Find My Baby! The Inside Story of Valiree Jackson

I grew up in Spokane, Washington, the largest city between Seattle and Minneapolis. Nothing much really happens there, compared to other cities of its size. The population has slowly and steadily increased from 342,000 in 1980 to 418,000 in 2000 - and more than 90% of those people are white. The county reports a rise in homicides from 12 in 1990 to 26 in 1995. (Imagine the difference when I became one of Houston's diverse four million people!)

Violent crimes, when they do happen in Spokane, make the front page and stay there. Find My Baby! is about one of those crimes. Written by John Stone, the victim's uncle, the 152-page book consists of 61 chapters, some only a page long. Let me tell you the story:

On October 18, 1999, nine-year-old Valiree Jackson was reported missing from her grandparents' house on Blossey Street in Spokane. Spokane County sheriff's officers were skeptical when 33-year-old William "Brad" Jackson made the report, claiming that the girl had vanished from the front yard early one morning before school.

Brad, a truck driver home on disability, told the police that Valiree was playing in the yard while he did laundry that morning. When it was time to walk her to school, he discovered only her backpack on the front steps.

The worried father and his neighbors scoured the neighborhood before calling the sheriff's department. Detectives, volunteers, and search dogs combed a 24-square-block area for the little girl, who had celebrated her birthday just nine days earlier. MISSING posters appeared in local business windows, on telephone poles, and on bulletin boards throughout the area. Police checked out the 80+ known sex offenders living in the area. They found no leads.

Brad Jackson was a suspect early on, when detectives found blood on Valiree's pillow and sheets, and on Brad's shoes. But they couldn't uncover any evidence in searches of Brad's home, so investigators got a warrant to take Brad's 1995 Ford pickup for a search. They returned it with a global positioning system transmitter attached, and they tracked Brad's movements to two fresh grave sites. One, about 10 miles from his home was empty. The other, about 50 miles northwest of Spokane, was not. Cadaver dogs found Valiree's body on November 15.

Police charged Jackson with second-degree murder, then upgraded to first-degree. At his trial, he admitted that he buried Valiree but denied killing her. The defense said that Valiree died of an overdose of the prescription anti-depressant Paxil and Brad panicked after finding her lifeless body. He was afraid to report it because of the scrutiny police put him under following the mysterious disappearance of Valiree's mother, Roseann Pleasant, in 1992.

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