- In 2004, the city of atlanta was
Very much a booming metropolitan area.
There were people that were migrating here
From all over the country.
- John ray moved to atlanta
To have a place where he could
Socialize and have parties.
- He was just ambitious and great to be around,
Great demeanor all the time.
- But on may 16th, he did not show up for work.
- They are able to go into the home
And find john's body tied up in the middle of the floor,
Lying in his own blood.
[tense music]
- He had been stabbed several times.
- There was literally just blood all over.
♪ ♪
- This investigation went through a number
Of different avenues, pulling on different threads
That they discovered from the scene.
- We learned that john's vehicle
Was not in the driveway
Because the killer was driving the car.
- Dna was all over the airbag.
- We know the dna belongs to him,
But does that make him a murderer?
[glass shatters]
- We need to get john ray
The justice he truly deserved.
♪ ♪
[dramatic music]
♪ ♪
[sirens wailing]
[upbeat music]
- In 2004, the city of atlanta
Is hitting its stride as the cultural epicenter
Of the south.
- Relative to other places in the united states,
It's more culturally diverse.
It was a more welcoming community
Than where I had grown up.
- The city of atlanta was the marquee city
In the southeast.
You were getting people from all walks of life,
Diverse communities that were coming in.
One of the communities that was starting to grow
And become more public was the lgbt community.
- Atlanta continued to grow in that respect
And continued to be a place where people
Could be themselves and comfortably be themselves
Without fear of repercussion for being themselves.
- In atlanta, there was a growing gay community
That gave more freedom to people
To sort of be who they were
And express their sexual preference.
- Such is the case for 32-year-old john ray,
An air force veteran and paralegal
Who was enjoying the freedom of atlanta's open culture.
But one spring morning, john's close friends
Become concerned after not hearing from him
For a few days.
- On may 16, 2004, he did not show up for work.
His friends were trying to reach him.
He wasn't answering.
Friends of his go out to his home,
And they aren't able to get in.
- Friends called the police department
And stated that he hadn't shown up for work
For about three days,
So they just wanted the police to respond
And do a welfare check.
- From that point, police are able to contact
One of john's friends who has a set of keys to his home.
An officer meets up with the young lady.
They are able to go into the home.
[tense music]
♪ ♪
The officer finds john's body
Tied up in the middle of the floor,
Lying in his own blood.
♪ ♪
The officer quickly asks the woman
To step out of the home.
[sirens wailing]
- The atlanta pd homicide unit
Is immediately dispatched to the scene.
♪ ♪
- Once we made entry into the residence,
It was just abundantly clear that there was
Some sort of struggle or attack or ambush.
There was literally just blood
All over the living room
And the dining room,
And john ray was in the dining room
On his stomach in a hogtied fashion.
It appeared that john was tied up
With whatever random cords--
Phone cords, electrical cords.
And he appeared to have been stabbed.
- This was one of the most graphic scenes
That I had seen.
There was just no rationale for this type of brutality.
- Medical examiner was able to determine that he had been
Stabbed several times.
The stabbing was so brutal that the knife actually
Broke off into the body.
Medical examiner investigators
Surmised at the scene
That john ray just wasn't killed that day.
He had been laying there for at least three days.
- The me collects the body
As investigators analyze the rest of the house.
- When we talk about this scene,
I think there's good words to use--sensory overload.
'cause it's not just what you're seeing with your eyes.
You're smelling things, like a decomposing body.
- Csi dusts the scene for prints,
But the house appears to have been wiped down.
- When we walked in the kitchen,
We were able to see cleaning products everywhere.
We could smell the smell of bleach.
When we walked into the bathroom,
There was another huge amount of blood
That indicated that the suspect
Had tried to clean himself off before he left.
- Despite the killer's thoroughness,
Detectives are stunned when they discover something
He may have left behind.
- There's clothing in the washing machine.
This red rocawear t-shirt actually had
A lot of blood on it.
- Are we gonna find the suspect's blood?
