Body on the Shore | Case Files: Dark Waters | Forensic Files

[water bubbling] [theme music] [stirring music] NARRATOR: Parris Island, South Carolina.
It sits near the mouth of Broad River, a sheltered tidal estuary that feeds into the Atlantic Ocean.
[ominous music] - There's a tremendous amount of water. There's both, obviously, the ocean,
but you have a lot of rivers and swampy areas in our jurisdiction. And it's called the low country for a reason.
It's very low to sea level, and there's a tremendous amount of water in the area.
RYAN NEILL: The Broad River is known for its fishing. It's known for its family outings.
It's known for a place to go boating and have fun. [ominous music] NARRATOR: Memorial Day, a busy public holiday
where tourists and local residents make the most of their free time. [stirring music]
- Loaded up my boat. Got all my stuff together. Early that morning, I actually put in at this boat ramp
at the Broad River boat ramp and proceed to head up the Broad River towards Parris Island.
- A fisherman who was fishing in the area had spotted a body on an area of shell deposits.
- I noticed something red and white on the bank. It was very bright. And my first thoughts was it was
a cooler laying on the bank. NARRATOR: As Carey drew closer, he realized the object was, in fact, a human form, and female.
- Her legs and her arms were pretty much the same color as the sand. It was a sand shell break.
And she was so blended in, you really couldn't see it. Her feet were down in the sand.
She was face down, laying on her stomach. It was so hard to tell until you got right up close.
It's not something everyone should find. [water bubbling] [stirring music] - Because of the severity of the decomposition
and the presence of animal activity along the remains, a visual ID could not be made.
Saltwater is home to a number of versatile fish and aquatic life. Each of these can have different impacts
on remains that are in water. Crustaceans are known to heavily feed on decomposing remains.
They are naturally scavengers. So they could sit there and do a lot of damage to the body compared to fish that feed
on the body out of curiosity. They'll sit there and take little nibbles, but they don't do as much damage
as crustaceans normally do. RYAN NEILL: Historically, you see in that the warmer months, which, in this case
is May, the water is starting to warm up, animal activity starts to increase, but also decomposition starts to occur.
- The fact that she was in the water that long, it's brackish. It's a combination of saltwater and freshwater.
Due to the tides, her body was badly decomposed. That has a detrimental effect on any investigation.
SARAH MORMINO: In a case like this where a body is found in water, there's a lot of trauma
and little circumstances are known. Investigators cannot jump to any conclusions.
This could be a suicide from jumping off one of the local bridges. This could be an accident from falling off a boat.
This could be of natural causes, or it could be of suspicious causes. The investigators must keep their eyes open
and rely on what the water and the environment and the circumstances of the case are telling them.
CAREY FURMAN: After I located the body, I left 30, 45 minutes after Coast Guard had
come in with their helicopter and they had already dispatched several wildlife boats, and search and rescue to come out to get the body.
At that point, my day is over. NARRATOR: Working out where the body came from would also be no easy task.
[water sloshing] [stirring music] - This sort of Broad River area, the whole sort of estuary
around Beaufort, is one of the largest marine areas in the county. The movement of water changes every six
hours or so, which means that there's a lot of flushing going on. So it's a complex area to study.
And certainly tracking a body in this area becomes quite difficult. NARRATOR: But their first step was to work
out the victim's identity. And the answer lay in a missing person report. RYAN NEILL: We are an assisting agency.
Part of my duties were to maintain good relationships with the sheriffs and police chiefs of the area.
The police chief of Hampton called me that day and said that he had had a missing person's report filed.
NARRATOR: The missing person was 34-year-old Masako Miller from Beaufort, the mother of two young boys aged 4 and 8,
and a 12-year-old girl. - Masako Miller didn't show up to work, and that was highly irregular for her.
