The Cadaver King and the Country Dentist

by Radley Balko

  Johnson couldn’t say what drew him to that house just off of the road. Nor could he say what drew him to the broken window or what made him quietly lift it up, reach in, and pick up the small girl from her pallet on the floor. But that’s what he did. He did it all without waking either her or the adults sleeping on the bed next to her. He then cradled the girl in his arms and carried her into the night.

  Johnson walked across the fields behind the house, toward a patch of woods by the creek. That’s when the girl woke up. He let her down, and she started walking with him, holding his hand. The voices in his head grew sinister. They told him to “sex molest her, and hurt her, and dispose of the body.” He’d later say that he didn’t want to harm the girl, but he didn’t know what to do.

  The two sat down, and the girl fell asleep. Johnson began to cry. He sobbed and beat the ground with his fists. Then he gave in to the voices. He took her clothes off and pulled out his penis. She woke up and began to cry. She told him, “You want my momma.” Fearing her cries would be heard, he took her closer to the creek. There the voices told him to “teach her.” He penetrated her and quickly ejaculated. She told him she was cold. The voices went away, and his mind began to clear. He’d later say that this is when he realized what he had done, and began to cry all over again.

  The two of them sat there for a while until the voices returned and told Johnson to dispose of her body. He obeyed. He walked her closer to the creek, picked her up by the waist and cast her into the water. It was a deep pool, and she quickly slipped under. She tried to climb out, but the sides were steep and slippery. After a few minutes he jumped in, but her body had already washed downstream. Two decades later, investigators would ask Johnson if he kept anything of Christine Jackson’s as a souvenir. Of course not, he answered. “I’m not a pervert.”

  The temperature had dipped into the upper fifties. Johnson was wet, muddy, and cold. Yet after killing the little girl, he stayed in the woods for a long time. He couldn’t remember how long. But at some point, he’d say later, the voices finally told him to go home.

  SUNDAY, MAY 3

  It was an unusually hot and humid day for late spring. Sundays in Noxubee are given to preparing for church and then convening afterward for food and fellowship. In the small church at the head of Pilgrim’s Rest Road that Brewer’s mother and her family attended, it is often an all-day affair. Annie Brewer, Kennedy’s forty-nine-year-old mother, rose early. She had just finished preparing that evening’s dinner and was sweeping the covered outdoor porch when the telephone rang. She answered and heard the distressed voice of one of her daughters.

  “Christine is missing.”

  Christine and her brothers and sisters spent a good deal of time with Annie Brewer and her extended family. Christine wasn’t Annie Brewer’s granddaughter—Gloria and Kennedy got together after she was born—but Annie and the family treated her as if she were.

  Christine was small for her age. Though she had a head full of curly hair, she still had her baby fat, much of which remained in her face, particularly in her cheeks. She was tentative and bashful. She spoke quietly, and only to the people she trusted and to whom she was closest. So when Annie Brewer heard the news from her daughter, she felt in her bones that something was wrong. It would have been unusual for Christine to wander off by herself. The girl wasn’t bold or assertive enough to do such a thing. Ruby Brewer, Kennedy’s older sister who also often took care of Christine, felt the same way. “She would stay up under you,” Ruby recalls.

  Annie Brewer jumped in the car. When she arrived at the house a few minutes later, a few dozen people from the neighboring houses and trailers had already arrived to help with the search.

  Later, there would be a lot of speculation about how Kennedy Brewer and Gloria Jackson acted that morning. It’s a common phenomenon to assess guilt or innocence based on a suspect’s behavior. It’s also fraught with hazard. Innocent people can appear to be withdrawn or disinterested. Guilty people can appear distraught and victimized. These sorts of observations are also necessarily based on eyewitness observations, which themselves are influenced by biases, suggestion, and the witness’s own emotional state.