Are we gonna find john ray's blood?
That would be a huge clue for us.
- We collect those clothes, and we hold them.
We preserve them.
- With little forensic evidence
At the scene to work with,
Detectives try to piece together
What happened between john and his killer
In order to develop a theory.
- As police investigate the scene,
Officers encounter a pair of glasses
On a coffee table, which indicates
That he may have been sharing a drink with someone.
They find a broken vodka bottle.
They find a lot of his stuff missing--
A tv, a dvd player, a briefcase, a watch,
Other items of jewelry.
These were things that told a number
Of different potential stories.
- What was conflicting was the fact that if you're
Just trying to rob somebody,
You can grab their things and run.
But in this particular instance,
It appeared that john and this person
Were maybe having cocktails,
And then suddenly, there's a--
A burst of violence.
♪ ♪
We did search around.
We did not see any cameras
Or any type of advanced system,
But john did have an alarm.
- The officers and the people at the scene,
They said that the door was locked.
The alarm was on.
They had to turn the alarm off.
- For the door to have been locked,
For the alarm to have been set,
It had to have been someone that mr. Ray
Was familiar with.
- Armed with the revelation that john may have known
His assailant, investigators immediately turn
To his friends and family for answers.
Who is john ray?
- You want to know everything about your victim.
And in this particular instance,
We were able to speak with some of his friends.
- I got a phone call that john had been murdered.
It shocked me and affected me greatly.
- The fact that he would meet a demise like that
Really bothered me.
- It was heartbreaking, 'cause something like that
Couldn't have happened to a--
A better person.
I mean, john was just a really great guy.
- His friends were able to tell us
That john was very educated,
That he graduated from benedict college.
He moved to atlanta to buy a house
And fix it up and have a place where he could
Socialize and have parties.
He was interested in becoming a lawyer
And was starting that path by working as a paralegal.
[dramatic music]
- I started working with fulton county
Conflict defender about 2001,
And john was there when I got there.
He had gone to trial with me.
He was able to help me
Do what I needed to do in the courtroom.
He was bright.
I thought john had all the skills
That he needed to be a good lawyer.
- That guy was just ambitious.
Just great to be around, great demeanor all the time.
Like, he was always joking.
He always had, like, a smile on his face.
But he was determined.
He had this candid insistence on excellence.
- In speaking with friends,
We did learn that john was gay.
That wasn't something that he wanted everybody to know.
- John and I were fraternity brothers.
We had no idea that john was gay.
It wasn't something that we talked about.
If john would have opened himself up about that,
He would have found that there were
Quite a few other brothers in the fraternity
Who were living the same kind of down-low lives.
- John's loved ones cannot think of any enemies he had,
But they do reveal to investigators
That john drove a pontiac.
And when police check the area,
They find no sign of it.
- We learned that john had a white pontiac grand am,
And clearly, that vehicle was not in the driveway.
That was an exciting tip to get right there on the scene,
Because it's either the killer driving the car
Or a person who knows about the killing.
So that car is an imperative that we find it.
[sirens wailing]
Officers immediately put out
An all-points bulletin.
It goes over the police radio.
It goes nationwide.
- And it's almost as soon as the operator
Is putting in that last digits of that vin
And they're hitting the send button,
It's almost immediately, we're getting a hit, boom.
That vehicle's been located.
I mean, you're ecstatic,
But all right, we have the vehicle.
What happened?
[sirens wailing]
- The suspect has actually crashed john ray's car
And hit a power pole.
- And then flees the scene on foot.
This guy's long gone.
This individual just slipped away
From police custody that easy.
It's very frustrating.
- The airbag had blood on it.
- So now we have blood that we can test for dna.
♪ ♪
[tense music]
- Atlanta detectives are only hours into investigating
The murder of 32-year-old john ray,
Who was brutally stabbed to death in his dining room
Three days earlier.
After scouring john's home,
Police discover his car has been stolen
And put out an apb.
To their surprise, they get a hit in no time.