She was always on time, never came in late, and she hardly ever came out without letting
somebody know that she wasn't going to be there that day. NARRATOR: Concerned, her coworker,
went to Masako's home. DAVID WILLIAMS: Went inside and found that the children had been left alone,
which was highly irregular. Ms. Miller would not leave her children by themselves.
SEAN THORNTON: She is a mother with small children. And she just, apparently in the middle of the night, vanishes.
And they don't know where she is. RYAN NEILL: She had a 12-year-old, and then two younger children.
And she also had left a note that was written in crayon. And the note said, "I'll be right back.
Get ready for school. Went with someone. Love you all." The daughter felt that was odd because her mother would
never leave a note like that. And on top of that, the note was not written in her mother's handwriting.
SEAN THORNTON: I think everybody was concerned at that point. But the trigger, I think, for all of us,
was the fact that she did not seem to be the person, based upon her coworkers and talking to her children, that she would have just
disappeared and left her small children there to fend for themselves. [stirring music]
- Well over 90% of individuals who go missing do turn up, and they're unharmed. And so even though I think there's concern
here because of Masako's history, the fact that she has children, that she's a reliable employee,
I think there's still going to be this hope. DAVID WILLIAMS: There was no sign of any forced entry.
There was no break in. Nothing of that sort. It was just like she had just walked away and vanished.
Her car was still there, but she was not. [ominous music] - We also learned that Ms. Miller was
an immigrant from Japan, that she had come to the country several years prior and had gained US citizenship.
But what we found is her parents lived in Japan. She had a very close relationship with her mother,
and they communicated on a regular basis. But we needed to talk to her mother as well.
SEAN THORNTON: Had she been nervous when she talked to her parents? Had she been scared?
Maybe she gave them a clue as to what had occurred. Maybe she mentioned a name. Maybe she indicated what she was concerned about.
DAVID WILLIAMS: Hampton police department went to check if her debit card had been used on the night
of the 25th or in the early morning hours of the 26th. And they discovered that it had been used at a Shell gas
station in Hampton. RYAN NEILL: As we sent agents to the gas station to start obtaining video footage
or see if they actually had it, we had to think that this could have actually been her
using the card. NARRATOR: Keeping all options open, police put together a list of people
who might have seen Masako, or been to her home the night she vanished. - Everybody's trying to do everything
as quickly as possible. But you also don't want to have tunnel vision and just zero
in on one person, and then you miss something important if it happens to be somebody else.
So the way that you do that is you start interviewing as many people as you can,
as quickly as you can to try and determine who the perpetrator might be. In this case, there had been an air conditioner
guy that had come out rather late because it's in the summertime in the South and it was hot.
And I think he was there around 10 o'clock on the evening of the 25th. So that was probably the last sighting of anybody.
Because the children answered the door, but one of them was already asleep in a chair.
So when the kids went to bed, that's the last time anybody saw her. DAVID WILLIAMS: Two of Ms. Miller's children
were fathered by Kelvin Jackson. After Masako Miller and Kelvin Jackson split up,
she started dating another go. SEAN THORNTON: You have a new boyfriend. You have the father of her daughter,
who is a different person than Kelvin Jackson. You also have the air conditioner guy,
who was one of the last people other than her children certainly to see her alive.
RYAN NEILL: We need to find who else was at the residence. There's always a handful of cases that you can remember
and you can recall through your career that where you ramped it up even more. And this was one of them.
[ominous music] NARRATOR: In South Carolina, 34-year-old mother of three Masako Miller has vanished from
her home during the night. - The lack of any forced entry, the lack of her house
being in disarray. We felt like this was going to be somebody that she knew, that she was comfortable with.
For some reason, whoever this person was that came into her residence, was comfortable coming in.
NARRATOR: Police have begun narrowing down the last people who had seen her. - When we interviewed the heating and cooling repairman,
he had indicated that he arrived at the house that night. So he is now probably the last person to see Ms. Miller
before her disappearance. And he reported to us that he saw nothing out of the ordinary.
