‘Money was the motive.’ Investigator describes bloody Mother’s Day attack on Macon couple
The man accused in a brutal Mother’s Day attack that left a north Macon couple bashed unconscious in pools of their own blood at times made puzzled faces and appeared to scoff in court Wednesday while an investigator described the man’s alleged crimes.
The suspect, Frederick D. Jackson, has been jailed since May 9 on charges that include aggravated battery on a husband and wife at the pair’s Kathryn Drive home near Wesleyan Drive.
The two, in their mid-40s, were believed to have been beaten in the predawn hours of May 8 and possibly left to die.
At Wednesday’s probable cause hearing in a courtroom at the Bibb County Law Enforcement Center, Jackson looked on, seemingly perplexed and agitated as the investigator divulged potentially incriminating aspects of the case.
A judge later ruled there were sufficient grounds for the charges and bound Jackson’s case over to superior court. If convicted and sentenced to the maximum, Jackson, 41, who served three years in prison for aggravated assault in the late 1990s, could be sent to prison for 40 years.
In his testimony, Bibb sheriff’s investigator Deandre Hall for the first time publicly revealed details of the grisly attack on the couple, who survived life-threatening wounds. The Telegraph is withholding their names for privacy reasons.
The investigator, in outlining the allegations against Jackson, told a Bibb magistrate at Wednesday’s hearing that the attack left the husband with a broken back, skull fractures, busted ribs and a gashed nose.
Hall said the wife suffered a “brain bleed,” facial fractures and severe bruising all over her body. He said her eyes were swollen shut and her nose was split open and that she spent about a month in the hospital. She was on a ventilator for a week. “She had been beaten really badly,” the investigator said.
He noted that when sheriff’s deputies were called to the couple’s house after the husband regained consciousness the afternoon of May 8 that officers found a trail of blood down a hallway and pools of blood in the pair’s bedroom. Hall said there was blood on the bed, on pillows, on walls and on the ceiling.
Hall said that as investigators began piecing together what happened that a clearer picture of the assault emerged.
When the husband, a former co-worker of Jackson’s, was eventually able to recall the horrific events, he told investigators that Jackson had called him “out of the blue” the night of May 7. The husband said Jackson asked him on the phone if he still lived on Kathryn Drive and that Jackson said he was going to “stop by.”
The husband said that when Jackson arrived his wife had already gone to bed. The husband said he and Jackson drank some beer and smoked cigarettes. As the night wore on, he and Jackson became intoxicated and when the husband was about to go to bed he told Jackson he could stay in a guest room so he wouldn’t have to drive home drunk.
Hall, the investigator, testified Wednesday that the husband said “he showed Mr. Jackson” to the guest bedroom and that as the husband was walking to his own bedroom “all he remembered was getting hit from behind.”
“He felt like he had gotten hit with a hammer,” Hall said.
The husband later awoke in a puddle of blood in his bed. His cellphone and wallet were gone. He found his wife knocked out in their basement, her body partially covered with a trash bag.
The object or objects used to strike the pair have not been found, Hall said. He did note that the husband recalled seeing Jackson doing something curious with a hammer while the husband and Jackson were drinking.
“He stated that Jackson was even cleaning his (finger)nails with a hammer. ... He had some kind of hammer,” Hall said. “He was cleaning his fingernails with the end of it to the point where (the husband) went in the bathroom and said, ‘Here,’ and gave (Jackson) fingernail clippers.”
The wife, according to Hall, later told investigators that she remembered waking up and seeing her husband being attacked.
“She remembered running downstairs. She remembers being beaten and that was the last thing she remembered,” Hall said.
She was later shown a photo lineup and she picked out Jackson as the assailant.
Conflicting stories
The investigator said he interviewed Jackson on May 9 at the sheriff’s office and said Jackson admitted going to the couple’s house. Jackson said he arrived about 9 p.m. that Saturday and left at 11 p.m.
Jackson said he was home at his mother’s place in Unionville half an hour later, Hall testified.
The investigator, however, said Jackson’s mother has told deputies that her son was not home at all that night, that she called him the next morning, Mother’s Day, and that Jackson said he was at a girlfriend’s house.
Hall said a surveillance camera at a neighbor’s house across Kathryn Drive from the couple’s home recorded footage of a lone man “who appears to be Mr. Jackson ... rush out in a hurry (and) get into a tan Lincoln.”
In his interview with investigator Hall, Jackson said that when he left at 11 p.m. the husband walked with him out to his car.
But video footage, Hall said, shows nothing of the sort.
Hall said the video shows a man who appears to be Jackson by himself getting into a Lincoln, a car Jackson was known to drive, at 2 a.m. on May 8.
The investigator also spoke to Jackson’s girlfriend. She told Hall that on the weekend the husband and wife were attacked that Jackson threatened to “shoot up” her house and demanded the title to his car because he needed money.
Hall said that during his interview with Jackson that Jackson “just randomly mentioned the (couple) having money.”
Hall said it appeared Jackson was under the impression that the Kathryn Drive couple, whose house Jackson had visited before, were well-to-do.
“I felt like money was the motive,” the investigator testified.
This story was originally published August 11, 2022 at 5:00 AM.