  Unsurprisingly, then, some witnesses claimed that Kennedy Brewer and Gloria Jackson were both frantic that morning, worried sick over the whereabouts of the little girl. Others said Brewer kept busy searching while Jackson sat sullenly on a neighbor’s porch. Still others said that Brewer acted as though he couldn’t be bothered to search in the rising heat and never strayed much beyond the edges of the house. Supporters of Brewer and those allied with Jackson turned on one another almost immediately, and opinions about how Brewer and Jackson acted that morning split mostly along family lines.

  Soon, the volunteers had thoroughly searched the small house and surrounding area. They had ruled out any likely nearby hiding places. They then began to fan out across the fields and cow pastures that abutted the house. Others hiked down toward Horse Hunter Creek, a small stream that meandered through the area in a southeasterly direction, carving its way through the pastures. By the time Deputy Sheriff Bud Permenter arrived at a little after eight a.m., at least two dozen people had been searching for Christine for nearly an hour. There was no trace of her.

  Because he saw no signs of forced entry, and because the house was “locked” from the inside, Permenter decided early on to focus on the two people who had last seen the girl: Brewer and Jackson. Neither could explain how Christine could simply vanish, so Permenter suspected one or both had to have been involved. If Jackson didn’t see the girl when she got home, Brewer was his likely suspect. If Jackson had seen the girl, they were both suspects. For the short term, it would be the latter. Jackson told Permenter that she last saw Christine just before she went to sleep, when Brewer picked the girl up off their bed and placed her on a pallet on the floor.

  By the time Permenter had finished interviewing the couple, tempers were flaring, both between Brewer and Jackson, and between the two families. Permenter placed Brewer and Jackson in his patrol car—he’d later say it was because he was worried about their safety. He cordoned off the house and checked the interior and exterior, looking for any signs of forced entry. He noticed the bent nail that kept the door shut. The other door to the house was boarded up. The only window that could have offered access to the child was the broken one in the bedroom.

  Permenter went into the bedroom and inspected the bed. There was bedding and clothing strewn about, which he recovered and bagged for evidence. The bed itself was still shoved against the exterior wall. The window sat toward the bottom of the bed, along the wall and at about the same height as the top of the mattress. This is where Jackson said she went to wake Brewer up. The window’s lower section was broken. There was a gap of about one square foot. Beneath it was Christine’s pallet, with the blanket pulled back.

  Permenter went back to the patrol car and asked Jackson and Brewer about the broken windowpane. They both told him that the window had been broken when they moved in. He searched the rest of the inside of the house but found nothing of any obvious evidentiary value. On the home’s exterior, Permenter found no indication that someone had come in or out—no footprints, and no sign of any kind of disturbance or forced entry.

  Permenter was soon joined by Ernest Eichelberger and then Sheriff Albert Walker. Both men also investigated the scene, inside and out, and like Permenter found no sign of forced entry. All of the officers later reported that the plants beneath the window were undisturbed. They saw no footprints leading toward or away from the window. And still no sign of Christine.

  MONDAY, MAY 4

  A dog team arrived in the morning. Oddly, the handler, a volunteer officer from Newton County, first gave the dogs a piece of Kennedy Brewer’s clothing, not a piece of Christine’s. The handler would later testify that the first dog was spooked by a large hog and refused to track. The second, he’d say, headed toward the creek and appeared to have been onto a scent before tiring in the heat.<
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  The third dog was the only one to actually track a scent from Christine Jackson’s clothes. The handler and dog worked their way down the creek bed, in and out of the vegetation, until they came to a pool of water. At that point the dog tried to go into the pool—“started pawing the water,” as her handler described it. The dog then “put her head down in the water and, in other words, she knew something was there, but we couldn’t see nothing.” The handler would later testify that he could see a small opening from the field leading to the water, and caught a glimpse of a slip mark in the muddy bank on the opposite side. He made a mental note of it, but the dogs were tired and it was getting late. The search was called off for the evening.

  Two days had passed, and there was still no sign of Christine Jackson.

