On August 5, 2026, Tasmiyah “Tas” Whitehead walked out of Pulaski State Prison on parole. More than 16 years had passed since she and her identical twin, Jasmiyah “Jas” Whitehead, left their mother bleeding in a bathtub, went to school and pretended nothing had happened.
The release brought Georgia back to one of the most horrific family tragedies in the state’s history.
Highlights
- Nikki Whitehead became a mother at 18 and relied on her grandmother to help raise her identical twin daughters.
- Eight days after Nikki regained custody, Jas and Tas attacked her and left her in bleeding in a bathtub.
- Tasmiyah Whitehead was released on parole in August 2026, while Jasmiyah remains incarcerated pending parole consideration in 2028.
Jarmecca “Nikki” Whitehead was 34 when her daughters took her life in Conyers on January 13, 2010. The girls were 16.
It all began when she sought custody from them, wanting to make up for lost time and build the family they never had the chance to have until that point. The twins refused, having grown accustomed to the freedom they had living with their great-grandmother.
When Jarmecca tried to discipline them, they began plotting her end.
A young mother finally reunited with her twin daughters, only for them to fatally rebel against her
Nikki’s story began in a painfully common way among hundreds of young mothers.
She was only 18 when Jas and Tas were born on November 27, 1993. Their biological father left for Canada, leaving her to face motherhood alone.
Her best friend, Yucca Harris, remembered Nikki, who had grown up without much structure, as “an amazing person.” Determined to face her circumstances head on and provide for her children, she earned a cosmetology license, became a hairstylist and later studied fashion at Bauder College in Atlanta.
One instructor remembered her as particularly “energized” and being “a very loving mother” to the, at the time, baby twins.
Thankfully, Nikki wasn’t alone. She relied heavily on her grandmother, Della Frazier, and the girls spent much of their childhood in Frazier’s home. Over time, Frazier assumed an increasingly important role in their lives as Nikki struggled to balance the responsibilities of motherhood with her own needs as a young woman.
Frazier later described Nikki as an inconsistent presence.
The arrangement appeared to work well for the twins. Under their great-grandmother, Jas and Tas flourished. They earned places on the honor roll, joined the Girl Scouts and grew up to be disciplined, conventional children.
As time went on, they both came to believe that they didn’t really need or care about Nikki as a mother, or even at all.
Nikki sought custody of the twins in 2007, wanting to rebuild her family and role as a mother
By 2007, Nikki was determined to become the “loving mother” she was described as during the girls’ early years. She sought custody of Jas and Tas, convinced that bringing them home would give all three of them another chance.
But Nikki’s hopes blinded her to a brutal reality. What she didn't account for was the fact that beyond her wishes and motherly love, she couldn't see the twins for who they truly were.
She didn't know them, not really.
It was Frazier who had raised the twins, shaped their routines and became the authority they recognized. To Jas and Tas, Nikki was nothing but an absent figure from their childhood who had suddenly returned demanding obedience.
They did not see her custody fight as an attempt to control them, and their resentment was already beginning to harden into something far more dangerous.
The family Nikki had imagined never materialized. Arguments over school, discipline and her authority soon became part of their daily lives.
The arguments then turned physical. Counseling failed to contain the hostility to the point police had to intervene. The conflict eventually reached juvenile court.
Then, in June 2008, another confrontation shattered what remained of the relationship.
The twins claimed Nikki had attacked them. Nikki insisted that it was her daughters who were the aggressors.
Faced with two irreconcilable accounts and a household spinning further out of control, a judge removed Jas and Tas from Nikki’s custody and sent them back to Frazier. The second separation devastated Nikki, but it did nothing to weaken her determination to bring them home.
She continued fighting for nearly two years to regain custody. When she finally succeeded on January 5, 2010, a court ordered mother and daughters to live together for a two-week trial period.
The old conflict intensified almost immediately.
But this time, Nikki was afraid.
Investigators later found a chilling entry written around the day of the transfer.
One twin wrote, “If we don’t get rid of her now, we’ll be stuck here forever.”
Just eight days after the girls came home for the second time, Nikki lost her life in brutal fashion
The breaking point came on the morning of January 13, 2010. Jas and Tas had overslept and were late for school. Nikki confronted them and made the rules clear: they could no longer do whatever they wanted.
They said she threatened them with a cooking pot. What followed moved from the kitchen into the living room and became a sustained attack involving the pot, a kitchen knife and a red vase.
The sisters’ accounts differed, but each admitted participating. Tas said she struck Nikki with the pot and stabbed her. “She bit me in the chest,” Jas said of her mother, adding that Tas then stabbed her. Jas admitted hitting Nikki with the vase, picking up the knife and trying to choke her with a ribbon.
Nikki fought for her life.
