Mom, son dead in MontCo murder-suicide

By Scott McCabe and Emily Babay

Examiner Staff Writers

LOCAL NEWS
COVER STORY

5
T H U R S DAY, AU G U S T 4 , 2 0 1 1

Washingtons employment bubble bursting

By Liz Farmer
Examiner Staff Writer

A psychiatrist and her teenage son were found dead in their Kensington home in what Montgomery County police are calling a murder-suicide. The bodies of 54-year-old Margaret Jensvold and 13-year-old Benjamin Barnhard were discovered at their home on the unit block of Simms Court at about 2:30 p.m. Tuesday. Police were called to the home after Jensvolds co-worker contacted authorities, saying she had not been able to reach the woman for several days. Neighbor Lauren Anthone was shocked by the news. I feel sad that they slipped through cracks and none of us saw it coming, Anthone told The Washington Examiner. No one reached out for help and obviously someone was under a great deal of mental distress. Ofcers found Jensvolds and Barnhards bodies in their bedrooms, police said. It wasnt immediately known how long their bodies had been there. Both had suffered trauma, said Ofcer Howard Hersh, a Montgomery County police spokesman. He would not say how Jensvold and Barnhard died, whether any weapon was found at the home or who initiated the killings. He said he didnt know whether anyone else was living at the home. The boys father, James Barnhard, told WRC-TV that Ben recently graduated from Wellspring Academy, the school for overweight kids in rural North Carolina that had been featured on the show Too Fat for 15: Fighting Back on Style Network. The father said Jensvold was a lovely mother. Jensvold had co-edited the book Psychopharmacology and Women: Sex, Gender, and Hormones and contributed to the book Psychopharmacology from a Feminist Perspective. She had previously practiced at the Premenstrual Syndrome Clinic on St. Elmo Road in Bethesda, according to records. Jensvold once sued the National Institutes of Health for sex discrimination. She and another doctor claimed that they were forced to work in a male dominated, sexist atmosphere, and that they had been denied mentoring opportunities considered essential to advancing in their careers. But in 1996, U.S. District Judge Deborah K. Chasanow tossed out the claims, saying they were in part exaggerated and fabricated. Staff Writer Freeman Klopott contributed to this report.
smccabe@washingtonexaminer.com

Nearly 30,000 Washington-area workers joined the jobless ranks over the past two months as the unemployment rate inched up almost an entire percentage point and all signs point to more bad news on the horizon. May and Junes unemployment rate marked the rst time this year the region saw upticks in joblessness according to data released Wednesday by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. And more job cuts are on the way, positioning Washington to have the worst job growth in a single year since the recession ended. Were just catching up with the rest of the nation in terms of bad economic performance, said University of Baltimore economist Richard Clinch. This region has been highly dependent on the federal government, which has been in delay mode ... and the national economy isnt growing so theres nothing to move us forward. More than 18,000 people led for unemployment benets in the Washington region in June, pushing the area up to 6.2 percent after hitting a 12-month low of 5.4 percent in April. Junes newly unemployed represent a 64 percent increase over Mays 11,000 new unemployment lings and brings the number of unemployed people in the D.C. area to about 194,000. A separate report released Wednesday shows more job losses are to come. Washington, Maryland and Virginia are on pace to match last years job cuts by October, combining for more than 37,000 through July, according to the consulting rm Challenger, Gray & Christmas. The increase in job cuts is in direct opposition to the rest of the country. In fact, job cuts have dropped for the rest of the county by 8 percent [over] last years total through July, said John Challenger, chief executive ofcer of the Chicago consulting rm. The resolve of the country to cut the size of the government is going to affect the Washington, D.C., metro [area] disproportionately. The result is a shaky future for the regions more than 300,000 federal workers and contractors, who have reaped the benets of federal spending more than any state in the nation, according to the Greater Washington Initiative. June also marked the rst time Washington didnt post an annual job gain, losing 2,700 jobs compared with June 2010. Meanwhile, other major cities like Boston and New York posted annualized gains. Federal workers said the cuts already had them tired of hiring freezes. Its horrible, said Carolyn

EXAMINER FILE

More than 30,000 workers joined the unemployment ranks over the past two months in the Washington area.

T H E WA S H I N G T O N E X A M I N E R

Federal workers wary of spending cuts

By Liz Farmer and Amy Myers
Examiner Staff Writers

Federal workers say the upcoming spending cuts will be a thorn in their side but they think the pain will stop short at losing their jobs. It appears as though theyre trying to balance the budget on the backs of federal employees, said Gerald Alston, who has spent 34 years at the Environmental Protection Agency and is two years away from retirement. Alston said he doesnt fear for his job, but some nonessential testing programs are getting cut and a three-year salary freeze has

him frustrated. I deserve a pay raise, just because the cost of living goes up, he said. Others are annoyed about cuts in business travel and being stuck with the same old computer programs for another year. Congress special cost-cutting committee, which has not been appointed, is tasked with slashing the federal decit by a mammoth $1.5 trillion or more over the next decade. But the uncertainty caused this year by the near government shutdown and the last-minute deal to raise the United States debt limit has

frozen spending. Many federal employees said the atmosphere has all but halted new hires, which means more work for current employees. And although many have been through this before, some have reached their limit. I just dont think that [Congress] can relate to federal employees, said Bob Koston, a longtime U.S. Agency for International Development employee. Were not taking payroll reductions yet when they start addressing reducing the payroll, people will worry.
lfarmer@washingtonexaminer.com

Bye, bye government spending

D.C. area jobless rates
Metro area June Unemployed 6.2% 194,200 July job cuts 210 120 6,746 7,076 66,414 May 5.7% Unemployed April Unemployed 175,800 5.4% 164,900 Jan.-July 2011 15,981 7,112 14,470 37,563 312,220 Jan.-July 2010 35,040 3,184 2,240 40,464 339,353

District Virginia Maryland Region Nation

SOURCE: BUREAU OF LABOR STATISTICS; CHALLENGER, GRAY & CHRISTMAS

McDonald, who has spent 40 years McDonald with various agencies. A lot of people are putting in for government positions and not even being considered or looked at. In Maryland, employers said they planned to lay off or did lay off more than 6,700 workers in July about 900 shy of the states total for all of last year. Challenger said layoffs in

July were largely because of cuts in traditionally stable industries like pharmaceuticals, retail and computer technology. A&P/Superfresh, Allen Family Foods and Lockheed Martin Corp. have all laid off hundreds of Maryland employees. Last year the federal government was a culprit as D.C. lost thousands of temporary Census

Bureau workers. Clinch said the uncertainty created by the upcoming federal spending cuts will hit the areas contractors the hardest. An atmosphere of uncertainty has been hanging over Washington for the better part of a year between the near-government shutdown in April and the threat of the United States defaulting on its debt over the past several weeks. Everything slowed down because no one knew what was going on, Clinch said. A lot of contracting activity has been delayed so were getting a short-term effect in Washington. Alan Chvotkin, executive vice president of the Professional Services Council, said contractors are just looking for a little predictability these days. Anything we can do to urge some stability in the process, he said. I think our members would accept less [money] to know more.