Ryan Alexander Jenkins briefly found fame as a wealthy contestant on Megan Wants a Millionaire, where affluent bachelors competed for the affection of reality star Megan Hauserman.
The Canadian real estate investor later filmed I Love Money 3, a competition series that he ultimately won, earning a $250,000 prize.
Shortly after filming Megan Wants a Millionaire, Ryan met American swimsuit model Jasmine Fiore at a Las Vegas casino in March 2009.
The pair married just two days later in what friends later described as a whirlwind romance. However, their relationship quickly became volatile.
Speaking to Entertainment Weekly, 51 Minds Entertainment co-founder Mark Cronin recalled that Jenkins constantly called Fiore while filming I Love Money 3.
“He kept telling her on the phone, ‘I’m going to win this, and you and I are going to have the life I’ve always promised,'” Cronin said. “Then he would ask her, ‘Where were you last night?’ Because he’s in Mexico shooting the show, and she lives in Las Vegas.”
Production staff initially believed Ryan’s possessiveness would simply become part of his reality TV storyline.
Cronin admitted in the interview, “We were actually making a story of it on the show. We were like, ‘Look at this guy, he’s obsessed with this model he married.’ It was funny, until it wasn’t funny at all.”
Reality star Megan was equally surprised when Jenkins called her after filming wrapped.
“He called me and said, ‘I have to tell you something… when I left the show, I went to Vegas, and I met a girl. She’s my soulmate, and we got married.'”
Looking back, Cronin believed the impulsive marriage reflected Ryan’s desperation to maintain the image he had tried to build on television.
“He was really desperate to have a trophy wife,” he explained. “When he eventually lost the show, he very quickly found himself another blonde in Vegas and married her. I think that was him trying to win the show in the end.”
Behind the scenes, however, the marriage was rapidly falling apart.
Reportedly, Jenkins had already been convicted of a**aulting a former girlfriend in Canada years earlier, a criminal record that never surfaced during VH1’s background checks.
Image credits: Ethan Miller/Getty Images
In June 2009, just months before Fiore’s passing, he was also arrested in Las Vegas following an alleged domestic violence incident involving his wife.
In August 2009, witnesses described a heated argument as the couple attended a poker tournament in San Diego, with investigators later determining that the dispute was fueled by Jenkins’ jealousy after Fiore spent time on her phone texting an ex-boyfriend.
Days later, on August 15, Jasmine’s mutilated body was discovered inside a suitcase abandoned in a dumpster in Buena Park, California.
In an alleged attempt to prevent authorities from identifying her, her teeth and fingers had been removed.
Reportedly, investigators ultimately identified the 28-year-old model through the serial numbers on her breast implants.
By then, Ryan had already fled California. Authorities alleged he drove to Washington state before crossing into Canada by boat as prosecutors charged him with first-degree homicide, triggering an international manhunt.
Days later, on August 23, 2009, motel employees discovered the 32-year-old had taken his life inside the Thunderbird Motel in Hope, British Columbia.
Investigators recovered a laptop containing a digital “Last Will and Testament,” in which Jenkins expressed both love and resentment toward Fiore and accused her of infidelity, but never directly confessed to the ki**ing.
The scandal quickly derailed both reality shows he had starred in.
Megan Wants a Millionaire was pulled from the air after only three episodes, while the completed season of I Love Money 3, which Jenkins had won, was permanently shelved and has never aired.
Cronin later described the tragedy as the darkest chapter of his career, saying, “It’s the worst thing to ever happen to me… When something comes that close to home, that’s a really scary thing.”
The case also exposed major flaws in reality TV casting.
The production company had hired outside investigators to vet contestants, but Ryan’s prior Canadian a**ault conviction went undetected because of failures in the international background check process.
What began as a search for reality TV fame ultimately became one of the industry’s darkest cautionary tales.
