Update

2009-02-03T12:37:00.000-08:00

These are the most recent pictures of Rocky Jackson

I had the chance to speak with Rocky Jackson a few nights ago. Wow. I wasn’t sure I would ever know what happened to him once he left prison in 2002. He was in good spirits though. He showed no emotion…really, when I first spoke with him. He did not sound alarmed, or shocked. He acknowledged calmly that he was indeed the same Rocky. I found him a little cold in the beginning. Not rude at all, but frigid…reluctant to revisit that place in his mind that he so badly wants to forget. I began to speak with him about how life had treated him since he left Federal prison 7 years ago, and he let me know eagerly that he was now married (his wife is very pretty and blonde just like Dusty) with a small daughter, repeating over and over that “it was the past,” and that he has moved on. Rocky is considered a respectable person in the community according to him. He is a homeowner; he has finished a business degree, owns his own business, and is an artist. It was really hard to get into the “other stuff” the “real stuff” that I wanted to know. How it happened? What was running through his mind at the time? What attracted him to Dusty? Yes, all of that, I wanted to know. I finally got him to go back a little bit and relay to me just how he met “Dusty” as he called her. Not being able to remember, he paused for a minute and answered with a quick “I think at a party. I really don’t remember.” I wanted to know if Kathy Charlene Brown was as sultry as the movie made her out to be. He said “well, yes she was pretty, but more than that she was charismatic.” It seemed that she just had this charm that made her very appealing. I could tell that just talking about Dusty put a bitter taste in his mouth. His voice would change, you know? Like, his voice would drop whenever we talked about Dusty. I could feel and sense a little bit of the resentment that he has toward her. He never said it, but it was evident, because after all she was 4 or 5 years older than him. “When I was younger, I was susceptible,” Rocky said. He never would say to me anything about the roll she played in this whole thing. In fact he stated emphatically “No comment. I have always wanted to say that” he said. He did express a lot of regret over what happened. “Who I am now is not who I was 28 years ago. It is something that I live with everyday.” He has tried to block it out of his mind and move forward with life, but it is still there. The cloud of that fateful night still hovers over him…

Only having seen the movie once since his release, Jackson disagreed with much of what took place in the movie, although he was pleased with Cole Hauser as a choice to play him. He did not agree with Hauser’s portrayal of him as “some sort of a hick,” as he stated. Also, according to Rocky the movie was not based on court transcripts. (However, I found out today from the attorneys in the case that this movie was most definitely based on court transcripts) However, he stands firm that this was self defense. “On that day, Sept 3, 1982 it could have been me in Chris’ place. The knife was his knife. It came out of his hand. I am not justifying what happened. I live each day with regret that Chris died.”

Till this day Ralph Jackson claims self defense. The part in the movie where he sits and waits for Chris to come home so that he can kill him was not true at all he claimed. He actually walked up to Chris and the confrontation ensued right there in front of Chris’ apartment according to Rocky. However, the evidence proves that Chris was stabbed about 27 times in his bedroom. In any event, his self defense theory did not hold up because he was found guilty of murder and sentenced to life in prison. He was released in 2002. The news media there barely covered the trial at all. They were given statements for release by the Military, but not much other than that. The Military really down played the crime a lot so as not to bring a lot of media attention to the case. And that is what actually happened. It just sort of died there. And the Birmingham articles only happened after the movie came out.

You can read a gist of the prosecutions statements here.

Ralph G. Jackson

Update