Her Dad Was No Father of the Year
(“Bagging a Killer,” Forensic Files)
This week, it’s back to Forensic Files with an episode about how police used a low-concept ploy and a high-tech device to expose a murderer.
Investigators compelled Brad Jackson, who killed his 9-year-old daughter, to dance a two-step familiar to Forensic Files watchers:
1) “Officer, I have no idea what happened to (fill in name).”
2) “Your Honor, I know what happened and it’s not my fault because (fill in improbable excuse).”
Police tactics that force suspects to change their stories add some wry moments to otherwise grim tales like this one.
Taken? Jackson, 34, ended up sentenced to 56 years rather than life without parole. So, for this week, I dug around a little for an epilogue for him and some of the other parties on “Bagging a Killer,” the Forensic Files episode about the case.
But first a recap of the episode, along with additional information drawn from internet research:
On October 18, 1999, Brad Jackson dialed 911 and, in an anguished voice, said he couldn’t find his daughter.
She’d been playing outside with her dog and had disappeared, with only her backpack left behind, he said.
Troubled mom. Folks from the Jacksons’ friendly neighborhood in Spokane Valley, Washington, sprang into action by searching for the flame-haired little girl and holding vigils.
Not everyone was buying Brad Jackson’s heartsick single dad routine, though. Valiree’s uncle John Stone recalled how his sister, Roseann Pleasant, had feared Jackson.
Pleasant had vanished two years after giving birth to Valiree, her daughter with Jackson. She reportedly struggled with drug problems, which Jackson blamed for her disappearance. But Stone wasn’t so sure.
Car stash. Investigators also had some suspicions about Jackson in relation to his daughter’s disappearance. He claimed that some blood stains on Valiree’s pillow came from a nosebleed she’d had the night before he reported her missing. But police hadn’t found any bloody tissues, wash cloths, cotton balls, etc., in the house.
After searching Jackson’s car and Ford pickup truck, investigators secretly outfitted each vehicle with a GPS transmitter — hot new gadgetry back in the day. A 1999 New York Times story about the case described it as a high-tech version of a bloodhound.” (Prosecutor Jack Driscoll later said “GPS” stands for “God Praise Satellites.”)
Then, as Detective David Madsen explained during his interview on Forensic Files, he warned Jackson that if Valiree lay in a shallow grave somewhere, her body would be easy to find.
Jackson fell for it.
The GPS tracked his movements as he removed his daughter’s body from its original grave, then drove to another area to bury it more deeply.
Cadaver dogs found Valiree’s body buried face down on the grounds of the second of those locations, a logging region near the town of Springdale.
Shaky defense. Investigators believe Jackson suffocated Valiree in her bed, thus the blood on her pillow, then wrapped her head in a plastic bag — similar to ones found in the home that Jackson shared with his parents and Valiree — and hastily buried her. Afterward, he returned home, called 911, and started play-acting.
In the subsequent trial, Jackson’s “not my fault” contention was that he had found Valiree dead in her bed due to a Paxil overdose (more about that in a second), panicked out of fear that people wouldn’t believe him, and then buried her.
The jury didn’t buy it.
As for a motive, apparently Valiree didn’t get along with her father’s onetime girlfriend, Dannette Schroeder. Jackson allegedly felt that, with his daughter out of the way, he could rekindle things with Schroeder.
Few friends. I’m not sure how Forensic Files narrator Peter Thomas managed to read this part without throttling the living parties involved: Taking Valiree to a psychiatrist and getting her a prescription for the psychotropic drug was Schroeder’s idea. Schroeder thought it would help make the little girl easier to contend with.
Apparently, however, Schroeder had nothing to do with the murder plot. She testified for the prosecution at Jackson’s trial.
“He’s not the B.J. that I fell in love with two years ago,” Schroeder testified. “I don’t know what happened. I wasn’t there.”
Some of Jackson’s own blood relatives spoke out against him in court.
“This is hard for me to say — I honestly believe Brad deserves what he took from Valiree, and that’s a life sentence,” said his brother, Dick Jackson, as reported by AP.
Memorial. Neighbors who fell victim to Jackson’s false alarm that an anonymous child abductor was loose in their community weren’t exactly unhappy to see him locked up either.
The Forensic Files episode closed with a view of the tree that kids from McDonald Elementary, where Valiree attended school, planted as a memorial to her. They chose a plum tree with red leaves that reminded friends of her hair.