- After interviewing the new boyfriend, we were able to check out his alibi for the time period
when Ms. Miller disappeared. And his alibi was solid. He was nowhere near that location.
- We had a couple agents go out and start doing a neighborhood canvass, which would be going door-to-door
to her neighbors and see if they had seen anything suspicious. One of her neighbors reported to us
that he had seen her ex-boyfriend, Kelvin Jackson, in the neighborhood that evening.
NARRATOR: 34-year-old Kelvin Jackson was also the father of Masako's two youngest boys.
- While our crime scene unit is working on the residence and we have now learned that her financial bank card had
been attempted to be used, we immediately sent investigators to that gas station
to see if they had surveillance footage of who was using that card. - And they pulled the video for the time frame
that the card was used. And they found out that Kelvin Jackson, who was the estranged
boyfriend of Masako Miller, had used her card at the gas station. That was declined because there wasn't
enough money in her account for the transaction. So he went inside, so you could see him clearly
on the camera on the inside of the convenience store, and he paid in cash for the gas.
- We wanted to look a little closer to that video. We wanted to, let's make sure that Ms. Miller
is not in the car. That she not willingly left with him. But what we saw on the video was once the card was declined,
there was no conversation back to the car. He immediately went in the gas station
and paid cash, and came back out and pumped his gas. There was no indication that anybody else
was in that vehicle with him. DAVID WILLIAMS: When we spoke to Ms. Miller's new boyfriend,
he said he never had any problems with Kelvin Jackson, but he understood that there was
some jealousy on Mr. Jackson's part towards him. Kelvin Jackson thought that she was disrespecting
him by dating another man when he already had children by her. There were several leads we had in this case, other
than just Kelvin Jackson had used her card. We knew that she had placed a call to an air conditioning person on the night of the 25th.
- At some point, I guess Ms. Miller felt very comfortable with him because she started to share a little bit more,
that she was having troubles with an ex-boyfriend. She got sugar put in her gas tank,
and I guess that was because the unit was low on Freon. And she started to question whether that had been an act
of sabotage to her unit. But the HVAC man reported that to us, and we felt that was very interesting, too,
especially that she used the term former boyfriend. DAVID WILLIAMS: That just gave us
more suspicion on his involvement in her disappearance. [stirring music] RYAN NEILL: We've identified Mr. Jackson.
We've now made contact with Mr. Jackson, and he is coming to sit down for an interview with us
and discuss Ms. Miller. We felt like we had enough probable cause to go ahead and charge him with credit card fraud.
- Unlawful use of a debit card is a relatively low level felony. And the concern was that if he bonded out, he might disappear.
So, they clearly had probable cause to arrest him. DAVID WILLIAMS: And then when he was confronted with the fact
that he was on camera using Ms. Miller's debit card, then he admitted, yeah, I was there,
but that was an old car that I had, and I did not stop by her residence. SEAN THORNTON: And then, of course, they
were able to confront him with the fact that we have two eyewitnesses that saw him walking
around her neighborhood. RYAN NEILL: As the interview was progressing, you could tell Mr. Jackson was very uncomfortable
being interviewed by us. You could see his body language and his answers were not being very honest with us.
And in this case, one of the questions we have for ourselves is, if you're not involved with her disappearance,
you have no reason to be dishonest with us. Especially with the mother of your two children,
you should be very forthcoming with information. But every time we ask him questions,
he was giving us one answer. And we were confronting him with the truth, and then he would change his answer to meet the truth.
NARRATOR: Police already had their prime suspect, Kelvin Jackson, in custody for fraudulently
using Masako's bank card. But that wouldn't keep him off the streets for long. - After checking the phone records,
it was discovered that the last known location of the phone was on I-95 in Highway 21.
The bad news was that Ms. Miller was not at that location. RYAN NEILL: We're asking to produce some missing persons
information so that we can start getting this out to the media. DAVID WILLIAMS: We got a call from a person
in the vicinity of I-95 and Highway 21 that they had found a phone on the side of the road.
