Do you know who murdered Jermaine Francois in 2017? Jermaine Francois, a 34-year-old Black/African American male from Wilmington, Delaware, was shot in the early morning hours of January 11, 2017, in the 100 block of East 14th Street. Wilmington police responded shortly after midnight after reports of gunfire and found him wounded at the scene. He was suffering from multiple gunshot wounds and was rushed to a nearby hospital in critical condition, but he later died from his injuries.
For years, the case sat unresolved.
The first investigation was assigned to Sergeant Don Palmatary of the Wilmington Police Department’s Criminal Investigations Division, but the trail eventually went cold. As time passed, the case moved into the hands of the department’s Cold Case Unit, where investigators began reworking the old file, looking again at evidence and leads that had not produced an arrest in the immediate aftermath of the shooting.
The first major break came more than seven years later. In April 2024, investigators identified Robin Webster as a suspect in connection with Francois’ killing. The case was presented to a New Castle County Grand Jury on April 22, 2024, and an indictment was returned. Webster was taken into custody the next day, April 23, 2024, without incident. She was charged with Murder in the First Degree, arraigned in Justice of the Peace Court 11, and held at the Delores J. Baylor Women’s Correctional Institution on $5,000,000 cash-only bail.
The investigation did not stop with Webster’s arrest. Wilmington’s Cold Case Unit continued pursuing the case, and in February 2025 authorities announced a second arrest. Kenneth Bleen was indicted by a New Castle County Grand Jury on February 17, 2025, and taken into custody without incident on February 18, 2025. He was also charged with First Degree Murder in connection with Francois’ shooting death. After arraignment in Justice of the Peace Court 11, Bleen was held at the Howard R. Young Correctional Institution on $1,000,000 cash-only bail.
Authorities credited the later progress in the case to the work of Cold Case Investigators Steven Rizzo and Mariana Espinosa, along with Detective Devon Jones. Their work turned a long-stalled homicide investigation into a case with two named suspects, both accused of murder. Available online reporting shows arrests and charges against Webster and Bleen, but no publicly available conviction or trial outcome was found in the reviewed online sources.
