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[water bubbling] [theme music] [stirring music] NARRATOR: Parris
Island, South Carolina.
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It sits near the mouth
of Broad River, a sheltered tidal estuary that
feeds into the Atlantic Ocean.
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[ominous music] - There's a tremendous
amount of water. There's both,
obviously, the ocean,
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but you have a lot
of rivers and swampy areas in our jurisdiction. And it's called the low
country for a reason.
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It's very low to sea level,
and there's a tremendous amount of water in the area.
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RYAN NEILL: The Broad River
is known for its fishing. It's known for its
family outings.
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It's known for a place
to go boating and have fun. [ominous music] NARRATOR: Memorial Day,
a busy public holiday
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where tourists
and local residents make the most
of their free time. [stirring music]
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- Loaded up my boat. Got all my stuff together. Early that morning, I actually
put in at this boat ramp
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at the Broad River
boat ramp and proceed to head up the Broad
River towards Parris Island.
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- A fisherman who was
fishing in the area had spotted a body
on an area of shell deposits.
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- I noticed something red
and white on the bank. It was very bright. And my first
thoughts was it was
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a cooler laying on the bank. NARRATOR: As Carey
drew closer, he realized the object was, in
fact, a human form, and female.
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- Her legs and her
arms were pretty much the same color as the sand. It was a sand shell break.
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And she was so blended in,
you really couldn't see it. Her feet were down in the sand.
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She was face down,
laying on her stomach. It was so hard to tell until
you got right up close.
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It's not something
everyone should find. [water bubbling] [stirring music] - Because of the severity
of the decomposition
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and the presence of animal
activity along the remains, a visual ID could not be made.
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Saltwater is home to a number
of versatile fish and aquatic life. Each of these can
have different impacts
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on remains that are in water. Crustaceans are
known to heavily feed on decomposing remains.
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They are naturally scavengers. So they could sit there
and do a lot of damage to the body compared
to fish that feed
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on the body out of curiosity. They'll sit there
and take little nibbles, but they don't
do as much damage
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as crustaceans normally do. RYAN NEILL:
Historically, you see in that the warmer months,
which, in this case
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is May, the water is
starting to warm up, animal activity
starts to increase, but also decomposition
starts to occur.
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- The fact that she was in the
water that long, it's brackish. It's a combination
of saltwater and freshwater.
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Due to the tides, her
body was badly decomposed. That has a detrimental
effect on any investigation.
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SARAH MORMINO:
In a case like this where a body is found in water,
there's a lot of trauma
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and little
circumstances are known. Investigators cannot
jump to any conclusions.
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This could be
a suicide from jumping off one of the local bridges. This could be an accident
from falling off a boat.
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This could be
of natural causes, or it could be
of suspicious causes. The investigators must
keep their eyes open
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and rely on what the water
and the environment and the circumstances
of the case are telling them.
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CAREY FURMAN: After
I located the body, I left 30, 45 minutes
after Coast Guard had
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come in with
their helicopter and they had already
dispatched several wildlife boats, and search and rescue
to come out to get the body.
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At that point, my day is over. NARRATOR: Working out
where the body came from would also be no easy task.
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[water sloshing] [stirring music] - This sort of Broad River
area, the whole sort of estuary
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around Beaufort, is
one of the largest marine areas in the county. The movement of water
changes every six
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hours or so, which
means that there's a lot of flushing going on. So it's a complex
area to study.
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And certainly tracking
a body in this area becomes quite difficult. NARRATOR: But their first
step was to work
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out the victim's identity. And the answer lay
in a missing person report. RYAN NEILL: We are
an assisting agency.
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Part of my duties
were to maintain good relationships
with the sheriffs and police chiefs of the area.
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The police chief of Hampton
called me that day and said that he had had a
missing person's report filed.
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NARRATOR: The missing person
was 34-year-old Masako Miller from Beaufort, the mother
of two young boys aged 4 and 8,
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and a 12-year-old girl. - Masako Miller didn't
show up to work, and that was highly
irregular for her.
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She was always on time,
never came in late, and she hardly ever
came out without letting
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somebody know that she wasn't
going to be there that day. NARRATOR: Concerned,
her coworker,
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went to Masako's home. DAVID WILLIAMS: Went
inside and found that the children
had been left alone,
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which was highly irregular. Ms. Miller would not leave
her children by themselves.
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SEAN THORNTON: She is
a mother with small children. And she just, apparently in the
middle of the night, vanishes.
