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00:00On September the 13th, 2007, a woman's body was found in the burnt-out remains of a stolen van
00:09in Hillsborough County, Florida.
00:12When she was jogging in the early morning darkness, he abducted her and dragged her
00:18into a secluded location just off of a main roadway where he raped her and stabbed her to death.
00:24She did nothing wrong. She was just a victim of an evil person.
00:28Investigators were struggling to find any clues, but the killer's loose lips soon led detectives to his door.
00:36When the news came on about a body, he seemed kind of excited about the whole conversation.
00:42It was almost as if he had more information than what she even heard on TV.
00:48The man in question was unemployed 25-year-old Kenneth Jackson.
00:53Jackson showed absolutely no remorse for what he had done.
00:57He's a psychopathic killer.
01:00He was so proud of what he'd done that he had to talk about it.
01:06Kenneth Jackson had inadvertently revealed himself as one of the world's most evil killers.
01:11On June 5th, 2013, 30-year-old Kenneth Jackson was sentenced to his death.
01:41He was sentenced to death after being found guilty of murdering mother of three, Cooke Tran.
01:47He'd ambushed her while she was out on an early morning run in her hometown of Sefner, a small community just outside Tampa in Florida.
01:57We're talking about a very small area of Florida.
02:00So you can imagine that a murder would send shockwaves through that small community.
02:06They were literally horrified.
02:08I think the impact only reinforced the notion that women aren't safe running alone in the dark.
02:17They're an easy target.
02:20No matter how many self-defense classes they may take or they may carry a pepper spray, it's not enough.
02:30It's just the element of surprise and the strength of the predator is too much for any woman to overcome.
02:39Kenneth Jackson showed no remorse for taking the life of an innocent woman.
02:44He had no emotion to the fact that this was a woman with school-age children that she was working to take care of.
02:57He didn't have respect for life in general.
03:01He didn't seem to care.
03:03Everything was only about himself at all times.
03:06This killer story begins on June 26th, 1982.
03:15Kenneth Ray Jackson was born in Hillsborough County, Florida.
03:20He was the product of an inappropriate and unlawful relationship.
03:24It's hard to imagine a less satisfactory childhood than Kenny Jackson's.
03:28His mother, when he was conceived, was 14.
03:33Her partner at the time was 28.
03:35She gave him up, effectively, at the age of six months to her mother, his grandmother, and her boyfriend.
03:42Kenny did have a rough upbringing.
03:45He was moved around from different family members.
03:48He suffered some abuse when he was growing up, physical abuse.
03:51He saw a lot of abuse.
03:52And it wasn't just at home where Jackson had a difficult time.
03:57Probably, inevitably, Jackson's school reports reflected that he was aggressive.
04:03He was belligerent in cars.
04:06He was just a really, really difficult boy.
04:09His teachers raised concerns about his behaviour,
04:14about the way he was turned out when he came to school.
04:18And they had huge difficulties finding who his guardians even were,
04:25who it was who was supposed to be looking after this child.
04:29I don't think he had any stability in his life.
04:32So, not surprising that he turned towards criminality.
04:39In 2003, at the age of 21,
04:43Kenneth Jackson was sentenced to five years in prison
04:46after a spate of car thefts.
04:49He was released four years later on July the 26th, 2007,
04:54and headed to the small residential community of Sefna
04:58in Hillsborough County.
05:01When he got out of prison,
05:03he ended up moving in with a couple,
05:06the O'Neills, Linda and Wally O'Neill,
05:09and they allowed him to move into the trailer with them.
05:13Wally was Jackson's grandmother's old boyfriend.
05:17The boyfriend who'd been with his grandmother
05:19when he arrived with her at the age of six months.
05:22Although they must have had a very strange relationship,
05:26it was probably the only place
05:28in which Kenny Jackson felt at home.
05:31On September 13th, 2007,
05:4012 miles away in the neighboring town of Gibsonton,
05:44Hillsborough County Fire Rescue were called to a van
05:47engulfed in flames at 7 o'clock in the morning.
05:50What they discovered when they got there
05:53was a scene of unimaginable horror.
05:55When the fire department put the vehicle fire out,
05:59they discovered a body inside.
06:03That, of course, triggered phone calls to the homicide section,
06:07and supervisors had detectives respond to the area.
06:11So I went down to the Gibsonton area.
06:15At that point, I was assigned to be the lead detective on the case.
06:19The body was charred beyond recognition.
06:25It was literally a mess.
