Sister of Texas Woman Left Unrecognizable After She Was Found Dead Days Later Wants Her ‘Monster’ Husband to Endure Life of Fear During 72-Year Prison Sentence

When 46-year-old Jenean Chapman was found dead in her blood-soaked Dallas apartment in October 2023, family members didn’t recognize her.

“It’s hard to wrap our brains around the fact that she’s dead because it’s like, it didn’t look like her,” her sister, Crystal Marshall, said in an interview in 2023.

Last Friday, the victim’s family got their chance to address the man just convicted of killing Chapman, an accomplished businesswoman who had once worked as an assistant for Sarah Ferguson, the Duchess of York.

“May you endure a life of perpetual fear and decay, confined to an existent devoid of solace or redemption. I want you to suffer. Every day for the rest of your life,” Charene Chapman told James Michael Patrick, her late sister’s husband of three months. “And I want him to hear those words forever.”

Jurors deliberated Patrick’s fate for two days. Had they concluded he acted in a moment of sudden passion, he would’ve likely received two to 20 years in prison. But, with Patrick’s history of violence toward Chapman in mind, they sentenced him to 72 years.

“My sister was a classic domestically abused woman,” Crystal Marshall told FOX 4 shortly after her death.

In court on Friday, her mother, Ann Marshall, remembered Chapman as “a very giving person.”

“She give what she doesn’t even have, and she put herself aside and do for you. This is how she is,” Marshall said.

Chapman had taken some time off from work on September 20 for “domestic issues.” Ferguson, in an Instagram post written after Chapman’s death, said she had talked with her former assistant, “who seemed so happy,” just a few months earlier.

“Jenean was loyal, hardworking, beautiful and fun and my heart breaks for her family and friends,” said Ferguson, who included a picture of herself with Chapman.

Her marriage was off to a rocky start, family members said. One sister told police, “(Patrick) choked (Chapman) unconscious in a recent fight.”

After her employer had not heard from her in five days, an HR manager called police asking for a welfare check. Chapman was found with “obvious injuries” to her neck, face and body, police said. A nightstand and lamp had been kicked over, indicating a fight.

That same day, Patrick was admitted to an Austin hospital for “treatment to an adverse reaction to an unknown substance.” A doctor who examined him discovered a bloody, black fingernail on his body.

When asked about it, Patrick told the doctor he had gotten in a fight with his wife. University of Texas police arrested him in the hospital soon afterward.

Patrick and Chapman had been together, off and on, for six years before their marriage in July 2023, which her family did not attend.

“We just know in the last year, the relationship got really rocky,” sister Nicole Marshall said.

Still, they were shocked by the news.

“That’s why I use the word blindsided, because we did not see this coming,” Crystal Marshall said after Patrick’s arrest. “We knew that they had arguments, and that’s typical in relationship. It was a bit toxic, but we would never think it would be taken to this extreme where my sister would ultimately lose her life.” 

Now face to face with her sister’s killer, Nicole Marshall didn’t hold back.

“You’re a monster,” she said. “And I will sleep well at night knowing that you are where you belong in prison away from society.”