So where are the parties today? There’s no recent information available online about Dannette Schroeder, but the Web did turn up some intelligence on others related to the case:
• Sadly, Roseann Pleasant never turned up. Her brother said he suspected Jackson killed her and buried her in a building foundation during his stint working for Haskins Steel Co. The Charley Project, an organization that profiles missing persons, maintains a page devoted to Pleasant. (Note: Some sources spell her first name “Roseanne.”)
• John Stone, Valiree’s uncle, was the most sympathetic character appearing on the Forensic Files episode. Many online commenters expressed anger that Brad Jackson didn’t simply give custody of Valiree to Stone if he wanted her out of the way. Stone launched the Valiree Jackson Charitable Foundation which, as of 2004, was mired in some legal woes.
• Lawyers for Jackson have taken issue with the legality of the police’s GPS use. On Sept 11, 2003, the state of Washington Supreme Court denied Jackson’s motion for a new trial and reaffirmed his conviction. In 2019, he lost another court action, which noted he’s incarcerated in Mayo Correctional Institution in Florida. (Thanks to reader TJ for writing in with the tip.) It’s a safe bet that this child killer will stay behind razor wire, where he can’t harm innocent people again.
That’s all for this post. Until next week, cheers. — RR
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Thanks for this, RR. I recall this episode and of being appalled that a father could kill his child, and for the sake of a relationship: pure evil, and one of those cases whereby life imprisonment should absolutely mean it. And I agree with the contention that if he didn’t want her, others — even child services — would have stepped in, so he had a vastly better ‘option.’ I guess that if he thinks there’s any possibility of parole he’s induced not to ‘fess-up to the murder of Roseann, which is a shame, as he otherwise might have had a change of heart, with nothing to lose. It’s a fair and logical assumption that having killed his daughter for a relationship he’d have less hesitation in killing her mother for same, so I’d bet that’s just what he did…
A heartbreakingly tragic case.
I guess he felt entitled to kill anyone when it was convenient for him. I’d be curious to find out how he was brought up — whether something happened to him or he was just born that way.
… Though the nature/nurture debate never really resolves anything, because of the ‘counter cases’: children who were nurtured badly but don’t commit such crimes. And even where there appears to be ’cause’ — X abused Y because X was abused — explanation isn’t justification, though it will be offered by desperate defence as mitigation (and works sometimes).
Courts in the US seem a little more willing to allow for psychological defence than in the UK — and I’d argue that that’s because US citizens are culturally more disposed to psychologists/psychobabble than their counterparts here. I hope that doesn’t sound patronising! But as in many things, the UK’s not too far behind where the US leads culturally!
No, it’s more that in the US, one is considered innocent until proven guilty, and we like to explore every possible angle before committing someone to life imprisonment or death. And I frankly don’t care if that sounded patronizing.
Well, j, tell that to the vastly disproportionately high number of blacks in your prisons and the many who believe the claimed unequal treatment before the law is because they couldn’t buy better defence (never mind your begging the question of the justification of the death penalty, which the UK abolished 50 years ago). I suspect they wouldn’t agree that “every possible angle” was explored in their cases… Then there’s the astonishingly high incarceration rate in the US — the highest in the world. While the US represents about 4.4 percent of the world’s population, it houses around 22 percent of the world’s prisoners.
“It’s a stark fact that the United States has less than 5 percent of the world’s population, yet we have almost 25 percent of the world’s total prison population. The numbers today are much higher than they were 30, 40 years ago despite the fact that crime is at historic lows.”
–Hillary Rodham Clinton, speech on criminal justice at Columbia University, April 29, 2015
The UK needs no lesson on the integrity of the judiciary from the US…
We, the United States, had to violently separate ourselves from the UK for a reason, you just reaffirmed that reason. We are nothing like you, thank God.
I am indeed glad ‘we are nothing like you’, for your citizens are rather more inclined to take the lives of their fellows than ours (though you need a history lesson if you think you assertion is more than mere rhetoric):
Violent crime rates per 100,000 population, 2013
Murder and non-negligent
manslaughter (intentional homicide) Rape Robbery Aggravated assault
Australia 0.73 18 39 47
Germany 0.77 9 64 88
England/Wales 0.92 18 157 –
Scotland 1.15 20 60 117
USA 4.5 26.8 113 241
And yet I saw a show about a quadruple killing (twin sisters + an elderly Spitfire pilot who survived the Battle of Britain and his wife) in the UK that could have been avoided had the UK courts imposed more than 100 hours of community service for a prior public stabbing attack at random the killer committed! “Injustice” exists everywhere… even the Saintly UK! A lot of prisoners in US means more crimes committed BY and not “due to” RACE! I’m not in prison, not because I’m white, but because I do not commit crime!
