Calls from the Inside

Episode 1

Killing For Control

Tue, Dec 20, 2022

On January 14, 2004, a month after Jeromir "Jerry" Palensky's disappearance, his body was found floating face down in the Jordan River near Salt Lake City, Utah, by the Salt Lake County Sheriff's Department. He was an immigrant to the United States from Czechoslovakia. He was 61 years old at the time of his death. He had been working as a ranch hand for Vern Fields and his wife Linda Walker Fields. The homicide case went cold, but heated up again in 2006 when detectives were given some vital information about Linda that allowed her to be arrested. At the jail, Linda spoke for hundreds of hours to her husband Vern, often incriminating herself and Vern in the murder. Vern was arrested in 2007. Both parties were convicted of murder and were sentenced to life in prison without parole. Linda's original sentence was overturned and in 2013 she was given a new trial. This time, she was convicted of voluntary manslaughter and was sentenced to 10 years in prison. She had already served the bulk of that amount of time, and she was released from prison in 2017. Now divorced from Vern, she remarried, but her new husband killed her and then killed himself. The motive for Jerry's murder was a $300,000 life insurance policy that had Linda listed as the beneficiary.