06x25 - Bagging a k*ller

[bunniefuu]

[phone ringing]

-- OPERATOR: -- emergency.

MAN OVER PHONE: I can't find my daughter.

NARRATOR: Nine-year-old Valiree Jackson

vanished from her Spokane, Washington home

without a trace.

The search for her whereabouts included

almost every neighborhood and the area's

mountain and forest regions.

But the key to solving the mystery

was an investigative tool , miles away, in space.

[theme music]

NARRATOR: Spokane, Washington is a vibrant city, the center

of an area known as the Inland Northwest.

Many residents looking to raise a family settle several miles

east of the city, in the Spokane Valley, where the schools are

good, crime is low, and families feel safe.

Brad Jackson, a truck driver, and his daughter,

Valiree, lived here in a home they

shared with Brad's parents.

Brad had sole custody of Valiree because the child's mother,

Roseanne Pleasant, mysteriously disappeared seven years ago.

She had a drug problem.

In October of , Valiree had just turned nine-years-old.

She was a very bright fourth grader at the McDonald

Elementary School, just a few blocks from her home.

SHELLY EGELAND: You just saw a vibrant little girl.

If somebody was in an argument, she'd

try and mend it, and fix it.

She was, she was a great little girl who never got in trouble.

NARRATOR: Monday morning, October ,

started out just like any other school

day until something went terribly wrong.

NARRATOR: Brad said Valiree had been playing in the backyard

with her dog while he was in the basement doing laundry.

Later, he heard Valiree leave for school

through the garage door. DET.

DAVE MADSEN: And then he heard her go out into the front yard.

He was very exact.

He said, exactly :, he walked out the front door

and found her missing.

Found her backpack laying on the front doorstep.

-Valiree!

Come on, Valiree.

Where are you?

NARRATOR: Brad Jackson frantically

searched the neighborhood, knocking on doors,

searching for his daughter before calling police.

NARRATOR: That call mobilized not just police,

but also a tightly-knit neighborhood.

-I got home at : AM, and my mother-in-law

called me about five after and said,

there's a little red head girl missing on Blossey,

and I knew right away it was Valiree.

So I raced over there.

Brad was in the front yard.

And I went over there and hugged him,

and I said, let's find her!

-Now, normally, when we get missing kids,

I mean, they're found either in the house

or at a friend's house playing, you know?

And they're, they're cleared within, uh,

minutes at the most, to an hour.

NARRATOR: But the little girl was nowhere to be found.

Valiree's grandmother made a televised

plea for her safe return.

-Please, whoever took her, we're asking for her safe return,

'cause Valiree, you know how we always

hug and kiss every night, Honey?

Well, we're still giving them to you.

NARRATOR: As the search continued,

neighbors began calling police with leads.

WOMAN OVER PHONE: So I'm right down

the street from where that little girl was kidnapped.

I might have something that, that might be able to help you.

-- OPERATOR: OK. What do you got?

WOMAN OVER PHONE: In the last couple weeks,

there's been a blue Blazer, and a man about six-feet two,

um, light-colored hair--

NARRATOR: Unfortunately, none of these tips checked out.

Parents feared something sinister

had invaded their quiet neighborhood.

SHELLY EGELAND: We were all terrified.

We, we wouldn't matter let our kids walk to school,

and we didn't want ours to be the next.

NARRATOR: Days went by with no sign

of nine-year-old Valiree Jackson.

Flyers were posted in stores, in car windows,

and on the internet.

Newspapers and television stations

asked the community to report anything suspicious.

-As a parent, you're concerned that I

have a child the same age, um, that here there's potentially

a person who's loose in the community, preying on,

on school children.

NARRATOR: An abduction by a stranger was one possibility.

But problems in the Jackson family suggested another.

-The fact that her mother had, uh, been reported missing,

was listed as a missing person since ,

and that either her mother or someone for her mother

could have taken Valiree.

NARRATOR: But the last time anyone

saw Roseanne Pleasant, Valiree's mother,

was seven years earlier in .

Roseanne's brother didn't believe his sister had anything

to do with Valiree's disappearance.

He pointed the finger squarely at Brad.

-We believed that he had sold her into a p*rn ring

to get money.

He was raising money for a reward,

uh, so we felt that once the money got high enough that he

would pay someone off, or he had, he had drug problems.

W-w-we didn't know.

NARRATOR: Detectives searched the Jackson home for clues.

In Valiree's room were some blood stains on her pillow.

Brad Jackson told police that Valiree had a nose bleed

the night before she disappeared.

Police also found a prescription for Valiree

for the antidepressant, Paxil.

They learned that the normally cheerful little girl

was in counseling because of a stressful relationship

with Danette Schroeder, one of her father's girlfriends.

Danette and Valiree argued frequently and fought.

Danette suggested to Brad that Valiree should receive therapy.

That was when she was given the antidepressant medication.

And forensic scientists found something else

in Valiree's bed, two red hairs.