06:28With no identification to be found on the charred remains,
06:32detectives turned their attention to the burnt-out car.
06:35I was told at the time that they had recovered
06:38a license plate off of the vehicle,
06:40and, of course, that was a start.
06:42We were able to make contact with the owner.
06:47We learned that the vehicle had been listed
06:49at the gentleman's job site as for sale.
06:53It had been parked in the parking lot there.
06:56He worked part-time at an auto parts store.
06:59Repairing it to sell it,
07:01he had a sign for sale in the window.
07:05After we determined that this vehicle must have been stolen,
07:09we had the van taken back to our crime scene offices
07:12at the sheriff's office.
07:13But during this time, during the course of the day,
07:16there were other events unfolding
07:18that I wasn't immediately aware of.
07:23In a seemingly unrelated incident
07:2512 miles north of the torch car,
07:28a discovery had been made
07:29in the grounds of a church in Sefner.
07:32The sergeant was notified
07:33that there were some clothing items, shoes,
07:37and some blood that had been located,
07:41in front of the St. Francis Church
07:43on 579 north of MLK.
07:49There had been a yard crew,
07:52and they had actually, in mowing the lawns,
07:55found this bloody clothing,
07:58and a sheriff's officer deputy had gone out there,
08:01and they had recovered some of that clothing
08:03and items that were left behind.
08:05At this stage, police were unsure
08:09about whether these two events were connected
08:11until a panicked young man contacted them for help.
08:17Three in the afternoon or so,
08:20I received a call from my dispatch
08:22saying there was a young man there
08:25who was looking for his mother,
08:27and she'd been missing,
08:29that she had left early in the morning
08:31and had never came back.
08:35We had this person that we believed was a female
08:38and could not identify at that point.
08:42It's like, yeah, we need to check this out.
08:46Where they were calling in from
08:48was just north of where that St. Francis Church was
08:51and where the clothes and the blood was located.
08:55I went up there, and I looked at the area,
08:58and that was when it was very evident
09:00that there was not a little bit of blood.
09:03Somebody had... somebody had died there.
09:07The missing woman was 50-year-old
09:10Vietnamese immigrant Cuk Tran.
09:12Meanwhile, more information was coming through
09:15about the unidentified body found in the van.
09:18It was becoming increasingly likely
09:20that the missing person's report
09:22and the body were connected.
09:24It appeared she had Asian features.
09:28And in learning that this was a Asian male
09:33that was reporting his missing Asian mother,
09:36of course, everyone was starting to think,
09:38this is... this is our woman.
09:41I asked for some details about some particular jewelry
09:45because this body that was burned up in the van
09:48still had lots of jewelry on.
09:50We were able to link jewelry from pictures in the house
09:55to what was on her person.
09:57So at that point in time, we were pretty positive
10:00that Cuk Tran was our victim.
10:02The small community of Sefner was left in shock.
10:07Detectives had no clue who had committed this terrible crime,
10:10but the killer was about to make a huge mistake
10:13that would lead police straight to his door.
10:16On the morning of September 13th, 2007,
10:34in Hillsborough County, Florida,
10:35a pile of bloodied clothes had been discovered
10:38in the grounds of a church.
10:4012 miles away, the charred remains of a woman
10:44had been found inside a burning van.
10:46Detectives believed her to be 50-year-old Vietnamese immigrant
10:50Cuk Tran from the town of Sefner.
10:52She was a mother of three.
10:55She had an older son who was off at college,
10:59a 16-year-old that was going to high school,
11:02and a 10-year-old.
11:04She worked a full-time job as a nail technician.
11:09She lived at home in a trailer park,
11:11and she would get up very early in the morning
11:15to try to find a little bit of time for herself
11:17to go for a walk or a jog to try to take care of herself.
11:23Cuk Tran had settled in Hillsborough County
11:26after leaving her homeland in search of a better life.
11:30Her and her husband were part of the exodus from Vietnam
11:33in the 70s and 80s,
11:35after the communists took over South Vietnam
11:39after the Vietnam War.
11:40It sounded like a pretty horrific struggle
11:45after the war for her and her children
11:48and her husband to come here.
11:51For Mrs. Tran to leave a war zone
11:53and come to the United States
11:55was an example of the American dream.
12:00She was escaping violence of the war
12:02and coming to a country where people are believed to be safe
12:06and given opportunity.
12:08For Cuk Tran, however,
12:11the United States was far from the safe haven she'd hoped for
12:15and her life had been cut short in the most brutal way.
12:20With no immediate suspects,
12:23police started to look into Cuk Tran's life for clues.