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And they don't
know where she is. RYAN NEILL: She
had a 12-year-old, and then two younger children.
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And she also had left a note
that was written in crayon. And the note said,
"I'll be right back.
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Get ready for school. Went with someone. Love you all." The daughter felt that was
odd because her mother would
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never leave a note like that. And on top of that,
the note was not written in her mother's handwriting.
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SEAN THORNTON: I
think everybody was concerned at that point. But the trigger, I
think, for all of us,
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was the fact that
she did not seem to be the person, based
upon her coworkers and talking to her children,
that she would have just
00:08:17
disappeared and left
her small children there to fend for themselves. [stirring music]
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- Well over 90% of individuals
who go missing do turn up, and they're unharmed. And so even though I
think there's concern
00:08:35
here because of Masako's
history, the fact that she has children, that she's
a reliable employee,
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I think there's still
going to be this hope. DAVID WILLIAMS: There was
no sign of any forced entry.
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There was no break in. Nothing of that sort. It was just like she had just
walked away and vanished.
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Her car was still
there, but she was not. [ominous music] - We also learned
that Ms. Miller was
00:09:08
an immigrant from
Japan, that she had come to the country
several years prior and had gained US citizenship.
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But what we found is her
parents lived in Japan. She had a very close
relationship with her mother,
00:09:24
and they communicated
on a regular basis. But we needed to talk
to her mother as well.
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SEAN THORNTON: Had
she been nervous when she talked to her parents? Had she been scared?
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Maybe she gave them a clue
as to what had occurred. Maybe she mentioned a name. Maybe she indicated what
she was concerned about.
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DAVID WILLIAMS: Hampton police
department went to check if her debit card had been
used on the night
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of the 25th or in the early
morning hours of the 26th. And they discovered that it
had been used at a Shell gas
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station in Hampton. RYAN NEILL: As we sent
agents to the gas station to start obtaining
video footage
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or see if they
actually had it, we had to think that this
could have actually been her
00:10:10
using the card. NARRATOR: Keeping
all options open, police put together
a list of people
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who might have seen Masako, or
been to her home the night she vanished. - Everybody's trying
to do everything
00:10:25
as quickly as possible. But you also don't want to have
tunnel vision and just zero
00:10:29
in on one person, and then you
miss something important if it happens to be somebody else.
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So the way that
you do that is you start interviewing
as many people as you can,
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as quickly as you can
to try and determine who the perpetrator might be. In this case, there had
been an air conditioner
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guy that had come
out rather late because it's in the summertime
in the South and it was hot.
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And I think he was there around
10 o'clock on the evening of the 25th. So that was probably
the last sighting of anybody.
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Because the children answered
the door, but one of them was already asleep in a chair.
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So when the kids
went to bed, that's the last time anybody saw her. DAVID WILLIAMS: Two
of Ms. Miller's children
00:11:13
were fathered
by Kelvin Jackson. After Masako Miller
and Kelvin Jackson split up,
00:11:23
she started dating another go. SEAN THORNTON: You
have a new boyfriend. You have the father
of her daughter,
00:11:30
who is a different person
than Kelvin Jackson. You also have the air
conditioner guy,
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who was one of the last
people other than her children certainly to see her alive.
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RYAN NEILL: We need to find
who else was at the residence. There's always a handful
of cases that you can remember
00:11:47
and you can recall
through your career that where you ramped
it up even more. And this was one of them.
00:11:54
[ominous music] NARRATOR: In South
Carolina, 34-year-old mother of three Masako Miller
has vanished from
00:12:10
her home during the night. - The lack of any forced
entry, the lack of her house
00:12:16
being in disarray. We felt like this was going
to be somebody that she knew, that she was comfortable with.
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For some reason,
whoever this person was that came
into her residence, was comfortable coming in.
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NARRATOR: Police have begun
narrowing down the last people who had seen her. - When we interviewed the
heating and cooling repairman,
00:12:39
he had indicated that
he arrived at the house that night. So he is now probably the last
person to see Ms. Miller
00:12:47
before her disappearance. And he reported
to us that he saw nothing out of the ordinary.
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- After interviewing
the new boyfriend, we were able to check out
his alibi for the time period
00:12:59
when Ms. Miller disappeared. And his alibi was solid. He was nowhere
near that location.
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- We had a couple agents go out
and start doing a neighborhood canvass, which would
be going door-to-door
00:13:12
to her neighbors
and see if they had seen anything suspicious. One of her neighbors
reported to us
00:13:18
that he had seen her
ex-boyfriend, Kelvin Jackson, in the neighborhood
that evening.
