The circumstances under which Macon, Georgia, nurse Georgia Rudolph, and Jacksonville, Florida, college professor Jack Turnock were brought together was most unusual; both believed they may have lived an earlier life. After learning of the other’s specific experiences, each came away believing they had been romantically involved during the early twentieth century . . . over thirty years before either was born.

The belief that following death, the human soul or spirit begins a new life in a new body has been a central tenet in many world religions and cultures since ancient times. Because the concept of reincarnation involves non-material, metaphysical claims that cannot be independently tested to determine their validity, the postulation cannot be empirically proven.

By the same token, however, reincarnation cannot be scientifically refuted. Thus, the possibility of Georgia Rudolph and Jack Turnock having been lovers in another lifetime cannot definitively be dismissed.

                                                                       

                    Georgia Rudolph                                            Jack Turnock

Shortly after being adopted at age five, Georgia Rudolph began experiencing brief but recurring memory flashes of unfamiliar images. Sometimes they were in the form of dreams, but they also often occurred in the course of her everyday activities.

Most of the mental snapshots were of a house and of a young girl who sometimes appeared to be in her late childhood, but at other times she looked like a young woman, perhaps in her late adolescence.

 

Young Georgia

As Georgia grew into adulthood, the images continued and multiplied in variety, some of which, such as a horse drawn carriage and old fashioned stern wheels, were seemingly indicative of a bygone time. Other recurring images were of a river and a young man dressed in a brown suit and a derby hat who was sometimes alone, but at other times with the young woman, who Georgia guessed was about eighteen-years-old. All of the images were apparently during the winter, as the weather was cold and snow covered the ground.

Georgia thought the memories may have been related to her life prior to her adoption, but she found nothing suggesting so after meeting her biological parents nor from the several foster homes she had lived in for two years prior to being adopted.

The Images Expand

Georgia began undergoing several regressive hypnotic sessions with Dr. Bill Roll, a Psychology and Psychological Research professor at West Georgia College in Carrollton, Georgia. The therapeutic technique takes the patient, in his or her mind, back to the past while remembering everything said while put under.

The hypnotized nurse regressed to approximately age two and stopped responding to “Georgia,” saying her name was “Sandra Jean Jenkins,” she had brown hair and eyes, and she had been born in a small city by the river in 1895, fifty-three years before Georgia’s birth.

Georgia Undergoes Hypnosis

Georgia had also frequently mentioned “Marietta” as if it were a place, as opposed to a person, that had seemed to have played a central role in Sandra’s life. Multiple states, including Georgia, have towns or cities name Marietta, but it was determined the most likely locale was the Ohio town sitting on the confluence of two rivers, the Ohio and Muskegon.

At the turn of the twentieth century, Marietta, Ohio, was a major river port town of just over 13,000 people one-hundred-fifty miles south of Medina, where Georgia had been raised.

Georgia said she came upon several places she had seen in her visions upon visiting Marietta for the first time in 1979. She also identified the names of former residents and roads from the turn of the twentieth century as well what former businesses were in specific buildings at the time. With one building that had been an ice cream parlor before being converted into an insurance office, she accurately described the interior which had been redone in 1937, eleven years before she was born.

Much of the information Georgia provided of old Marietta was confirmed by an area historian. Lifelong resident and longtime Marietta Times editor Ted Bauer says she knew more of the town’s history and many little out-of-the-way places than many of the old timers. Much of the information could have been researched, but it likely would have taken her years to learn so much about the town.

             

Postcards Of Old Marietta, Ohio

Georgia also seemed to instinctively know her way around Newport, a primarily farming town of just over 1,000 people, fifteen miles east of Marietta. She found a church she claimed had been in many of her dreams in which she, as Sandra Jean Jenkins, was wearing a long white Victorian dress, and had walked two blocks to a cemetery grave, knowing it to be the that of her (Sandra’s) grandmother, but always awaking before reading the name on the headstone.

After walking the actual two blocks from the church to the Newport Cemetery along what she said was the exact route taken by Sandra in her dream, Georgia arrived at the gravesite of Mary “Mollie” Bevan Greene. In the early twentieth century, she and her husband James had lived and farmed in Marietta, and their family owned and operated the Greene Line, a fleet of river steamboats along the Ohio River. The company’s stern wheelers were, Georgia said, the same type as those in her visions.

The Greene Headstone

On the outskirts of town, Georgia found the house she said she had seen in her visions and in which she believed Sandra had lived or at least had spent a lot time. Records confirm it had been the Greene family home.

The Former Greene Home

Georgia believed Mollie Bevan Greene was Sandra Jean Jenkins’ grandmother, but she was only thirty-three-years-old in 1895, when Georgia believed Sandra was born, and her oldest child was born in 1880.

In addition, through their eight children, Mollie and James had numerous (exact number unclear) grandchildren, none of whom were named Sandra Jean Jenkins.

     

James And Mary “Mollie” Bevan Greene

After returning from Marietta, Ohio, Georgia underwent additional regressive hypnotic sessions, with Dr. Doug Smith, a clinical psychologist and Deputy Director of the Macon Mental Health Center.

Georgia reiterated her contention of being the reincarnated Sandra Jean Jenkins while, in one session, adding that she was with her fiancé, Tommy Hicks, on a stern wheeler belonging to her family and that he was wearing a derby hat.

Georgia Undergoing Hypnosis With Dr. Doug Smith

In subsequent hypnotic sessions, Georgia (as Sandra) said Tommy had perished during a storm in 1914, shortly before their wedding, having fallen into the Ohio River upon being swept from the riverboat deck striking a sandbar. His body was never found.