They had powered it up. And when they powered it up, they saw that there was a lot of phone calls and text messages
wanting to know where they were. They got scared, and took it and threw it into a little pond near their residence.
- A couple of divers went in the water. And within 20 or 30 minutes, they located the phone.
And it was sent to our forensic laboratory for any type of future testing. Nothing of value came from the actual recovery of the phone.
We would be actually be looking for DNA or fingerprints. And once they're submerged, those are actually of no value.
SEAN THORNTON: There weren't phone calls back to the children. There weren't phone calls to family.
There weren't text messages. There weren't other sightings. Nobody had seen her.
They really weren't any signs of life from Masako that you would hope for. RYAN NEILL: So, at that point, we were pretty certain
foul play had occurred at this point. NARRATOR: With no leads on Masako's whereabouts,
detectives feared for her safety. Then came the breakthrough they'd been dreading.
[stirring music] RYAN NEILL: On the afternoon of May 30, I received a phone call that a body
had been found in the Broad River in Beaufort County. SEAN THORNTON: Masako's body was found by a fisherman.
She was identified, at least initially, by a tattoo. RYAN NEILL: We knew Masako had a very distinguishing tattoo.
We wanted to examine this body to see if we could at least maybe see this tattoo.
[stirring music] - Oftentimes, when we have a situation like this, the tattoo may be somewhat disrupted or not visible.
But we can take certain things like peroxide, in fact, and put on that tattoo, which makes it come to life
and becomes much more visible, at least for a short time. And we can take photos of that, and then hopefully
make an identification. RYAN NEILL: We unzip the body bag with the corner, and we were able to find a tattoo that matched
the tattoo Ms. Miller had. This gave us enough to where we could proceed to say that she's been identified.
And at that point, the coroner agreed that this is the body of Masako Miller. NARRATOR: Detectives needed to work out
where Masako's body entered the water and how it ended up on this shore. They started looking at the tidal currents.
[water sloshing] - This isn't the sort of a semi-enclosed sea, if you like. You get a very different circulation
pattern to the ones you'd expect from the normal tide. - It's my theory that Ms. Miller
was placed into the Broad River in the hopes that her body would wash out into the Atlantic Ocean
and never be found. NARRATOR: But the tides seemed to have worked against Masako's killer.
SIMON BOXALL: The body would have initially gone, counting towards the sea, and then come
back into the tidal cycle. And the fact it was found on the high watermark is not surprising.
It's likely to have been trapped by the oyster shells. As the water receded, it would have left the body behind.
NARRATOR: Could her body have been dumped from the bridge that runs across Broad River?
- At the time that her body was dumped, we had strong West and Southwest winds. Regardless of whether the tides going in or
out, if her body was dumped at that end of the bridge, the West and Southwest winds would
have pushed her body across the Broad River, and she would have ended up in the area that I found her.
NARRATOR: But her body was badly damaged and decomposing, and could have been in this marine tidal environment
for up to four days since she went missing. - It was very difficult for us to tell
if there was an actual cause of death with her. So we were going to now have to rely
on forensic experts in forensic pathology to actually give us a cause of death. [stirring music]
NARRATOR: South Carolina Law Enforcement officers believe a body found on Parris Island
is mother of three Masako Miller. What was a missing persons case is now a potential
murder investigation. [stirring music] - Now that we actually know that it's a homicide because we
have a body, the investigation takes on more urgent approach than just a missing person.
We had suspected it was a homicide all along, but now that we had the body, we ramped up our investigation to try to identify
what happened to Ms. Miller. NARRATOR: But detectives still have no idea how she died.
- Part of the complexities of investigating a water death is the injuries that the body sustained
during the time they're in the water, especially if it's a lengthy amount of time.
- Our initial examination of Ms. Miller, we could not see any type of injuries that would have been
consistent with her death. There was no indications of strangulation. There was no indications of a gunshot wound, of stab wounds.