12:28There were some issues with her marriage.
12:31They weren't necessarily living together,
12:34but they were still good friends.
12:36Both parents were still very much focused
12:39on taking care of the kids.
12:41She would get up, do some exercise.
12:45Her husband would come by in the mornings,
12:48help get the kids ready for school.
12:50She would get back from her morning exercise routine
12:53and she would get them to school
12:55and then she would go to work.
12:57She was a responsible employee,
13:00got along well with everyone.
13:01She was evidently well-liked by her customers.
13:07She did nothing wrong.
13:09She was just a victim of an evil person.
13:13Cuk Tran's daily morning run
13:16would take her past St. Francis Church in Sefner.
13:19It was a very large church property
13:21where it had quite a bit of open land
13:24between the roadway and the church itself.
13:26If a car was going by at 5 in the morning,
13:31it wouldn't see you down there.
13:33Detectives started working on the theory
13:35that Cuk Tran was ambushed by her killer
13:38while she was out on her morning run.
13:41She had a routine.
13:43He would run at 5 a.m. in the morning before work.
13:47This was her only free time.
13:49It was really the only time she had to herself,
13:52which was even more tragic.
13:55That's all she had
13:56and she never dreamed
13:58that there was this predator waiting there for her.
14:03This isn't an area
14:04where there'll be lots of women to choose from,
14:07so this person had probably gone to that area before,
14:11checked it out, waited around,
14:14seen how many people were around,
14:16whether they were likely to get caught.
14:19I don't think that this was opportunistic.
14:22I think this was targeted.
14:26We wanted to get the guy.
14:28I mean, that's the whole goal, right?
14:30You want to solve this thing.
14:33Detectives were convinced
14:34that Cuk Tran was killed in the grounds of the church
14:37and then her body driven away
14:39in the van that was found on fire 12 miles away.
14:42The autopsy confirmed
14:44the horrific circumstances of her death.
14:47The medical examiner was able to determine
14:49there were multiple stab wounds in the neck.
14:53The carotid artery had been cut.
14:56One of the stab wounds
14:57had cut through the victim's windpipe
15:01and would have probably prevented sufficient air
15:04from being able to go through the vocal cords
15:06so that she could vocalize.
15:08She was dead before the fire ever started.
15:11There was no soot in the windpipe
15:14or carbon monoxide in the blood.
15:20The autopsy also discovered
15:22a possible motive for the crime.
15:25She had been raped.
15:28The medical examiner had collected blood slides
15:31and the vaginal swabs and all for DNA,
15:33but we didn't have any comparisons at that point.
15:36Usually when people use fire to destroy a body,
15:43it's because they want to eliminate
15:45any forensic evidence at all.
15:50They think, I'm never going to get caught
15:53because I have destroyed every single piece of evidence.
15:57Well, fire doesn't always destroy every piece of evidence.
16:01This would have been an overconfidence, I think, in that person.
16:08Desperate to find Cooke Tran's killer,
16:11detectives started to hand out flyers
16:13in the trailer park where she'd lived,
16:15appealing for information from her neighbours.
16:18There was probably 100 or so trailers in this trailer park.
16:22We went house to house,
16:23handing the flyers out, talking to neighbours.
16:25There was one trailer that I actually stopped at,
16:30which was within eyeshot
16:32of where the victim's house was, her trailer.
16:36And it was an elderly individual that was there, a man,
16:39who was very inquisitive as to why I was there.
16:44So I finished walking through.
16:47It was extremely hot out that day.
16:49I was thirsty, so I decided to go to the gas station
16:53in the corner of MLK and 579,
16:55which is just to the south of where St. Francis Church was.
16:59And I walk in, I get my drink, and I'm soaking wet.
17:03I've got a shirt, tie.
17:05I walk up, I pay, and all of a sudden,
17:07something hit me of saying,
17:09you know what, I'm going to go get a flyer.
17:12I come back, I give the flyer to the clerk.
17:15As I start talking to her,
17:16she starts explaining how there was this individual
17:20who was in the store.
17:22And when the news came on about a body and an investigation,
17:28he seemed kind of excited about the whole conversation
17:30and the subject matter and everything that was being said.
17:34But also, it was almost as if he had more information
17:36than what she even heard being said on the TV.
17:40But really what stuck out to her was he was telling her
17:43he had seen Cooktron jogging.
17:45And the only time she did that was very early in the morning,
17:48right around 5, 5.30 in the morning.
17:51And that's when she was abducted.