  WEDNESDAY, MAY 6

  On Wednesday morning, Noxubee County brought in a helicopter from the Meridian, Mississippi, naval base to assist with the search for the little girl. Permenter and a couple members of the dog team boarded the helicopter and flew out to the scene. They approached the south end of the creek and flew north to the vicinity of the wide spot in the creek—the pool—that had excited the dogs the day before. Someone on the helicopter then spotted something in the water, but couldn’t quite tell what it was. They hovered over the area until the prop wash blew the water off to the side. That’s when Christine Jackson’s body finally floated to the surface. The deputies recovered her body from the water and turned it over to the county coroner. The coroner then sent it to Steven Hayne for an autopsy.

  Permenter had now identified the two people who were with Christine when she was last seen alive, but he was still missing a motive. Why would the couple cover up the abduction and likely murder of a three-year-old girl in their care? Did they play a role in her disappearance?

  The similarities to the rape and murder of Courtney Smith couldn’t have been lost on him or the law enforcement authorities around him. Less than two years after Smith was killed, another little girl in the same area had been abducted from her bed and was now missing. At a later court hearing, one of Brewer’s lawyers asked a law enforcement officer if the abduction and murder of Courtney Smith had any effect on the way they investigated Christine Jackson’s disappearance. He answered without hesitation: it had not. And why hadn’t they even considered the possibility that the two crimes were related? It was simple: Levon Brooks was the man who raped and murdered Courtney Smith. And Levon Brooks was still under the control of the Mississippi Department of Corrections.

  But that answer wasn’t completely accurate. Initially, local officials had considered a connection. Just as in the Brooks case, local police had gathered everyone who had been in contact with the victim during the previous twenty-four hours: the two young men, Graham and Williams; Gloria Jackson; and another male, James Clayton, an off-and-on boyfriend of Jackson’s. They then added one additional suspect: Justin Albert Johnson.

  Years later, André de Gruy, now the Mississippi state public defender, would have several conversations with law enforcement officials in Noxubee County about those early days of the investigation. The officials told him they knew that Johnson had been a suspect in the Brooks case. They also knew that within the last few years he had twice been charged and convicted for attempted sexual offenses against women, both of which involved breaking into their homes. They also knew that Johnson lived in a small, green clapboard house less than half a mile from where Christine Jackson lived.

  Permenter rounded up all of his early suspects and transported them to Noxubee General Hospital, where they submitted to an examination. A nurse collected blood, saliva, and urine samples from each, as well as body, scalp, and pubic hair. Each suspect was also examined for any lacerations or bruising. Brewer, Jackson, Graham, Williams, and Clayton had no noticeable scrapes or scratches. But one suspect did, all over his arms: Justin Johnson. When the nurse asked Johnson how he got the scratches, he said they were “self-inflicted.”

  But the authorities had already homed in on Kennedy Brewer. He continued to protest his innocence and insisted that he knew nothing about Christine’s disappearance. Permenter told Brewer there was one surefire way to clear his name: he could consent to go with law enforcement to Hattiesburg to see Dr. Michael West, who would make molds of his teeth. If he was telling the truth, Permenter said, West would clear him of any blame.

  And so Brewer went with Noxubee County officials to Hattiesburg to see West, along with Graham, Williams, and Gloria Jackson. Justin Johnson was never asked to submit a dental mold.

  FRIDAY, MAY 8

  As with Courtney Smith, Christine Jackson’s body was sent to Steven Hayne. From his autopsy, Hayne concluded that Jackson had been manually strangled. He also found that she had been sexually abused, so violently that she suffered a laceration from the bottom of her vagina to her rectum. Hayne concluded that the injury was most consistent with forceful penetration by a “male penis.” More critically, Hayne noted a number of other injuries—abrasions on Christine’s arm, forearm, hand, and fingers. The abrasions were small, from between three-eighths of an inch to about five-eighths of an inch long. As with Courtney Smith, Hayne thought these were bite marks, and after he communicated his suspicions, Michael West was brought in to conduct additional analysis. That transfer was easy. West was already at the morgue, assisting Hayne throughout the autopsy and examination.