And yet I saw a show about a quadruple killing (twin sisters + an elderly Spitfire pilot who survived the Battle of Britain and his wife) in the UK that could have been avoided had the UK courts imposed more than 100 hours of community service for a prior public stabbing attack at random the killer committed!
+One swallow doesn’t make a summer. Of course you’ll find such examples – but the stats speak for themselves: homicide is, sadly, much commoner in the US than UK. Easy access to guns is one undoubted reason.
A lot of prisoners in US means more crimes committed BY and not “due to” RACE! I’m not in prison, not because I’m white, but because I do not commit crime!
+Sorry – I don’t understand you. If you’re making a point about race, I wasn’t. But it’s true that African Americans (and black people here) are disproportionately highly involved in crime including homicide. I don’t speculate why; I merely state the fact.
Nothing saintly about UK – violence is too common here – but it does have a far smaller proportion of its population incarcerated (like other European countries) than US and far fewer homicides. As these would be considered generally desirable facts, something has gone very wrong in US (I refer you to my quotation of H Clinton above rather than what I as a Brit think to defuse your defensiveness).
No, it’s more that in the US, you sanctimoniously trumpet the principle of innocent until proven guilty, all while publicly executing unarmed black civilians in the streets, torturing random brown people at Guantanamo Bay, extrajudicially assassinating civilians all across the globe via drone and convicting innocent Americans left and right in sensationalistic tabloid trials. And I frankly don’t care if that sounded harsh. Get off your high horse.
I do know his parents and they are wonderful people and they truly loved Valiree
Thanks for writing in, Dbone. I wonder how they feel about Brad now.
I managed the Maternity Support Services that Roseann was enrolled in while pregnant/parenting her daughter. I always suspected Brad of killing her, then Valiree. Her death still angers me and causes me pain. I pray for peace for her parents because answers will never be known. I am glad that God is just and will deal with Brad.
Hi Clea, We all think he killed my mom. I miss her terribly. Being 42, with children of my own now, I cannot help but think about how much she would have loved being a grandma. As for our little bug Valiree, Brad didn’t make it easy to keep in touch with her when we moved away. What really drives the Brad-did-it-thing home though is my mom was set to enter into a really good rehab center in AZ that my uncle had gotten her into. She was trying to clean her life up to get Valiree back and start to do things the right way. That’s why my other two sisters and I had gone to live with the oldest of the two’s father. He was a father to us all and the only person my mom had ever married. We used to hear from mom every week and one day the phone calls just stopped. We never heard from her again. I know though that on that day that my work on earth is done, both her and Valiree will be there to welcome me home.
Killing a child and then calling police distraught. Has that worked for anyone?
Definitely not deserving of a Father’s Day gift.
Probably. We only know about the ones who got caught.
If police are doing their job a cases’s assessment disregards the emotional expression of potential suspects, whether flat or dramatic, precisely because it’s not reliably probative of crime. Human nature, however, inevitably informs police’s response, raising or reducing suspicion according to the expected behaviour. Perhaps that behaviour IS probative to some degree – I don’t know. One often hears police saying in the likes of FF eps ‘His behaviour wasn’t what I’d expect of a person who’s just… X/Y/Z.’
Levi’s correct that we don’t know whether faux emotion’s tipped the balance in favour of a perp, averting suspicion where there should’ve been, but I suspect such cases are few – particularly with the rise of forensics and concomitant reduction in the role of circumstantial evidence. Perps may well assume that their behaviour is more influential on police that it is…
Mike T: Sadly it probably has. So-called cot death syndrome might be reproducible by smothering a small child; and pushing a child down stairs and claiming they fell, or poisoning them and claiming they accessed the medicine cupboard or garage might be plausible; drowning’s another one amenable to lies. I’m quite sure false explanations have been used and accepted. Children are easier to murder than adults because no one wants to believe that a child would be murdered by a loved one; and they’re inclined naturally to put themselves in dangerous situations.