17:53So that was pretty critical.
17:55The stranger's story confirmed what the police already knew
17:59about Cooktron's morning routine.
18:02But it wasn't information they'd released to the public.
18:05This guy's talking and he's saying things
18:07that really haven't been publicly made.
18:10So that's a clue.
18:12That was a very strong,
18:16OK, we need to jump on this.
18:19And that started the ball rolling.
18:23I started asking her questions.
18:25Well, you know, who is this individual?
18:28Do you know where he lives?
18:29And she proceeds to tell me that his name's Kenny
18:33and he had just gotten released from prison.
18:37So I asked her, what did he go to prison for?
18:40Do you know?
18:41And she said, I think Grand Theft Auto.
18:45At this point in time now in the investigation,
18:48we know that the van that was burned with our victim in it
18:52was stolen from the advanced auto parts
18:54literally two blocks from where I was standing at the gas station
18:58and just south of where the victim was marked.
19:02I said, where has he lived?
19:04Do you know anything about him?
19:05She said, yeah, he lives in the trailer park north of here.
19:10It turned out that this man, Kenny,
19:12lived in exactly the same trailer park as Cooktron.
19:17Detectives finally had a breakthrough in the case,
19:20but all they had to go on was a single name, Kenny.
19:24They knew they had to find this man and fast
19:27before he killed again.
19:39On September 19th, 2007,
19:43six days after the murder of 50-year-old Cooktron
19:46in Hillsborough County, Florida,
19:48detectives had their first lead.
19:50A man called Kenny who'd aroused the suspicion
19:55of a gas station clerk when talking to her about the murder
19:58lived in the same trailer park as the victim.
20:02Troy was reminded of a strangely inquisitive man
20:05he'd interviewed at the trailer park.
20:08Now all of a sudden the red flags start going off even more
20:10because now I realize, wait a minute,
20:13I wonder if this Kenny guy is the guy
20:15that I was sitting there asking myself,
20:18this guy's awful nosy, he's asking like a lot of detailed questions.
20:22Troy made his way back to the trailer park.
20:25The man he'd previously spoken to was Wally O'Neill,
20:29who'd once been in a relationship with Kenny's grandmother.
20:33Wally confirmed that Kenny was in fact 25-year-old Kenneth Jackson.
20:40Police discovered this wasn't the first time
20:43he'd been on the radar of law enforcement.
20:47He had had several arrests in the past.
20:51He had recently gotten out of prison.
20:53He hadn't been in the area long.
20:57Wally confirmed that Jackson had been living with him,
21:01but told Troy that he'd left town just two days before.
21:05We learned that at the time of the murder
21:08and the vehicle being burned that he was not at home.
21:13So they couldn't give an alibi as to his whereabouts,
21:16but they did know for a fact
21:18that he did happen to be in the area where the burned van was.
21:22We haven't made contact with our person of interest yet,
21:26but we are getting verification
21:27that he's in the right place at the right times
21:31to be associated to it.
21:32Detectives learned that Kenneth Jackson
21:37had gone to live with his girlfriend in North Florida.
21:41On September 20th, a week after the murder,
21:45they drove upstate to find him.
21:47We went up there and asked if he was willing to speak with us.
21:51He rode with us in the car
21:53over to the Carrabelle Police Department office
21:57where we could sit down and do an audio recording
22:00and try and find out what he might know.
22:07While collecting DNA samples from Jackson,
22:11the detectives got a lucky break.
22:13During the course of this conversation,
22:15we got around to the clothes that he was wearing,
22:18and he said, you know,
22:19I think this is what I was wearing that day.
22:22I was like, can we get that for, you know, testing?
22:26And he said, well, I don't have anything else.
22:28I said, we'll take you to go buy clothes.
22:31We went and we bought him new shoes, new shirt.
22:35So he gave us permission to take his clothes.
22:39He considered himself smarter than the police.
22:42So that made him so careless.
22:46It was time for investigators to sit down
22:49and interview their prime suspect.
22:51They were certain of Jackson's movements
22:53on the day of the murder,
22:55but they wanted to hear it from the horse's mouth.
22:58During the course of our investigation,
23:00we put him down there where the van was burned.
23:03And that was huge,
23:04because he had a family member
23:05that identified him being down in Gibsonson.
23:09Why? He lives in Sefner.
23:11Why would you be down in Gibsonson?
23:13So everything just started falling in,
23:16so we wanted to get him locked into a timeline
23:18as to where were you at,
23:20what were you doing?
23:21And we were able to do that.
