It Made Terrible Sense

A father is shot dead with his own gun--by his own children

It was the first homicide in six months for Cheyenne, Wyo., and one that area residents will long remember. When Richard C. Jahnke, 38, an IRS senior agent, stepped out of his blue Volkswagen to open the garage door of his $125,000 red brick home on Cowpoke Road one evening last month, he walked into an ambush of shotgun slugs. He died instantly, and the attacker swiftly fled with an accomplice through a bedroom window. But when, within twelve hours, police arrested the two alleged murderers, the reaction was shock more than relief. Charged with the crime were Jahnke's children, Richard, 16, and Deborah, 17.

According to the criminal complaint later filed by officials, Richard admitted to city police after he was picked up: "I shot my father for revenge." Indeed, the family had fought bitterly on the day of the slaying. That evening, while their father and mother dined out at a local restaurant, Richard and Deborah, both students at Cheyenne's Central High School, put their deadly plot into action. Richard, armed with a loaded 12-gauge shotgun from his father's 60-piece gun collection, lay in wait behind the garage door. Taking a back-up position, Deborah allegedly cradled a .30-cal. automatic carbine in the living room, in case their father escaped their first line of fire. The planning was unnecessary: Richard, aiming through the plywood garage door, hit his father with four pump-action blasts while his mother sat in horror in the car.

Despite the coldly premeditated nature of the slaying, public sentiment in Cheyenne began shifting to the alleged killers as details about the Jahnke household emerged. Said Richard's high school ROTC instructor, Major Robert Vegvary: "Something monstrous and horrible must have happened at home." Indeed, to hear local residents tell it, something had. Though a devoted father, the elder Jahnke was described by those who knew him as an ultrastrict disciplinarian with an explosive temper that often boiled over into physical violence. He doled out severe beatings to his children for the most minor infractions; his Puerto Rican-born wife Maria stood by helplessly during her husband's fist-wielding tirades and sometimes suffered violence herself. Said a friend of the family's after the killing: "What those children did ... it made terrible sense."

According to some Cheyenne residents, trouble had been brewing in the Jahnke household long before the $38,500-a-year IRS agent was transferred from Phoenix in August 1980. The family virtually isolated itself, and the children were expected to spend most of their free time at home. The parents forbade dating for Deborah, and Maria Jahnke insisted on accompanying her teen-age daughter on outings. Jahnke, a former career Army sergeant, a gun buff and survivalist who stored a large emergency cache of dried foodstuffs in the home, often patrolled his house fondling one of his guns. Lamented the green-eyed Deborah to a friend last summer: "They won't let me out of their sight. It's driving me crazy." Said one friend: "The kids didn't see it as love. They felt imprisoned."

Richard was arraigned late last week on charges of first-degree murder and conspiracy, and Deborah on charges of conspiracy and aiding and abetting. Both face life sentences if tried as adults. Their defense attorney, who has entered a not-guilty plea for his clients, is seeking to have the proceedings transferred to juvenile court, where the criminal penalties would be lighter. Said one Cheyenne sheriffs deputy, ruefully: "It is the victim who will be on trial, not the suspects." -

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