EXPOSED: Jerry Springer's Producer Was Sentenced To Prison Over Sister's Death One Year Before Late TV Host's Death
April 27 2023, Published 1:30 p.m. ET
A former producer of The Jerry Springer Show was sentenced to prison time last year for her alleged role in her handicapped sister's death, RadarOnline.com has learned.
In a shocking development just one year before Jerry Springer’s sudden death this week at age 79, his former producer – Jill Blackstone – was hit with an eight year sentence for voluntary manslaughter.
The incident took place in March 2015 when cops said Jill drugged her sister Wendy Blackstone – who was deaf and partially blind – and put her in their garage along with three pet dogs. Then she set the garage on fire.
Wendy, who was 49 at the time of her death, and her two dogs perished in the March 2015 blaze in Studio City, California, which Jill was accused of staging as an accident.
Homicide detectives claimed Jill was frustrated with providing expensive, long-term care for her sibling.
Jill – who also worked on The Rosie O’Donnell Show and several other popular programs – was arrested shortly after the crime. But she was temporarily released with no charges filed. She denied the allegations.
Despite that, suspicious authorities never closed the case and Jill was arrested again in 2018 and charged for her sister’s murder.
According to investigators, Wendy was found unconscious in the garage – which had been filled with carbon monoxide. She also had a suicide note in her hand that investigators said was written by her sister.
Near her feet were a Weber charcoal grill and a trash can containing ash – both believed to be the source of the carbon monoxide.
L.A. County prosecutors filed a murder charge against Jill in March 2018, and she was arrested in April of that year in Baltimore where she’d checked herself into a hospital due to a medical condition.
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Four years later – and just one year before Springer’s sudden death on Thursday – Jill pleaded no contest to the voluntary manslaughter charge in February 2022.
“My client pled no contest clearly to abate her exposure to dying,” Jill’s defense attorney, Danny Davis, said after Jill’s sentencing last year.
Despite Jill’s no-contest plea, Davis argued that investigators “didn’t really have a solid proof of the cause of [Wendy’s] death.”