00:13:26
NARRATOR: 34-year-old Kelvin
Jackson was also the father of Masako's two youngest boys.
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- While our crime scene unit
is working on the residence and we have now learned that
her financial bank card had
00:13:40
been attempted to be
used, we immediately sent investigators
to that gas station
00:13:45
to see if they had
surveillance footage of who was using that card. - And they pulled the video
for the time frame
00:13:54
that the card was used. And they found out that Kelvin
Jackson, who was the estranged
00:14:01
boyfriend of Masako
Miller, had used her card at the gas station. That was declined
because there wasn't
00:14:10
enough money in her account
for the transaction. So he went inside, so you
could see him clearly
00:14:17
on the camera on the inside
of the convenience store, and he paid in cash
for the gas.
00:14:24
- We wanted to look a little
closer to that video. We wanted to, let's make
sure that Ms. Miller
00:14:28
is not in the car. That she not willingly
left with him. But what we saw on the video
was once the card was declined,
00:14:35
there was no conversation
back to the car. He immediately went
in the gas station
00:14:39
and paid cash, and came
back out and pumped his gas. There was no indication
that anybody else
00:14:47
was in that vehicle with him. DAVID WILLIAMS: When we spoke
to Ms. Miller's new boyfriend,
00:14:54
he said he never had any
problems with Kelvin Jackson, but he understood
that there was
00:14:58
some jealousy on Mr.
Jackson's part towards him. Kelvin Jackson thought
that she was disrespecting
00:15:06
him by dating another man when
he already had children by her. There were several leads
we had in this case, other
00:15:15
than just Kelvin Jackson
had used her card. We knew that she
had placed a call to an air conditioning person
on the night of the 25th.
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- At some point, I guess Ms.
Miller felt very comfortable with him because she started
to share a little bit more,
00:15:34
that she was having troubles
with an ex-boyfriend. She got sugar put
in her gas tank,
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and I guess that was because
the unit was low on Freon. And she started to question
whether that had been an act
00:15:46
of sabotage to her unit. But the HVAC man
reported that to us, and we felt that was
very interesting, too,
00:15:52
especially that she used
the term former boyfriend. DAVID WILLIAMS:
That just gave us
00:15:58
more suspicion
on his involvement in her disappearance. [stirring music] RYAN NEILL: We've
identified Mr. Jackson.
00:16:09
We've now made contact
with Mr. Jackson, and he is coming to sit down
for an interview with us
00:16:14
and discuss Ms. Miller. We felt like we
had enough probable cause to go ahead and charge
him with credit card fraud.
00:16:23
- Unlawful use
of a debit card is a relatively low level felony. And the concern was that if he
bonded out, he might disappear.
00:16:31
So, they clearly had
probable cause to arrest him. DAVID WILLIAMS: And then when
he was confronted with the fact
00:16:39
that he was on camera using
Ms. Miller's debit card, then he admitted,
yeah, I was there,
00:16:45
but that was an old
car that I had, and I did not stop
by her residence. SEAN THORNTON: And then,
of course, they
00:16:51
were able to confront
him with the fact that we have two eyewitnesses
that saw him walking
00:16:55
around her neighborhood. RYAN NEILL: As the interview
was progressing, you could tell Mr. Jackson
was very uncomfortable
00:17:02
being interviewed by us. You could see his body
language and his answers were not being very honest with us.
00:17:13
And in this case,
one of the questions we have for ourselves
is, if you're not involved with her
disappearance,
00:17:18
you have no reason
to be dishonest with us. Especially with the mother
of your two children,
00:17:23
you should be very
forthcoming with information. But every time we
ask him questions,
00:17:27
he was giving us one answer. And we were confronting
him with the truth, and then he would change his
answer to meet the truth.
00:17:35
NARRATOR: Police already
had their prime suspect, Kelvin Jackson, in custody
for fraudulently
00:17:41
using Masako's bank card. But that wouldn't keep him
off the streets for long. - After checking
the phone records,
00:17:50
it was discovered that the last
known location of the phone was on I-95 in Highway 21.
00:18:00
The bad news was
that Ms. Miller was not at that location. RYAN NEILL: We're asking
to produce some missing persons
00:18:10
information so that
we can start getting this out to the media. DAVID WILLIAMS: We got
a call from a person
00:18:16
in the vicinity
of I-95 and Highway 21 that they had found a phone
on the side of the road.
