Montgomery County man charged with bludgeoning his ex-girlfriend to death with a hammer

On Sunday, Jeanette Weiss recalled her daughter Jessica Zipkin’s bright smile, big brown eyes, and velvety red hair, and the excitement that lit up the 34-year-old each time she came up with a new recipe.

That light was extinguished early Saturday morning, when Zipkin’s ex-boyfriend bludgeoned her to death with a hammer in his Perkiomen Township apartment, law enforcement officials said.

William Carey, 46, has been charged with first- and third-degree murder, and possessing an instrument of crime, according to a statement issued Sunday by Montgomery County District Attorney Kevin R. Steele and the Pennsylvania State Police.

Shortly before 1:30 a.m. Saturday, state police troopers responded to a 911 call about a possible dead woman at an apartment on Gravel Pike in Perkiomen, according to the joint statement. Inside they found Zipkin with a fatal wound to the back of her head, and a hammer next to her body.

An autopsy determined Zipkin had died of blunt-force trauma to the head and that the manner of death was a homicide, authorities said.

According to Zipkin’s family members, she had been dating Carey since early March-late April, but the pair broke up in mid-October.

A bartender by profession, Jena — as her friends lovingly called her — was kind, a good listener, and had the naivety of someone who always looks for the best in people.

“[She] will drop everything she’s doing to come to save you, that’s the type of person she is,” her best friend, Alania Perry, said in an interview Sunday.

But over the weekend, no one was there to save Zipkin.

According to the affidavit of probable cause for Carey’s arrest, Zipkin’s body was found in an apartment rented by Carey.

Video surveillance retrieved by police shows Carey arriving at a local taproom, the Duck Inn, at 12:57 p.m. on Friday, wearing a T-shirt. Almost an hour later, he returned to the apartment, and within 10 minutes Zipkin arrived.

Around 2:30 p.m. a neighbor heard a woman screaming and then a man scream, but according to the affidavit, he turned the volume up on his television.

Eight minutes later, Carey is seen by the cameras entering the Duck Inn’s basement with clothing items and disposing of them in a trash can, the affidavit states. Soon, he is seen walking out wearing a long-sleeve shirt and placing the trash bag from the taproom basement into a dumpster in the parking lot.

At some point, he asked a person for a ride to buy shoes because the ones he had “stunk,” according to the affidavit. But when they arrived at the store, Carey didn’t get out of the car. Instead, he seeming to be “spaced out and to be crying while inside [the] vehicle,” the police report states.

A little before 1:30 a.m., on Saturday, Carey returned home and told the property owner that “his girlfriend was deceased in the apartment,” according to the police complaint. The property owner called 911.

As a result of a search warrant, police Saturday morning found a pair of bloodstained sneakers in Carey’s kitchen, and a pair of jeans and a T-shirt that appeared to be stained with blood in the Duck Inn dumpster, according to the affidavit of probable cause.

Soon after, Carey was arrested. He is being held without bail at the Montgomery County Correctional Facility. A preliminary hearing is scheduled for Nov. 13.

For Zipkin’s loved ones, the loss is immeasurable and painfully sudden. They are left heartbroken and confused, said Perry, her friend. “We don’t know what went wrong,” she added.

As the family grapples with the loss, they said they hope “Jena” is remembered as a good soul who was always there to support people and loved her cat, Flurken.