Anthony Hines was executed for killing a Kingston Springs woman. Her daughter wants you to remember Jean.

Anthony Darrell Hines, 66, was executed this month for the 1985 murder of a Kingston Springs woman. But for Jean Jenkins’ family, the most important story is not about the man who spent 40 years on death row.

It is about Jean.

Her youngest daughter, Melissa Jenkins, was 22 when her mother was killed. Forty-one years later, she still remembers Jean walking to church through the snow, taking neighbors to doctors’ appointments and filling the family table with food.

“She was the epitome of a good Southern Christian lady,” said her youngest daughter, Melissa Jenkins. “She is to me what a Christian should be.”

Jean was 54 when she was killed March 3, 1985, while working as a maid at the CeBon Motel in Kingston Springs.

Hines was executed Aug. 13 at Riverbend Maximum Security Institution after being convicted of Jean’s killing and spending four decades on death row. The Tennessee Department of Correction said he was pronounced dead at 10:43 a.m. following a lethal injection at Riverbend Maximum Security Institution.

For the Jenkins family, the execution closed one part of a four-decade ordeal. It did not erase the loss of a mother, wife, grandmother and friend – or the lifetime of memories the family was denied.

But for Melissa, the execution was never really the story.

The story was her mother.

A woman who showed up

Jean was a regular presence at New Hope Church of Christ in Fairview, where Melissa remembers a small congregation that might have 40 people on a good Sunday.

It didn't matter if it was raining or snowing. Jean went. “She would walk to church in the snow,” Melissa said.

Her faith also showed up in the way she treated people.

When someone in the community was sick, recovering from surgery or had lost a loved one, Jean and other women would put together fruit baskets for them. If someone needed a ride to a doctor's appointment in Nashville and didn't have a car, Jean would take them.

Those seemingly small acts are among the things Melissa remembers most.

Jean and her husband married in August 1946 when she was 16. They had three sons before Melissa was born 11 years later, making her the youngest of the four children and the only daughter.

By the time Jean was killed, Melissa was 22 and had recently moved back home. That decision gave her several additional months with her mother – time she now treasures.

The two would sometimes go fishing with Melissa's father at an aunt's property, sitting beside a large stock pond in the late evening. Those are the memories Melissa wants to hold onto.

Sunday dinners and an Italian cream cake

Jean was also known for her cooking.

Once a month or so, she would invite the family's preacher and a few other families over for Sunday dinner.

“If you got selected as an invitee, you knew you were in for something special,” Melissa said.

Her mother made dumplings, tomato gravy and an Italian cream cake that Melissa remembers as being nearly seven layers tall and taking about three days to prepare.

But one recipe in particular has survived through the generations: blueberry delight.

“All of us make it,” Melissa said.

Melissa laughs at the fact that Jean's cooking somehow lives on in the family despite the women never being allowed to help in the kitchen.

“My grandmother wouldn't allow us in the kitchen. My mom wouldn't let me in the kitchen,” she said. “So the fact that we all turned out to be pretty decent cooks, it's kind of amazing.”

A loss that never went away

Melissa remembers the day her mother died as vividly as she remembers the quieter moments.

For decades, the family rarely talked about what happened.

Melissa said they came from a family where emotional subjects generally weren't discussed. Jean's death would come up in conversations and memories, but the family didn't often sit down and talk about it.

Then, last September, the family learned that Hines' execution had been scheduled.

The execution ultimately ended a legal process that had stretched across most of her life. Hines maintained his innocence, and his case went through decades of appeals. The U.S. Supreme Court in 2021 overturned a lower court ruling that had granted him a new trial, citing what it described as overwhelming evidence supporting his conviction. 

For Melissa, the years of appeals meant repeatedly being forced back into something her family had spent decades trying to live with.

“You have to continually grieve the family member and relive what happened to them,” she said. She knows the memories won't disappear. “I'm never going to stop reliving it,” she said. “I just don't have to [deal with] the legal avenue anymore.”

Remembering Jean

Melissa traveled to Tennessee for the execution and witnessed it. Other members of the Jenkins family also attended.

The day was not a celebration. Instead, it marked the end of a chapter that had remained open for 40 years.

Jean's children were denied a lifetime of memories with their mother. Her grandchildren never got to know her as she would have been in the decades that followed.

But they still have the memories they made with her.

“To me, she was something special,” Melissa said.

That is how she wants people to remember her mother. Not simply as the woman whose death became a decades-long death-penalty case, but as Jean – a woman who went to church when the doors were open, helped people when they needed it and filled her family's home with food, faith and love.