00:18:24
They had powered it up. And when they
powered it up, they saw that there was a lot of
phone calls and text messages
00:18:30
wanting to know
where they were. They got scared,
and took it and threw it into a little
pond near their residence.
00:18:41
- A couple of divers
went in the water. And within 20 or 30 minutes,
they located the phone.
00:18:47
And it was sent to our forensic
laboratory for any type of future testing. Nothing of value came from the
actual recovery of the phone.
00:18:56
We would be actually be looking
for DNA or fingerprints. And once they're submerged,
those are actually of no value.
00:19:02
SEAN THORNTON:
There weren't phone calls back to the children. There weren't phone
calls to family.
00:19:07
There weren't text messages. There weren't other sightings. Nobody had seen her.
00:19:11
They really weren't any
signs of life from Masako that you would hope for. RYAN NEILL: So, at that
point, we were pretty certain
00:19:21
foul play had occurred
at this point. NARRATOR: With no leads
on Masako's whereabouts,
00:19:28
detectives feared
for her safety. Then came the breakthrough
they'd been dreading.
00:19:36
[stirring music] RYAN NEILL:
On the afternoon of May 30, I received a phone
call that a body
00:19:47
had been found in the Broad
River in Beaufort County. SEAN THORNTON: Masako's body
was found by a fisherman.
00:19:55
She was identified, at least
initially, by a tattoo. RYAN NEILL: We knew Masako had
a very distinguishing tattoo.
00:20:05
We wanted to examine this body
to see if we could at least maybe see this tattoo.
00:20:11
[stirring music] - Oftentimes, when we have
a situation like this, the tattoo may be somewhat
disrupted or not visible.
00:20:24
But we can take certain
things like peroxide, in fact, and put on that tattoo,
which makes it come to life
00:20:30
and becomes much more visible,
at least for a short time. And we can take photos
of that, and then hopefully
00:20:36
make an identification. RYAN NEILL: We unzip
the body bag with the corner, and we were able to find
a tattoo that matched
00:20:45
the tattoo Ms. Miller had. This gave us enough to where
we could proceed to say that she's been identified.
00:20:51
And at that point,
the coroner agreed that this is the body of Masako Miller. NARRATOR: Detectives
needed to work out
00:20:58
where Masako's body
entered the water and how it ended
up on this shore. They started looking
at the tidal currents.
00:21:07
[water sloshing] - This isn't the sort of a
semi-enclosed sea, if you like. You get a very
different circulation
00:21:16
pattern to the ones you'd
expect from the normal tide. - It's my theory
that Ms. Miller
00:21:25
was placed into the Broad
River in the hopes that her body would wash
out into the Atlantic Ocean
00:21:31
and never be found. NARRATOR: But the tides
seemed to have worked against Masako's killer.
00:21:38
SIMON BOXALL: The body
would have initially gone, counting towards
the sea, and then come
00:21:42
back into the tidal cycle. And the fact it was found
on the high watermark is not surprising.
00:21:48
It's likely to have been
trapped by the oyster shells. As the water receded, it would
have left the body behind.
00:21:57
NARRATOR: Could her body have
been dumped from the bridge that runs across Broad River?
00:22:03
- At the time that
her body was dumped, we had strong West
and Southwest winds. Regardless of whether
the tides going in or
00:22:11
out, if her body was dumped
at that end of the bridge, the West and Southwest
winds would
00:22:18
have pushed her body
across the Broad River, and she would have ended up
in the area that I found her.
00:22:29
NARRATOR: But her body was
badly damaged and decomposing, and could have been in this
marine tidal environment
00:22:35
for up to four days
since she went missing. - It was very difficult
for us to tell
00:22:42
if there was an actual
cause of death with her. So we were going
to now have to rely
00:22:46
on forensic experts
in forensic pathology to actually give us
a cause of death. [stirring music]
00:23:04
NARRATOR: South
Carolina Law Enforcement officers believe a body
found on Parris Island
00:23:09
is mother of three
Masako Miller. What was a missing persons
case is now a potential
00:23:17
murder investigation. [stirring music] - Now that we actually know
that it's a homicide because we
00:23:29
have a body, the investigation
takes on more urgent approach than just a missing person.
00:23:37
We had suspected it was
a homicide all along, but now that we
had the body, we ramped up our investigation
to try to identify
00:23:45
what happened to Ms. Miller. NARRATOR: But detectives still
have no idea how she died.
00:23:53
- Part of the complexities
of investigating a water death is the injuries that
the body sustained
00:24:01
during the time
they're in the water, especially if it's
a lengthy amount of time.
