Testimony says man's girlfriend wouldn't let go
By Emily Gurnon
egurnon@pioneerpress.com
Updated: 12/10/2009 12:33:57 AM CST
It was a holiday afternoon in December 2007. Michelle Wilson showed up at her ex-boyfriend's workplace, and the two of them had what appeared to be an "uncomfortable" conversation, a witness said.
Jeffrey Franz, the manager at the Jiffy Lube where Carl Jackson worked, overheard one thing.
Jackson told Wilson, "But I don't love you."
Franz was among several witnesses who testified Wednesday in Ramsey County District Court about the short relationship between Wilson and Jackson and what happened after they broke up.
Wilson is on trial for second-degree murder. She is accused of killing Jackson in her St. Paul home Jan. 13, 2008, the day after he turned 33 and only weeks after the incident at the Jiffy Lube. Wilson, 47, does not dispute that she shot him with her Glock 9mm pistol, but she says she did so in self-defense.
The Jiffy Lube manager described the encounter at his shop as "weird" and said he told Jackson to make Wilson leave.
He recalled the date as either Christmas Eve or New Year's Eve 2007, because the place was closing early.
Taffala Jones testified Wednesday that she and Wilson were good friends for 18 to 20 years — so close that she asked Wilson to be godmother to one of her daughters.
But their friendship was not without conflict.
Wilson and Jackson had met at a Halloween party hosted by Jones. Wilson later became angry with her friend, accusing her in an e-mail of setting her up with Jackson.
"I don't like
Advertisement
feeling like my friends R pimping me out like some ugly, broken-down hoe," Wilson wrote. Jones denied setting the two up.
Wilson also said Jones, "as my friend," should have told her that Jackson was seeing other women.
Wednesday's witnesses gave example after example of Wilson's apparent fury after her relationship with Jackson ended. They said they believed Jackson met someone before Christmas whom he cared for deeply, but he didn't want to hurt Wilson. In the face of repeated unwelcome phone calls from Wilson, Jackson's friends urged him to get a restraining order against her. He never did.
On Dec. 28, Jones and her partner, Fred Redmond, were surprised to find a voice-mail message on Redmond's phone. The message wasn't for Redmond.
It was apparently recorded during an accidental call made from Jackson's cell phone — a so-called pocket dial, in which a speed-dial button is inadvertently pushed.
They heard Wilson's and Jackson's voices.
"He was trying to leave, and she wouldn't let him leave, and she was begging him to stay," Jones testified.
April and Ray Brigham had known Jackson for years before he brought Wilson to a party at their house. April Brigham said she believed they dated for about a month, between Halloween and early December 2007, when Jackson brought Chillnail Hollingsworth to meet them. Jackson seemed smitten with Hollingsworth, the couple said.
It was in early January that Jackson shared with them some voice mails he'd received from Wilson.
In one of them, April Brigham said, she heard Wilson say, "Are you trying to make me hate you?"
Jackson asked Ray Brigham to accompany him when he returned a box of Wilson's things to her house.
"He said (Wilson) is the kind of woman that guys don't break up with — she breaks up with them," Ray Brigham said.
But Jackson insisted he would be the first. "She's like a wild horse, and I intend to break her of that," Brigham recalled Jackson saying. He talked of taking her to church.
Defense attorney Gary Wolf suggested that meant "teach her a lesson."
"No," Brigham said. "Carl tried to take everyone to church." He said his "best friend" was adamantly against violence toward women.
The defendant maintains Jackson was assaulting her the night she killed him.
No comments:
Post a Comment