Read Online Cold Cases Solved: True Stories of Murders That Took Years or Decades to Solve (Murder, Scandals and Mayhem Book 8) by Mike Riley - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Mike Riley
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1969
Date of Conviction: November 24, 2003
Backstory:
Diane Lee Maxwell Jackson was born on May 12, 1944 in Louisiana to parents David M. and Nora Maxwell. Her brother David was 5 years her junior.
The twenty-five year old single mother lived at 5107 Belmont in Houston and worked as a Southern Bell telephone operator.
On The Day In Question:
On December 14, 1969, Maxwell was running late for work. She parked her car in the company parking lot, but never made it to her desk. Instead, she was forced into a nearby shack, where she was raped, and then strangled and stabbed to death.
Investigation:
Police investigated Maxwell’s case, but no suspect was ever identified. Her car was fingerprinted and latent prints were lifted from it. When no match was found, the prints were filed away. The case went cold.
More than three decades later, Maxwell Jackson’s brother, David Maxwell, pushed to have her case reopened. Working in law enforcement himself, he had started reviewing and working on his sister’s case file himself in 1989. At that time he asked investigators to run the prints again, again no match was found.
Technology improved, and he asked again in 2003. This time, a match was made to James Ray Davis, who had never been a suspect before. He did have a criminal record, but had been released from prison ten years ago and as far as anyone could tell, he’d gotten his life back on the straight and narrow.
Identifying the prints was a huge job. They were first found stored incorrectly in archives from 1984. That search alone took a month. The prints were then run against the Houston Police’s database, but as Davis had never been arrested in Houston there was no match to find in Houston’s or the state’s databases. Databases included only Davis’s thumbprints.
The breakthrough came when the prints were run through the FBI’s Integrated Automated Fingerprint Identification System (IAFIS). Prints are voluntarily submitted to the FBI by law enforcement agencies at the local, state, and federal level.
The FBI then categorizes the prints along with any criminal background linked to the individual. Law enforcement agencies can then request a search through IAFIS to identify prints found at crime scenes. The database contains over 70 million subjects.
When the latent prints from Maxwell Jackson’s crime scene were run, IAFIS had only been online for three years. Within five hours it provided a list of twenty potential matches. A technician then examined that shortlist and found a definitive match with Davis’s prints.
When they examined Davis’s background, investigators discovered that he had only been released from prison for nine days when he killed Maxwell Jackson. Within a month of her murder he was already back in prison again, this time for auto theft.
Investigators located Davis living in federally funded housing on the Texas-Arkansas border. Arguably, anyone could have touched Maxwell Jackson’s car on the day of her murder, and so they needed a confession.
Davis originally seemed calm and friendly, but after the homicide detectives asked him about his life in 1969 and 1970 and revealed they were from Houston, he became visibly shocked and nervous.
Davis confessed to killing Maxwell Jackson, but not to raping her. He was printed again and a DNA swab was also taken. He was released, but placed under surveillance until an arrest warrant could be issued. Davis chose to surrender himself at a parking lot a block away from where he lived.
On January 15, 2004, Davis pled guilty to Maxwell Jackson’s murder. He was sentenced to life in prison.
Current Status:
Before her death, Maxwell Jackson’s brother, David Maxwell, was planning on becoming a lawyer. After she died he changed his path in life and joined the Texas State Highway Patrol, and then the Texas Rangers. Would Maxwell Jackson’s death forever have remained unsolved were it
Date of Conviction: November 24, 2003
Backstory:
Diane Lee Maxwell Jackson was born on May 12, 1944 in Louisiana to parents David M. and Nora Maxwell. Her brother David was 5 years her junior.
The twenty-five year old single mother lived at 5107 Belmont in Houston and worked as a Southern Bell telephone operator.
On The Day In Question:
On December 14, 1969, Maxwell was running late for work. She parked her car in the company parking lot, but never made it to her desk. Instead, she was forced into a nearby shack, where she was raped, and then strangled and stabbed to death.
Investigation:
Police investigated Maxwell’s case, but no suspect was ever identified. Her car was fingerprinted and latent prints were lifted from it. When no match was found, the prints were filed away. The case went cold.
More than three decades later, Maxwell Jackson’s brother, David Maxwell, pushed to have her case reopened. Working in law enforcement himself, he had started reviewing and working on his sister’s case file himself in 1989. At that time he asked investigators to run the prints again, again no match was found.
Technology improved, and he asked again in 2003. This time, a match was made to James Ray Davis, who had never been a suspect before. He did have a criminal record, but had been released from prison ten years ago and as far as anyone could tell, he’d gotten his life back on the straight and narrow.
Identifying the prints was a huge job. They were first found stored incorrectly in archives from 1984. That search alone took a month. The prints were then run against the Houston Police’s database, but as Davis had never been arrested in Houston there was no match to find in Houston’s or the state’s databases. Databases included only Davis’s thumbprints.
The breakthrough came when the prints were run through the FBI’s Integrated Automated Fingerprint Identification System (IAFIS). Prints are voluntarily submitted to the FBI by law enforcement agencies at the local, state, and federal level.
The FBI then categorizes the prints along with any criminal background linked to the individual. Law enforcement agencies can then request a search through IAFIS to identify prints found at crime scenes. The database contains over 70 million subjects.
When the latent prints from Maxwell Jackson’s crime scene were run, IAFIS had only been online for three years. Within five hours it provided a list of twenty potential matches. A technician then examined that shortlist and found a definitive match with Davis’s prints.
When they examined Davis’s background, investigators discovered that he had only been released from prison for nine days when he killed Maxwell Jackson. Within a month of her murder he was already back in prison again, this time for auto theft.
Investigators located Davis living in federally funded housing on the Texas-Arkansas border. Arguably, anyone could have touched Maxwell Jackson’s car on the day of her murder, and so they needed a confession.
Davis originally seemed calm and friendly, but after the homicide detectives asked him about his life in 1969 and 1970 and revealed they were from Houston, he became visibly shocked and nervous.
Davis confessed to killing Maxwell Jackson, but not to raping her. He was printed again and a DNA swab was also taken. He was released, but placed under surveillance until an arrest warrant could be issued. Davis chose to surrender himself at a parking lot a block away from where he lived.
On January 15, 2004, Davis pled guilty to Maxwell Jackson’s murder. He was sentenced to life in prison.
Current Status:
Before her death, Maxwell Jackson’s brother, David Maxwell, was planning on becoming a lawyer. After she died he changed his path in life and joined the Texas State Highway Patrol, and then the Texas Rangers. Would Maxwell Jackson’s death forever have remained unsolved were it
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