00:24:07
- Our initial examination
of Ms. Miller, we could not see any type of
injuries that would have been
00:24:13
consistent with her death. There was no indications
of strangulation. There was no indications of a
gunshot wound, of stab wounds.
00:24:21
But also the presence of animal
life and animal activity and the damage that they had done
to tissue, not to mention
00:24:30
the damage just due
to decomposition, it was difficult for us
to tell the cause of death.
00:24:37
[water sloshing] - This area is dominated
by oyster reefs used for commercial fishing, as well
as sort of a natural reef
00:24:47
in its own right. These reefs act
as havens for young fish, quite an amazing life
cycle in this region.
00:24:55
But it also means
as the oysters die off, we get a lot
of shells left behind, and those can be quite sharp
and dangerous to a human.
00:25:05
MICHELLE DUPRE: There was
a lot of postmortem damage to the body. As the body floats
down and rubs
00:25:12
up against those oyster shells,
the skin is often destroyed. And a lot of things
are covered up
00:25:18
or evidence is taken
away because of that. NARRATOR: The body was taken to
a police pathology laboratory
00:25:27
to look for a possible
cause of death and to confirm her identity. - We had obtained dental
records and some DNA samples
00:25:38
from known standards
of hers to try to compare them to the body. And ultimately, dental records
are what identified Ms. Miller.
00:25:47
MICHELLE DUPRE: Dental
records is kind of unique because it isn't like DNA. There is no database
for dental records.
00:25:53
We have to have an idea
who the victim is, and then hopefully
find a dentist that she went
to that can provide
00:26:01
evidence or dental records. And that's what happened here. - According to the autopsy, she
had sustained some blunt trauma
00:26:11
injuries that were
not able to be determined if they
were prior to her death or after her death.
00:26:21
NARRATOR: Police already had
their prime suspect in custody. Fearing he could flee.
00:26:27
They'd arrested Kelvin
Jackson, father to two of Miller's children,
for fraudulent use
00:26:31
of Masako's credit card. But they didn't have enough
to charge him with murder. - You know, we really sat
back and looked at everything
00:26:41
involved in the investigation. And we you look at her phone
records, her bank records,
00:26:46
the interviews that
we have conducted to include her new boyfriend. There was nothing to indicate
anybody's involvement
00:26:53
other than Mr.
Jackson's involvement with her disappearance. NARRATOR: But with
so little evidence,
00:26:59
investigators weren't
even sure exactly where her body went into the water. - As you see
around, there's only
00:27:07
a couple places where
you can actually place the body in the water. The bridge, top of that
is a busy bridge.
00:27:15
Whereas this place here
provides you more secrecy, and there's easy
access to the water
00:27:21
as far as placing the body
in the water here. He felt like he could
cover his crime by placing
00:27:32
her in this body of water. - I think the reason
that perpetrators dispose of a body in water
is people thinking,
00:27:43
OK, this is going to be a way
to dispose of this victim. And it's very hard
to find people.
00:27:48
I think he's so confident he's
going to get away with it. NARRATOR: Her killer was wrong.
00:27:55
[ominous music] JIM CARUSO: So a body
in the water will sink, particularly
if clothed, and
00:28:09
hang around near the bottom. As decomposition moves along,
microorganisms produce gas.
00:28:18
And that causes the torso,
in particular, to bloat. Eventually, some of that
gas may cause the body
00:28:25
to come to the surface,
and that's when we often discover the remains. - In this case, it is likely
that Miller's body traveled
00:28:39
a significant way
with the current until it ultimately was
washed up on the bank.
00:28:46
NARRATOR: With no witnesses
or firm evidence of foul play, police needed
to strengthen their case.
00:28:55
DAVID WILLIAMS: In another
interview with Mr. Jackson, he told the agents that he
spent the night at a hotel
00:29:06
in Walterboro, South Carolina,
on the night of the 25th, early morning of the 26th of May.
00:29:15
- We felt like this
was another case of him being dishonest with us. Because he lives in a residence
in which is the opposite
00:29:21
way of Ms. Miller's. - The hotel that he stayed
is probably 150 miles from Columbia where he worked.
00:29:34
[stirring music] - He had no reason
to be in Walterboro. So we dispatched
a team of agents
00:29:46
to that hotel,
where they received information from
the clerk that he had actually paid cash for a room.
00:29:53
And we also dispatched a crime
scene unit to that hotel to go ahead and process that
room for any type of evidence
00:29:58
that may be there. DAVID WILLIAMS: I believe that
he went to this hotel to clean
00:30:05
up before he went
to work on the 26th, after the night that
he'd had disposed of Masako Miller's body
after he had killed her.
