Speaker 1: On September thirteenth, two thousand and seven, a woman's body
Speaker 1: was found in the burnt out remains of a stolen
Speaker 1: van in Hillsborough County, Florida.
Speaker 2: When she was jogging in the early morning darkness, he
Speaker 2: abducted her and dragged her into a secluded location just
Speaker 2: off of a main roadway, where he raped her and
Speaker 2: stabbed her to death.
Speaker 3: She did nothing wrong, She was just a victim of
Speaker 3: an evil person.
Speaker 1: Investigators were struggling to find any clues, but the killer's
Speaker 1: loose lips soon led detectives to his door.
Speaker 4: When the news came on about a body, he seemed
Speaker 4: to kind of excited about the whole conversation. It was
Speaker 4: almost as if he had more information than what she
Speaker 4: even heard on the TV.
Speaker 1: The man in question was unemployed twenty five year old
Speaker 1: Kenneth Jackson.
Speaker 5: Jackson showed absolutely no rom morphs for what he had done.
Speaker 5: Is a psychopathic killer.
Speaker 6: He was so proud of what he'd done that he
Speaker 6: had to talk about it.
Speaker 1: Kenneth Jackson had inadvertently revealed himself as one of the
Speaker 1: world's most evil killers. On June fifth, twenty thirteen, thirteen
Speaker 1: year old Kenneth Jackson was sentenced to death after being
Speaker 1: found guilty of murdering mother of three, Kouktran. He'd ambushed
Speaker 1: her while she was out on an early morning run
Speaker 1: in her hometown of Sefna, a small community just outside
Speaker 1: tam in Florida.
Speaker 7: We're talking about a very small area of Florida, so
Speaker 7: you can imagine a murder would send shop waves through
Speaker 7: that small community. They were literally horrifying.
Speaker 6: I think the impact only reinforced the notion that women
Speaker 6: aren't safe running alone in the dark. They're an easy target.
Speaker 6: No matter how many self defense classes they may take,
Speaker 6: or they may carry a pepper spray. It's not enough.
Speaker 6: It's just an element of surprise and the strength of
Speaker 6: the predators too much for any woman to overcome.
Speaker 1: Kenneth Jackson showed no remorse for taking the life of
Speaker 1: an innocent woman.
Speaker 3: He had no emotion to the fact that this was
Speaker 3: a woman with children's school age children that she was
Speaker 3: working to take care of. He didn't have respect for
Speaker 3: life in general. He didn't seem to care. Everything was
Speaker 3: only about himself at our times.
Speaker 1: This killer story begins on June twenty sixth, nineteen eighty two.
Speaker 1: Kenneth Ray Jackson was born in Hillsborough County, Florida. He
Speaker 1: was the product of an inappropriate and unlawful relationship.
Speaker 7: It's hard to imagine a less satisfactory childhood than Kenny Jackson's.
Speaker 7: His mother when he was conceived was fourteen, her partner
Speaker 7: at the time was twenty eight. She gave him up
Speaker 7: effectively at the age of six months, to her mother,
Speaker 7: his grandmother, and her boyfriend.
Speaker 2: Kenny did have a rough upbringing. He was moved around
Speaker 2: from different family members. He suffered some abuse when he
Speaker 2: was growing up, physical abuse. He saw a lot of abuse.
Speaker 1: And it wasn't just at home where Jackson had a
Speaker 1: difficult time.
Speaker 7: Probably inevitably, Jackson's school reports reflected that he was aggressive,
Speaker 7: he was belligerent in casts, he was just a really,
Speaker 7: really difficult boy.
Speaker 5: His teachers raised concerns about his behavior, about the way
Speaker 5: he was turned out when he came to school, and
Speaker 5: they had huge difficulties finding who his guardians even were.
Speaker 5: Who it was who was supposed to be looking after
Speaker 5: this child. I don't think he had any stability in
Speaker 5: his life, so not surprising that he turned towards criminality.
Speaker 1: In two thousand and three, at the age of twenty one,
Speaker 1: Kenneth Jackson was sentenced to five years in prison after
Speaker 1: a spate of car thefts. He was released four years
Speaker 1: later on July the twenty six, two thousand and seven,
Speaker 1: and headed to the small residential community of Sefna in
Speaker 1: Hillsborough County.
Speaker 2: When he got out of prison, he ended up moving
Speaker 2: in with a couple, the O'Neill's, Lenda and Wally O'Neill,
Speaker 2: and they allowed him to move into the trailer with them.
Speaker 7: Woolly was Jackson's grandmother's old boyfriend, the boyfriend who had
Speaker 7: been with his grandmother when he arrived with her at
Speaker 7: the age of six months. Although they must have had
Speaker 7: a very strange relationship, it was probably the only place
Speaker 7: in which Kenny Jackson felt at home.
Speaker 1: On September thirteenth, two thousand and seven, twelve miles away
Speaker 1: in the neighboring town of Gibsonton, Hillsborough County, fire rescue
Speaker 1: were called to a van engulfed in flames at seven
Speaker 1: o'clock in the morning. What they discovered when they got
Speaker 1: there was a scene of unimaginable horror.