- It was almost immediate that we learned
That the car was in impound.
It had actually been involved in a traffic offense
Three days prior.
- John had been dead for three days.
And tracing back to the day
That he was believed to have been killed,
His car had been in a wreck.
- The traffic infraction
Was in very close proximity to john's house.
- One of the thoughts that's going through your head--
Well, was someone arrested with it?
- Investigators immediately head to the impound
And meet with their fellow officers,
Who fill them in on how the car got there.
- What homicide investigators learned
Was that on the early-morning hours
Of may 16, 2004,
Uniformed officers attempt to pull over
A black male for a traffic stop,
Running a red light.
But that person decides that they're not going to stop.
[siren wailing]
- He speeds off.
He tops the hill and goes down the hill, and by the time
The officer is able to crest that hill,
He sees that the suspect has actually crashed the car
And hit a power pole.
♪ ♪
- That person just knocked the pole down,
Knocked the power out for that entire area,
And flees the scene on foot.
The officer gets there that fast,
But this guy's long gone.
What they identified was a black male fleeing the scene.
- While officers at the scene
Did not apprehend the suspect,
They did recover and impound the car.
The investigative team is led to john's vehicle
So they can examine it to see if the suspect
Left any evidence behind.
- That vehicle is the most important thing
In the case right now.
That is where we're gonna find all of our evidence.
- Police were able to find a number of clues in the car,
Items that had been stolen from john's house--
Dvd player, tv, briefcase, jewelry, watches.
- Whoever killed john and took his items
Left all those items in the car.
So probably the person who fled from the car
Is our killer.
- Upon closer examination, police uncover
The most important piece of evidence
Found so far in the investigation.
- The airbag was deployed,
And the driver's blood was all over the airbag.
- And now we have blood that we can test for dna.
- They are able to actually cut out
The portions of the airbag with blood on it
And send it to the crime lab
And have that profile established
From that blood sample
And have it uploaded into codis.
♪ ♪
- Any offender after the year 2000
Had to give dna samples as they were
Being released from prison.
So it was still a crapshoot
If the killer hadn't served prison time,
But finding that blood evidence in the car
Was like hitting the lottery.
We were super sure at that point,
Once we swabbed the blood and uploaded it in codis,
That we would get our suspect.
- The dna profile is run
Against the database of offenders,
And investigators quickly get their results.
- Unfortunately, we were extremely deflated,
Because the hit came back as not a match.
We couldn't find out whose blood it belonged to.
- This individual just slipped away
From police custody that easy.
It's very frustrating.
We have dna, so all hope is not lost.
But as an investigator, you don't even focus on that.
You just keep--keep at it.
- Searching for answers, detectives head back
To john's neighborhood
To canvass the area for any vital information.
- We learned through the canvass
That john had been burglarized numerous times.
We had found out specifically,
Just days prior to his actual murder,
He was burglarized.
We started to lean more towards thinking
That this was a burglary gone bad.
So the prior burglaries were also looked at.
And basically, what we learned was,
He had high-end jewelry that was taken,
As well as other electronics.
- The last break-in that had been reported
Ended with his phone line being cut
In an effort to deactivate
The security system at his home.
- Those scenes were also processed,
And in one particular instance,
There was a fingerprint that was lifted.
Unfortunately, it was just a partial print,
So we couldn't run it on our afis machine to get a match.
♪ ♪
- We couldn't get any clear indication
That maybe the person that committed these burglaries
Were connected to this murder.
But I think the bigger picture is that we believe
There were people that chose to prey on john.
- Hoping to uncover who may have been targeting john
In these burglaries, investigators reach out
To john's friends to gain insight.
- In speaking with a friend of john ray's,
We come across this individual
That he had been having a dispute with
Who we knew to be john ray's landlord.
- John had moved into this house
With a sort of lease-to-own option,
Where he would pay the landlord some money,
And then that money would go towards
The actual down payment to purchase,
Only to find out that the house he had been paying on
Was actually in foreclosure.
