The small room where a mother let her son stay overnight became the scene of a deadly attack by dawn, say investigators.
WEST MILWAUKEE, Wis. — The guest room in Cheryl Jenkins’ home is at the center of the homicide case against her son, a space prosecutors say shifted overnight from a place to sleep into the scene of a fatal beating.
That room shaped nearly every part of the investigation. It is where Cheryl Jenkins’ fiancé said Hayward Jenkins stayed after arriving late at night. It is where the fiancé believed the two were talking before dawn. It is where police found Cheryl Jenkins dead with a wooden baseball bat on top of her body. And it is where prosecutors say physical damage, blood evidence and later medical findings all pointed to a sustained assault that led to a charge of first-degree intentional homicide against the 38-year-old defendant.
The story the complaint tells begins with an act of help. The fiancé said Hayward Jenkins came to the home around 9 or 10 p.m., knocking on a window. Cheryl Jenkins let him in, got him something to eat and gave him the guest room for the night. The fiancé said he fell asleep by 10:30 p.m. after taking medication and asked Cheryl Jenkins to come to bed. Hours later, around 4 to 4:30 a.m., he heard a noise and briefly got up. He told police he thought it was the upstairs neighbors and went back to sleep, believing Cheryl Jenkins was in the guest room talking with her son. In the complaint, that assumption becomes one of the last known snapshots of the room before the killing was discovered.
When daylight came, the room was closed off. The fiancé told police he woke around 7:30 a.m., called Cheryl Jenkins and got no answer. He knocked on the guest-room door, checked whether the car was gone and found it still in the garage, then returned and saw the bedroom door was locked. He entered through the bathroom and found her on the floor. Officers arriving minutes later described a room that looked disturbed. They reported a broken metal bed frame, clutter that the witness said had not been there the day before, and blood on the back of the door and lower part of an east wall. Those details gave investigators a picture of violence confined to a small indoor space.
The injuries described by the medical examiner deepened that picture. Dr. Lauren Decker documented blunt-force trauma across Cheryl Jenkins’ body, including facial injuries, scalp lacerations, skull fractures, hemorrhaging and injuries to her arms and legs. Police also reported blood on the bat and on parts of Cheryl Jenkins’ body beyond the fatal head wound. The complaint says she was found face down, with the bat resting on top of her. Prosecutors did not say in the filing whether Cheryl Jenkins ever left the chair where Jenkins later told police she had been sitting when he struck her, or whether investigators recovered the scissors he said she was holding. Those unanswered points leave some of the final moments inside the room unclear.
Outside the room, the investigation spread quickly into the neighborhood. Surveillance footage reviewed by police showed a person running between apartment buildings in the 1700 block of Miller Park Way before heading to a bus stop at Miller Park Way and West Mitchell Street. Bus footage then showed the defendant boarding an MCTS bus at about 6:07 a.m., according to the complaint. Family members later directed police to Potawatomi Casino, where officers arrested Jenkins at about 12:33 p.m. Police said his clothing matched the person seen on video. In a post-arrest statement, the complaint says, Jenkins told investigators he argued with his mother over silver coins and money, felt she was not listening and then “flipped out.”
The human contrast in the case has shaped much of the public reaction: a mother who fed her son and gave him a place to stay, and a complaint that says he later admitted killing her. Prosecutors said Jenkins told police his mother had scissors in her hand, that he feared she might stab him and that he struck her multiple times in the head with the bat while she was sitting in a chair. He also allegedly said he was wrong for murdering her. Jenkins appeared in court March 1, where local reports said bond was set at $300,000, and a preliminary hearing had been scheduled for March 10. The most detailed public account remains the complaint, which leaves the room itself as the clearest witness to what happened.
Author note: Last updated March 30, 2026.