{"id":2535,"date":"2025-06-10T20:42:26","date_gmt":"2025-06-10T20:42:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/grow48.us\/?p=2535"},"modified":"2025-06-10T20:42:48","modified_gmt":"2025-06-10T20:42:48","slug":"the-story-of-jonathan-schmitz-and-the-infamous-jenny-jones-murder","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/grow48.us\/?p=2535","title":{"rendered":"The Story Of Jonathan Schmitz And The Infamous \u2018Jenny Jones Murder\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Jonathan Schmitz lived an ordinary life. He was, by all definitions, an \u201caverage Joe\u201d who lived in Michigan and generally led a quiet existence. But on March 6, 1995, he was invited to appear on one of the most popular talk shows of the day, The Jenny Jones Show, where he was told that a person who had a \u201csecret crush\u201d on him would be revealed.<\/span><\/h1>\n<\/header>\n
Expecting a beautiful woman to reveal herself, Schmitz was bewildered when the \u201csecret crush\u201d was revealed to be a gay acquaintance named Scott Amedure.<\/p>\n

On-screen, Schmitz appeared amused \u2014 and even flattered \u2014 at Amedure\u2019s revelation. But when the cameras stopped rolling, Jonathan Schmitz began seething with rage that ultimately led him to murder Scott Amedure \u2014 and this tragedy changed talk shows forever.<\/p>\n

This is the shocking true story of the man dubbed \u201cThe Jenny Jones Killer.\u201d<\/p>\n

Jonathan Schmitz\u2019s Fateful Appearance On The Jenny Jones Show<\/p>\n

\"\"
Scott Amedure is pictured moments before Jonathan Schmitz came onstage.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

If you believe Jonathan Schmitz, he went on The Jenny Jones Show \u2014 one of the most popular talk shows of the 1990s \u2014 because he was told that a woman had a crush on him, and he was curious to know who it was. He was invited to tape an episode of the show at its Chicago-area studios on March 6, 1995.<\/p>\n

When he arrived at the studio, he saw a woman he knew in the audience and thought she might be his secret admirer.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe figured she was his secret admirer and walked up and kissed her, said Lt. Bruce Naile of the Sheriff\u2019s Department to The New York Times. \u201cBut then they told him: \u2018Oh, no, she\u2019s not your secret admirer. This is.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

The \u201cthis,\u201d in this case, was Scott Amedure, a 32-year-old acquaintance of Schmitz\u2019s, who had been introduced to him by a mutual friend named Donna Riley, who also was at the taping. \u201cHe was stunned,\u201d said the lieutenant. \u201cHe had agreed to do the show. So he didn\u2019t know what to do or what his rights were. So he sat there and went along with it.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Jenny Jones Show producers, however, had a different story. They claimed that they told Jonathan Schmitz that his crush could be \u201ca man or a woman,\u201d leaving it open to interpretation. In the actual episode \u2014 which ultimately never made it to air \u2014 Schmitz genially told Amedure that he was \u201cdefinitely heterosexual,\u201d and didn\u2019t seem enraged or otherwise disturbed by the revelation. And at worst, everyone thought, it would be something that would be laughed off in the future \u2014 maybe as a tall tale to tell over a night of drinking with friends.<\/p>\n

Regardless of which version of events you believe, however, the tragic result was the same.<\/p>\n

Jonathan Schmitz Becomes The \u2018Jenny Jones Killer\u2019
\nThree days after Jonathan Schmitz taped his national television appearance on The Jenny Jones Show, he returned home from an evening out with friends to find an anonymous note on his door. Though the contents of the note were never revealed, it was enough to enrage Schmitz.<\/p>\n

He grabbed his shotgun, knocked on Amedure\u2019s door, and pumped two rounds into his chest, killing him instantly. Schmitz then left the residence, contacted the police, and confessed to the killing.<\/p>\n

The ensuing trial was nothing short of a media circus. Prosecutors claimed that Schmitz killed Amedure in cold blood in an attempt to hide the fact that the pair were having an affair \u2014 a claim bolstered by the testimony of Amedure\u2019s friend, who testified to the affair on the stand.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat you are seeing on the tape is a 24-year-old man facing the studio audience and the camera with what I consider to be an ambush,\u201d Richard Thompson, the prosecutor in the case, told The Washington Post in 1995. \u201cHe is visibly upset. People are laughing. It\u2019s like a Roman circus where the audience gives a thumbs up or thumbs down to everything that is going on.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"
Even though the episode never aired, Jonathan Schmitz was quickly overcome with so much rage that he murdered Scott Amedure within days of the taping.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

But Schmitz\u2019s lawyers argued that the show, and its producers, were to blame for the ensuing tragedy. They claimed that, but for their failure to disclose Amedure\u2019s intentions, he would still be alive. The defense also revealed that Schmitz\u2019s father frequently made homophobic comments to his son, and Schmitz killed Amedure out of a \u201cgay panic\u201d that ensued.<\/p>\n

In the end, a jury convicted Jonathan Schmitz of second-degree murder in 1996 and was sentenced to 25 to 50 years in prison. The conviction was subsequently overturned, and after a re-trial, Schmitz was re-convicted of the same crime in 1999. He was released in 2017 on parole and has remained out of the limelight ever since.<\/p>\n

The Aftermath Of Scott Amedure\u2019s Murder
\nAfter the \u201cJenny Jones killer\u201d was convicted of second-degree murder, the Amedure family sued The Jenny Jones Show for the wrongful death of Scott Amedure. At trial, Jones got on the stand and testified that she didn\u2019t get permission from Schmitz to humiliate him on national television.<\/p>\n

She also confirmed that her show didn\u2019t do a background check on Jonathan Schmitz \u2014 or any of her guests \u2014 before bringing them on the air. Amedure\u2019s attorney pointed out that, had Jones and her staff conducted a background check on Schmitz, his past mental health and addiction issues would have been revealed.<\/p>\n

In the end, Scott Amedure\u2019s family was awarded nearly $30 million in a judgment against Jones and her show, but the judgment was later overturned in a 2-to-1 ruling. The case was later featured in Netflix\u2019s limited series Trial by Media, and in an episode of the HLN series How It Really Happened.<\/p>\n<\/section>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Jonathan Schmitz lived an ordinary life. He was, by all definitions, an \u201caverage Joe\u201d who lived in Michigan and generally led a quiet existence. But on March… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2536,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2535","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/grow48.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2535","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/grow48.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/grow48.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/grow48.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/grow48.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2535"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/grow48.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2535\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2540,"href":"https:\/\/grow48.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2535\/revisions\/2540"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/grow48.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2536"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/grow48.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2535"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/grow48.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2535"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/grow48.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2535"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}