But also the presence of animal life and animal activity and the damage that they had done to tissue, not to mention
the damage just due to decomposition, it was difficult for us to tell the cause of death.
[water sloshing] - This area is dominated by oyster reefs used for commercial fishing, as well as sort of a natural reef
in its own right. These reefs act as havens for young fish, quite an amazing life cycle in this region.
But it also means as the oysters die off, we get a lot of shells left behind, and those can be quite sharp and dangerous to a human.
MICHELLE DUPRE: There was a lot of postmortem damage to the body. As the body floats down and rubs
up against those oyster shells, the skin is often destroyed. And a lot of things are covered up
or evidence is taken away because of that. NARRATOR: The body was taken to a police pathology laboratory
to look for a possible cause of death and to confirm her identity. - We had obtained dental records and some DNA samples
from known standards of hers to try to compare them to the body. And ultimately, dental records are what identified Ms. Miller.
MICHELLE DUPRE: Dental records is kind of unique because it isn't like DNA. There is no database for dental records.
We have to have an idea who the victim is, and then hopefully find a dentist that she went to that can provide
evidence or dental records. And that's what happened here. - According to the autopsy, she had sustained some blunt trauma
injuries that were not able to be determined if they were prior to her death or after her death.
NARRATOR: Police already had their prime suspect in custody. Fearing he could flee.
They'd arrested Kelvin Jackson, father to two of Miller's children, for fraudulent use
of Masako's credit card. But they didn't have enough to charge him with murder. - You know, we really sat back and looked at everything
involved in the investigation. And we you look at her phone records, her bank records,
the interviews that we have conducted to include her new boyfriend. There was nothing to indicate anybody's involvement
other than Mr. Jackson's involvement with her disappearance. NARRATOR: But with so little evidence,
investigators weren't even sure exactly where her body went into the water. - As you see around, there's only
a couple places where you can actually place the body in the water. The bridge, top of that is a busy bridge.
Whereas this place here provides you more secrecy, and there's easy access to the water
as far as placing the body in the water here. He felt like he could cover his crime by placing
her in this body of water. - I think the reason that perpetrators dispose of a body in water is people thinking,
OK, this is going to be a way to dispose of this victim. And it's very hard to find people.
I think he's so confident he's going to get away with it. NARRATOR: Her killer was wrong.
[ominous music] JIM CARUSO: So a body in the water will sink, particularly if clothed, and
hang around near the bottom. As decomposition moves along, microorganisms produce gas.
And that causes the torso, in particular, to bloat. Eventually, some of that gas may cause the body
to come to the surface, and that's when we often discover the remains. - In this case, it is likely that Miller's body traveled
a significant way with the current until it ultimately was washed up on the bank.
NARRATOR: With no witnesses or firm evidence of foul play, police needed to strengthen their case.
DAVID WILLIAMS: In another interview with Mr. Jackson, he told the agents that he spent the night at a hotel
in Walterboro, South Carolina, on the night of the 25th, early morning of the 26th of May.
- We felt like this was another case of him being dishonest with us. Because he lives in a residence in which is the opposite
way of Ms. Miller's. - The hotel that he stayed is probably 150 miles from Columbia where he worked.
[stirring music] - He had no reason to be in Walterboro. So we dispatched a team of agents
to that hotel, where they received information from the clerk that he had actually paid cash for a room.
And we also dispatched a crime scene unit to that hotel to go ahead and process that room for any type of evidence
that may be there. DAVID WILLIAMS: I believe that he went to this hotel to clean
up before he went to work on the 26th, after the night that he'd had disposed of Masako Miller's body after he had killed her.
RYAN NEILL: As they were processing the scene, I think we needed to make sure that Ms. Miller was
never in that room, whether alive or deceased. NARRATOR: But no forensic evidence
placed Masako in the hotel room, so the DNA search moved to her home from where she'd seemingly vanished.