One FF episode: in 1987 Robert and Paula Sims moved to Alton, Illinois.There she gave birth to her son, Randy and daughter, Heather. Six weeks after Heather’s birth, a masked individual reportedly broke into their home and kidnapped their daughter. Police learned this wasn’t the first time the Sims had a baby kidnapped. In 1986, their first daughter was reportedly kidnapped only thirteen days after being born. Paula Sims was convicted of first-degree murder. Breathtaking that she thought she could twice claim kidnapping of two children she murdered.
I know it’s purely from watching too many crime shows, but Jackson causes me to think about the weirdness of common sense, like maybe he should have refrained from committing homicide. He obviously lacked the social skill needed to coordinate, for instance, a simple van trip to the the pig farm for a seamless, convivial body disposal. Like in the sequel to Silence of the Lambs. People should refrain from doing serious crimes.
So many better options he could have chosen — the guy needed a life coach.
… To say the least. The photo you post, RR, is of such a sweet child. How could her father do it? As I said earlier: pure evil (with or without the ontological connotation).
I agree. This is a type of crime that can only be explained in terms of moral.
A horrendous crime that I hope haunts Jackson every day of his life. I don’t support the death penalty — but child murderers, especially ones who do it premeditatedly, rationally (as opposed, say, to being under the influence of substances), surely merit it if it’s there? Jackson is lucky — particularly if, as suggested, this was his second murder. ‘Scum’ is a word used here in UK of such people.
I first saw this episode when it first aired in 2002 and it haunts me to this day. There were no pictures of this gorgeous little girl where she wasn’t smiling. I don’t see why Brad Jackson felt the need to take this child’s life. She had living grandparents that she lived with. He could’ve left her with them.
I meant gorgeous little girl
It’s one of the saddest episodes. I think the only bright spot is that the police figured out who did it fairly quickly — no innocent parties were accused of the crime. They got the right guy.
Like most men, he probably couldn’t handle people thinking he was less than perfect, so he chose to kill his child instead of giving her away and possibly looking like a delinquent parent.
The same with Casey Anthony…she should have just given custody of her daughter to her parents.
kd: Rather naughty: Paternal and maternal filicide is similarly common in the UK, and I daresay in the US. Men may, more than women, need to be thought perfect – but they don’t kill their children more often than them, so in this assertion at least, feminist bias is misguided.
I was sole custodial parent. To be sure, it gave me a sense of pride knowing I stepped up to the plate and did an excellent job as a single dad. To say a man would be thought of as a delinquent parent is preposterous. The same is never the case with respect to the single mom. Jackson is just a pathetic being, not to be confused with the human being species. May he rot in or below hell.
Agreed, Jackson had a birth defect — no heart.
Linda: He had no need: The motivation was evil, pure and simple.
I’m Valiree’s cousin, from her mom’s side thankfully. Thank you for spotlighting her story. I’m just 6 months older than her so I witnessed a lot of this as the next youngest in the family and it forever changed my life. She was so beautiful and happy and she’s with me every day via a tribute tattoo. This year she would’ve been 27 years old.
Thanks so much for writing in — it’s good to know Valiree was as sweet as she looks! So sorry for your loss…I hope it’s a comfort that her killer is where he belongs.
He’s already in hell?
He’s in the waiting room…
God bless her and keep her and all who loved her. With RR, I’m so sorry for your loss.
RR, Thanks for the update. So sad, too, that Roseann was never found – two loved ones gone. Jackson would never admit to her death, of course, while he hopes to get a new trial, and at only 50 he’s plenty of time to hope that it will happen, preventing a hope of ‘closure’ for the family. This does seem to have been a slam-dunk for the prosecution, though, so even a new trial seems very unlikely to change the outcome.
I imagine that as a child killer he’s kept off the locator database as a ‘vulnerable’ prisoner and/or is out of state for that reason.
A potential additional dimension to the case I found on the interweb:
“Detectives seek clues in diary ; Valiree Jackson wrote dad `won’t leave me alone'”
December 2, 1999
A Spokane Valley man may have killed his 9-year-old daughter to cover up an inappropriate relationship he had with the girl, sheriff’s detectives said in court documents released Wednesday.
Brad Jackson “repeatedly and inappropriately violated” the personal boundaries of his daughter, Valiree, in the months leading up to her murder, sheriff’s Sgt. Jim Goodwin wrote in an affidavit of probable cause.