23:23But we were also able to get him
23:24to give too many inconsistencies in his interviews
23:26that could prove that he was lying.
23:28And he could not stick with a solid alibi
23:31because he didn't have one.
23:35In all of the lies that he told law enforcement,
23:38the one thing he was consistent on
23:40was that he did not know Cooctron.
23:42And they showed him photographs of her
23:44that were very good depictions of her
23:47in the year or two before her death.
23:49And he insisted,
23:51I don't know her.
23:52I don't know anything about her.
23:53I've never seen her before.
23:55Even though she lived
23:57about five trailers down from his,
24:00and you could step out
24:01from the doors of those trailers
24:03and see the other trailer
24:05is how close he lived to her.
24:06But he insisted he'd never seen her before.
24:09I don't have nothing to do with it, sir.
24:10Nothing to do with it at all.
24:12That's the honest God's truth.
24:14I don't know nothing about this lady.
24:15I ain't never seen her before.
24:18He was obviously super confident
24:20that he'd obliterated all of the evidence
24:23and that he could sit and play games
24:25with the police, almost,
24:27because they were never gonna pin this one on him.
24:31We both believed that we had our guy.
24:34After that first interview,
24:35we had our DNA that he gave us.
24:38We had the clothing that he gave us.
24:41And Troy and I got in the car
24:43and we drove from Carabelle, Florida,
24:45back to just north of Gainesville
24:47to meet up with one of the detectives
24:49from Hillsborough here,
24:50who was meeting us halfway
24:51so we could pass that off
24:53so they could immediately get that back
24:55to FDLE the next day
24:56to start the DNA comparisons.
25:01Six days later, on September 26,
25:04the DNA reports came back from FDLE,
25:07the Florida Department of Law Enforcement.
25:09I received a phone call from FDLE
25:14stating that they had just gotten the report
25:17from their DNA analysis
25:19that said that the samples collected
25:23from Kenneth Jackson
25:24did match the semen that was collected
25:28from the medical examiner
25:30during the autopsy of Cook Tran.
25:32At that moment, it's like relief.
25:34You realize, okay, we knew we were on point.
25:37We knew we had our guy.
25:40Jackson had lied to detectives,
25:42but the evidence gave away the truth.
25:45We had dealt with Kenneth Jackson for hours
25:47and he said that he didn't know this person,
25:50he had never met this person,
25:52didn't even know that she was a neighbor
25:53in his trailer park.
25:55And now we have his semen and her.
25:58That is enough to get an arrest warrant.
26:01As soon as the DNA samples come back
26:05and they are confirmed as being Kenneth Jackson's,
26:09the police fly by helicopter
26:11to his new abode in North Florida
26:13to find him.
26:15But when they get there, he's not there.
26:17We had the sheriff's office up there
26:21and the local township PD
26:23and also the girlfriend's mother's assistants.
26:29She had some ideas and she thought,
26:31well, maybe they're over this one place fishing.
26:33And they were, in fact.
26:35So this was like one in the morning,
26:37but they were both up there sitting at the dock.
26:40Kenneth Jackson's luck was about to run out.
26:44I talked with Kenny and said,
26:46we've got some new information
26:48we need to talk to you about.
26:49Would you mind coming with us back to the station
26:51to talk about it?
26:55No matter what it was that we talked to him about,
26:57he was very obstinate against anything that we said.
27:02Even when we could point out his inconsistencies,
27:06it didn't matter.
27:07He just was like water off a duck's back, you know?
27:11He just didn't care.
27:11But this time, investigators were armed with a smoking gun.
27:17I focused on the point of DNA again
27:20because I had asked him at the first interview,
27:22will your DNA show up on this lady at any point?
27:26And he was like, no, no, no, I've never met her.
27:28There's no way possible.
27:31He knew he had burned up this victim in a van.
27:35He believed he had absolutely nothing to worry about
27:37because that was all burned up and there was nothing to be found.
27:41He felt that he was safe.
27:45Well, in fact, your DNA is on her, Kenny.
27:48How did that happen?
27:50Denial, denial, denial.
27:52So that your DNA just miraculously just appeared on this woman,
27:56on this dead woman.
27:57It just miraculously appeared.
27:59Someone who you've never met before.
28:01Someone who you don't know who it is.
28:03And you're going to sit here and tell us that you don't know how
28:05on top of the other lies you told us.
28:08And you're going to tell us that you don't know how that happened.
28:10And you want us to just believe that, right?
28:12You can believe what you want to.
28:13We know what we're believing.