RYAN NEILL: We collected her bedclothes. Because we also got to rule out whether a sexual assault had
occurred and everything else. So we wanted to make sure that we collected everything we possibly could.
DAVID WILLIAMS: The things that involve DNA, it takes quite a bit of time to get that analysis
back to tell us what it is. NARRATOR: With tests underway, detectives kept building a picture of their prime suspect,
Kelvin Jackson, and his relationship with victim, Masako Miller. SEAN THORNTON: Her child, her daughter,
specifically recalled several instances of domestic violence. She recounted one in particular that was so bad.
Kelvin Jackson had taken Masako into the bathroom and locked her in there. And her daughter was trying to get in the bathroom door
with a knife to try to protect her mother. So there was clearly instances of domestic violence
that had been occurring prior to her disappearance. JONI JOHNSTON: I think it's interesting
how perpetrators really underestimate children and how observant they are, and what they keep in
and what they know. Masako's daughter provided some amazing insight into their relationship.
I mean, she tells investigators numerous times about how Kelvin Jackson would hit her mom,
how he had locked her in the bathroom, pushed her to the floor. Just incredibly abusive to her mom.
RYAN NEILL: So, Ms. Miller's current boyfriend, he's told us that he felt like Mr. Jackson was a bit jealous
that Ms. Miller had moved on. SEAN THORNTON: He had made a couple of threats, one of which
I was actually able to get into court because it was overheard by someone over the phone and they were
able to identify his voice. There had been an occasion where sugar had been poured into the tank of her vehicle,
which had ruined the vehicle. We didn't know for sure who did that, but it certainly seemed in line with
a jealous and/or abusive paramour, for lack of a better word. JONI JOHNSTON: He has actually moved
in with his new girlfriend, and yet there are some significant indicators that he
is not emotionally moved on. So, for example, he will pop around the house. He continues to text.
He will show up unannounced. He's been known to come through her window without being invited.
And he continues to take money from her. Masako's daughter said that her stepfather
thought he owned her mom. And I think when she said that, she completely hit the nail on the head.
[stirring music] - Now that we've found Ms. Miller's body, it was determined to go back and interview Mr. Jackson again
and confront him with the fact that we now have her body to see if he had any additional information
that he might want to tell us. We're still waiting on the forensic stuff. But in the interim, several of the different agents
at the office, their specialties are homicide. They thought that they could interview him and possibly get
him to, you know, to confess. He was interviewed, like, three or four more times,
but he would not admit to the homicide. - Agent Charles asked him, he said, would you be interested in taking a polygraph examination?
And he said, sure, I would. And he goes, well, stand by and we'll set you up. We got you set up next door to go ahead and take one.
You could see a look come upon him that he knew he was in trouble at this point.
[beeping noises] Polygraphs probably are not 100% effective, and I think everybody knows it's
just a law enforcement tool. They're not admissible in court, but I think it can help you with actually,
am I going in the right direction? [beeping noises] And Mr. Jackson was administered a polygraph,
and he failed miserably. [beeping noises] - The problem in a case like this is there is no smoking gun.
You don't even know what the, for sure, what the cause of death is. - I need proof beyond a reasonable doubt.
What means something to me is, do I have enough to convict? Because otherwise he's just going
to be your guest for a few months, and then he's going to get out and go do it again.
DAVID WILLIAMS: Mr. Jackson, throughout this entire ordeal with us interviewing him, he always appeared
very cold, very calculating. You knew from his demeanor that he was capable of this,
but we just had to prove it. NARRATOR: But they still lacked the crucial proof that Kelvin Jackson was responsible for the murder
of Masako Miller. [stirring music] NARRATOR: In South Carolina, a young mother's decomposing body
has been found washed up on the shoreline of Broad River. Police have strong circumstantial evidence
her ex-partner, Kelvin Jackson, was the killer. - You could have probably charged him.
But when we do this, we contact a solicitor, and we give them the evidence and they'll say need more.