“At worst her father’s actions were a display of power and control over the child and possibly sexually motivated,” Goodwin wrote. “This information … is significant in regard to motive for the disappearance and death of this child.”
————-
We’ve wondered in our posts why Jackson killed Valiree when he appeared to have other options for her care. Perhaps this was is: he was abusing her and worried she’d report it. If a man can murder his child he could certainly abuse her, so it must be plausible, alongside the other explanation that she was simply ‘in the way.’
Interesting find — could be the missing puzzle piece. Thanks much for sending.
I have wondered if the paxil, and possibly any therapy that went along with that, had valiree remembering things? Maybe things about her mother, things he said, things that don’t add up? It might be why she had such a reaction to his girlfriend, knowing her mom should still be there.
Interesting theory — that he murdered her to keep her quiet.
From what I can remember with my family around the case, when the diary pieces came out, there was no physical evidence of sexual abuse. A lot of it was Valiree feeling like he wasn’t giving her privacy like she deserved as a young girl getting older. But, unfortunately we’ll never 100% know for sure.
@xtina, as much as a part of me would like to believe that, Valiree was only 2 years old when my aunt went missing. It’s highly unlikely she would have been able to remember anything about it. I do know during the case it was told that Valiree had started asking questions to Brad about her mom, but nothing as to him being involved with her disappearance. There is always that possibility that she overheard something Brad may have slipped with as she got older, but the sad reality is that I don’t think she would have known enough to really piece it together. Him and his family did a pretty stellar job at keeping Valiree completely separated from our family once my aunt disappeared.
Thanks much for writing in — so sad that John Stone lost a sister and a niece.
Maybe not so sad for John Stone. In 2004, Stone was accused of using his sympathetic relationship to Valiree to swindle local businesses out of failed promised advertising. Pretty disgusting thing to do. Which makes you wonder if John Stone doesn’t know where his sister ended up? Perhaps he used her and disposed of her himself. John Stone was quick to blame Brad Jackson.
Nonetheless, for a father to just expose his daughter to someone who puts them into depression and then has to take mind-altering drugs and then to murder his own child should have been executed…twice.
Slain girl’s uncle accused in flap over bench ads
http://www.spokesman.com/stories/2004/sep/02/slain-girls-uncle-accused-in-flap-over-bench-ads/
Complaint Review: Rev John W Stone Author Of Find My Baby – Phoenix Arizona
https://www.ripoffreport.com/reports/rev-john-w-stone-author-of-find-my-baby/phoenix-arizona-85017/beware-of-rev-john-w-stone-author-of-find-my-baby-phoenix-arizona-433968
Yeah my uncle did some sketchy things in the years following major grief…. no one’s perfect. But don’t sit there and equate it to him having anything to do with my aunt’s disappearance. He had nothing to do with it. Period.
Xtina….the mother had been dead for seven years. Valiree was murdered at the age of 9. Not sure a two year old is going to remember and comprehend certain facts enough to be useful. Who knows for sure.
xtina says:
April 23, 2018 at 2:36 pm
I have wondered if the paxil, and possibly any therapy that went along with that, had valiree remembering things? Maybe things about her mother, things he said, things that don’t add up? It might be why she had such a reaction to his girlfriend, knowing her mom should still be there.
I just wish they’d try to solve the case. Like make him take a polygraph, visit his old friends that are still alive and search the properties he was working on at the time if he fails the test.
Me, too — her family deserves a resolution.
Sunny: Hello; I take it you mean Roseann? It’s terribly distressing that she disappeared and her loved ones have been left in limbo. We can only try to imagine what it would be like for us… Alas, it’s only suspected that Jackson killed her; a polygraph isn’t entirely reliable and for good reason inadmissible (see this case, for example, featured in FF and in which the perp passed a p/graph ‘with flying colours’:
https://www.monstersandcritics.com/smallscreen/pregnant-15-year-old-becky-stowe-was-murdered-by-her-16-year-old-boyfriend-robert-leamon-jr/
He has only counter-incentive to confess.
If the buildings he worked on – a good idea in principle – were domestic/short, with relatively shallow foundations, ground-penetrating radar could be tried (successfully used in other FF stories), and cadaver dogs, as some record is bound to exist of whom he worked with and where. Hopefully, as a cold-case the police will re-open their investigation. He may, though, have done what he did with Valiree and taken her somewhere remote to bury, in which case there would seem very little chance of success. I suspect that’s what the police think.