28:15Forensic evidence is proven to us.
28:17And he finally said,
28:19Well, if you have such good information,
28:20why don't you arrest me then?
28:22It's like, okay.
28:24We will do that.
28:28On September 27th, 2007,
28:32two weeks after the murder of Cook Tran,
28:35Kenneth Jackson was formally arrested.
28:38Despite his constant denial,
28:40detectives were convinced he was a dangerous predator.
28:44He planned that entire event.
28:46He stole the van from the advanced auto parts,
28:49left it parked where he knew he could ambush Cook Tran
28:52because he knows she walks, runs in the mornings.
28:57And he targeted her.
28:58And it is as evil as it gets.
29:01This type of attack,
29:03a stranger in the dark jumps out of the bushes to attack you,
29:09is the nightmare that sits in the head of every single woman.
29:14And if it actually happens to you,
29:18all of those nightmares come to life at once.
29:21So for Cook Tran,
29:24that must have been the most terrifying moment
29:29that she had ever experienced.
29:31He thought everything through all the way up until the getaway.
29:37Like, once he burned the van,
29:39he didn't have a plan of what he was going to do after that.
29:42But I am convinced that he would have killed again,
29:45given the opportunity.
29:46Had we not have caught him,
29:48he would have killed again.
29:49After he was arrested,
29:54information on Kenneth Jackson continued to come in.
29:58One of the other significant pieces of evidence
30:00that the police received
30:01was from a relative of Jackson's
30:04who gave them a DVD,
30:06which he apparently habitually watched.
30:09It was a pornographic DVD,
30:12which included particularly Asian women
30:15and also had elements of bondage.
30:19Everything lines up that he's living out his fantasy.
30:22To me, Jackson appears to be on his first outing
30:26as a potential serial killer.
30:29He wasn't responding to some provocation.
30:32He was acting to please himself.
30:36And I think the violence pleased him,
30:38the fire pleased him,
30:40the cat and mouse he thought he was going to have
30:43with the police, excited him.
30:45This is a really dangerous individual.
30:49Prosecutors felt they had enough evidence
30:52to charge Kenneth Jackson with murder.
30:55He was charged with first-degree premeditated murder.
30:59He was charged with sexual battery,
31:01with a deadly weapon.
31:03And he was charged with grand theft motor vehicle
31:06of the van that he stole
31:07so that he could dispose of Ms. Tron's body.
31:10Despite denying everything to detectives,
31:14Kenneth Jackson suddenly rediscovered
31:17the loose lips that had put him
31:18on the police's radar in the first place.
31:22While he was in custody for all that time,
31:25again, that man talked.
31:28He ran his mouth to everybody.
31:31He did discuss about how he raped the woman,
31:35he killed the woman, he burned her up in the van.
31:37But one of the common threads
31:39from each of these statements we got
31:42was that he never was talking in remorse.
31:45He was bragging about it.
31:49He was so proud of what he'd done
31:51that he had to talk about it.
31:54But if Jackson thought his fellow inmates
31:57would listen to his secrets in confidence,
32:00he was gravely mistaken.
32:02Multiple inmates came forward
32:04with all the stories Kenny was talking about.
32:06There were two of them
32:07that were in federal custody
32:09being held in the local jail on federal charges.
32:12He made statements to each of them independently
32:15where he talked about the fact
32:17that he had seen her running,
32:19had seen her jogging,
32:20had determined that he was going to abduct her.
32:23He gave descriptions of the murder
32:26and how he went about stabbing her
32:28and what was going on,
32:30how she was reacting to him.
32:33He used a pretty offensive pejorative
32:35in describing how he sexually assaulted her.
32:39So it was pretty compelling evidence
32:41to have that in front of the jury.
32:44Getting those leads and that information
32:46from other prisoners saying that he's bragging
32:50about what he did only boosted our case.
32:54With the trial on the horizon,
32:57prosecutors in Hillsborough County
32:59had DNA evidence, witness statements
33:01and jailhouse informants.
33:03But would the jury find Kenneth Jackson guilty
33:06or would he be able to outsmart everyone
33:09and get away with murder?
33:11In October 2012,
33:25five years after the death
33:26of 50-year-old mother-of-three, Kuk Tran,
33:29Kenneth Jackson, the man accused of her rape and murder,
33:33stood trial in Florida.
33:35It was one of the most heinous murder rapes
33:38that had occurred that year.
33:40So there was a lot of TV there and print media.
33:45We had many, many witnesses
33:47and it went on for several weeks.