Speaker 3: When the fire department put the vehicle fire out, they
Speaker 3: discovered a body inside. That of course triggered phone calls
Speaker 3: to the homicide section and supervisors had detectives respond to
Speaker 3: the area, so I went down to the Gibsonton area.
Speaker 3: At that point I was assigned to be the lead
Speaker 3: detective on the case.
Speaker 7: The body was charged beyond recognition.
Speaker 8: It was literally a mess.
Speaker 1: With no identification to be found on the charred remains.
Speaker 1: Detectives turned their attention to the burnt out car.
Speaker 3: I was told at the time that they had recovered
Speaker 3: a license plate off of the vehicle, and of course
Speaker 3: that was a start. We were able to make contact
Speaker 3: with the owner. We learned that the vehicle had been
Speaker 3: listed at the Gentleman's job site as for sale. It
Speaker 3: had been parked in the parking lot there. He worked
Speaker 3: part time at an autoparts store repairing it to sell it.
Speaker 3: He had a sign for sale in the window. After
Speaker 3: we determined that this vehicle must have been stolen, we
Speaker 3: had the van taken back to our crime scene offices
Speaker 3: at the Sheriff's office. But during this time, during the
Speaker 3: course of the day, there were other events unfolding that
Speaker 3: I wasn't immediately aware of.
Speaker 1: In a seemingly unrelated incident, twelve miles north of the
Speaker 1: torch Car, a discovery had been made in the grounds
Speaker 1: of a church in Cefna.
Speaker 4: The sergeant was notified that there were some clothing items, shoes,
Speaker 4: and some blood that had been located in front of
Speaker 4: the Saint Francis Church on five point seventy nine north
Speaker 4: of MLK.
Speaker 3: There had been a yard crew and they had actually
Speaker 3: been mowing the lawns found this bloody clothing and a
Speaker 3: Sheriff's Office deputy had gone out there and they had
Speaker 3: recovered some of that clothing and items that were left behind.
Speaker 1: At this stage, police were unsure about whether these two
Speaker 1: events were connected until a panicked young man contacted them
Speaker 1: for help.
Speaker 3: Three in the afternoon or so, I received a call
Speaker 3: from my dispatch saying there was a young man there
Speaker 3: who was looking for his mother and she'd been missing,
Speaker 3: that she had left early in the morning and had
Speaker 3: never came back. We had this person that we believed
Speaker 3: was a female and could not identify. At that point,
Speaker 3: it's like, yeah, we need to check this out.
Speaker 4: Where they were calling in from was just north of
Speaker 4: where that Saint Francis church was and where the clothes
Speaker 4: and the blood was located. I went up there and
Speaker 4: I looked at the area, and that was when it
Speaker 4: was very evident that it was not a little bit
Speaker 4: of wood. Somebody had somebody had died there.
Speaker 1: The missing woman was fifty year old Vietnamese immigrant Kouk Chran. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: more information was coming through about the unidentified body found
Speaker 1: in the van. It was becoming increasingly likely that the
Speaker 1: missing person's report and the body were connected.
Speaker 3: It appeared she had Asian features, and in learning that
Speaker 3: this was a Asian male that was reporting his missing
Speaker 3: Asian mother, of course everyone is starting to think this
Speaker 3: is our woman. I asked for some details about some
Speaker 3: particular jewelry, because this body that was burned up in
Speaker 3: the van still had lots of jewelry on.
Speaker 4: They were able to link jewelry from pictures in the
Speaker 4: house to what was on her person. So at that's
Speaker 4: point in time, we were pretty positive that Kuktran was
Speaker 4: our victim.
Speaker 1: The small community of Sefna was left in shock. Detectives
Speaker 1: had no clue who had committed this terrible crime, but
Speaker 1: the killer was about to make a huge mistake that
Speaker 1: would lead police straight to his door. On the morning
Speaker 1: of September thirteenth, two thousand and seven, in Hillsborough County, Florida,
Speaker 1: a pile of blooded clothes had been discovered in the
Speaker 1: grounds of a church. Twelve miles away, the charred remains
Speaker 1: of a woman had been found inside a burning van.
Speaker 1: Detectives believed her to be fifty year old Vietnamese immigrant
Speaker 1: Kuktran from the town of Sefna.
Speaker 3: She was a mother of three. She had an older
Speaker 3: son who was off at college, a sixteen year old
Speaker 3: that was going to high school, and a ten year old.
Speaker 2: She worked a full time job as a nail technician.
Speaker 2: She lived at home in a trailer park, and she
Speaker 2: would get up very early in the morning to try
Speaker 2: to find a little bit of time for herself to
Speaker 2: go for a walk or a jog to try to
Speaker 2: take care of herself.
Speaker 1: Cook John had settled in Hillsborough County after leaving her
Speaker 1: homeland in search of a better life.
Speaker 2: Her and her husband were part of the exodus from
Speaker 2: Vietnam in the seventies and eighties after the Communists took
Speaker 2: over South Vietnam after the Vietnam War.
Speaker 6: It sounded like a pretty horrific struggle after the war
Speaker 6: for her and her children and her husband to come
Speaker 6: here for the missus. Trying to leave a war zone
Speaker 6: and come to the United States. We as an example
Speaker 6: of the American dream. She was escaping violence of the
Speaker 6: war and come into a country where people are believed
Speaker 6: to be safe and give an opportunity.
