Kenzie's Murder Of Jordan Brown

On an early morning in February 2009, state police found, 26-year-old, Kenzie Houk with a bullet in her head laying in her bed. She was eight months pregnant. The search for her killer ended with the most heart-breaking news. The 26-year old’s killer was her own fiancée’s 11-year-old son, Jordan Brown.

Jordan allegedly snuck into his parents’ room in the morning with a shotgun hidden under a blanket and shot Kenzie in the back of the head as she was sleeping, also killing the unborn child. Prosecutors testify that there was always a little bit of tension between Jordan and Houk. They stated that Jordan was jealous of Houk and her unborn child who was intended to take Jordan’s room after being born. Brown’s father was not home at the time of

"He has left several messages threatening to hurt me and my family. I am in fear of him hurting me physically or my family," Houk is quoted as saying in the order of protection, filed in March 2008 (Slifer, 28). A couple of weeks before Houk’s death, Adam got paternity test results saying that he and Houk’s four-year-old daughter was not his biological daughter and on the night of the murder, Harvey was escorted out of a club because he got into an aggressive argument with Kenzie’s parent. Police tried to convict Mr. Harvey in but he had an alibi saying that he was home sleeping in his parents’ basement during the time of the murder. When police pulled his car over the afternoon of the murder to take him in for questioning, they revealed that Harvey’s car looked like he had just gotten into it. The car’s hood and the roof had piles of snow on them. Also, Harvey had only been two blocks away from his father’s house. This lead investigators back to Jordan.

Jordan Brown was said to be one of the youngest suspects of homicide in the county. In Pennsylvania, there is no lower limit for someone being charged as an adult for a criminal case. If convicted. Jordan would be as an adult with homicide and face life in prison without a possibility of parole. Following the second investigation and the final trial, Brown was charged

Jordan’s family stated that Jordan had never shown any signs of violence before the crime and after further review, the court made their decision to transfer Jordan from Lawrence County Jail to a juvenile detention center until the age of 21. Kenzie Houk’s family was heartbroken and disappointed in the Court’s decision.

During Jordan’s stay in the detention center, he went to counseling sessions weekly to help him cope with the situation. Most delinquents that join the detention center that Brown was in, Edmund L. Thomas Adolescent Detention Center, juveniles usually stay only a couple of weeks but because Jordan was so you the trauma of the situation kept him there much longer. In the case of homicide, "my choice is either to charge him as an adult or don't charge him," said John Bongivengo of the Lawrence County District Attorney's Office. "Not charging him at all wasn't feasible."