By Keith L. Alexander
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, September 11, 2008

A Southeast Washington woman accused of killing her four daughters was indicted yesterday in D.C. Superior Court on charges of premeditated first-degree murder.

If convicted, Banita Jacks, 33, could be sentenced to life in prison. She has been in jail since she was arrested Jan. 9, the day that federal marshals serving an eviction notice found the bodies in a rowhouse on Sixth Street SE.

In its indictment, the grand jury says Jacks killed the girls with "deliberate and premeditated malice." The document also provides new details about how the children died.

The youngest, Aja Fogle, 5, had been strangled and beaten, the indictment says. Her sisters, N'Kiah Fogle, 6, and Tatiana Jacks, 11, had been strangled. As previously thought, Brittany Jacks, 16, had been stabbed, the document says.

Jacks was also charged with failing to provide the girls with adequate nutrition and medical attention.

Authorities have said they think the girls had been dead for as long as six months. Jacks had told police that they died in their sleep. The eldest, Brittany, had puncture wounds on her abdomen and a knife was near her body, court papers say.

Because the bodies were decomposed, authorities were not able to immediately establish the causes of death. The D.C. medical examiner determined only that the deaths were homicides. Prosecutors recruited a forensic anthropologist and the FBI to aid in the investigation.

Prosecutors are able to seek a life sentence because the charges -- 12 in all, including cruelty to children -- were filed with "special circumstances" stemming from the ages of the victims.

Jacks is due in court tomorrow for a hearing, and her trial is scheduled for December. At a hearing in June, she told D.C. Superior Court Judge Frederick H. Weisberg that she was anxious to get to trial.