After hours of questioning, Alexander Jackson never admitted to killing family

CEDAR RAPIDS — Alexander Jackson, in a police interview, never admitted to killing his parents and 19-year-old sister on June 15, 2021, but after hours of interrogation he did admit his college grades had plummeted and his dad expected him to get a job or move out.

Cedar Rapids Police investigators believed that could have been a “why” — motive — for him to fatally shoot his father Jan Jackson, 61, mother Melissa Jackson, 68, and his sister Sabrina Jackson.

According to testimony, the family members died of multiple gunshot wounds. Police found them dead in separate rooms in the house.

Investigators Matt Denlinger and Sarah Lacina grilled Jackson for hours at the hospital when he was being treated for the gunshot injury to his foot. They also spoke with him in a short interview later that night at the police department before charging him with three counts of first-degree murder.

The prosecution will rest Friday after four days of testimony, and the defense will start its case. Closings may be Monday or Tuesday.

Lacina and Denlinger told Jackson numerous times they didn’t believe his version of events that a “masked male” intruder with dark clothes and green shoes came into the Jackson home at 4414 Oak Leaf Ct. NE, during the early morning hours and shot his dad and then shot him in the foot during a struggle over a .22 caliber semi-automatic rifle that belonged to the Jacksons.

“There’s no proof of anyone coming and going from your house,” Lacina said during the recorded video interview.

She said if there’s no connection with the family to the alleged intruder and he was just coming in to murder people — because nothing was stolen — then he would have to get “lucky” to find a house with gun he could use to commit the crime.

“You can’t sit there and look me in the eye and tell me that’s what happened,” Lacina said.

But that’s what Jackson did throughout the interviews. Many minutes of the interview he also didn’t exactly answer their questions.

Both investigators were empathetic about the frustrations of bad grades and fathers’ expectations, as well as other issues with family. They asked if he might be having anxiety, mental health or sexual orientation issues, or “bad thoughts.”

Denlinger told Jackson they were just trying to figure out what happened and wanted to give him an opportunity to talk because there was no evidence of forced entry in the house and no evidence of an “unknown intruder.”

Lacina said they wanted to understand because “something bad” happened and they weren’t there to judge him.

Jackson, who had been given fentanyl for pain but was coherent, said nothing happened. He was close to his family. They had dinner that night and watched a movie. He and his dad had cleaned the rifle that night because the last time they used it the gun jammed.

He said he was sleeping on the screened in porch and woke up to the sound of about 10 gunshots. He ran downstairs and saw the “man” — intruder — and saw his dad on the floor. He started wrestling with the man for the gun and he was shot in the foot.

Jackson, at one point, said he didn’t know if he shot himself during the struggle — meaning he may have been the one who pulled the trigger — or if the intruder did it.

The intruder ran out, he thought, and he crawled to his basement bedroom to get his phone to call 911 and find a belt to use as a tourniquet to stop the bleeding. He said he saw his sister in the bed. The door to her bedroom, which is next to his, was open. He said he didn’t know she was hurt.

Denlinger said everyone was shot in the head, except him, which “makes no sense at all.”

“I didn’t do it. OK,” Jackson said in the video.

Lacina said it looked like Jackson had killed his “entire family in cold blood” without an explanation.

“I want the guy found,” Jackson said.

Lacina said, “We found him.”

“You did? It wasn’t me,” Jackson added.

Denlinger said Jackson didn’t think it through. This is “clearly what happened” because “there is something else going on.”

Jackson didn’t reply.

The investigators also met with Jackson at the department after his treatment at the hospital after 8 p.m. June 15, 2021, and attempted one more time to find out what happened that morning.

Denlinger told him they had reviewed the videos from the surveillance cameras at his home and the neighbors’ home and none of them show anyone coming or going from the house.

He also asked Jackson who was using his phone at 6 a.m. to access social media.

Jackson said he didn’t know. He stuck to his story.

Lacina then told him he wasn’t going home. He was being charged with three counts of first-degree murder.

Denlinger, after the videos were played in court Thursday, also identified the video clips taken from surveillance cameras at the Jacksons’ home that were mounted in the front and back of the house and from a neighbor’s camera. No person was seen coming or going from the Jackson home the morning the family was killed.

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