Speaker 1: For Kuktran. However, the United States was far from the
Speaker 1: safe haven she'd hope for, and her life had been
Speaker 1: cut short in the most brutal way. With no immediate suspects.
Speaker 1: Police started to look into Kuktran's life for clues.
Speaker 3: There were some issues with her marriage. They weren't necessarily
Speaker 3: living together, but they were still good friends. Both parents
Speaker 3: were still very much focused on taking care of the kids.
Speaker 3: She would get up do some exercise. Her husband would
Speaker 3: come by in the mornings help get the kids ready
Speaker 3: for school.
Speaker 8: She would get back.
Speaker 3: From her morning exercise routine and she would get them
Speaker 3: to school, and then she would go to work. A
Speaker 3: responsible employee, got along well with everyone. She was evidently
Speaker 3: well liked by her customers. She did nothing wrong. She
Speaker 3: was just a victim of an evil person.
Speaker 1: Kuk trans daily morning run would take her past in
Speaker 1: Francis Church in Sefna.
Speaker 3: It was a very large church property where it had
Speaker 3: quite a bit of open land between the roadway and
Speaker 3: the church itself.
Speaker 4: If a car was going by at five in the morning,
Speaker 4: it wouldn't see you down there.
Speaker 1: Detectives started working on the theory that kook Tran was
Speaker 1: ambushed by her killer while she was out on her
Speaker 1: morning run.
Speaker 6: She had a routine she would run at five am
Speaker 6: and a morning before work. This was her only free time.
Speaker 6: It was really the only time she had to herself,
Speaker 6: which was even more tragic. That's all she had and
Speaker 6: dream that there was this predator.
Speaker 8: Waiting there for her.
Speaker 5: This isn't an area where there'll be lots of women
Speaker 5: to choose from, so this person had probably gone to
Speaker 5: that area before, checked it out, waited around, seeing how
Speaker 5: many people were around, whether they were likely to get caught.
Speaker 5: I don't think that this was opportunistic. I think this
Speaker 5: was targeted.
Speaker 8: We wanted to get the guy.
Speaker 3: I mean, that's the whole goal, right, you want to
Speaker 3: solve this thing.
Speaker 1: Detectives were convinced that Kuktran was killed in the grounds
Speaker 1: of the church and then her body driven away in
Speaker 1: the van that was found on fire twelve miles away.
Speaker 1: The autopsy confirmed the horrific circumstances of her death.
Speaker 3: The medical examiner was able to determine there were multiple
Speaker 3: stab wounds in the neck. The crotid artery had been cut.
Speaker 2: One of the stab wounds had cut through the victim's
Speaker 2: windpipe and would have probably prevented sufficient air from being
Speaker 2: able to go through the vocal cords so that she
Speaker 2: could vocalize.
Speaker 3: She was dead before the fire ever started. There was
Speaker 3: no soot in the windpipe or current looxide in the blood.
Speaker 1: The autopsy also discovered a possible motive for the crime.
Speaker 8: She had been raped.
Speaker 3: The medical examiner had collected blood slides and the vaginal
Speaker 3: swabs off for DNA, but we didn't have any comparisons
Speaker 3: at that point.
Speaker 5: Usually when people use fire to destroy a body, it's
Speaker 5: because they want to eliminate any forensic evidence at all.
Speaker 5: They think, I'm never going to get caught because I
Speaker 5: have destroyed every single piece of evidence. Well, fired doesn't
Speaker 5: always destroy every piece of evidence. This would have been
Speaker 5: an overconfidence, I think in that person.
Speaker 1: Desperate to find cook, trans killer detectives started to hand
Speaker 1: out flyers in the trailer park where she'd lived, appealing
Speaker 1: for information from her neighbors.
Speaker 8: There was probably one hundred or so trailers in this
Speaker 8: trailer park.
Speaker 4: We went house to house, handing the flyers out, talking
Speaker 4: to neighbors.
Speaker 8: There was one trailer.
Speaker 4: That I actually stopped at which was with an eyeshot
Speaker 4: of where the victim's house was her trailer, and it
Speaker 4: was a elderly individual that was their man, who was
Speaker 4: very inquisitive as to why I was there. So I
Speaker 4: finished walking through. It was extremely hot out that day.
Speaker 4: I was thirsty, so I decided to go to the
Speaker 4: gas station at the corner of MLK in five point
Speaker 4: seventy nine, which is just to the south of where
Speaker 4: Saint Francis Church was, And I walk in, I get
Speaker 4: my drink and I'm soaking with I've got a shirt tie.
Speaker 4: I walk up, I pay, and all of a sudden
Speaker 4: something hit me of saying, you know what, I'm gonna
Speaker 4: go get a flyer.
Speaker 8: I come back. I give the flyer to the clerk.
Speaker 4: As I started talking to her, she starts explaining how
Speaker 4: there was this individual who was in the store and
Speaker 4: when the news came on about a body and an investigation.
Speaker 8: He seemed to kind of excited.
Speaker 4: About the whole conversation and the subject matter and everything
Speaker 4: that was being said, but also it was almost as
Speaker 4: if he had more information than what she even heard being.
