{"id":75435,"date":"2026-07-02T23:31:24","date_gmt":"2026-07-02T23:31:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/75435\/"},"modified":"2026-07-02T23:31:24","modified_gmt":"2026-07-02T23:31:24","slug":"ex-boyfriend-pleads-guilty-to-murder-of-detroit-teen-london-thomas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/75435\/","title":{"rendered":"Ex-boyfriend pleads guilty to murder of Detroit teen London Thomas"},"content":{"rendered":"

WAYNE COUNTY, Mich. \u2013 The ex-boyfriend of 17-year-old London Thomas<\/a>, who was found dead in April 2025, has pleaded guilty to her murder.<\/p>\n

Jalen Pendergrass, 23, and his mother, Charla Pendergrass, 49,<\/a> were charged with second-degree murder and evidence tampering in October.<\/p>\n

Charla Pendergrass (left) and Jalen Pendergrass (right) (WDIV)<\/p>\n

Thomas was found dead in Southfield on April 26, 2025, two weeks after she had been reported missing. She was last seen when she was dropped off at her boyfriend\u2019s house on Carlysle Street in Inkster on April 5, 2025.<\/p>\n

London Thomas. (WDIV)<\/p>\n

Wayne County Prosecutor Kym Worthy previously said Jalen and Thomas were in a relationship, but it had ended at the time she arrived at the house in Inkster.<\/p>\n

On April 26, 2025, one of Charla\u2019s friends told the FBI that she\u2019d asked him to move a sealed bin with unknown contents on April 11. He said that he placed the bin in an SUV on Millard Street in Southfield. When police searched the SUV, they found Thomas\u2019 body inside the bin.<\/p>\n

The Oakland County Medical Examiner found that Thomas died from asphyxia, and her death was ruled a homicide.<\/p>\n

On July 2, Jalen pleaded guilty to second-degree murder. As part of a plea deal, all other charges were dismissed. He is expected to be sentenced on July 31.<\/p>\n

Charla is expected to appear in court on July 31 for a pretrial hearing.<\/p>\n

Copyright 2026 by WDIV ClickOnDetroit – All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"WAYNE COUNTY, Mich. \u2013 The ex-boyfriend of 17-year-old London Thomas, who was found dead in April 2025, has…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":75436,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[26],"tags":[34135,34147,27,34146],"class_list":["post-75435","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-london","tag-detroit","tag-inkster","tag-london","tag-wayne-county"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@UnitedKingdom\/116852993734611688","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75435","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=75435"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75435\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/75436"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=75435"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=75435"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=75435"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}