I do hope they find her, despite the inevitable sadness.
Killing a child is despicable. Killing your own child, horrendous. But one thing EVERYONE has overlooked in this case is the Violation of Jackson’s Fourth Amendment Rights. The GPS put in his vehicles unbeknownst to him was a blatant violation of that right. That is the basis for his request for a new trial. We all have the uninalienable right to be free from illegal search and seizure. What made the government above the law? If they could do it to him, they can do it to YOU.
Grady: The police had, they would claim, probable cause – and I agree, thus circumventing those rights, if the story presented in FF is accurate. It goes without saying that such probable cause was indeed founded, as Jackson took the bait to retrieve Valiree from her first grave to the second, discovered via the device. If he has a pending appeal I’d be highly surprised if it’s upheld. Fourth Amendment rights in principle permit, in Shakespeare’s phraseology, indirections to find directions out. What’s your concern in this case?
Grady: Having read Jackson’s appeal judgement from 2003, it disagrees with your contention. It concludes:
“Article I, section 7 [of the Washington State Constitution] protects from government intrusion those privacy interests that people in Washington have traditionally held as well as privacy interests they should be entitled to hold. Absent a recognized exception to the warrant requirement, attachment of a GPS device to a vehicle without a warrant violates these privacy interests. Requiring a warrant ensures that use of GPS technology will be limited to circumstances in which law enforcement has probable cause to believe that criminal activity had occurred or is occurring and will protect innocent citizens from unwarranted and highly intrusive police surveillance. Here, however, law enforcement officers properly obtained valid warrants; thus, evidence obtained through use of the device was properly admitted.
As I stated earlier, the warrants were obtained through probable cause – and this appeal found there WAS probable cause to issue them, hence the issue you raise was rejected. From my understanding of US law (as a Brit) there was indeed probable cause: the police’s action was justified and legal.
None of us wants unjustified intrusion into our lives by law enforcement, but this intrusion was justified – surely? – both prospectively (ie, probable cause) and in hindsight (it did in fact significantly aid justice).
I checked and indeed he is still in prison. He is at Clallam Bay Corrections Center as of 1/7/20. He is listed under William B Jackson. Also, your site has a really obnoxious constant popup ad from opgr.org that makes is very difficult to post from a smartphone. Just a heads up.
Not sure that’s the same guy…the William Jackson I located at Clallam Bay is in his 20s and of native American heritage.
Thanks for the heads-up about the pop-up ad. I’ll ask my freelance IT guy to look into it next time we talk. I’m surprised because I was actually under the impression that the ad network didn’t use pop-ups.
That’s not him, his location hasn’t been public since 2001. The one listed there was born in 1994. It’s not the same William B Jackson.
Thanks for writing in — I cetainly hope he’s still in prison!
I was just with family 2 weeks ago and they would’ve mentioned if he was out. With his sentencing he shouldn’t be eligible for early release or parole, so he’s still got 36 years.
Glad the justice system is working — thanks so much for the update!
Thanks for this – and so sorry for the family, for whom this probably feels like yesterday… Jackson is pure evil. I imagine that in prison he’ll be segregated from main population as child murderers are, as we know, vilified.
There’s no seeming prospect that Jackson will be released – thank goodness. Isn’t there something called Vinelink or some such, whereby interested parties – and certainly the victims’ families – are automatically, or can sign up to be, notified of perps’ release? For sex crimes this may be mandatory, but I don’t think Jackson was convicted of such.
I saw another website that mentions William Bradley Jackson as in custody “out of state.” I then found a William Jackson in California’s inmate search. He is 53 years old so he is the right age. CDCR# G29278. This inmate is eligible for parole in July, 2026.
Unfortunately I couldn’t find anything about him or the crime committed. But could very well be him.
The age is right, but he’s not due for release ’til c 2055, having been sentenced to 56 yrs from 99/00. Appeals info online includes affirmation of that sentence. Unless there’s another of that name and age imprisoned – quite a coincidence – there must have been a publically unreported change to sentencing. Yet a poster above, who knows the family, reports nothing, and I’d have expected them to know if his sentence had been cut.