Speaker 8: Said on the TV.
Speaker 2: But really what stuck out to her was he was
Speaker 2: telling her he had seen couchtron jogging and the only
Speaker 2: time she did that was very early in the morning,
Speaker 2: right around five five point thirty in the morning, and
Speaker 2: that's when she was abducted. So that was pretty critical.
Speaker 1: The stranger's story confirmed the police already knew about kop
Speaker 1: Trad's morning routine, but it wasn't information they'd released to
Speaker 1: the public.
Speaker 3: This guy's talking and he's saying things that really haven't
Speaker 3: been publicly made. So that's a clue that that was
Speaker 3: a very strong Okay, we need to jump on this,
Speaker 3: and that started the ball rolling.
Speaker 4: I started asking her questions, well, you know who is
Speaker 4: this individual, you know where he lives, and she proceeds
Speaker 4: to tell me that his name's Kenny and he had
Speaker 4: just gotten released from prison. So I asked her what
Speaker 4: did he go to prison for?
Speaker 8: Do you know? And she said, I think grand theft.
Speaker 6: Daughter.
Speaker 8: At this point in time, now in the investigation.
Speaker 4: We know that the van that was burned with our
Speaker 4: victim in it was stolen from the Advanced Auto Parts
Speaker 4: literally two blocks from where I was standing at the
Speaker 4: guest and just south of where the victim was murtined.
Speaker 4: I said, where's he lived? Do you know anything about him?
Speaker 4: She said, yeah, he lives in the trailer park north
Speaker 4: of here.
Speaker 7: It turned out that this man, Kenny, lived in exactly
Speaker 7: the same trailer park as cook.
Speaker 1: Trap detectives finally had a breakthrough in the case, but
Speaker 1: all they had to go on was a single name, Kenny.
Speaker 1: They knew they had to find this man and fast
Speaker 1: before he killed again. On September nineteenth, two thousand and seven,
Speaker 1: six days after the murder of fifty year old Kuktran
Speaker 1: in Hillsborough County, Florida, detectives had their first lead. A
Speaker 1: man called Kenny, who'd aroused the suspicion of a gas
Speaker 1: station clerk when talking to her about the murder, lived
Speaker 1: in the same trailer park as the victim. Troy was
Speaker 1: reminded of a strangely inquisitive man he'd interviewed at the
Speaker 1: trailer park.
Speaker 4: Now, all of a sudden, the red flags start going
Speaker 4: off even more because now I realized, wait a minute,
Speaker 4: I wonder if this Kenny guy is the guy that
Speaker 4: I was sitting there asking myself. This guy's awful nosy,
Speaker 4: He's asking like a lot of detailed questions.
Speaker 1: Troy made his way back to the trailer park. The
Speaker 1: man he'd previously spoken to was Wally O'Neill, who'd once
Speaker 1: been in a relationship with Kenny's grandmother. While he confirmed
Speaker 1: that Kenny was in fact twenty five year old Kenneth Jackson,
Speaker 1: police discovered this wasn't the first time he'd been on
Speaker 1: the radar of law enforcement.
Speaker 3: He had had several arrests in the past. He had
Speaker 3: recently gotten out of prison. He hadn't been in an
Speaker 3: area long.
Speaker 6: While.
Speaker 1: He confirmed that Jackson had been living with him, but
Speaker 1: told Troy that he'd left town just two days before.
Speaker 3: We learned that at the time of the murder and
Speaker 3: the vehicle being burned, that he was not at home,
Speaker 3: so they couldn't give an alibi as to his whereabouts,
Speaker 3: but they did know for a fact that he did
Speaker 3: happen to be in the area where the burned van was.
Speaker 3: We haven't made contact with our person of interest yet,
Speaker 3: but we are getting verification that he's in the right
Speaker 3: place at the right times to be associated to it.
Speaker 1: Detectives that Kenneth Jackson had gone to live with his
Speaker 1: girlfriend in North Florida. On September twentieth, a week after
Speaker 1: the murder, they drove upstate to find him.
Speaker 3: We went up there and asked if he was willing
Speaker 3: to speak with us. He rode with us in the
Speaker 3: car over to the Carabelle Police Department office where we
Speaker 3: could sit down and do an audio recording and try
Speaker 3: and find out what he might know.
Speaker 1: While collecting DNA samples from Jackson. The detectives got a
Speaker 1: lucky break.
Speaker 3: During the course of this conversation. We got around to
Speaker 3: the clothes that he was wearing and he said, you know,
Speaker 3: I think this is what I was wearing that day.
Speaker 3: It's like, can we get that for you know, testing?
Speaker 3: And he said, well, I don't have anything else. I said,
Speaker 3: we'll take you to go buy clothes. We went and
Speaker 3: we bought them new shoes, new shirt. So he gave
Speaker 3: us permission to take his clothes.
Speaker 6: He considered himself smarter than the police, so that made
Speaker 6: him so careless.
Speaker 1: It was time for investigators to sit down and interview
Speaker 1: their prime suspect. They were certain of Jackson's movements on
Speaker 1: the day of the murder, but they wanted to hear
Speaker 1: it from the horse's mouth.
