. She could have simply walked away like so many others faced with similar circumstances and the burden of a broken heart.
