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

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

William Carey, 46, was charged with first- and third-degree murder and possession of a criminal instrument, according to a statement issued Sunday by Montgomery County District Attorney Kevin R. Steele and state police in Pennsylvania.

Shortly before 1:30 a.m. Saturday, state troopers responded to a 911 call about a possibly deceased woman at an apartment on Gravel Pike in Perkiomen, according to the joint statement. Inside they found Zipkin with a fatal wound to the back of her head and a hammer next to her body.

An autopsy determined Zipkin died of blunt force trauma to the head and the manner of death was a homicide, authorities said.

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

A bartender by profession, Jena – as her friends affectionately called her – was kind, attentive and had the naivete of someone who always looks for the best in people.

“(She’ll) drop everything she’s doing to come save you, that’s the type of person,” her best friend, Alania Perry, said in an interview Sunday.

But over the weekend, no one was there to save Zipkin.

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

Video surveillance obtained by police shows Carey arriving at a local bar, the Duck Inn, 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 according to the affidavit, he turned up the volume on the television.

Eight minutes later, Carey is seen on camera entering the basement of the Duck Inn with items of clothing and throwing them into a trash can, the affidavit states. He is soon seen walking out wearing a long-sleeved shirt and placing the garbage bag from the basement of the room into a dumpster in the parking lot.

At one point, he asked a person to go buy shoes because the ones he had “stank,” according to the affidavit. But when they got to the store, Carey didn’t get out of the car. Instead, he appears to be “spaced out and crying while in (the) vehicle,” the police report said.

Shortly before 1:30 a.m. Saturday, Carey returned home and told the homeowner that his “girlfriend had passed away in the apartment,” according to the police complaint. The owner called 911.

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

Shortly after Carey was arrested. He is being held without bond at the Montgomery County Correctional Facility. A preliminary hearing is scheduled for November 13.

For Zipkin’s loved ones, the loss is immeasurable and painfully sudden. They were left devastated and confused, said Perry, her friend. “We don’t know what went wrong,” she added.

As the family copes with the loss, they said they hope “Jena” is remembered as a kind soul who was always there to support people and loved her cat, Flurken.