Speaker 4: During a course of our investigation, we put him down
Speaker 4: there where the van was burned. That was huge because
Speaker 4: he had a family member that identified him being down
Speaker 4: in Gibsonson. Why he lives in Sefner, Why would you
Speaker 4: be down in Gibsonson. So everything just started falling in.
Speaker 4: So we wanted to get him locked into a timeline
Speaker 4: as to where were you at, what were you doing,
Speaker 4: And we were able to do that, But we were
Speaker 4: also able to get him to give too many inconsistencies
Speaker 4: in his interviews. They could prove that he was lying,
Speaker 4: and he could not stick with the solid alibi because
Speaker 4: he didn't have one.
Speaker 2: Then all of the lies that he told law enforcement,
Speaker 2: the one thing he was consistent on was that he
Speaker 2: did not know kuk Trond, and they showed him photographs
Speaker 2: of her that were very good depictions of her in
Speaker 2: the year or two before her death, and he insisted,
Speaker 2: I don't know her, I don't know anything about her.
Speaker 2: I've never seen her before, even though she lived about
Speaker 2: five trailers down from his, and you could step out
Speaker 2: from the doors of those trailers and see the other
Speaker 2: trailer is how close he lived. Everybody insisted he'd never
Speaker 2: seen her before.
Speaker 6: It all as always going to I don't know nothing
Speaker 6: about this lady I ain't.
Speaker 4: Never seen before.
Speaker 5: He was obviously super confident that he'd obliterated all of
Speaker 5: the evidence and that he could sit and play games
Speaker 5: with the police, almost because they were never going to
Speaker 5: pin this one on him.
Speaker 3: We both believed that we had our guy after that
Speaker 3: first interview. We had our DNA that he gave us,
Speaker 3: We had the clothing that he gave us, and Troy
Speaker 3: and I got in the car and we drove from Carabelle, Florida,
Speaker 3: back to just north of Gainesville to meet up with
Speaker 3: one of the detectives from Pillsborough here who was meeting
Speaker 3: us halfway, so we could pass that off so they
Speaker 3: could immediately get that back to FDL the next day
Speaker 3: to start the DNA comparisons.
Speaker 1: Six days later, on September twenty six, the DNA reports
Speaker 1: came back from FDLA, the Florida Department of Law Enforcement.
Speaker 3: I received a phone call from FDLA stating that they
Speaker 3: had just gotten the report from their DNA analysis that
Speaker 3: said that the samples collected from Kenneth Jackson did match
Speaker 3: the seamen that was collected from the medical examiner during
Speaker 3: the autopsy of Cooktran.
Speaker 8: At that moment, it's like relief.
Speaker 4: You realize, Okay, we knew we were on point, we
Speaker 4: knew we had our guy.
Speaker 1: Jackson had lied to detectives, but the evidence gave away
Speaker 1: the truth.
Speaker 3: We had dealt with Kenneth Jackson for hours, and he
Speaker 3: said that he didn't know this person. He had never
Speaker 3: met this person, didn't even know that she was a
Speaker 3: neighbor in his trailer park. And now we have his
Speaker 3: semen in her.
Speaker 8: That is an to.
Speaker 3: Get an a restaurant.
Speaker 7: As soon as the DNA samples come back and they
Speaker 7: are confirmed as being Kenneth Jackson's, the police fly by
Speaker 7: helicopter to his new abode in North Florida to find him.
Speaker 7: But when they get there, he's not there.
Speaker 3: We had the sheriff's office up there and the local
Speaker 3: township PD and also the girlfriend's mother's assistants. She had
Speaker 3: some ideas and she thought, now, maybe they're over this
Speaker 3: one place fishing, and they were, in fact, so this
Speaker 3: was like one in the morning, but they were both
Speaker 3: up there sitting at the dock.
Speaker 1: Kenneth Jackson's luck was about to run out.
Speaker 3: I talked with Kenny and said, we've got some new
Speaker 3: information we need to talk to you about. Would you
Speaker 3: mind coming with us back to the station to talk
Speaker 3: about it.
Speaker 4: No matter what it was that we talked to him about,
Speaker 4: he was very obsentate against anything that we said. Even
Speaker 4: when we could point out his inconsistencies, it didn't matter.
Speaker 4: He just was like it was like water off a
Speaker 4: duck's back, you know, he just didn't care.
Speaker 1: But this time investigated is well armed with a smoking gun.
Speaker 3: I focused on the point of DNA again because I
Speaker 3: had asked him at the first interview, will your DNA
Speaker 3: show up on this lady at any point? And he
Speaker 3: was like, no, no, no, I've never met her. There's
Speaker 3: no way possible. He knew he had burned up this
Speaker 3: victim in a van. He believed he had absolutely nothing
Speaker 3: to worry about because that was all burned up and
Speaker 3: there was nothing to be found. He felt that he
Speaker 3: was safe. Well, in fact, your DNA is on her, Kenny,
Speaker 3: how did that happen? Denial denial, denial.
Speaker 2: So that your DNA just miracticusly just appeared on this woman,
Speaker 2: on this dead woman.
Speaker 4: He just appeared and someone who you've never met before.