They were identified as pubic hair,

and appeared to be similar to Brad Jackson's.

But pubic hair can be transferred

from room-to-room on socks.

The evidence could be meaningless,

or an indication of sexual abuse.

Police also thought it was odd that Brad Jackson was

able to recall much more about Valiree's clothing

on the day she disappeared than most

parents would usually remember.

-He knew exactly every article of clothing

that Valiree Jackson was wearing.

He was able to describe it to the police,

down to her purple socks.

And while Valiree did have a history of bloody noses,

there was no other evidence inside the home

to corroborate Brad's story.

-I didn't find any evidence in the house,

other than on the pillow cases, of her having a bloody nose.

No evidence of her stopping the bloody nose, such as toilet

paper, towels, or anything laying around.

NARRATOR: With a search warrant, Jackson's pickup truck

and automobile were searched for evidence.

But police found nothing in either vehicle.

VIGIL PARTICIPANT: --grandparent,

or brother, or sister--

NARRATOR: Two weeks after Valiree disappeared,

residents of Spokane Valley held a candlelight

vigil, praying for her safe return.

VIGIL PARTICIPANT: [inaudible] Pray for [? our ?] Valiree.

NARRATOR: Few knew, at this point,

that the girl's father was a suspect.

-He'd made statements to me.

He knew he was being followed by the news media.

There was neighbors following him all the time.

He was always having to lose tails.

He was very paranoid about it.

NARRATOR: But surprisingly, police

weren't following Brad Jackson at all.

Why?

Because they didn't have to.

When police searched Jackson's car and truck for evidence,

they left something inside of each vehicle.

It was a device called a global positioning system, or GPS.

, miles above the Earth, global positioning satellites

circle the globe.

Each one beams back the precise time,

as kept by an atomic clock.

Since the signals have different distances

to travel and, therefore, reach the Earth at different times,

a computerized receiver can translate that information

into an exact position to within feet.

-The GPS receiver will record that location.

If we move to another location, it

will know the difference in time and how long we have spent

at a time exactly to within milliseconds.

NARRATOR: The location of the vehicle

can then be monitored by the police.

After the GPS transmitters were hidden in Jackson's vehicles,

Detective Madsen took a calculated risk.

He confronted Jackson with his suspicion

that he had m*rder*d his own daughter.

DET.

DAVE MADSEN: I didn't know if he'd buried her.

I just took a gamble.

The fact that we haven't found her-- this had been,

um, over a week-- and the fact that she hadn't been found

in that period of time would indicate to me

that she probably was underground.

-He was, kind of, told by Detective Madsen that, look,

we know you k*lled her.

We know you buried her somewhere.

You probably didn't bury her deep enough.

Animals are going to find her.

They're going to dig up her bones.

We're going to find it.

-And then, you know, look over your shoulder.

I'll be looking for you.

Because you'll never know when the time

is that I'm going to throw you in jail.

NARRATOR: The satellites would be looking, too.

And it didn't take long for Jackson to take the bait.

The GPS system revealed that Jackson had driven miles

away to a remote logging site, and spent

the next minutes there.

Four days later, Jackson drove five minutes away from his home

to another deserted location on Vicari Road.

DET.

DON MCCABE [VOICEOVER]: He arrives

at that site at ::, and he, the next movement

is ::, which is approximately minutes.

NARRATOR: From there, the GPS tracking system

reveals Jackson drove miles away,

stopping once again at the logging site.

DET.

DON MCCABE [VOICEOVER]: There's some open fields,

farm land, and a lot of woods.

NARRATOR: When police went to the Vicari Road site,

cadaver dogs went straight to a shallow grave,

empty, except for two plastic shopping

bags and some duct tape, which had several red hairs attached.

Next, police made the -mile drive to the logging site.

Once there, the cadaver dogs found an area

that had recently been excavated.

It was a grave, deeper than the one on Vicari Road.

And in that grave was the body of nine-year-old Valiree

Jackson, lying face down.

The police gamble had paid off.

They had frightened Jackson into moving

Valiree's body into a deeper grave.

-I, uh, watched Sheriff Sturrock as he walked towards me.

He looked at me and he told me that they had found what they

believed to be the body of Valiree.

And I just crashed to the ground.

I went down.

I couldn't feel anything.

I couldn't feel my legs, my arms, nothing.

I was gone.

I was gone.

I was-- mentally, at that point in my life, I d*ed.

I d*ed.

It hurt so much.

NARRATOR: Investigators now had an avalanche

of forensic evidence.

The plastic bags were the same brand

as dozens found in Jackson's kitchen.

And traces of Valiree's blood were found inside.

The duct tape in the grave matched

a roll in Jackson's basement.

Jackson's tire and footwear impressions

were found at the grave sites.

All of this evidence tied Jackson to the burial.

But police still needed proof that Jackson

was the one who committed the m*rder.

Police sent the plastic bags from the grave to the United

States Secret Service for analysis.

