On Sunday, Jeanette Weiss remembered her daughter Jessica Zipkin’s bright smile, big brown eyes, velvety red hair and the excitement that lit up the 34-year-old every time she found a new recipe.

That light was extinguished early Saturday morning, when Zipkin’s ex-boyfriend beat her to death with a hammer in his Perkiomen County apartment, law enforcement officials said.

William Carey, 46, is charged with first- and third-degree murder and possession of an instrument of crime, according to a statement released Sunday by Montgomery County District Attorney Kevin R. Steele and the Pennsylvania State Police.

According to the joint statement, shortly before 1:30 a.m. Saturday, state police troopers responded to a 911 call about a possible dead woman at an apartment on Gravel Pike in Perkiomen. Inside, they found Zipkin with a fatal wound to the back of his head and a hammer next to his body.

Authorities determined at an autopsy that Zipkin died of blunt force trauma to the head and that the manner of death was homicide.

According to Zipkin’s family members, Carey was together from early March to late April, but the two broke up in mid-October.

A bartender by trade, Jena—as her friends affectionately called her—was kind, a good listener, and had the naivety of someone who always looked for the best in people.

“(She) will drop everything she can to save you, that’s the kind of person she is,” her best friend, Alania Perry, said in an interview Sunday.

But there was no one to save Zipkin throughout the weekend.

According to the affidavit of probable cause for Carey’s arrest, Zipkin’s body was found in an apartment Carey rented.

Video footage obtained by police shows Carey arriving at the Duck Inn, a local bar, at 12:57 a.m. Friday wearing a T-shirt. Almost an hour later he returned to the apartment and within 10 minutes Zipkin arrived.

Around 2:30 p.m., a neighbor heard a woman screaming and then a man screaming, but the man turned up the volume on his television, according to the affidavit.

Eight minutes later, Carey is seen on camera entering the basement of the Duck Inn with clothing items and throwing them in the trash can, the affidavit said. Shortly after, he is seen coming out wearing a long-sleeved shirt and throwing the garbage bag from the basement of the restroom into the garbage can in the parking lot.

At one point, he asked a person to get in the car to get shoes because his shoes “smelled,” according to testimony. However, when they arrived at the store, Carey did not get out of the car. Instead, he appeared “spaced out and crying in the vehicle,” the police report states.

According to the police complaint, just before 1:30 a.m. Saturday, Carey returned home and told the property owner that his “girlfriend was dead in the apartment.” The property owner called 911.

As a result of a search warrant, police found a pair of blood-stained sneakers in Carey’s kitchen Saturday morning and a pair of apparently blood-stained jeans and a T-shirt in the Duck Inn trash can, according to the affidavit. for probable cause.

Shortly after Carey was arrested. He is being held without bail at the Montgomery County Jail. The preliminary hearing is scheduled for November 13.

For Zipkin’s loved ones, the loss was immeasurable and painfully sudden. Their friend Perry said they were heartbroken and confused. “We don’t know what went wrong,” he added.

As the family deals with the loss, they said they hope “Jena” will be remembered as a good soul who always supported people and loved her cat, Flurken.