During Tasmiyah’s sentencing hearing in January 2014, prosecutor Richard Read described a fight filled with “name-calling and cursing and gouging and scratching.”
The twins tried to argue self-defense, but the wounds showed that the violence continued far beyond an attempt to escape.
Reports confirmed as many as 80 stab wounds. The attack was so fierce that Nikki’s lungs and jugular were pierced, and her spinal cord was completely severed. Defensive wounds covered her hands and forearms.
Even then, the twins were not done.
They dragged her to the bathroom together, placed her in the bathtub, filled it with water and forced her beneath the surface.
In their confessions, they recalled their mother telling them that she hated them and that they were going to prison. Jasmiyah later described the moment, “She went under a couple times and that was it.”
The girls tried to clean the house, took Nikki’s purse and cellphone, and put the knife and pot in a plastic bag. Then they went to school as if nothing had happened.
After school, they returned and alerted authorities, claiming they had discovered their mother lifeless. Police found Nikki in the water-filled bathtub, wearing a nightgown and covered in blood.
A trail led from the bedroom through rooms marked by a broken vase and a blood-smeared couch.
Lieutenant Chris Moon called it “the bloodiest scene I think I’ve ever been to.” Another investigator, Greg Carson, said the blood was so pervasive, “You can smell it, even taste it.”
The twins tried to explain away their injuries as self-inflicted responses to stress
At first, Jas and Tas were treated as traumatized daughters and possible witnesses. They said they had left home around 7:30 or 8 am, arrived at school only slightly late and found Nikki after returning.
Investigators started ruling out suspects.
The twins’ biological father was in Canada and had an alibi. Police also investigated two men in Nikki’s life and considered whether a romantic dispute or love triangle had led to the homicide.
Robert Head, with whom Nikki and the twins lived, was away driving in Indiana. Joe Carter, a barber who worked next to Nikki’s salon, acknowledged that they had been lovers for several months, but surveillance supported his alibi.
Neither man provided an explanation for the violence, and there was no sign of forced entry. The medical evidence suggested a personal, rage-filled attack by someone Nikki knew.
Attention returned to the sisters. Detectives noticed that they appeared to cry without producing tears and made disparaging comments about their mother. Their bodies carried scratches and bite-related injuries, which they said were self-inflicted.
In an effort to convince police, Tasmiyah bit her own arm and described the act as a response to stress. Investigators didn’t buy it.
The twins were described as “Jekyll and Hyde” by police after being arrested
A dental examination reportedly matched a mark on Tasmiyah to Nikki’s teeth. Human hair was found between Nikki’s teeth, another remnant of the struggle. In Tasmiyah’s room, investigators opened a shoebox containing brown boots. Blood and a clump of hair had been pushed into one toe.
The timeline broke apart as well. Gas-station surveillance placed the twins away from school at approximately 10:10 am, long after the time they claimed to have left home. School video confirmed that they arrived later in the morning.
Blood from Nikki and both daughters was found in the house.
Detectives then placed the sisters in a vehicle fitted with a microphone. Believing they were speaking privately, the twins discussed the lack of evidence against them and noted that police had not found the homicide weapon.
The case was closed. In May 2010, four months after Nikki’s passing, Jas and Tas were arrested and charged.
When Carson saw them after the arrest, he said their demeanor changed completely. “They were vile, cussing, nasty, threatening,” he recalled. “Complete Jekyll and Hyde.”
Only one of the sisters would leave jail in 2026
Both sisters initially pleaded not guilty, but defense had nothing. They tried arguing the twins’ age, the family’s violent history and their insistence that Nikki had initiated the fight.
Prosecutors eventually agreed to reduce the homicide charges.
In 2014, the sisters pleaded guilty to voluntary manslaughter. Each received 30 years: 20 years for manslaughter, five for possessing a knife during the crime and five for making false statements to authorities.
They were sent to separate prisons and became eligible for parole in 2017.
Their pleas required videotaped confessions. Jas argued they were left with no other choice as the fight went on “until somebody di**.” Tasmiyah called it “confusion and turmoil” that never stopped. Both expressed regret and wished they had called the police instead of going to school and lying.
Nikki’s mother, Lynda Whitehead, was furious.
“You offer someone 30 years with parole?” she asked. “It is like she is not important; she is the victim.”
On August 5, 2026, the Georgia parole board released Tas from Pulaski State Prison after concluding there was a reasonable probability she could remain free without breaking the law.
Reports describing 12 years in prison count from her 2014 conviction; the more than 16 years in custody includes the time she spent jailed before the plea. She remains under parole supervision, with a maximum sentence date in 2040.
Jas, on the other hand, did not leave with her. As of September 2026, she remains incarcerated at the minimum-security Metro Transitional Center.
Her next parole consideration is set for 2028.
"I'm just wondering why one was released and not the other", one comment reads