00:30:17
RYAN NEILL: As they were
processing the scene, I think we needed to make
sure that Ms. Miller was
00:30:20
never in that room,
whether alive or deceased. NARRATOR: But no
forensic evidence
00:30:30
placed Masako
in the hotel room, so the DNA search
moved to her home from where she'd
seemingly vanished.
00:30:39
RYAN NEILL: We collected
her bedclothes. Because we also got to rule out
whether a sexual assault had
00:30:43
occurred and everything else. So we wanted to make
sure that we collected everything we possibly could.
00:30:50
DAVID WILLIAMS: The things
that involve DNA, it takes quite a bit
of time to get that analysis
00:30:56
back to tell us what it is. NARRATOR: With tests
underway, detectives kept building a picture
of their prime suspect,
00:31:06
Kelvin Jackson,
and his relationship with victim, Masako Miller. SEAN THORNTON: Her
child, her daughter,
00:31:16
specifically recalled several
instances of domestic violence. She recounted one
in particular that was so bad.
00:31:25
Kelvin Jackson had taken
Masako into the bathroom and locked her in there. And her daughter was trying
to get in the bathroom door
00:31:34
with a knife to try
to protect her mother. So there was clearly
instances of domestic violence
00:31:42
that had been occurring
prior to her disappearance. JONI JOHNSTON: I
think it's interesting
00:31:47
how perpetrators really
underestimate children and how observant they are,
and what they keep in
00:31:53
and what they know. Masako's daughter provided
some amazing insight into their relationship.
00:32:01
I mean, she tells investigators
numerous times about how Kelvin Jackson
would hit her mom,
00:32:08
how he had locked
her in the bathroom, pushed her to the floor. Just incredibly
abusive to her mom.
00:32:17
RYAN NEILL: So, Ms.
Miller's current boyfriend, he's told us that he felt like
Mr. Jackson was a bit jealous
00:32:23
that Ms. Miller had moved on. SEAN THORNTON: He had made a
couple of threats, one of which
00:32:27
I was actually able to get into
court because it was overheard by someone over
the phone and they were
00:32:32
able to identify his voice. There had been
an occasion where sugar had been poured
into the tank of her vehicle,
00:32:41
which had ruined the vehicle. We didn't know
for sure who did that, but it certainly
seemed in line with
00:32:47
a jealous and/or
abusive paramour, for lack of a better word. JONI JOHNSTON: He
has actually moved
00:32:55
in with his new
girlfriend, and yet there are some significant
indicators that he
00:33:01
is not emotionally moved on. So, for example, he will
pop around the house. He continues to text.
00:33:08
He will show up unannounced. He's been known to come
through her window without being invited.
00:33:13
And he continues
to take money from her. Masako's daughter said
that her stepfather
00:33:19
thought he owned her mom. And I think when she
said that, she completely hit the nail on the head.
00:33:26
[stirring music] - Now that we've found
Ms. Miller's body, it was determined to go back
and interview Mr. Jackson again
00:33:39
and confront him with the fact
that we now have her body to see if he had any
additional information
00:33:45
that he might want to tell us. We're still waiting
on the forensic stuff. But in the interim, several
of the different agents
00:33:55
at the office,
their specialties are homicide. They thought that they could
interview him and possibly get
00:34:01
him to, you know, to confess. He was interviewed, like,
three or four more times,
00:34:06
but he would not
admit to the homicide. - Agent Charles
asked him, he said, would you be interested in
taking a polygraph examination?
00:34:14
And he said, sure, I would. And he goes, well, stand
by and we'll set you up. We got you set up next door
to go ahead and take one.
00:34:21
You could see a look come
upon him that he knew he was in trouble at this point.
00:34:26
[beeping noises] Polygraphs probably
are not 100% effective, and I think
everybody knows it's
00:34:32
just a law enforcement tool. They're not
admissible in court, but I think it can
help you with actually,
00:34:38
am I going
in the right direction? [beeping noises] And Mr. Jackson was
administered a polygraph,
00:34:43
and he failed miserably. [beeping noises] - The problem
in a case like this is there is no smoking gun.
00:34:50
You don't even know
what the, for sure, what the cause of death is. - I need proof beyond
a reasonable doubt.
00:34:57
What means something to me is,
do I have enough to convict? Because otherwise
he's just going
00:35:02
to be your guest
for a few months, and then he's going to get
out and go do it again.
