Arthur Jackson

People liked Arthur Jackson.

His neighbors thought he was the friendliest guy around, with a happy-go-lucky smile and a great attitude. From what his neighbors could tell, Arthur Jackson was a great father who often played in the family yard with his stepchildren, 7-year-old stepson Tyson Adams and 13-year-old stepdaughter Jaelyn Ford.

Things were not as they seemed.

32-year-old Arthur Jackson and his wife, Lisa Ford Jackson, were not having what you’d call ‘an amicable separation.’

At around the middle of September, Lisa told Arthur Jackson that she wanted a divorce. Mr. Jackson insisted that if there was a divorce, he was going to take his and Lisa’s daughter: 3-year-old Arianna Jackson.

Arthur Jackson told Lisa that if she fought him about his having custody of Arianna, he’d do whatever it took to get her declared an unfit parent.

Late in the month of September, 2007, Arthur Jackson called police and said that he was afraid for the girls his wife was responsible for because nobody would answer the door at the house.

Early in the month of October, Lisa Jackson called police, saying that despite their separation, her husband was banging on her door and repeatedly ringing the doorbell. By the time police arrived, however, Arthur Jackson was gone.

Everything came to a head on the 12th of October, 2007, when Arthur Jackson went to visit his family one last time.

This time, he brought a gun.

Nobody knows exactly what happened when Arthur Jackson walked into the door of his wife’s home. Nobody knows – except his 3-year-old daughter Arianna, who was covered in blood but unharmed when she was dropped off at a church in Arlington where a cousin worked.

According to Arianna:

Daddy shot Mommy. Daddy shot Brother and Sister. Bang, bang, bang.

As he left his little girl with the relative at the church, a smiling Arthur Jackson announced, “I killed some people. I’m going to kill some more,” and “I killed Lisa. I shot her in the head.”

He asked the cousin to make sure Arianna was given to his mother in Memphis.

Then he got into his car and drove off.

Understandably, police were quickly called.

Authorities arrived at Lisa Jackson’s one-story brick home and discovered Lisa’s body, lying on her bed with a gunshot to the head. On the floor next to her bed were the bodies of her two children – Jaelyn Ford and Tyson Adams – also shot in the head.

At about half-past noon, police found Arthur Jackson sitting in his car, which was parked on a driveway to a house on a nicely treed suburban lot. Hale Elementary School, just across the street from Arthur Jackson’s breakdown, went into lockdown and the students evacuated.

Arthur Jackson just sat there, in his car, while cops yelled at him through a loudspeaker they had set up. They talked to him on his cell phone. Sometimes, when he felt like it, Arthur Jackson would raise his gun to his head and threaten to blow his head off. At other times, he would talk about surrendering and talk about how life was perfect.

He did that off and on for seven hours, surrounded by a million cop cars and blocked into the driveway by an armored personnel carrier that weighed several tons.

Then, when Arthur Jackson decided he wanted to leave, he just…drove off. Through a neighbor’s yard he went, around some cop cars, out of the blocked-off neighborhood and onto the open road.

The police, who were looking like complete idiots at this point, followed Arthur Jackson as he drove to Lake Arlington, pointed his car at the lake, gunned the engine and shot himself in the head.

 Loading ...