33:50We were seeking the death penalty in this case.
33:52The DNA was direct scientific evidence,
33:56but we wanted to give the jury an understanding
33:58of how the crime occurred and why it occurred.
34:02So we had lots of different types of evidence in this case,
34:05from DNA scientific evidence to jailhouse snitches
34:09to other witnesses that he had made statements to
34:12that connected him to the crime.
34:13He planned this entire thing out
34:16to the point of stealing a van
34:17so that he can then stalk his prey.
34:20This was an extremely premeditated murder,
34:24driven by an extremely evil motivation.
34:29Prosecutors were ready to present their case
34:32of what they believe happened on the morning of September 13, 2007.
34:37He had seen her jogging in the early morning hours
34:41before he had become obsessed with her apparently
34:43and with the idea of abducting her.
34:46He positioned himself in an area in front of St. Francis Assisi Church
34:51where he knew she would be running or jogging.
34:55And when she came along in the darkness,
34:58he grabbed her, probably put the knife to her throat,
35:01and forced her off of the roadway.
35:04Mrs. Tron was surprised by this man
35:07leaping out of the darkness.
35:09There was no way she could have defended herself.
35:11It was just all too sudden.
35:13He took her down into this little valley,
35:15which was concealed from view from the roadway.
35:19And he forced her down on the ground.
35:20He took her clothes off of her,
35:22probably ripped them off of her,
35:24and he raped her.
35:26And when she was screaming or yelling in pain
35:30and begging for her life,
35:32he began to stab her in the throat.
35:37He knew he was going to kill her.
35:39He knew he was going to rape her.
35:40This just speaks to an extremely depraved level of evil.
35:46He made the decision to take advantage of someone in the dark
35:53that he felt he could overpower.
35:56Then when he was in fear for maybe being found out
36:01because they were struggling,
36:02they were fighting, they were screaming,
36:04decided he could kill them.
36:07And then at that point,
36:08to think that he could make all this go away
36:11by destroying this person,
36:14literally by trying to burn them up,
36:17that is evil.
36:18On October 15th, 2012,
36:25Jackson's trial began
36:26at the Hillsborough County Circuit Court.
36:29In my opening statements,
36:30I told the jury he was trying to burn
36:33his biological evidence out of her body.
36:36His intent was to try to destroy her body
36:38because her body was evidence of the rape and the murder.
36:42It was all pre-planned.
36:43It was extremely cold-blooded, calculated.
36:48It stayed with me for a long time, even today.
36:53Jackson, who'd been all too keen
36:55to blab about the murder to his fellow inmates,
36:58suddenly didn't seem able to speak up in the courtroom.
37:02He didn't show any emotion at all throughout the trial.
37:06He just sat quietly.
37:08It was kind of eerie.
37:09He had an eerie presence,
37:14this sort of calm, strange demeanor throughout.
37:18I thought he didn't mind being caught that much.
37:22Watching him, I think he had always wanted,
37:25from the beginning, to be able to boast about it.
37:28He appeared to enjoy the attention of the trial.
37:32He seemed to be very immature.
37:34He smiled a lot.
37:36But he just didn't seem like he was taking the whole process seriously.
37:41He has got all eyes on him.
37:44This is his moment in the sun.
37:46He's not even thinking about what's going to happen afterwards.
37:51He couldn't hide his enjoyment at getting so much attention.
37:57Troy Morgan, the detective who'd made the initial breakthrough in the case,
38:05was called to testify.
38:07It's a great pride in being able to get up there and testify,
38:11finding out the information that kind of linked everything to him.
38:15And that was pretty much all the testimony, you know,
38:17that I really had to bring to the table,
38:19was being in the right place at the right time
38:22and asking the right question.
38:23The gas station attendant who Troy Morgan had spoken to
38:29wasn't the only witness called by the prosecution.
38:32There were witnesses who put him near the area where the van was found,
38:38and that was in the city of Gibsonton.
38:40The murder happened in the city of Sefner,
38:42and they are separated by about 10, 11, 12 miles.
38:47So it's a significant distance.
38:48And there were witnesses, one of which knew him,
38:52put him walking on foot in Gibsonton that morning.
38:56And that really stood out to her.
38:59Why is Kenny down here in Gibsonton walking?
39:02How did he get here?
39:04That was significant because he told the detectives,
39:07and never would come off of the fact,
39:09that he rode a bicycle from Sefner down to Gibsonton through the night,
39:14and that's why he was in Gibsonton.