- Could john and his landlord have gotten into an argument
That turned deadly?
- The landlord would be a person that john would
Readily let in the house.
He was clearly defrauding john.
He was stealing his money.
And money makes people do absolutely crazy things.
♪ ♪
[dramatic music]
- Two days into their investigation
Into the murder of john ray, atlanta homicide detectives
Have just learned that john was in a heated dispute
With his landlord.
♪ ♪
- This house was everything to john.
He was excited about it.
He was paying on it.
He was ready to decorate and throw parties.
And in the meantime, he found out that the landlord
Was actually deceiving him,
That he was selling him a house
That he was actually losing.
We decided that that was definitely worth a look.
You know, was john having this ongoing battle with this guy?
- The landlord was in the midst
Of foreclosing on the house,
And john realized that if the home
Was foreclosed, he had to move.
So he confronted the landlord at one point,
And, of course,
His friends described there was a heated debate.
Police followed up on this and went
To interview the landlord.
- We make contact with him.
We confront him about this information that we have,
About this money that he was stealing from john,
And he fesses up to it.
And he admits, you know, that he had fallen
On some hard times and money problems.
- Although he admits he was defrauding john,
The landlord provides an alibi
For the night john was killed
And insists he had nothing to do with the burglaries
Or his murder.
- He is emphatic that he did not hurt john,
That he had not seen john that day, that he,
You know, wasn't in the house on this particular day.
In order to prove his innocence,
He offers up his own dna.
We get his dna and we take it to the gbi for comparison.
- Detectives wait anxiously to see if the dna
Can bring them any closer to a killer.
- We're able to determine that the landlord
Is not involved in this case.
His alibi checked out,
And it is not his dna that's in the car.
We've ruled out the one person that john
Was having an argument with.
It was very disappointing, because we had to start
Right back to the drawing board.
We just hit another brick wall.
It's like one brick wall after another.
Coming up with viable suspects, and, you know,
Dna doesn't lie, and so you just
Eliminate people one by one.
- The frustration is building
Not only for detectives but for john's family,
Who want answers.
- The resounding question with family,
Friends, coworkers, was,
Why would someone do this to john,
Leave him hogtied in the middle of his floor
With the end of a knife blade lodged in his chest?
He was an upstanding citizen.
He was someone who was looked upon as a hero to folks.
- The community is fearful
Of who's out there, who killed john.
His family is upset, and we feel bad
That we're not bringing john ray
The justice he deserves.
- Investigators described the level of frustration
That officers have when they come
To an impasse on an investigation,
When they're not able to move forward.
They have to go back to a family and say, I'm sorry.
I can't tell you who did this.
And at the same time, investigators described
Just how much determination they have
For making sure that they did
Everything that they could for the family
To solve this case.
Now this was the thing that they said
Kept them up at night, that kept them moving forward.
- Now a week into their investigation,
Detectives are back at square one.
So they turn to the media, hoping a news blast
Might prompt a tipster to call in.
The tactic soon pays off,
As police get a call with a potentially explosive lead.
- John's friend said that john had a relationship
With a gentleman named grant.
♪ ♪
- The friend stated that grant
Was somebody john had been dating.
- As they continue to dig in,
Detectives learn that the relationship
Between john and grant
Has recently soured.
- He had tried to borrow $500 from john,
And john told him no.
♪ ♪
- The friend told police that grant had been
Bullying him about loaning him money.
John was going to confront him and say that,
You know, hey, I'm not gonna be able to give you the money.
And, you know, he had some concern
That there might be some blowback from that.
♪ ♪
- He was the last person to have had
An argument with john.
That was disclosed to one of john's friends.
So that sort of opens up the theory that, you know,
Is this a lovers' quarrel?
Is this really a domestic situation?
Is this a crime of passion?
What we know about the killer is that, obviously,
It's a person john knows,
Because of the lack of forced entry.
John obviously invited this person in.
♪ ♪
At this point in the investigation,
He was looking like a great suspect.