Shamed by her family for becoming pregnant while unwed, nineteen-year-old Sandra committed suicide shortly thereafter by drowning herself in a pond behind her home and was buried on a hill in an unmarked grave a few feet from Mollie Bevan Greene’s headstone. An angel with one arm raised can be seen from the locale but no unmarked graves are nearby.

Angel Statue At The Newport, Ohio Cemetery

In her hypnotic sessions, Georgia said Sandra Jean Jenkins and Tommy Hicks had both died in 1914, and that Sandra had been born in 1895. No birth or death records have been found of people with those exact names having lived in Marietta or Newport, Ohio, in the early twentieth century, but such records at the time were often not thoroughly compiled and kept. They could have been accidentally lost or discarded, or, as Georgia believed, Sandra’s birth records may have been destroyed and that her death was not recorded because she had committed suicide, an act that was then considered immoral and shameful.

The Find a Grave website has no listings of a Sandra Jean Jenkins or of a Sandra Jenkins having died in 1914. Several listings of “Thomas Hicks” who had died in that year are documented, but none had any Ohio connections. A Newport farm found registered to a Tom and Jennie Hicks in 1906, however, may suggest Tommy Hicks did exist, as Georgia, under hypnosis, had said those were the names of his parents.

Georgia also believed there is proof of Sandra Jean Jenkins having lived as well.

No Records Found To Corroborate Georgia’s Claims

Jim Greenwood, one of the nearest living relatives of the Greene family, had provided a picture taken of a family reunion in 1908. Every person in the photograph is identified except for a young girl in the center, who appears to be somewhat separated from everyone. Georgia said another Greene family relative had told her he did not know the girl’s name but that she had drowned in the pond behind her house.

Georgia was certain she did know this girl’s name: Sandra Jean Jenkins, and that she was the girl from her visions.

Unidentified Female

 (Could She Be Sandra Jean Jenkins?)

The majority of viewer tips submitted to the documentary television show Unsolved Mysteries centered on possible sightings of fugitives or people finding a long lost relative or friend.  One of the last segments producers expected to generate a needed update was Georgia Rudolph’s claim of her possible reincarnation, broadcast on February 14, 1990, during the show’s second full season as a weekly program.

Following the segment, thirty-seven-year-old Jacksonville college professor Jack Turnock contacted the show. He claimed to have had experienced visions of living an earlier life in which his name was . . . Tommy Hicks.

Jack Turnock

 (Previously Tommy Hicks?)

Seven months later, on September 8, Jack Turnock traveled to Macon, Georgia, to undergo hypnosis with Dr. Smith. Georgia Rudolph, separately, was also hypnotized. They were not introduced to each other until after their respective sessions. Jack (as Tommy Hicks) said he had died after falling off the N.B. Forrest riverboat in the Ohio River; Georgia (as Sandra Jean Jenkins) told the same account.

Georgia and Jack then, together, underwent dual hypnosis in which “Sandra” asked “Tommy” where he had proposed and where they had become pregnant. After saying he had asked for her hand in marriage on a bench by the river and that they had conceived while having a picnic in a small bluff in the corner of a corn field overlooking the river, he and Dr. Smith say Georgia’s jaw “nearly hit the floor” as it was exactly what she had seen in her hypnotic sessions.

Both became emotional after Tommy apologized for dying and leaving “Jeannie,” as he referred to her, unwed and pregnant. She forgave him. As they held hands, they said they loved one another and bid farewell.

Georgia Rudolph and Jack Turnonk’s account of their hypnotic sessions was confirmed by Dr. Doug Smith and several people associated with Unsolved Mysteries. The show had set up equipment to record the dual hypnotic session and believed they were operating, but the tape, for an unexplained reason, had malfunctioned.

The purported N.B. Forrest riverboat was likely named for Civil War general Nathan Bedford Forrest, who had used ferries and local boats to transport troops across various rivers during the Civil War, but I could not find anything documenting a specific riverboat of that name.

Georgia (Sandra?) And Jack (Tommy?)

 Undergo Dual Hypnosis

Doug Smith believes both Georgia Rudolph and Jack Turnock were sincere in their beliefs that they actually experienced all of the things they described while under hypnosis.

In 1997, however, Smith pled guilty to fondling and having sex with a woman patient suffering from a multiple personality disorder.  He was given three years’ probation and was stripped of his psychologist license.

Doug Smith

Georgia Rudolph’s reincarnation claims are perhaps given more credence than others by her using her psychic abilities to help catch a killer.

Thirty-year-old Jenifer McCrady disappeared from Belpre, Ohio, thirteen miles southwest of Marietta, on September 19, 1996. Her body was found buried in a wooded area twelve days later. She had been shot to death.

Police were aided in locating Jenifer’s remains by Georgia Rudolph’s visions and object-reading, and she provided many clues leading to the arrest and conviction of Jenifer’s husband, Jackie, an Ohio State Highway Patrol Trooper. He was given a life sentence without the possibility of parole.

https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/54150762/jenifer_lee-mccrady

Jenifer McCrady

Georgia Rudolph died in February 2013 at age sixty-four, nearly a century after she believes Sandra Jean Jenkins had died. Her claims of reincarnation are hard to accept, but they probably cannot be dismissed as easily as many others.

If reincarnation is the real deal, perhaps Sandra Jean Jenkins/Georgia Rudolph will soon be beginning another life.

Was Georgia’s Passing Her Second Death? 

SOURCES:

• Macon (Georgia) Telegraph
• Ohio Mysteries
• Rock Island Argus (Moline, Illinois)
• Unsolved Mysteries