00:35:08
DAVID WILLIAMS: Mr. Jackson,
throughout this entire ordeal with us interviewing
him, he always appeared
00:35:15
very cold, very calculating. You knew from his demeanor
that he was capable of this,
00:35:24
but we just had to prove it. NARRATOR: But they still
lacked the crucial proof that Kelvin Jackson was
responsible for the murder
00:35:34
of Masako Miller. [stirring music] NARRATOR: In South Carolina, a
young mother's decomposing body
00:35:53
has been found washed up on
the shoreline of Broad River. Police have strong
circumstantial evidence
00:36:00
her ex-partner, Kelvin
Jackson, was the killer. - You could have
probably charged him.
00:36:07
But when we do this,
we contact a solicitor, and we give them the evidence
and they'll say need more.
00:36:13
We knew at this
point, we didn't have enough evidence to arrest him. NARRATOR: But they
were still waiting
00:36:21
for the results
of what they hoped would be crucial forensics. The first, a sample
of handwriting
00:36:27
on a note that police believed
Jackson was trying to pass off as a message from Masako.
00:36:34
- It was strange
in appearance, the handwriting. It looked like
somebody had purposely
00:36:39
altered their handwriting
to write this note. - Her daughter
looked at the note and didn't think it looked
like her mother's handwriting.
00:36:50
She thought it looked like
Kelvin Jackson's handwriting. DAVID WILLIAMS: I
obtained a search
00:36:54
warrant for his jail
cell at the Beaufort County Detention Center. I knew there would be
paper and pen there,
00:37:02
and that he would
have some type of correspondence in his cell. - We had found some
paperwork in his personnel
00:37:09
file at his place of employment
that he had filled out. And we used those
items and sent them
00:37:14
to the laboratory
for our handwriting experts to compare to the note. DAVID WILLIAMS: They
were able to determine
00:37:23
that, most likely, Kelvin
Jackson penned the note. NARRATOR: Detectives
were also waiting
00:37:32
for the results of DNA tests
from the victim's bed sheets. Meanwhile, they continued to
question prime suspect Jackson.
00:37:42
DAVID WILLIAMS: On the last
time we interviewed him, Jackson even admitted
that he was in Ms.
00:37:48
Miller's house
on the night of the 25th into the morning of the 26th. They'd even had sex.
00:37:56
And he left, used her
card, and went to work. NARRATOR: Then investigators
got the breakthrough
00:38:06
they'd been waiting for. - We ended up getting
the DNA report back from our forensic laboratory.
00:38:14
The report was
interesting to us because it didn't include
any known DNA found on the letter or fingerprint.
00:38:23
Testing was negative
on the letter. But what we did find
was, we found his DNA present on her bedding.
00:38:32
DAVID WILLIAMS:
It was determined that on the pillowcase that was
taken from Ms. Miller's house,
00:38:37
there was a large stain. The stain ended up being
Ms. Miller's saliva and blood mixture.
00:38:47
And on the corners
of the pillow were the touch DNA
of Mr. Jackson. MICHELLE DUPRE: DNA was found
in the middle of the pillow.
00:39:00
We sometimes call
that a death mask. Because when a pillow is
put over someone's face,
00:39:05
their DNA is in the middle
of that pillow. But the perpetrator's
DNA is on the outskirts,
00:39:10
or the rest of that pillow. That's what broke
the case here. SEAN THORNTON: Once
I learned that,
00:39:18
it certainly seemed
to me to be consistent with her being asphyxiated
or smothered to death.
00:39:26
We believe she was
killed in her house. Well, why do we believe that? Because she's got three
sleeping children in the house.
00:39:33
So if she had been drug out
of the house kicking and screaming, or if there had been
a really significant fight,
00:39:39
you would think that the kids
would have probably heard that. You know, all these
things kind of
00:39:43
are tying together
to indicate to me that it's consistent with the
way we believe she was killed,
00:39:49
which is smothered. NARRATOR: But would
this evidence be enough to convince a jury?
00:39:57
SEAN THORNTON: Unfortunately,
because she had been dumped in a body of water-- and not to be graphic, but
where there is animal activity,
00:40:05
crabs and other things-- there was a substantial
amount of damage to the body. Nothing of any forensic value
was pulled off of the body.
00:40:14
In fact, if you looked at the
autopsy report, cause of death is listed as undetermined.
00:40:20
So it makes my job
a lot harder. - We felt like all
along we had a very strong circumstantial case.
