The gas station clerk barely looked up when I walked in, soaked in sweat after canvassing the trailer park in the September heat. I grabbed a drink, paid, and was about to leave when something made me pull out one of the missing person flyers. “You seen this woman? ” I asked.
She glanced at it, then nodded slowly. “There was a guy in here earlier. When the news came on about the body, he was… excited about it. Almost like he knew more than what was being said on TV.
”
That got my attention. “What do you mean? ”
“He told me he saw her jogging,” she said. “But the only time she did that was around 5:00 or 5:30 in the morning.
That’s when she was taken. How would he know that? ”
He wouldn’t. We hadn’t released that detail to the public.
“What’s his name? ”
“Kenny. He just got out of prison. Grand theft auto, I think.
”
“Where does he live? ”
“The trailer park north of here. ”
The same trailer park where Cuc Tran lived. —
On the morning of September 13th, 2007, a van was found engulfed in flames in Gibsonton, Florida.
When firefighters put out the fire, they found a body inside—charred beyond recognition. No ID. No clear answers. Twelve miles away, in the town of Seffner, a yard crew at St.
Francis Church found bloodied clothing and shoes on the church grounds. At first, no one knew if the two scenes were connected. Then a young man called in, panicked. His mother had gone out for her morning run and never come back.
Her name was Cuc Tran. She was 50 years old, a Vietnamese immigrant who had fled the war to build a better life in America. She was a nail technician, a mother of three—one son in college, another in high school, and a 10-year-old. Every morning before work, she would wake up early to jog.
It was the only time she had to herself. When I saw the amount of blood at the church, I knew. Someone had died there. The body in the van had Asian features.
The jewelry found on her matched pictures from her home. We were positive: Cuc Tran was our victim. She had done nothing wrong. She had just gone for a run.
—
We had no immediate suspects, so we started working the neighborhood. The trailer park where Cuc lived was small—about a hundred trailers. We went door to door, handing out flyers, asking questions. One trailer stood within eyesight of Cuc’s home.
An older man answered. He was awfully curious about why I was there. Asking detailed questions. Inquisitive in a way that felt off.
But I didn’t have anything concrete, so I moved on. That day was brutal. Hot, humid, my shirt soaked through. I stopped at a gas station to get a drink.
That’s when the clerk told me about Kenny. The pieces started falling into place. The van with Cuc’s body was stolen from an auto parts store just two blocks from that gas station. Kenny lived in the same trailer park as the victim.
And he had been in the area when the van was burned. I went back to the trailer park. The older man I’d spoken to earlier—his name was Wally O’Neal. He confirmed that Kenny was actually 25-year-old Kenneth Jackson, his girlfriend’s grandson.
But there was a problem. Jackson had left town two days after the murder. He had moved in with his girlfriend in North Florida. We drove up there, found him, and asked if he was willing to talk.
He agreed. He rode with us to the police department. During the interview, we collected DNA samples. We also asked about the clothes he was wearing that day.
“I think this is what I was wearing,” he said. “Can we take those for testing? ”
“I don’t have anything else. ”
“We’ll buy you new clothes.
”
He gave us his clothes willingly. He thought he was smarter than us. He had burned the victim in a van, destroyed the evidence, or so he believed. He was careless because he was confident.
We interviewed him about his whereabouts on the day of the murder. He gave inconsistencies, couldn’t stick to a solid alibi, because he didn’t have one. He insisted he never knew Cuc Tran. “I don’t know her.
Never seen her before. ”
But she lived about five trailers down from his. You could step out of one trailer and see the other. He still denied it.
“I don’t know nothing about this lady. ”
We knew we had our guy. But we needed proof. —
Six days after the interview, the DNA results came back from the Florida Department of Law Enforcement.
The samples collected from Kenneth Jackson matched the semen found during the autopsy of Cuc Tran. That moment? Relief. We knew we were on point.
We knew we had our guy. We flew by helicopter to his girlfriend’s place in North Florida. He wasn’t there. The local sheriff’s office reached out to the girlfriend’s mother.
She had an idea where they might be. It was 1:00 in the morning. They were sitting at a dock, fishing. We walked up to Jackson.
