{"id":1064012,"date":"2026-07-02T15:41:15","date_gmt":"2026-07-02T15:41:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/1064012\/"},"modified":"2026-07-02T15:41:15","modified_gmt":"2026-07-02T15:41:15","slug":"london-thomas-boyfriend-pleads-guilty-to-her-murder-admits-to-strangling-her","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/1064012\/","title":{"rendered":"London Thomas’ boyfriend pleads guilty to her murder, admits to strangling her"},"content":{"rendered":"

The boyfriend of 17-year-old London Thomas pleaded guilty to her murder Thursday during a pretrial conference.\u00a0<\/p>\n

During Thursday’s pretrial conference, Jalen Pendergrass, who authorities said was the 23-year-old boyfriend of Thomas, admitted to meeting up with her at an Inkster residence on April 5, 2025, and admitted that the two had gotten into a physical altercation. Jalen Pendergrass admitted to putting his hands around Thomas’ neck until the point where she was no longer breathing.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Thomas was last seen around 4 a.m. April 5, 2025, in Inkster, and her family filed a police report on April 6, 2025, when she did not return home. Family and friends organized searches to find the teen.\u00a0Her body was found<\/a>\u00a0on April 26, 2025, in Southfield, inside a parked SUV in a driveway in the area of Millard Street near Berg Road.\u00a0<\/p>\n

A medical examiner determined that Thomas died from asphyxia and ruled the manner of death as homicide.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Jalen Pendergrass and his mother, Charla Pendergrass, of Clawson, were both charged<\/a> in October 2025 with second-degree murder and conspiracy to tamper with evidence. At the time of arraignment, the two entered not guilty pleas.\u00a0<\/p>\n

On April 26, 2025, Wayne County prosecutors said Inkster police received a tip from a friend of Charla Pendergrass.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Prosecutors say that the friend alleged that Charla Pendergrass called him on April 7, 2025, and asked him to move a “sealed plastic bin with unknown contents.” Authorities said that the friend placed the bin in an SUV on Millard Street in Southfield on April 11, 2025.\u00a0<\/p>\n

As part of his plea agreement, prosecutors have dismissed the charges of tampering with evidence, unlawful imprisonment and felony homicide against Jalen Pendergrass, according to court records.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Jalen Pendergrass is scheduled to be sentenced on July 31.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Charla Pendergrass is scheduled to return to court on July 31 for a pretrial conference. Her trial is set to start Oct. 26.\u00a0<\/p>\n

This is a developing story and will be updated.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The boyfriend of 17-year-old London Thomas pleaded guilty to her murder Thursday during a pretrial conference.\u00a0 During Thursday’s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1064013,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[7757],"tags":[748,188,393,4884,47723,18424,257,30762,16,15],"class_list":["post-1064012","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-london","tag-britain","tag-crime","tag-england","tag-great-britain","tag-homicide","tag-inkster","tag-london","tag-southfield","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/116851145962922753","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1064012","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1064012"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1064012\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1064013"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1064012"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1064012"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1064012"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}