They were using an extraordinary technique called vacuum metal

deposition, which can find the tiniest traces of a fingerprint

on non-porous surfaces like plastic.

-We're here to assist any law enforcement agency, state,

local, or other federal agency.

You have a case of a child abduction or a child homicide,

uh, although we're extremely busy,

this is the kind of case that goes to the front of the line.

NARRATOR: The evidence is placed in a chamber,

along with tiny specks of gold and zinc.

The pressure in the chamber is reduced

to a near perfect vacuum.

The metals are heated, vaporized,

and within the vacuum of the chamber, adhere to any finger

oils which may be present.

The analysis was successful.

The Secret Service found fingerprints

on the inside of the plastic bag and on the duct tape.

The fingerprints were those of Brad Jackson.

At Valiree Jackson's autopsy, the medical examiner

found no evidence of sexual abuse,

but discovered bruising around her face and nose, which solved

the mystery of how she was m*rder*d.

-The pillow that was found in her room, uh,

had two blood spots on it which were consistent with a pillow

being pressed over someone's face,

and the blood draining from the nose there.

NARRATOR: The question of motive was

one that still haunted prosecutors.

-The key issue in all of this was why, and convincing a jury

that a parent could actually k*ll their, their own child.

NARRATOR: In a fascinating turn of events,

it was the global positioning satellite system

which revealed the elusive motive.

Almost a year after Valiree Jackson disappeared,

her father went on trial for m*rder.

Led to Valiree's grave by a GPS tracking system,

prosecutors were now able to piece together

the events of Valiree's m*rder.

Prosecutors believe that Jackson smothered Valiree

with the pillow, leaving behind the blood stains

found by police.

Then Jackson got the plastic bags and duct tape

to cover her head and prevent blood

from dripping onto the floor.

Finally, Jackson dressed the little girl,

which is how he remembered what Valiree was

wearing, even the color of her socks.

Jackson drove Valiree's body to the Vicari Road site

just five minutes away, an area he knew from hunting.

It's unclear whether he dug the grave

then or some time earlier.

After he returned, he called police

to report his daughter missing.

A few weeks later, while under the surveillance of the GPS

system, Jackson drove an hour a way

to a deserted logging site, where he spent

the next minutes presumably digging a deeper grave.

Four days later, Jackson went to the Vicari Road grave site,

removed Valiree's body, and made the one-hour journey back

to the logging site, where he placed her in a deeper grave.

But why did Jackson k*ll is own daughter?

Astonishingly, the global positioning system

revealed the answer.

Jackson repeatedly drove by the home of his former girlfriend,

Danette Schroeder, as he went to and from the grave sites.

Even though they had broken up, Brad continued to pursue her.

-So he was really obsessed with this woman.

And the obsession got to the degree

that, um, his relationship with her

was more important than his daughter's life.

-I firmly believe that it got to the point

where he saw that Valiree wasn't going

to come around to Danette.

He wanted Danette and Valiree became disposable.

NARRATOR: The first thing Brad Jackson did after his arrest

was to call Dannette from his jail cell and propose marriage.

The first thing she did was change the locks on her doors.

Prosecutor Jack Driscoll took the case personally.

-Here's a parent who is supposed to protect their child, who was

supposed to be the guardian for them,

and he ends up k*lling them and buries them face down

in the dirt like he doesn't even care.

And, well, that offended me, such a vast degree,

I had to do this case.

I mean, I had to.

-Mr. Jackson, have you received a copy of the information

charging you with one count of m*rder in the first degree?

Now, Mr. Jackson, how do you plead to those two charges?

-Not guilty.

NARRATOR: At the trial, Jackson didn't deny digging

the graves or burying Valiree.

But Jackson claimed Valiree's death was an accident, that he

found her dead of an overdose of Paxil.

He feared that he would be blamed.

He panicked, and buried the body.

But forensic scientists testified that the Paxil levels

in Valiree's system were nowhere near lethal.

Brad Jackson was found guilty of first degree m*rder

and was sentenced to years in prison.

JOHN STONE: I believe he should have faced, uh,

the death penalty, but he didn't.

And I think anyone that murders a child, anyone that murders

a child should face the death penalty,

and their life should end.

-I hope he never gets out of jail.

And I wish he'd tell us where Roseanne is.

NARRATOR: Many people believe Jackson also

k*lled Valiree's mother, Roseanne

Pleasant, years earlier.

But police have no proof.

JOHN STONE: She was scared to death of Brad.

Uh, in my last conversation with my sister,

she said she feared for her life.

She said that Brad had some lye around,

and what is lye used for?

At that time, Brad worked on cement

and, uh, building foundations.

And so, to this day, I believe that my sister's

buried somewhere in those, one of those foundations he

was working on.

NARRATOR: The children of McDonald Elementary School

planted a tree in Valiree's memory.

It lives and grows there, healthy and strong,

the way Valiree should have.

[closing theme music]