he told me he shot him in the head and he told me that he had a silencer on the gun. now she, too, was called to the stand. that was enough. the jury was out less than an hour. the verdict was guilty. at the sentencing, life in prison, david jackson s family confronted michael wolfe, not just to condemn him, but to ask a question because there was still a piece missing, something that didn t make sense. what was david doing in that motel room the night they killed him? why did he walk into that trap? mr. britton was ten minutes down the road. david is not a stupid child at 24. why would mr. britton want to see him in a hotel? they demanded there would be no justice, they told wolfe, unless everyone was held
a phone bill from her mother s home placing calls to her home in arizona that night when nobody else could have been there. what s a phone bill of that age doing lying around somewhere where it can be grabbed for evidence by the defendant? the father was a meticulous record keeper. what s to say that wasn t an answering service that picked it up. michael wolfe testified in their first deposition that they had no answering machine. could have been someone else in the home. we questioned mr. wolfe about that and he said nobody was there. but as the defense prepared for trial in december 2010, something changed. there was new evidence discovered. lenny is the prosecutor who inherited the case. and that new evidence is what we considered a jailhouse snitch and he came forward and said that michael wolfe fabricated the entire story about barbara participating in the murder of david jackson. the jailhouse snitch was well-known, the d.a. said, mostly for the false info
here s what happened, as nancy heard it. wolfe and harry britton rented a hotel room on that long july night, invited david to a meeting there. and when he gets at the hotel, they have a very small conversation and michael shot david in the head. he told me he had to get so drunk to do it and that the first shot didn t kill him. he had to shoot him again. after which, as nancy relayed the story they did take his car to the airport and left it there. then they took him over to i mean, there was an empty lot there. uh-huh. and that s where he buried him. he did not spare the detail, said nancy. and he did tell me he poured some corrosive and i think it was lime is what he poured over the body. sure enough, that was consistent with the investigation. along with that story came what sounded like a motive. david disappeared, you remember,
up with was an increasingly web of relationships. david jackson was married to barbara britton. her father disliked david. barbara later married wolfe and they divorced and he married two more times. but now finally one of wolfe s ex-wives, a woman named nancy, was telling her she knew everything about what happened to david. can you tell me again? i know how he was killed and what they did with him. how did she know? according to the ex, michael drank, a lot. every night he would almost down a whole bottle of scotch and i guess he just needed to talk. and the story wolfe told implicated more than just himself.
as he was preparing for a visit from his 5-year-old son john. they decided david needed be rid of because they didn t want him in his life. david killed just to keep him out of his son s life? and, boom, it clicked for me all of a sudden, i said, wow, that s over child custody. that s why he s not here today. that was the motive? that was the motive. that was wolfe s confession a true story or just alcohol-fueled bravado? there was no way to know for sure but it was enough to bring about the arrest in october 2004 of michael wolfe, now living in ohio. but an arrest is not a conviction made and as michael wolfe cooled his heels, he sent a letter and centered on a conversation with his ex-wife barbara s father harry a few months before the murder. a reporter who writes for the broward county new times read the letter.