Where locations are ‘undisclosed,’ however, they would not be available on any inmate search – so I think your man’s not our man…
Daughter “in the way”? Give her to one of the willing relatives! I think logical reason for not doing this was additional sympathy Jackson would get from a missing/murdered daughter vice abandoning her would from the new girlfriend.
It’s extraordinary and deeply tragic he didn’t. It’s been speculated – but is unevidenced – that a potential explanation was sexual abuse: he needed to silence her in case she said anything. Even if he had no feeling for her (evidently), why would he risk murder rather than give her up… unless there was something to conceal? It would’ve been perfectly plausible to ask social services or relatives to take her as a single man who could claim he other couldn’t cope on his own or thought she needed a mother-figure. Many fathers would be concerned about raising a young daughter alone. It’s hard to avoid the conclusion that the worst, most appalling course was chosen because something was threatening him… Despite this, for her sake I hope he wasn’t.
God bless Valiree and those who loved and lost her.
A mother would’ve gotten life in prison, but a father gets less. Male privilege in action.
Criminal justice certainly doesn’t treat men less harshly than women; stats show the opposite. For example, women with children are frequently given a non-custodial sentence for the sake of the child for a crime that would otherwise attract it – including if she was he. Being a father doesn’t count.
I don’t necessarily disagree with this unequal treatment for the sake of children, so long as it’s acknowledged and not obviously unreasonable per her crime.
In this case a woman is likely to have got exactly the same sentence.
Nope. Male violence is conventional; female violence is sensational and “unladylike.”
Non-sequitur: although you’re right in observing the relative novelty of female violence, your argument is irrelevant as to mine. Women are treated more favourably than men for violent crime (most obviously reflected in the very few women given capital punishment relative to men for equally egregious crimes – a fact widely acknowledged in literature). Indeed, just as violence is ‘unladylike’, men sending women to prison may be thought unfitting treatment of the fairer sex, as one factor in explaining discrepancy. With more women in the judiciary, this may change.
I went to high school with Brad. He had a red face temper and flew off the handle routinely. His mother was severally mentally ill which explains Brad’s issues. His wife was a prostitute and clearly was killed years before he killed his daughter.
Correction – my aunt Roseanne was NEVER married to him. And she disappeared in 1992 — her death is still unproven. Even so, we fully believe he played a role in it. Especially since her disappearance happened weeks before a custody hearing. She was a good mother, despite her choice in work.
Such a damned shame this little girl was killed. The fact that her mother was not there to protect her from this monster of a father is equally sad and infuriating. To think that he not only drugged his little girl at the behest of that chic but then killed his own flesh and blood and basically dumped her body to be with his goofy girlfriend just pisses me off as a father. Valerie was totally reliant on him and had no advocate. He could’ve left the child with the grandparents and run off with the lady, take her to child protection services or just f—-ing LEAVE. To end her short life is just inexcusable. He’s an evil SOB. I hope he lives a long life in prison as an old man with severe arthritic issues, rotten teeth and bowel incontinence victimized by other inmates. That would just be befitting.
It’s good to know that this story is still being talked about and my little sister and mother remembered. In the coming week we will celebrate Valiree’s 31st Birthday. Not a day goes by that I don’t think of her. I have poster sized pictures of them both hanging in my home and love telling stories about them to my own children. Just prior to her disappearance, My mother had sent me and my other two sisters to live with my oldest sister’s dad so she could get into rehab in Arizona near my Uncle Winnie (John Stone) and begin to get her life on track and start the fight to win custody of Valiree back. I believe it was her intent to clean up and fight for Valiree that sealed her fate. In years past I used to dream of getting a letter from Brad, knowing his life was all but over, telling me what he did with my mother. He was very controlling and abusive. I have no doubt he is the reason my mother is no longer living. But I thank God she knew The Lord and she and Valiree will welcome me with open arms when I am called home. Thank you all for your discussion and sympathies.
It seems like, at least in 2019, William Brad Jackson was still in prison:
https://www.casemine.com/judgement/us/5c989d7e342cca322edd7b1a
Website article makes it obvious that it’s the same guy because they’re discussing the case
This solves the mystery of where he’s been incarcerated — thanks so much for writing in with the tip! I just updated the post accordingly.
You’re welcome. I find myself inevitably wanting to look up “where are they now?” info after watching episodes, and have enjoyed the info you’ve posted here, so I’m glad to add little details as I find them.