So we desperately need to find grant.
♪ ♪
The most important thing is to look
At whatever physical evidence that you had.
- Investigators were alerted to the potential dna match.
- Even though he was in john ray's car
The night of the crime, was he the killer?
♪ ♪
- Over a week into their investigation,
Atlanta homicide detectives
Are searching for a mystery man named grant,
Who is a person of interest in the stabbing death
Of john ray.
- He had asked john to borrow some money,
Which often causes problems.
We were pretty sure
That he was a really good suspect,
Just based on all the things we knew.
- Police find him.
They learned that he was actually out of the state.
- Grant tells authorities he and john broke up
Two weeks before the murder
And he's been living out of state ever since.
- He was able to give an alibi showing that
He was not in atlanta,
Not in georgia at all,
At the time of the murder.
- He had a clear-cut alibi that was verified.
- Despite his confirmed whereabouts,
Investigators take one more step
Before they can officially clear grant.
- Even though he gave a clear-cut, solid alibi,
Just to be sure he wasn't lying,
We asked him for a dna sample.
And he obliged.
We took that and had that compared with the dna sample
That we had collected from the car,
And it was not a match.
Grant was not our killer.
- Despite their-- their best efforts,
He was yet another dead end.
- To come up with a really good suspect,
And then it wasn't that suspect,
It's very frustrating.
Most detectives that I know pour their heart
And soul tirelessly, just trying
To find out who the killer is.
And this case is extremely disappointing.
- As the weeks turn into months,
Investigators dig deeper into john's personal life.
- We had learned that john was trying
To meet partners online
On some of these gay dating sites.
The problem there is, people
Don't want to identify themselves.
They use nicknames.
They kind of use fake profiles sometimes.
You don't know what's legit and what isn't.
And so trying to sift through that information
Is like trying to find a needle in a haystack.
- They went over a countless number of individuals
And ip addresses, each one requiring warrants
To be signed from a judge
And each one requiring numerous steps
That took lots of time,
Took lots of manpower.
- That process took months,
But digging into these websites
Was absolutely imperative.
- That took lots of time before officers
Felt that there wasn't a resolution in sight.
Gay dating sites also
Eventually came to a dead end.
[dramatic music]
♪ ♪
- In an investigation, the process of elimination,
As you eliminate people, it's--it's disappointing.
But at the same time, it's getting them out of the way
And getting you closer to the killer.
So it's sort of a bittersweet feeling.
- This investigation went through a number of twists
And turns, from potential lovers,
From dna on a stolen vehicle,
From possible dating sites,
Possible fraud with a landlord.
Nothing that police did was able to help them
Find closure in this case.
Weeks turned into months, which turned into a year.
- Despite the investigative team's best efforts,
The john ray investigation is growing cold.
- There was no resolution.
My biggest concern was the family.
You know, how were everybody taking it?
Because it's still heavy on our hearts.
- We'd speak with family members
And help them to understand,
This is what we've done to this point,
And we've not been able to get anything.
It's not stopped. It's not been closed.
It's just that we've ran out of leads.
- As atlanta police investigators
Have numerous homicides that they have to follow up on
And they've also got limited resources,
They have to move on.
- Anytime you break shoe leather and knock on doors
And put work into something, you--
You want to see the end result.
It's heartbreaking.
There's no other way to describe
When you can't find a killer that took somebody's life.
It stays with you, as a homicide detective.
- So the case of the murder of john ray
Sat on the shelf in the atlanta homicide division
For six years.
♪ ♪
- But in 2010, the john ray investigation
Gets a glimmer of hope.
- The atlanta police department
And the fulton county district attorney's office
Created the cold case unit as a way
To provide some justice that had, over years,
Progressively had been lost.
They built it around a number
Of senior homicide investigators
Who were able to use a lot of the knowledge
And expertise that they had built over time
And match it and mix it with a lot of the new technology
Of the day.
- The murder happened in 2004, and in 2010,
I was a member of the cold case/complex case unit.