00:40:29
When the handwriting came
back, we felt like that case got even stronger. And now that we
had the DNA back,
00:40:36
we felt like it
was even stronger, and it was a case
that we were going to be able to successfully
take to court.
00:40:47
DAVID WILLIAMS: I think the
reason Kelvin Jackson killed Masako Miller was jealousy.
00:40:54
He was no longer in her life. She had moved on. She had another boyfriend. And it drove him crazy.
00:41:03
[stirring music] - He would often say
to Masako, don't disrespect me, or you're disrespecting
me by doing this.
00:41:17
His women need to be
in his control. And that if they're not,
and they're doing things
00:41:23
that he doesn't like or that
are against what he wants, this is a sign of disrespect.
00:41:28
Then they deserve punishment. SEAN THORNTON: I think
that Kelvin Jackson was in the area of her
home during the time
00:41:40
that the air conditioner
guy was there. And it's my belief that Kelvin
saw a vehicle over there
00:41:46
that he didn't know
or didn't recognize, and she was dating
somebody new. He went over there
sometime after
00:41:53
that gentleman left,
which was around 10 o'clock, 10:30 at night. Likely after the kids went
to bed because none of the kids
00:42:00
recalled seeing Kelvin
Jackson that night. I think that he
overpowered Masako. I think that he used
the pillow to suffocate her.
00:42:14
I think he then takes her
body, he puts her in the trunk. He drives her to Beaufort,
and then disposes of her body
00:42:24
into the Broad River. NARRATOR: This
was where Jackson made his greatest mistake.
00:42:35
JONI JOHNSTON: I think when
you look at Kelvin Jackson and how he disposed
of Masako's body,
00:42:40
it was clear that he
really had no understanding of how water flows,
and also the impact
00:42:48
that it has on a dead body. The body's going to rise. It may end up actually
coming to the surface.
00:42:58
So that's one thing I think
that he did not understand. And then, of course, the fact
that the tides change.
00:43:06
It really requires a lot of
knowledge and sophistication. If you're disposing
of a body in water
00:43:12
because you think it's the best
place to avoid detection, you better understand how
all those things work.
00:43:18
[ominous music] - On May 26, 2011, Masako
Miller went missing. On June 10 of 2011,
we ended up arresting
00:43:34
Kelvin Jackson for her murder. - After we was able
to arrest Mr. Jackson, Ms. Miller's family and friends
were greatly relieved.
00:43:44
They were sad,
of course, because they had lost their mother
and their friend, but at least
the arrest was made.
00:43:52
NARRATOR: However, Kelvin
Jackson pleaded not guilty. [stirring music] SEAN THORNTON: The trial
started on July 30 of 2013.
00:44:07
Took all week. We called about 31
witnesses total, and that's a little more than
average in a murder case.
00:44:17
DAVID WILLIAMS: Any
case that you have, strictly circumstantial
evidence, the defense attorney
is going to try
00:44:22
to rip that apart
because they know they don't have any eyewitnesses. He had a good defense
attorney, tried
00:44:28
to cast doubt on the evidence. RYAN NEILL: After the state
rested their case, the defense then
had an opportunity
00:44:37
to put on their defense. And they chose not
to put on the defense. They put up no witnesses.
00:44:44
They made their closing
arguments, and the case went to the jury. I didn't time it, but I think
the jury was out 18 minutes.
00:44:55
SEAN THORNTON: And they came
back with a guilty verdict. DAVID WILLIAMS: The judge
sentenced Mr. Jackson
00:45:00
to 45 years without parole. [gavel bangs] I thought that
was just sentence. I was pleased.
00:45:07
I think the family was pleased. We were relieved that he
would be off the streets
00:45:13
for a long time. SEAN THORNTON: He
was very controlled when he was in court. He had no outbursts
or anything.
00:45:24
DAVID WILLIAMS: I believe
Mr. Jackson thought he could just wash away
his crime by throwing
00:45:28
Masako into the river. I think he thought the shoe
would wash out to sea or, at very least, sink
to the bottom, never be found.
00:45:38
And without a body, he
would be off scot-free. SEAN THORNTON: You
have to remember,
00:45:45
you have two children,
who, not only did they lose their mother, but
their father is now in prison
00:45:52
for killing their mother. And they're going
to carry that with them for the rest of their life.
00:45:57
RYAN NEILL: Today we wonder,
you know, how these kids doing. How much separation did
this cause this family?
00:46:04
Those kids ultimately
are the true victims, and they suffered
through all this. [theme music]