Jenny Shepard
From The NCIS Database, a Wikia wiki
| Jenny Shepard | |
|---|---|
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| Rank: |
NCIS Director |
| Gender: |
Female |
| Real-world information | |
| Actor: | |
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| Last appearance: | |
Jennifer "Jenny" Shepard was the Director of NCIS until she was killed.
[edit] Family
Director Shepard's father, Colonel Jasper Shepard, was an official working at the Pentagon who was suspected of taking a bribe. While under investigation Colonel Shepard committed suicide. Jenny blamed René Benoit for her father's death and believed he was responsible for the allegations made against her father.
However, circumstantial evidence exists that suggests that Colonel Shepard faked his suicide.
[edit] Career
In 1999, while still an agent, Jenny worked with Agent Gibbs and Agent William Decker on a covert mission in Paris involving the assassination of an arms dealer and his fiancee. Jenny was assigned the task of neutralizing Svetlana, the fiancee, while Gibbs was assigned to the arms dealer. While Gibbs accomplished his mission, Jenny, for reasons never disclosed, failed to neutralize Svetlana. This failure would ultimately cause the deaths of both William Decker and Jenny herself.
Several years later, when Director Morrow left NCIS to become the Deputy Secretary for the Department of Homeland Security, Jenny was appointed to succeed him as Director. Her tenure as Director was marked by many accomplishments, including the death of the renegade Mossad agent Ari Haswari, the successful destruction of a terrorist cell as recounted in the episode "Grace Period," the successful retrieval of a Cold War-era nuclear warhead as documented in the episode "Chimera," and the death of René Benoit & the dissolution of his network.
Prior to her death, Director Shepard was diagnosed with a terminal disease, one of the symptoms of which was a loss of coordination. The exact nature of the disease was never revealed, but her white blood cell count was normal and she had high levels of the enzyme creatine kinase. Only Donald Mallard, Gibbs, and Mike Franks were aware of her illness. She was killed in a shootout facing off against four men hired by Svetlana to kill her.[1] While Jenny brought down some of the men herself, Mike Franks, whom Jenny had asked for help tracking Svetlana, finished the job. Franks had been outside when the shooting began. After her death, Gibbs confronted Svetlana in Jenny's townhouse, and just as she pulled a gun on Gibbs, Mike Franks walked in and shot her in the back. Gibbs and Franks then set fire to the townhouse to cover up Svetlana's death and therefore Jenny's failure. The story leaked to the press stated that Jenny was the female body found in the fire, and that she died of smoke inhalation.
[edit] Relationship with Gibbs
Jenny's relationship with Gibbs is quite complicated. Sometime prior to Jenny becoming Director of NCIS, she and Jethro had an intimate relationship. While this initially complicated and strained their relationship when Jenny became director, it later relaxed into mutual respect and some degree of strained trust. As Director Shepard pointed out in the third season episode "Jeopardy," "Gibbs thinks of me like a wife."
Jenny and Gibbs struggled to trust one another. She sometimes ignored the chain of command by making Gibbs team report to her before reporting to Gibbs. She also upset Gibbs when she assigned Ziva David to his team as a liaison officer without informing him first. Additionally, she interfered on a few occasions, and Gibbs told her he was not comfortable with her looking over his shoulder. She also recruited DiNozzo in her attempts to bring arms dealer René Benoit while Gibbs was in temporary retirement, and did not tell Gibbs about it upon his return. Despite the tensions that stemmed from her appointment as Director, they remained close friends.
The closeness of their relationship was reinforced at several points during the series. When René Benoit visited Jenny at home, the only other person from NCIS present at the meeting was Gibbs. Also, Gibbs and the team went to great lengths to clear DiNozzo of charges and shield Jenny from murder charges during the FBI investigation into the murder of René Benoit. Jenny is also one one of two people allowed to call Gibbs "Jethro" on a regular basis.
In the episode "Judgment Day Part I," Jenny asserted to Mike Franks that she considered Gibbs to be her mentor. After Jenny picked a lock successfully, Franks asked, "Gibbs teach you that?" She responded, "Gibbs doesn't teach. You watch, you learn."