We looked at those difficult cases
That had run out of all leads.
And here it is, the john ray case.
♪ ♪
- When the cold case unit picked it back up,
They knew exactly what this case was gonna take.
And just having their sets of fresh eyes,
I felt very confident john ray's murder
Would be solved.
♪ ♪
- The cold case unit begins with reexamining
The most significant piece of evidence
Collected in the case,
The dna found in john ray's stolen car.
- They retest the dna that had been collected
From john ray's vehicle,
In addition to the scene of the crime in john's house.
- The dna was put into codis again in 2010,
And that profile actually caused a hit.
♪ ♪
- It's just a rush of everything.
I'm excited.
And then, of course, I want to know.
I want to know everything.
Who is this guy?
- Now we have a codis hit.
And we've identified a person
By the name of torico jackson.
♪ ♪
- Six years after atlanta paralegal john ray
Was robbed and stabbed to death in his home,
Atlanta pd's new cold case team
Has reentered the blood from john's stolen car
Into the codis system.
And this time, they've matched it to a name:
Torico jackson.
- Jackson, he had stayed active enough
That eventually, he got tested for dna.
So it took him continuing to be the criminal that he was
For that to hit the system.
- As detectives start researching torico jackson--
And they find out that he's a career criminal.
He had done a lot of armed robberies.
- Torico jackson has a pretty extensive rap sheet,
Committing aggravated assaults, robberies,
Things of that nature.
- The team immediately takes action to apprehend
Their new prime suspect.
- And it turns out that he's in jail now
For a similar violent crime.
- He had been in prison since 2006.
- And when we find out that he's in prison,
It brings a little bit of comfort,
'cause it's like, oh, we can breathe.
He's not going anywhere.
- When the cold case unit was alerted to the potential
Dna match, they go down to the institution
Where torico jackson is in prison.
- Now their main suspect,
Investigators sit down with torico jackson
To see if he has an explanation
For why his blood was found in john's stolen vehicle.
- We ask him about, you know, do you know john ray?
And of course, at that moment, it's all denials.
- Realizing they are not going to get a confession
Out of jackson, investigators decide
To corroborate the dna match that was found in the car.
- Investigators want to-- to get the confirmation swab
From jackson.
- When you get a codis hit, you have to do what they call
A confirmation swab.
It's to verify or confirm
That your test was accurate
And that the person in question is your suspect
And all the dna is matching.
- But when detectives attempt to take the dna sample
From jackson, they notice
Something unusual on his face.
- He had an actual gash on his nose,
Which was very indicative of a person
Who had had an accident or an injury,
Which is exactly what happened with john ray's vehicle.
He crashed it into a pole at a high rate of speed,
The airbag deployed, and the car flipped.
- That scar across his face was consistent
With him having been in a crash and, you know,
An airbag exploding in his face.
- As torico jackson is led away,
Detectives hope to make a connection
Between the scar on his nose
And the accident in john's vehicle
By examining old pictures of jackson.
- Investigators looked at photographs of torico jackson
That had been taken prior to john ray's murder.
And they also looked at photographs
Of torico jackson that were taken
After john ray's murder.
And what they found was, prior to mr. Ray's murder,
Torico jackson's photograph
Did not have a scar on his face.
- The photo confirms that jackson is the one
Who crashed john's car after the murder.
As the mountain of evidence builds,
The team compares jackson's new dna swab
With the blood found in john's vehicle.
And once again, it's a match.
- At this point in the investigation,
The detectives are definitely feeling confident
That torico's the killer.
I mean, his dna is inside john ray's car.
- But detectives know that tying jackson to john's car
May not be enough to charge him in the murder.
- Even though torico jackson was in the car
That got flipped over the night of the crime,
Was he actually in the house?
Was he the killer?
- It's not enough that we have dna.
We have to build a case.
- However, you know, when working these cases,
You always have to think like a defense attorney.
And the defense will just be,
Hey, some junkie gave me the car.