Speaker 3: Eat someone who you don't know who it is, And
Speaker 3: you're going to sing here and tell us that you
Speaker 3: don't know how on top of the other lies you
Speaker 3: told us, and you're going.
Speaker 4: To tell us that you don't know how that happened,
Speaker 4: and you want us to just believe that, Rightwardson, we.
Speaker 6: Know what we're believing.
Speaker 3: Forensic evidence has proven to us. And he finally said, well,
Speaker 3: if you have such good information, why don't you arrest me?
Speaker 8: Then it's like, okay, we will do that.
Speaker 1: On September twenty seventh, two thousand and seven, two weeks
Speaker 1: after the murder of Kuktran, Kenneth Jackson was formally arrested.
Speaker 1: Despite his constant denial, detectives were convinced he was a
Speaker 1: dangerous predator.
Speaker 4: He planned that entire event. He stole the van from
Speaker 4: the Advanced Auto Parts, left it parked where he knew
Speaker 4: he could ambush Cooktran because he knows she walks runs
Speaker 4: in the mornings.
Speaker 8: And he targeted her. And it is as evil as
Speaker 8: it gets.
Speaker 5: This type of attack, a stranger in the dark jumps
Speaker 5: out of the bushes to attack you, is the nightmare
Speaker 5: that sits in the head of every single woman, and
Speaker 5: if it actually happens to you, all of those nightmares
Speaker 5: come to life at once. So for kop Chan, that
Speaker 5: must have been the most terrifying moment that she had
Speaker 5: ever experienced.
Speaker 4: He thought everything through all the way up until the getaway,
Speaker 4: Like once he burned the van. He didn't have a
Speaker 4: plan of what he was going to do after that,
Speaker 4: But I am convinced that he would have killed again
Speaker 4: given the opportunity. Had we not have caught him, he
Speaker 4: would have killed again.
Speaker 1: After he was arrested, information on Kenneth Jackson continued to
Speaker 1: come in.
Speaker 7: One of the other significant pieces evidence that the police
Speaker 7: received was from a relative of Jackson's who gave them
Speaker 7: a DVD which he apparently habitually watched. It was a
Speaker 7: pornographic DVD which included in particularly Asian women, and also
Speaker 7: had elements of bondage.
Speaker 8: Everything lines up that he's living out his fantasy.
Speaker 5: To me, Jackson appears to be on his first outing
Speaker 5: as a potential serial killer. He wasn't responding to some provocation.
Speaker 5: He was acting to please himself, and I think the
Speaker 5: violence pleased him, The fire pleased him. The cat and
Speaker 5: mouse he thought he was going to have with the
Speaker 5: police excited him. This is a really dangerous individual.
Speaker 1: Prosecutors felt they had enough evidence to charge Kenneth Jackson
Speaker 1: with murder.
Speaker 2: He was charged with first degree premeditated murder. He was
Speaker 2: charged with sexual battery with a deadly weapon, and he
Speaker 2: was charged with the grand theft motor vehicle of the
Speaker 2: van that he stole so that he could dispose of
Speaker 2: Miss Tron's body.
Speaker 1: Despite denying everything to detectives, Kenneth Jackson suddenly rediscovered the
Speaker 1: loose lips that had put him on the police's radar
Speaker 1: in the first place.
Speaker 3: While he was in custody for all that time. Again,
Speaker 3: that man talked. He ran his mouth to everybody. He
Speaker 3: did discuss about how he raped the woman, he killed
Speaker 3: the woman, he burned her up in the van. But
Speaker 3: one of the common threads from each of these statements
Speaker 3: we got was that he never was talking in remorse.
Speaker 3: He was bragging about it. He was so proud of.
Speaker 8: What he'd done that he had to talk about it.
Speaker 1: But if Jackson thought his fellow inmates would listen to
Speaker 1: his secrets in confidence, he was gravely mistaken.
Speaker 3: Multiple inmates came forward with all the stories Kenny was
Speaker 3: talking about.
Speaker 2: There were two of them that were in federal custody,
Speaker 2: being held in the local jail on federal charges. He
Speaker 2: made statements to each of them independently where he talked
Speaker 2: about the fact that he had seen her running, had
Speaker 2: seen her jogging, had determined that he was going to
Speaker 2: abduct her. He gave descriptions of the murder and how
Speaker 2: he went about stabbing her and what was going on,
Speaker 2: how she was reacting to him. He used a pretty
Speaker 2: offensive pejorative and describing how he sexually assaulted her. So
Speaker 2: it was pretty compelling evidence to have that in front
Speaker 2: of the jury.
Speaker 4: Getting those leads and that information from other prisoners saying
Speaker 4: that he's bragging about what he did, only boost in
Speaker 4: our case.
Speaker 1: With the trial on the horizon. Prosecutors in Hillsborough County
Speaker 1: had DNA evidence, witness statements, and jailhouse informants. But would
Speaker 1: the jury find Kenneth Jackson guilty or would he be
Speaker 1: able to outsmart everyone and get away with murder. In
Speaker 1: October twenty twelve, five years after the death of fifty
Speaker 1: year old mother of three, Kouktran, Kenneth Jackson, the man
Speaker 1: accused of her rape and murder, stood trial in Florida.
