CHARLES TOWN, W.Va. — Sentencing is set for early November for a man recently convicted in a Jefferson County death.
C.J. Cook, 41, entered a ‘no contest’ plea late last week to felony counts including voluntary manslaughter, concealment of a dead body and conspiracy in the May 2021 death of James Michael Kerns at the Charles Town Motel 6.
Jefferson County Prosecutor Matt Harvey told the Panhandle News Network the investigation began in June 2021 when an anonymous call came in reporting ‘the smell of death’ coming out of a room at the motel.
Hear Prosecutor Matt Harvey talk about the case on Panhandle Live:
A state police investigator discovered a mattress with a large brown stain that tests later indicated was human blood.
Cook and his girlfriend Amanda Frey had checked out of that room the previous day.
The investigation determined that the victim had been staying with the pair in the motel room on May 18, 2021. Cook said he had not seen Kerns, 39, alive since May 23, 2021.
Cook denied any personal knowledge of the brown stain on the mattress or the cause of the smell in the room.
But Frey eventually admitted that Kerns died in the room, saying Cook and Kerns had an argument in the early morning hours of May 23, 2021. She reported seeing Kerns in bed bleeding from his right side and Cook was panicking. She believed Cook stabbed Kerns.
Frey said she and Cook were in the room with Kerns’ body for at least five days.
Investigators said Cook then wrapped the Kerns’ body in a blanket, put the body in a trash can, hauled trash can to a dumpster at the Motel 6, and then disposed of the body in the dumpster.
Cook reportedly took Kerns’ backpack and bag containing his belongings, which included a laptop computer, cell phone, social security card, and clothing, from the room and threw them over a fence near the Motel 6.
Law enforcement ended up searching for the body of the victim at the Mountainview Reclamation Landfill located in Greencastle, Pennsylvania last September but it still hasn’t been found.
Prosecutor Harvey said the victim’s family and friends are denied “the decency of a proper burial for a son, father, brother, and friend.”
Amanda Frey pled guilty to accessory after the murder and agreed to testify in the trial of Cook. She’s scheduled to be sentenced Sept. 12. Cook is set for a Nov. 1 sentencing.
Harvey said he’ll seek a 5 to 25 year prison term for Cook, which would be the maximum sentence on all counts. He said he’ll ask the judge to run the sentences consecutively.
Harvey lauded the efforts of Cpl. Timothy Perry and members of the West Virginia State Police, First Sgt. Dean Olack and members of the Eastern Panhandle Drug and Violent Crimes Task Force, the FBI, and all law-enforcement officers and volunteers that helped try to find James Kerns and bring him home to his family. Harvey also thanked Waste Management and Apple Valley Waste for its cooperation and assistance in the search and the Jefferson County Commission for funding part of the operation.