Featured Image Credit: Marion County Sheriff's Office
Topics: US News, True crime
Jess Hardiman
Video footage captures the moment a group of teenagers found out they were being charged with murder following the death of a 15-year-old boy.
Seath Jackson, 15, was brutally murdered in 2011, having been lured to a house by his ex-girlfriend before being ambushed, viciously beaten and shot several times.
Jackson was hit in the head and shot, but he still desperately tried to flee the property, police said.
However, he was shot again and he was placed in a bathtub – his knees brutally broken so that his body would fit in a sleeping bag.
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Still alive, Jackson was shot again before having his body burned in a backyard fire pit, with his ashes later shoveled into paint containers, according to arrest documents at the time.
Jackson had suspected ex-girlfriend Amber Wright, then 15, of cheating on him with 18-year-old Michael Bargo - who was the person behind the handgun.
He was sentenced to death for his role in the killing, and remains on death row, while his four co-defendants – Wright, her brother 16-year-old brother Kyle Hooper, 18-year-old Charlie Ely and 20-year-old Justin Soto were charged with first degree murder.
Chilling footage shows the moment Wright, Hooper and Ely learnt of their fate, being told: “You’re all going to be booked for first degree, premeditated murder.” Take a look:
Detective Rhonda Stroup of Marion County Sheriff's Office explained how the two juveniles of the group would be sent to Juvenile Assessment Center, while the adult would go to Marion County Jail.
They were then told: “Take a deep breath. You’ll have no bond. You won’t be getting out. Listen to me, everybody just take a deep breath.”
When one of the teens tries to say that they ‘really didn’t do anything’, Stroup says: “No, no, no. See, but you did.
“Listen, first of all, let’s get over that hump right now – that ‘We really didn’t do anything’ - because everybody’s complicit here.
“A person died, a person was murdered.”
All the defendants were sentenced to life in prison for Jackson’s murder.
In 2020, after nine years in prison, Ely was released after pleading to a lesser charge.
James Havens – the 37-year-old ex-boyfriend of Amber Wright’s mother – was accused of helping the teens dispose of the remains and pleaded guilty in 2018 to accessory to murder, receiving a 10-year sentence.
Bargo became Florida’s youngest inmate on death row, with the Supreme Court upholding his sentence in 2021.