[1] On August 23, 2009, Jenkins was found dead in a hotel room in Hope, British Columbia, Canada, after committing suicide at age 32.

[9][10] According to court records, Jenkins was charged in June 2009 in Clark County, Nevada, with "battery constituting domestic violence" for hitting Fiore on the arm.

[11] The pair reconciled shortly before Fiore's death, and were reportedly traveling to San Diego for a poker game.

[13] Investigators reported that Jenkins and Fiore checked into the L'Auberge hotel in Del Mar, San Diego, on the evening of August 13, 2009.

[14] Fiore's body was discovered, but not identified, on August 15 at about 7 a.m.,[18] badly beaten and crushed inside a suitcase, in a dumpster in an alley in Buena Park, California.

[18] According to Buena Park police, Fiore's teeth and fingers had been removed, before her nude body was stuffed into the suitcase.

[20] The Orange County coroner's office reported Fiore had died a couple of hours before her body was found.

[19] On the afternoon of August 19, Jenkins called his father from Birch Bay, who informed him that Fiore had been found murdered.

[28] The Whatcom County Sheriff's Department received witness reports of Jenkins' black BMW SUV towing a boat toward the Canada–US border.

Police later found the BMW SUV and an empty boat trailer at a marina in Blaine, Washington; the engine was still warm.

U.S. Coast Guard and U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) confirmed they had boats patrolling northwest Washington waters looking for Jenkins as early as August 19.

[28] At about 6 p.m. on August 20,[35] Jenkins arrived in a silver PT Cruiser with a young blonde woman at the Thunderbird Motel in Hope, British Columbia, Canada.

[47] On August 27, 2009, investigators found a storage unit full of Jenkins' belongings, including a suitcase of clothes, in Washington state.

Collective Intelligence doesn't perform background checks outside the United States, and outsourced the vetting of Jenkins to another firm, Straightline International.

According to Collective Intelligence founder Erika Worth, no one from Straightline would return her calls once the news of Jenkins' 2005 conviction broke.

Collective Intelligence claimed to have lost valuable business from Viacom (owner of VH1), NBC, and ABC as a result of the damage to its reputation.

[10] In a 2020 post-mortem on Fiore's murder, EW reported that the incident has had a considerable effect on the reality TV industry.

Christopher Catalano, who served as senior casting director for Megan Wants a Millionaire and has since moved to CBS as senior casting producer for Big Brother recalled that something felt off about Jenkins at the time of filming, and the fallout from Fiore's murder made him more willing to listen to his gut feelings about contestants; as he put it, "I'd rather be wrong than end up with another Ryan Jenkins."

Worth recalled that in recent years, networks and studios who work with Collective Intelligence have wanted "a thorough report" from her firm without regard for budgetary questions.