Speaker 6: It was one of the most heinous murder rapes that
Speaker 6: had occurred that year, so there was a lot of
Speaker 6: TV there and print media.
Speaker 2: We had many many witnesses and it went on for
Speaker 2: several weeks. We were seeking the death penalty in this case.
Speaker 2: The DNA was direct scientific evidence, but we wanted to
Speaker 2: give the jury and understanding of how the crime occurred
Speaker 2: and why it occurred. So we had lots of different
Speaker 2: types of evidence in this case, from DNA scientific evidence,
Speaker 2: to jail house snitches, to other witnesses that he had
Speaker 2: made statements to that connected him to the crime.
Speaker 4: He planned this entire thing out to the point of
Speaker 4: stealing a van so that he can then stalk his prey.
Speaker 2: This was an extremely premeditated murder driven by an extremely
Speaker 2: evil motivation.
Speaker 1: Prosecutors were ready to present their case of what they
Speaker 1: believe happened on the morning of September thirteenth, two thousand
Speaker 1: and seven.
Speaker 2: He had seen her jogging in the early morning hours before,
Speaker 2: he had become obsessed with her, apparently, and with the
Speaker 2: idea of abducting her. He positioned himself in an area
Speaker 2: in front of Saint Francis as Sissy Church, where he
Speaker 2: knew she would be running or jogging, and when she
Speaker 2: came along in the darkness, he grabbed her, probably put
Speaker 2: the knife to her throat. Off of the roadway.
Speaker 6: Missus Trot was surprised by this man leaping out of
Speaker 6: the darkness. There was no way she could have defended herself,
Speaker 6: and but she saw it too sudden.
Speaker 2: He took her down into this little valley which was
Speaker 2: concealed from view from the roadway, and he forced her
Speaker 2: down on the ground. He took her clothes off of her,
Speaker 2: probably ripped them off of her, and he raped her.
Speaker 2: And when she was screaming or yelling in pain and
Speaker 2: begging for her life, he began stabber in the throat.
Speaker 2: He knew he was going to kill her, He knew
Speaker 2: he was going to rape her. This just speaks to
Speaker 2: an extremely depraved level of evil.
Speaker 3: He made the decision to take advantage of someone in
Speaker 3: the dark that he felt he could overpower. Then, when
Speaker 3: he was in fear for maybe being found out because
Speaker 3: they were struggle, they were fighting, they were streaming, decided
Speaker 3: he could kill them. And then at that point to
Speaker 3: think that he could make all this go away. By
Speaker 3: destroying this person, literally, by trying to burn them up,
Speaker 3: that is evil.
Speaker 1: On October fifteenth, twenty twelve, Jackson's trial began that the
Speaker 1: Hillsborough County Circuit Court.
Speaker 2: In my opening statements, had told the jury he was
Speaker 2: trying to burn his biological evidence.
Speaker 8: Out of her body.
Speaker 2: His intent was to try to destroy her body because
Speaker 2: her body was evidence of the rape and the murder.
Speaker 6: It was all pre planned. It was extremely cold blooded, calculated.
Speaker 6: Stay with me for a long time even today.
Speaker 1: Jackson, who'd been all too keen to blab about the
Speaker 1: murder to his fellow inmates, suddenly didn't seem able to
Speaker 1: speak up in the court.
Speaker 6: He didn't show any emotion at all throughout the trial.
Speaker 6: He just was back quietly. It was kind of eerie.
Speaker 6: He had an eerie presence, this sort of calm, strange
Speaker 6: demeanor throughout. I thought he didn't mind being caught that much.
Speaker 6: Watching him, I think he had always wanted from the
Speaker 6: beginning to be able to boast about it.
Speaker 2: He appeared to enjoy the attention of the trial. He
Speaker 2: seemed to be very immature. He smiled a lot, but
Speaker 2: he just didn't seem like he was taking the whole
Speaker 2: process seriously.
Speaker 5: He has got all eyes on him. This is his
Speaker 5: moment in the sun. He's not even thinking about what's
Speaker 5: gonna happen afterwards, He couldn't hide his enjoyment at getting
Speaker 5: so much attention.
Speaker 1: Troy Morgan, the detective who'd made the initial breakthrough in
Speaker 1: the case, was cold to testify.
Speaker 4: It's a great pride in being able to get up
Speaker 4: there and testify, finding out the information that kind of
Speaker 4: linked everything to him. And that was pretty much all
Speaker 4: the testimony, you know that I really had to bring
Speaker 4: to the table was being in the right place at
Speaker 4: the right time and asking the right question.
Speaker 1: The gas station attendant who Troy Morgan had spoken to,
Speaker 1: wasn't the only witness called by the prosecution.
Speaker 2: There were witnesses who put him near the area where
Speaker 2: the van was found, and that was in the city
Speaker 2: of Gibsonton. The murder happened in the city of Sefner,
Speaker 2: and they are separated by about ten eleven twelve miles,
Speaker 2: so it's a significant distance. And there were witnesses, one
Speaker 2: of which knew him, put him walking on foot in
Speaker 2: Gibsonton that morning, and that really stood out to her,
Speaker 2: why is Kenny down here in Gibsonton walked? How did
Speaker 2: he get here? That was significant because he told the
Speaker 2: detectives and never would come off of the fact that
Speaker 2: he wrote a bicycle from Sefner down to Gibsonton through
Speaker 2: the night, and that's why he was in Gibsonton.