We knew at this point, we didn't have enough evidence to arrest him. NARRATOR: But they were still waiting
for the results of what they hoped would be crucial forensics. The first, a sample of handwriting
on a note that police believed Jackson was trying to pass off as a message from Masako.
- It was strange in appearance, the handwriting. It looked like somebody had purposely
altered their handwriting to write this note. - Her daughter looked at the note and didn't think it looked like her mother's handwriting.
She thought it looked like Kelvin Jackson's handwriting. DAVID WILLIAMS: I obtained a search
warrant for his jail cell at the Beaufort County Detention Center. I knew there would be paper and pen there,
and that he would have some type of correspondence in his cell. - We had found some paperwork in his personnel
file at his place of employment that he had filled out. And we used those items and sent them
to the laboratory for our handwriting experts to compare to the note. DAVID WILLIAMS: They were able to determine
that, most likely, Kelvin Jackson penned the note. NARRATOR: Detectives were also waiting
for the results of DNA tests from the victim's bed sheets. Meanwhile, they continued to question prime suspect Jackson.
DAVID WILLIAMS: On the last time we interviewed him, Jackson even admitted that he was in Ms.
Miller's house on the night of the 25th into the morning of the 26th. They'd even had sex.
And he left, used her card, and went to work. NARRATOR: Then investigators got the breakthrough
they'd been waiting for. - We ended up getting the DNA report back from our forensic laboratory.
The report was interesting to us because it didn't include any known DNA found on the letter or fingerprint.
Testing was negative on the letter. But what we did find was, we found his DNA present on her bedding.
DAVID WILLIAMS: It was determined that on the pillowcase that was taken from Ms. Miller's house,
there was a large stain. The stain ended up being Ms. Miller's saliva and blood mixture.
And on the corners of the pillow were the touch DNA of Mr. Jackson. MICHELLE DUPRE: DNA was found in the middle of the pillow.
We sometimes call that a death mask. Because when a pillow is put over someone's face,
their DNA is in the middle of that pillow. But the perpetrator's DNA is on the outskirts,
or the rest of that pillow. That's what broke the case here. SEAN THORNTON: Once I learned that,
it certainly seemed to me to be consistent with her being asphyxiated or smothered to death.
We believe she was killed in her house. Well, why do we believe that? Because she's got three sleeping children in the house.
So if she had been drug out of the house kicking and screaming, or if there had been a really significant fight,
you would think that the kids would have probably heard that. You know, all these things kind of
are tying together to indicate to me that it's consistent with the way we believe she was killed,
which is smothered. NARRATOR: But would this evidence be enough to convince a jury?
SEAN THORNTON: Unfortunately, because she had been dumped in a body of water-- and not to be graphic, but where there is animal activity,
crabs and other things-- there was a substantial amount of damage to the body. Nothing of any forensic value was pulled off of the body.
In fact, if you looked at the autopsy report, cause of death is listed as undetermined.
So it makes my job a lot harder. - We felt like all along we had a very strong circumstantial case.
When the handwriting came back, we felt like that case got even stronger. And now that we had the DNA back,
we felt like it was even stronger, and it was a case that we were going to be able to successfully take to court.
DAVID WILLIAMS: I think the reason Kelvin Jackson killed Masako Miller was jealousy.
He was no longer in her life. She had moved on. She had another boyfriend. And it drove him crazy.
[stirring music] - He would often say to Masako, don't disrespect me, or you're disrespecting me by doing this.
His women need to be in his control. And that if they're not, and they're doing things
that he doesn't like or that are against what he wants, this is a sign of disrespect.
Then they deserve punishment. SEAN THORNTON: I think that Kelvin Jackson was in the area of her home during the time
that the air conditioner guy was there. And it's my belief that Kelvin saw a vehicle over there
that he didn't know or didn't recognize, and she was dating somebody new. He went over there sometime after
that gentleman left, which was around 10 o'clock, 10:30 at night. Likely after the kids went to bed because none of the kids
recalled seeing Kelvin Jackson that night. I think that he overpowered Masako. I think that he used the pillow to suffocate her.
