Bettie Jenifer, the American wife of Ghanaian actor Chris Attoh was fatally shot by an unidentified black male after 5:00 pm on Friday 10 May outside of her office in Greenbelt, Maryland. According to the police report, the victim was confronted by a man, before running across the parking lot trying to escape him, while the man fired shots at her. She sustained one shot to the head, and one shot to the body and was pronounced dead at the scene of the incident.
“Once fatally in the head,” said Greenbelt Police Department Spokesperson George Mathews. “This happened in broad daylight, in front of multiple witnesses, right in front of an office complex.” He added, “Somebody wanted her dead”.
Bettie Jenifer, 44, and Chris Attoh married traditionally in a discreet ceremony in Accra, Ghana in October 2018. However, eyebrows were recently raised at the state of their marriage as Attoh deleted all pictures of his new wife from his Instagram page just over a week ago. This was Attoh’s second attempt at marriage, after divorcing from Nigerian actress Damilola Adegbite early in 2018.
Four and a half hours before her murder, her husband of seven months, Attoh tweeted,
“When it comes to relationships, remaining faithful is never an option but a priority. Loyalty is ever ”
“(Investigators) are aware of the tweets as well and that’s all part of the investigation,” said Mathews.
The ongoing investigation took a new twist as it was revealed that the deceased was married to a second man. Jenifer was also married to Kedrick Jenifer a.ka. “Ricky Jenifer”, “Pretty Ricky”, “James Howard Collier Jnr”, a drug lord who was convicted in 2016, after pleading guilty for moving large amounts of cocaine and drug money between Baltimore and Texas. He is currently serving a 20-year sentence.
The U.S. District Attorney’s office said the kingpin’s “Jenifer drug trafficking organization” distributed at least 450kg of cocaine, with a street value of approximately $15 million, in Baltimore and Woodbridge, Virginia.
“Kedrick Jenifer lived large as a major Baltimore drug dealer, but now he will lose all of his toys and live for two decades in federal prison, “ said U.S. Attorney Rod Rosenstein in a news release after his sentencing.
Court records have emerged that show that Kedrick Jenifer had filed for divorce from Bettie last month, on April 9, 2019. Bettie Jenifer also filed for divorce from him on April 15, 2019 as indicated by the court records. Attoh has chosen to remain silent, and communicated this through a statement by his talent agency, “Waka Talent Agency is saddened by the death of Bettie Jenifer, who was married to our client, Mr. Chris Attoh. We would like to note that the family has requested to mourn in private and therefore will not be doing any press interviews or commenting on the death.”