39:16With the overwhelming evidence laid out,
39:21the prosecuting attorneys began their closing arguments.
39:25I remember arguing to the jury,
39:27there is probably no crime that is as personally invasive
39:32as a crime where a person is putting part of their body
39:37into another person against their will.
39:39And I think that this may have impacted the women on the jury,
39:44and I argued to the jury, the last voice she heard
39:47and the last person's face she saw in her life on this earth
39:51was this defendant.
39:53The jury took less than a day to reach their verdict.
39:57The jury determined that he was guilty for the murder,
40:03the sexual battery, the grand theft auto, and the arson.
40:08It seemed the jury had no doubt in their minds about Jackson's guilt.
40:13When a jury returns a guilty verdict,
40:15the defendant is entitled to have the jury polled.
40:18A clerk asks each of the individual jurors
40:22to confirm that that is their verdict.
40:25And I've never heard this before.
40:26In any case, I've tried.
40:28Several of the jurors, when they responded yes,
40:31didn't just say yes, that's my verdict.
40:34They said yes!
40:36I know two of the women looked directly at the defendant
40:39and said it very vehemently like that.
40:43So that's what kind of stood out to me,
40:46was how much they believed in that verdict of guilty.
40:52The verdict was exactly the outcome
40:54the hard-working detectives had hoped for.
40:57To be able to get a positive result,
41:00it's what you want for every case.
41:02This one here, just, everything just kind of fell right into place,
41:05being at the right place at the right time.
41:07Sometimes it's better to be lucky than good.
41:09I mean, it's horrible what the people went through,
41:12and the families, what they've gone through.
41:15But it's a huge feeling of satisfaction
41:18when you can conclusively say,
41:22this is what happened, we got the guy.
41:26It doesn't change what happened.
41:28It's still a tragedy.
41:30But this is what we can give you
41:33for some sort of closure.
41:39A week later, on November 1st, 2012,
41:43the next phase of Kenneth Jackson's trial began.
41:46The murder conviction comes first,
41:49and then there's basically a second trial
41:51with the same jury to consider the death penalty.
41:55And then they come back to the same jury
41:57and ask for a vote.
41:59In this case, it was 11 to 1,
42:02which, at the time, was all that the state needed.
42:07On June 5th, 2013,
42:1030-year-old Kenneth Jackson was sentenced to death.
42:14When the death penalty was imposed,
42:16he had absolutely no reaction.
42:18I don't even know that he cared.
42:21I couldn't tell.
42:22He just looked blankly ahead,
42:24and he didn't offer any remorse
42:27or anything like that.
42:29I will say it was very satisfying
42:31to find that he was found guilty, number one,
42:34but number two, that he was given the death penalty.
42:40That wasn't the end
42:42of Kenneth Jackson's story, however.
42:44In 2016, the United States Supreme Court
42:48agreed that Florida's capital sentencing scheme
42:51was unconstitutional,
42:53which led the Florida Supreme Court
42:55to abolish the state's existing death penalty law
42:59and require that a jury's recommendation for death
43:02must be unanimous.
43:04Any case where we didn't have a unanimous verdict
43:06in the penalty phase
43:07was now subject to collateral attack,
43:10and that's what happened with Mr. Jackson's case.
43:13The case got reversed
43:14because we didn't have a unanimous verdict.
43:17The decision was made to allow him to plead to life,
43:20and that's what happened,
43:21and he was resentenced to a life sentence.
43:28Whether he does life in prison without parole
43:31or whether he does death penalty,
43:33either way, he's off the street.
43:36I know for a fact
43:37that that person won't be hurting anybody
43:40outside of those prison walls,
43:42and that's what we're after.
43:43This case really haunted me,
43:47I think because it was the first time
43:49I had encountered
43:51what I thought was a true psychopath.
43:54I think there was every possibility
43:56that Kenneth Jackson,
43:58if he had not been caught,
43:59would have gone on to kill other women,
44:02and that one day
44:04he might have been labeled a serial killer.
44:06Kenneth Jackson stalked,
44:12raped, and killed 50-year-old Cook Tran,
44:15an innocent woman who'd done him no harm.
44:18He burned her body
44:19in the attempt to destroy any evidence,
44:22but he wasn't as clever as he thought,
44:24and when his DNA was found on the victim,
44:27his fate was sealed.
44:29He showed absolutely no remorse
44:32for leaving three children without a mother,
44:34proving that Kenneth Jackson
44:36is one of the world's most evil killers.
44:39We'll see you next time.
45:09We'll see you next time.
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