I think he then takes her body, he puts her in the trunk. He drives her to Beaufort, and then disposes of her body
into the Broad River. NARRATOR: This was where Jackson made his greatest mistake.
JONI JOHNSTON: I think when you look at Kelvin Jackson and how he disposed of Masako's body,
it was clear that he really had no understanding of how water flows, and also the impact
that it has on a dead body. The body's going to rise. It may end up actually coming to the surface.
So that's one thing I think that he did not understand. And then, of course, the fact that the tides change.
It really requires a lot of knowledge and sophistication. If you're disposing of a body in water
because you think it's the best place to avoid detection, you better understand how all those things work.
[ominous music] - On May 26, 2011, Masako Miller went missing. On June 10 of 2011, we ended up arresting
Kelvin Jackson for her murder. - After we was able to arrest Mr. Jackson, Ms. Miller's family and friends were greatly relieved.
They were sad, of course, because they had lost their mother and their friend, but at least the arrest was made.
NARRATOR: However, Kelvin Jackson pleaded not guilty. [stirring music] SEAN THORNTON: The trial started on July 30 of 2013.
Took all week. We called about 31 witnesses total, and that's a little more than average in a murder case.
DAVID WILLIAMS: Any case that you have, strictly circumstantial evidence, the defense attorney is going to try
to rip that apart because they know they don't have any eyewitnesses. He had a good defense attorney, tried
to cast doubt on the evidence. RYAN NEILL: After the state rested their case, the defense then had an opportunity
to put on their defense. And they chose not to put on the defense. They put up no witnesses.
They made their closing arguments, and the case went to the jury. I didn't time it, but I think the jury was out 18 minutes.
SEAN THORNTON: And they came back with a guilty verdict. DAVID WILLIAMS: The judge sentenced Mr. Jackson
to 45 years without parole. [gavel bangs] I thought that was just sentence. I was pleased.
I think the family was pleased. We were relieved that he would be off the streets
for a long time. SEAN THORNTON: He was very controlled when he was in court. He had no outbursts or anything.
DAVID WILLIAMS: I believe Mr. Jackson thought he could just wash away his crime by throwing
Masako into the river. I think he thought the shoe would wash out to sea or, at very least, sink to the bottom, never be found.
And without a body, he would be off scot-free. SEAN THORNTON: You have to remember,
you have two children, who, not only did they lose their mother, but their father is now in prison
for killing their mother. And they're going to carry that with them for the rest of their life.
RYAN NEILL: Today we wonder, you know, how these kids doing. How much separation did this cause this family?
Those kids ultimately are the true victims, and they suffered through all this. [theme music]

A missing woman's body washes up near a tidal estuary, leading police to CCTV and a cryptic note.

In this chilling true crime series, detectives, pathologists and police divers work together to decode complex crime scenes where victims' bodies are discovered in water.

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Brief Summary

Masako Miller's murder investigation leads to her ex-boyfriend Kelvin Jackson's arrest and conviction after DNA evidence surfaces.

Key points

The Discovery of a Body. A fisherman finds a body in the Broad River, leading to a grim investigation.
Masako Miller Goes Missing. 34-year-old mother Masako Miller vanishes from her home, raising alarms.
A Disturbing Note. Masako leaves a note for her children that raises suspicions about her disappearance.
A Breakthrough in the Case. Masako's body is found, confirming fears of foul play.
Identifying the Victim. Detectives confirm the body found is Masako Miller through a distinctive tattoo.
The Discovery of Masako's Body. Masako Miller's decomposing body is found washed up on the shoreline, raising suspicions about her ex-partner, Kelvin Jackson.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

It's not something everyone should find.

A witness reflects on discovering a body.

3:11WatchMar 21, 2026

Tension

85/ 100High tension

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