ORANGE PARK – There are days when Lt. Cody Monroe’s attention wanes and his memory focuses on the tiniest of details the morning Jillian Berrios was murdered.

He’s poured through every detail, big and small. He’s chased hundreds of leads, watched hours of video and considered every possibility.

“This one haunts me,” Monroe said. “It’s frustrating. It’s scary. It’s right there.”

Monroe had just been promoted to the homicide department at the Orange Park Police Department a few weeks before officers were called to the 500 block of Loring Avenue after somebody reported hearing gunshots.

When they arrived, they found Nissan Maxima crashed into a tree at the intersection of Loring and Plainfield Avenue. The driver, 27-year-old Jillian Marie Berrios was slumped behind the wheel. She died after being taken to Orange Park Medical Center. The passenger was injured by flying glass.

There are aspects of the shooting that are certain. Two unknown Black men approached the car from behind shortly after 5:30 a.m. and one of them fired five times into the car.

The man walked back to what investigators believe was a red Chevrolet Aveo and drive away with another Black man.

They know the women were celebrating a friend’s birthday by spending the night dancing. Their last stop was at the Taboo Bar and Grill on Atlantic Boulevard in Jacksonville. When they left the parking lot, the red Aveo also pulled away and followed them back to Orange Park. Sunrise was still two hours away on Oct. 19, 2013, when Berrios took her final breath – but before trying to stave off the inevitable.

“When the suspect vehicle pulled up behind her, the person exited the vehicle from behind her and approached the passenger side of the car,” Monroe said. “And then five rounds went through the window of the passenger side, missing the passenger but striking the driver.

“She was able to put it in gear, but the problem was she was at the end of the parking lot. So she had to do like a 2.3-point turn to get turned around to come back out, but she started losing consciousness and then drove off and crashed across the street on Loring Avenue. That's where we found her.”

Monroe is one of several detectives who’ve worked the case. Each hoped to find something that went unnoticed. Nothing was too insignificant or small.

Their investigation led them to believe Berrios wasn’t involved in drug or gang activities, but she often hung out with those who were in it.

“Despite all the interviews and all the background checks that we did on her, the people she associated with she tended to hang out with a crew,” Monroe said. “I truly think she was, you know, a great human being by all accounts and all her friends and family. You know, tell her how you know how good of a person she was.

“Everyone we spoke with during the investigation told us Jillian, or Jilly Beans is what they called her, was super loving and big-hearted type person who would give you the shirt off her back if anybody needed help.”

So why was she killed? Why did two men follow the women for 23 miles, approach the car, shoot five times and drive away?

“There were all different kinds of rumors swirling around the investigation,” Monroe said. “Some of the people that were involved in the investigation were related to the Latin King Gang, Bloods Gang. There was narcotics activity that was kind of uncovered during our investigation, so there were a lot of different directions this case took us. But at the end of the day, there was just not the physical evidence at the time to key us in on a specific suspect.”

Monroe said some of the witnesses seemed to be trolling for information during interviews.

“There were times where when they would have someone come in and talk to the police, and it felt like they were interrogating us to see what we knew sometimes,” Monroe said.

Although Berrios was murdered nine years ago, a lot of the details are still fresh in Monroe’s mind. And he promised not to stop looking for the people responsible for the crime.

“The case has been left active since its beginning. Police department detectives have not stopped investigating this case,” he said. “Again, like I mentioned earlier, a detective remains assigned to this homicide and is still working on new leads and new technology that may assist in solving this case. There's always new things that come out new information, a new technology that we can explore to use.”

Monroe hopes the community has the same determination to find justice for the mother of two.

“We plead to the public that there's anything they can do to help us in this case, any bit of information. I think it's important to contact us because we absolutely want to bring her killer to justice. This one truly comes down to somebody calling us and saying hey, ‘We have this information we think it might help you.’ Even if it's the most unsuspecting piece of information, even if it's the littlest piece of information that might be something we didn't hear or didn't get back then that could make the difference in these cases.”

To report information about the Jillian Berrios case, call the Orange Park Police Deparment at or the Florida Department of Law Enforcement at (850) 410-7000.