Curtis Bradford, 22, a Black male, was found dead outside a detached garage near 18th and Clark Streets in Omaha on the morning of August 19, 2013. A man returning home from a night shift discovered the body around 7 a.m., and authorities identified Bradford soon after. Investigators determined he had been shot twice in the back of the head; later testimony specified one wound from a revolver and another from a shotgun slug.
Bradford had recently reconnected with Nikko Jenkins, whom he knew from prison. Within hours of the killing, witnesses and later court records placed Bradford with Jenkins, including accounts that they had been together the night before the shooting. The case drew attention when a photograph surfaced showing Bradford and Jenkins posing together shortly before Bradford s death, underscoring how quickly the reunion turned lethal.
Detectives soon focused on Jenkins and members of his family. On August 29, 2013, Jenkins was arrested; he was ultimately convicted for a four-victim spree in Omaha that included Bradford, and a three-judge panel later sentenced him to death. Parallel to that case, prosecutors built a separate case against Jenkins s sister, Erica Jenkins. Witnesses including another sister, Lori Sayles testified that on the night Bradford was killed, Erica, Nikko, and Bradford left a car under the pretense of committing a robbery; Erica and Nikko returned holding weapons. A Douglas County jury found Erica Jenkins guilty of first-degree murder and related weapons charges for Bradford s killing, and she was sentenced to life in prison plus decades on the weapons counts.
Other arrests circled the case s edges. Christine Bordeaux, a cousin connected to the Jenkins group during the August 2013 violence, pleaded guilty to robbery charges tied to the broader spree and testified in related proceedings; coverage at the time noted that she, along with a man and another woman, had been detained on separate charges while investigators probed links to Bradford s death and the killing of Andrea Kruger. While Bordeaux s convictions were for robbery rather than murder, her cooperation and the arrests around her helped clarify the circle of suspects and the events that led to Bradford s final hours.