I didn't kill him.
You know, so you have to find ways to get around that.
- While they begin putting their case together,
The team gets some frightening news.
- Torico was scheduled to be released very soon,
Like, within weeks.
- Even though there have been six years
Between the time that this victim,
John ray, was murdered and now,
Ironically, they have a time constraint.
- So the detectives in the cold case squad,
They had to move very fast.
- Investigators know they must move quickly
To assure jackson is not back out
On the streets, where he could go on the run
Or commit another crime.
- That's where the investigation
Immediately turned, because he's about to get out,
So the clock's ticking.
What are we gonna do?
♪ ♪
- The atlanta cold case team believes
They've finally found their killer
In the brutal murder of john ray
After they linked torico jackson's dna
To john's stolen vehicle.
Jackson is in prison on a separate charge,
But he is days from being released,
So the clock is ticking for the team
To tie him directly to the murder
Before he is set free.
- The key is to put torico jackson
In john ray's house.
Detectives looked at john ray's phone records,
And in those phone records, they observed
Numerous phone calls made
From the residence of john ray
Right around the time of john ray's death.
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So the detectives did
Kind of, like, what we call a phone canvass,
Where they reached out to these people in the phone log
To see if they knew who torico jackson was.
- In talking with some of these people,
We learned that these people, while they didn't know
John ray, they knew torico jackson.
So now we can definitely prove that torico jackson
Made phone calls from the house.
- This phone record information was huge.
It was almost bigger than the dna evidence,
Because the people that torico jackson was calling
Were people that he commonly used
To sell things quick on the street
After he stole or robbed somebody.
And he had to have been in john ray's house
At the time that john ray was murdered
To have made the phone calls.
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- While the phone records are damning,
The team then uncovers a picture
That answers a question that has lingered for years.
- They go look back at information
Around torico jackson.
They find a photo of torico jackson
Just four days before the murder.
In that photo, torico jackson is wearing
A red rocawear sweatshirt.
That red rocawear sweatshirt was found
In john ray's washing machine.
So now they have two layers of proof
That he was inside the house.
- In September of 2011, torico jackson is indicted
For the murder of john ray.
As they prepare for trial,
Prosecutors lay out their theory
As to what happened to john the night he was killed.
- I believe torico jackson was a predator that actually
Sought out people and would use them
And eventually victimize them.
- There's the potential that maybe torico jackson
Sold john ray a bill of goods
That he did have intentions of being a possible suitor
When, in fact, he was only identifying him as a mark
That he would rob.
And that confrontation turned into violence.
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- Jackson insists he's not guilty,
And in court, his lawyer tells a very different story
Of what happened at john ray's house.
- His attorney stated in his opening
That it was self-defense.
It was a shock to me that their strategy
Was essentially gay panic.
- He said that they were on a date
And john ray became violent and attacked him.
And he tried to protect himself
And grabbed a knife
After john ray came after him
With a bottle of vodka.
And he says that this was his only way
Of defending himself and keeping himself
From being killed by john ray.
- If you're acting in self-defense,
Then why do you steal items?
Why would you take the time to wash your clothes,
Bleach down the scene, set the alarm, lock the door,
And drive away with his car
Loaded down with his own equipment?
So all of that sort of negated this idea
That he in some way acted in self-defense.
The evidence was there.
It was just a matter of letting the jury see it.
The jury found him guilty on all charges.
The court sentenced him to life without parole.
He will never get out of prison.
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- After nine long years, john ray's family and friends
Are finally able to gain some closure
And mourn the loss of their loved one.
- John was a bright man, had a lot of potential.
He probably could have been anything he wanted.
And it's unfortunate that he met
The end that he met the way he met it.
- It's like, great, you got this guy off the street.
Awesome. But we can't bring john back.
I would have been interested to see what type of lawyer
John ray would have become, just knowing his dedication.
That's what we lost when we lost john ray--
Somebody who would have just excelled.
And the world really is going to--to miss that excellence.
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