By Bill Estep — bestep@herald-leader.com
Posted: 12:00am on Mar 29, 2011; Modified: 3:55am on Mar 29, 2011
MANCHESTER — A man accused of killing a family of five in Leslie County in 2004 steadfastly denied involvement when detectives interviewed him the day of the slayings, according to a recording.
However, the story that Clayton D. Jackson told that day didn't match details that he later put in a letter, according to earlier testimony.
Jackson, 30, is charged with killing Chris and Amanda Sturgill and their three sons, Michael, Robert and Jordan, early on Feb. 6, 2004.
Chris Sturgill, 25, a coal truck driver, was shot in the chest with an arrow before the family's mobile home at Roark was set on fire. The boys, ages 4, 3, and 18 months, died of smoke inhalation. Amanda Sturgill's body also was found in the burned-out home.
Police focused on Jackson as a suspect early on, interviewing him the same day firefighters found the five bodies.
On the tape of that interview, played for jurors Monday, state police Detectives Johnny Griffith and Dean Craft told Jackson they'd heard he'd had a sexual affair with Amanda Sturgill, and they suggested the relationship was the motive for the killings.
The detectives pointed out that Jackson had bought gloves the day before the slayings.
A statement Jackson made to a friend — who passed it on to police — indicated that Jackson had reason to think police wouldn't find any fingerprints in Sturgill's coal truck, police told him.
Someone took the truck from Sturgill's house the morning of the killings and burned the inside of the cab.
Jackson, however, repeatedly denied having an affair with Amanda Sturgill, 21.
He said he bought gloves because of the cold weather, and he picked up aluminum cans to make money.
Jackson, who agreed to talk to police without an attorney, said on the tape that he drank at a friend's house the evening before the slayings, then started walking home because he had no car.
Jackson told police that he saw Sturgill on his way home. He stopped to talk to Sturgill, and the two went to a bootlegger's house and bought beer and liquor.
Jackson said they drank together before Sturgill dropped Jackson off late on Feb. 5 at his house, where he got sick and passed out. He didn't wake up until well after the time the killings were discovered, Jackson told police.
That account did not match what Jackson told police in a letter in 2005, written from a federal prison where he was serving time on an unrelated weapons charge.
Jackson used the letter to try to raise suspicion about three other men, saying he thought they killed the Sturgills as he ran out the back door of their mobile home.
The prosecutor, Commonwealth's Attorney Gary Gregory, has said the investigation cleared those three men.
Jackson was charged with murder after sending the letter.
His trial is scheduled to continue this week.
No comments:
Post a Comment