  Less than a week after taking the dental molds from Brewer, Graham, and Williams, West concluded his examination. His findings were definitive. In a letter to Noxubee County law enforcement, West wrote that “the bite marks found on the body of Christine Jackson were indeed and without doubt inflicted by Kennedy Brewer.”

  WEDNESDAY, MAY 20

  Less than two weeks after abducting, raping, and murdering Christine Jackson, Justin Johnson entered a Lowndes County courtroom. He stood accused of the attempted rape of Verlinda Monroe about a year earlier. He pleaded guilty to burglary with intent to commit sexual battery. He was sentenced to ten years in the Mississippi Department of Corrections, with four of those years suspended. He was then taken into custody and transferred to Parchman Penitentiary. He’d serve six years before he was released.

  About sixteen months later, in September 1993, Kennedy Brewer was finally arraigned and charged with capital murder for the rape and killing of Christine Jackson. District Attorney Forrest Allgood announced that he would seek the death penalty.

  By that time, Michael West had run into a bit of trouble with some professional forensic organizations. The groups had raised questions about the scientific reliability of his trademark phrase, “indeed and without doubt.” Because he wasn’t allowed to use that phrase anymore, West rewrote his original letter to the law enforcement officials investigating Jackson’s murder. The new letter stated that the “dental study models of Kennedy Brewer are found to be within reasonable dental certainty the teeth that inflicted the bites.”

  The change in wording may have appeased the forensic groups with whom West was in hot water, but it changed nothing about Kennedy Brewer’s fate. West didn’t conduct a second analysis or seek out a second opinion. He simply changed his letter to express the same degree of certainty, but with different words. He was still claiming that Kennedy Brewer was the only person who could have inflicted the bite marks allegedly found on Christine Jackson.

  The state of Mississippi wanted to execute Kennedy Brewer before West rewrote his letter. It still wanted to execute him afterward. And Michael West was still the best route to a death sentence.

  3

  INVESTIGATING THE DEAD

  Gentlemen, you are about to enter the most important and fascinating sphere of police work: the world of forensic medicine, where untold victims of many homicides will reach back from the grave and point back a finger accusingly at their assailant.

  —Jack Klugman as TV character Dr. R. Quincy, medical examiner

  On March 15, 44 BCE, a conspiracy of Roman senators led by Gaius Cassius and Marcus Brutus conf
ronted Julius Caesar outside the Theater of Pompey, ripped off his tunic, and stabbed him nearly two dozen times. The Roman senate had recently named Caesar “dictator in perpetuity,” and the conspirators feared Caesar planned to exploit the new title, overthrow the senate, and institute a reign of dictatorial tyranny. Assassination, they believed, was their only hope to stop him and restore the Roman republic. Historical accounts vary, but approximately sixty conspirators participated in the assassination, including at least forty senators. Together they had agreed that each would inflict his own wound on the emperor, a plan that not only promised solidarity but would also make it difficult to determine precisely whose blade had caused Caesar’s death.

  After the murder, the eminent Roman physician Antistius examined Caesar’s body. What ensued was likely the first recorded postmortem forensic examination in the Western world. Antistius found twenty-three stab wounds, only one of which he determined was potentially fatal on its own. He concluded that the wounds had collectively caused Caesar to die from exsanguination—massive blood loss. Antistius then presented his findings before a public forum. (This is where we get the word “forensic,” a relative of “forum,” both derived from the Latin forensis, which means “to present before the public.”)

  But while Antistius’s autopsy was one of the first for which there is a recorded history—and probably the first in the West—there’s good evidence of postmortem physiology dating as far back as 3000 BCE. Unlike societies contemporaneous to theirs, neither the Egyptians nor the Babylonians considered dissection of the dead to be taboo. The Greek physician Galen of Pergamum, who lived in the second century CE, was reputed to be the first to understand the potential usefulness of comparing a living patient’s physiological condition with a postmortem examination of the same patient after death.