“We’ve got some new information we need to talk to you about. Would you come with us back to the station? ”
He came. At the station, he was obstinate, defiant.
Nothing we said mattered. He just didn’t care. “Will your DNA show up on this lady at any point? ” I had asked him during the first interview.
“No, no, no. I’ve never met her. There’s no way. ”
So I looked him in the eye.
“Well, your DNA is on her, Kenny. How did that happen? ”
Denial. Denial.
Denial. “It just miraculously appeared on this dead woman. Someone you’ve never met before. ”
He shrugged.
“You believe what you want to. ”
“We know what we’re believing. Forensic evidence is proven to us. ”
He finally said, “Well, if you have such good information, why don’t you arrest me then?
”
“Okay. We will do that. ”
On September 27th, 2007, two weeks after Cuc Tran’s murder, Kenneth Jackson was formally arrested. —
Once he was in custody, we learned more about him.
Jackson had been born in 1982, the product of an unlawful relationship—his mother was 14 when she conceived him, the father 28. He was given to his grandmother at six months old. He moved around between family members, suffered physical abuse, and was an aggressive, belligerent child. By 21, he was serving five years for car theft.
He had been out of prison for less than two months when Cuc Tran was killed. He planned everything. He stole the van. He stalked his prey.
He positioned himself at the church where he knew she would run. When she passed in the darkness, he grabbed her, put a knife to her throat, forced her off the roadway into a concealed spot. He raped her. She screamed and begged.
He stabbed her in the throat, cutting her carotid artery and windpipe. She died before the fire ever started. Then he drove her body 12 miles away, parked the van, and set it on fire to destroy the evidence. While in custody, Jackson talked.
He bragged. He told multiple inmates about raping Cuc, killing her, burning her body. Not with remorse—with pride. He described how he had seen her jogging, how he planned the abduction, how she reacted when he attacked her.
He was so proud of what he had done that he had to talk about it. A relative also gave police a pornographic DVD they said Jackson had watched—one featuring Asian women and bondage. Everything lined up. He was living out a fantasy.
He was dangerous. —
In October 2012, Kenneth Jackson stood trial for first-degree murder, sexual battery with a deadly weapon, grand theft of a motor vehicle, and arson. During the trial, Jackson sat quietly. No emotion.
Eerie calm. He smiled a lot. He seemed to enjoy the attention. He had all eyes on him, and he loved it.
The evidence was overwhelming. DNA. Witnesses who saw him in Gibsonton that morning. Jailhouse informants who testified about his bragging.
The gas station clerk told her story. Everything connected. In my closing argument, I told the jury: “There is probably no crime that is as personally invasive as a crime where a person is putting part of their body into another person against their will. The last voice she heard and the last face she saw in her life was this defendant.
”
The jury deliberated for less than a day. When the verdict was announced, the jurors were polled. Several of them, when asked to confirm the verdict, didn’t just say “yes. ” They said it vehemently.
Two women looked directly at Jackson and pronounced “Yes” with such force it stood out to me. Guilty on all counts. A week later, the penalty phase began. The jury voted 11 to 1 in favor of the death penalty.
On June 5th, 2013, Kenneth Jackson was sentenced to death. He had absolutely no reaction. No remorse. No emotion.
He just looked blankly ahead. —
That wasn’t the end of the case. In 2016, the U. S.
Supreme Court ruled that Florida’s capital sentencing scheme was unconstitutional. The Florida Supreme Court abolished the existing death penalty law and required that a jury’s death recommendation be unanimous. Jackson’s jury had voted 11 to 1. His sentence was reversed.
The state decided to allow him to plead to life without parole. He was resentenced. “Whether he does life in prison without parole or whether he does death penalty, either way he’s off the street,” I said. “I know for a fact that person won’t be hurting anybody outside those prison walls.
”
Cuc Tran did nothing wrong. She escaped a war zone, built a new life, worked hard, and raised three children. She took one hour each morning to care for herself. That was all she had.
Kenneth Jackson took that away from her and left three children without a mother. He showed absolutely no remorse. He is one of the world’s most evil killers.