Speaker 1: With the overwhelming evidence laid out, the prosecuting attorneys began
Speaker 1: their closing arguments.
Speaker 2: I remember arguing to the jury, there is probably no
Speaker 2: crime that is as personally invasive as a crime where
Speaker 2: a person is putting part of their body into another
Speaker 2: person against their will. And I think this may have
Speaker 2: impacted the women on the jury, And I argued to
Speaker 2: the jury, the last voice she heard, in the last
Speaker 2: person's face she saw in her life on this earth
Speaker 2: was this defendant.
Speaker 1: The jury took less than a day to reach their verdict.
Speaker 3: The jury determined that he was guilty for the murder,
Speaker 3: the sexual battery, the grand theft auto, and the arson.
Speaker 1: It seemed the jury had no doubt in their minds
Speaker 1: about Jackson's guilt.
Speaker 2: When a jury returns a guilty verdict, the defendant is
Speaker 2: entitled to have the jury pulled a clerk asks each
Speaker 2: of the individual jurors to confirm that that is their verdict.
Speaker 2: And I've never heard this before in any case I've tried.
Speaker 2: Several of the jurors when they responded yes, didn't just
Speaker 2: say yes, that's my verdict.
Speaker 8: They said yes.
Speaker 2: I know two of the women looked directly at the
Speaker 2: defendant and said it very vehemently like that. So that's
Speaker 2: what kind of stood out to me was how much
Speaker 2: they believed in that verdict of guilty.
Speaker 1: The verdict was exactly the outcome the hard working detectives
Speaker 1: and hopeful.
Speaker 8: To be able to get a positive result. It's what
Speaker 8: you want for every case.
Speaker 4: This one here just everything just kind of fell right
Speaker 4: into place, being at the right place at the right time.
Speaker 8: Sometimes it's better to be lucky than good.
Speaker 3: I mean, it's horrible what the people went through and
Speaker 3: the family is what they've gone through, but it's a
Speaker 3: huge feeling of satisfaction when you can conclusively say this
Speaker 3: is what happened, We got the guy. It doesn't change
Speaker 3: what happened. It's still a tragedy, but this is what
Speaker 3: we can give you for some sort of closure.
Speaker 1: A week later, on November one, twenty twelve, the next
Speaker 1: phase of Kenneth Jackson's trial began.
Speaker 6: The murder conviction comes first, and then there's basically a
Speaker 6: second trial with the same jury to consider the death penalty,
Speaker 6: and then they come back to the same jury and
Speaker 6: ask for a vote. In this case, it was eleven,
Speaker 6: which at the time was all that the state needed.
Speaker 1: On June fifth, twenty thirteen, thirty year old Kenneth Jackson
Speaker 1: was sentenced to death.
Speaker 6: When a death penalty was imposed, he had absolutely no reaction.
Speaker 6: I don't even know that he cared. I couldn't tell.
Speaker 6: He just looked blankly ahead and he didn't offer any
Speaker 6: remorse or anything like that.
Speaker 4: I will say it was very satisfying to find that
Speaker 4: he was found guilty number one, but number two that
Speaker 4: he was given the death penalty.
Speaker 8: That wasn't the.
Speaker 1: End of Kenneth Jackson's story, however. In twenty sixteen, the
Speaker 1: United States Supreme Court agreed that Florida's capital sentencing scheme
Speaker 1: was unconstitutional, which led the Florida Supreme Court to abolish
Speaker 1: the state's existing death penalty law and required that a
Speaker 1: jury's recommendation for day must be unanimous.
Speaker 2: Any case where we didn't have a unanimous verdict in
Speaker 2: the penalty phase was now subject to collateral attack, and
Speaker 2: that's what happened with mister Jackson's case. The case got
Speaker 2: reversed because we didn't have a unanimous verdict. The decision
Speaker 2: was made to allow him to plete the life and
Speaker 2: that's what happened, and he was resentenced to a life sentence.
Speaker 3: Whether he does life in prison without parole or whether
Speaker 3: he does death penalty. Either way, he's off the street.
Speaker 4: I know for a fact that that person won't be
Speaker 4: hurting anybody outside of those prison walls, and that's what
Speaker 4: we're after.
Speaker 6: This case really haunted me, I think because it was
Speaker 6: the first time I had encountered what I thought was
Speaker 6: a true psychopath. I think there was every possibility that
Speaker 6: Kenneth Jackson, if he had not been caught, would have
Speaker 6: gone on to kill other women, and that one day
Speaker 6: he might have been labeled as serial killer.
Speaker 1: Kenneth Jackson stalked, raped, and killed fifty year old Kutran,
Speaker 1: an innocent woman who'd done him no harm. He burned
Speaker 1: her body in the attempt to destroy any evidence. But
Speaker 1: he wasn't as clever as he thought, and when his
Speaker 1: DNA was found on the victim, his fate was sealed.
Speaker 1: He showed absolutely no remorse for leaving three children without
Speaker 1: a mother, proving that Kenneth Jackson is one of the
Speaker 1: world's most evil killers.