E-mail updates
Follow on Twitter
Subscribe to RSS
David Carson / St. Louis Post-Dispatch via AP
Police officers inspect a car belonging to missing woman Ebony Jackson that was found in St. Louis on Tuesday, Jan. 8, 2013.
A 30-year-old woman suspected of abandoning her infant son last week in an apartment building in St. Louis was found dead in the trunk of her car, prompting the police chief in a nearby town to stand on a street corner soliciting reward money for the hunt for her killer.
Ebony Jackson's 2004 Mitsubishi Galant was found around 10 a.m. Tuesday in Breckenridge Hills, about 16 miles away from St. Louis. Her car, found on the 4400 block of Elmbank Avenue, was located via GPS, and the vehicle was towed to a secure location so police could begin a thorough search.
Jackson's 3-month-old baby was discovered in the hallway of the Hickory Trace Apartment building on Friday, Jan. 4, nearly 12 miles away from where her car was found. The child was in a car seat and was in good health, police said.
Meanwhile, the police chief of Pine Lawn, about nine miles from St. Louis, began collecting money to put toward a reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of Jackson’s killer.
Police Chief Rickey Collins said neither he nor his department have any connection with Jackson, only that her death “rocked” the community. So he stood on a street corner beginning at 9 a.m. Wednesday, with the goal of collecting $5,000 by 3 p.m.
“It was an unbelievable murder that really touched a lot of hearts of the people here in St. Louis because it went from child abandonment to homicide,” Collins told NBC News. “I know Missouri is a very generous state and collecting rewards has always brought witnesses and evidence forward, so I hope to get information to bring the person forward and solve the case.”
Watch US News videos on NBCNews.com
A man from Oklahoma claiming to be the father of the baby said Jackson left with their son and headed to Missouri. That man came to St. Louis earlier this week to take a paternity test, the results of which are still pending, NBC affiliate station KSDK in St. Louis reported.
With less than an hour left of standing outside, Collins, who is on vacation until Jan. 22, said he thought he would get close to reaching his goal.
“You would think that everyone knows this woman,” Collins said. “People have been very generous, they are participating, giving thumbs up as they pass by and are very supportive of what we’re doing and why we’re doing it.”
The St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department did not identify a cause of death for Jackson. An autopsy will be performed, police said.
On Thursday, the Pine Lawn Police Department plans on releasing the official amount raised for the reward.
Stay informed with the latest headlines; sign up for our newsletter
Leave a Comment:
Excuse me - I'm not giving cash to anyone on a street corner, no matter which kind of uniform they might be wearing. I don't give to Salvation Army kettles, either - I transfer money from checking or use a credit card to make direct donations. Way too many crooks in the world. Set up a fund at a bank - don't stand on a street corner.
Give them money, they will charge you with bribery or solicitation...
A predator.
He must me found.
He must be adjudicated.
It just goes to show how jumping to conclusions and making snap judgements gets people, like the chief to eat a lot of humble pie. I think that is why he was on the corner trying to raise reward money. Eating crow.
Thank goodness the baby is alive and well. The face that the baby was placed somewhere safe tells me that whoever is involved in this knew the mother and child. The fact that the mother was found in her trunk counterindicates suicide.
Yea, she shot herself, then closed the trunk, cheeeeez
Her and her car could have been recovered soon but the police had to wait on a court order to use the GPS tracking. I hope they catch the low life that killed her. She wasn't even living in St. Louis, just visiting from Oklahoma.
Newtown, CT is a very well-off community and it has been inundated with cash. Maybe they can contribute to the reward fund.....
The "father" should be the first suspect. If he do not have an alibis and passing a lie-detector, I can conclude with 80% confident that he is the murder.
According to the news in St. Louis the police are looking for a man seen with her in East St. Louis. I guess it could be the babies father but he was said to be in Oklahoma.
There are an awful lot of people on this vine that should write for the movies.
No brainer....very very good chance the babies father was the you know what.....assuming....assuming that someone was pissed off that child was abandoned.....speculation...but without imagination you don't solve things.
The lady abandoned her baby.. Who cares about her now? What goes around comes around, at least this time. I would call off the case completely if I were the chief. of police.
There are many unanswered questions now. Was she in trouble and forced to leave the baby? Did the person who killed her abandon the baby?
It now seems like she did not willingly abandon the baby.
any idiot would see she was abducted and did not leave her baby she had been dead for days,,obviously ur a blind idiot "the great yendor" ur great at something...being an idiot...
How do you know she wasn't abducted and the baby left in the apartment building?
Oh Great Yendor...Did you read that this woman recently had brain surgery for a tumor and was not always thinking properly? Also; why are you the only one who knows that she did and if so, willingly abandon the child? And where does this justify the murdering of the mother and leaving her in a trunk? Thank God that you are not the chief of police...Judge, jury and excecutioner all in one.
Does anyone really care who the father of the child is and where he is? The point is that someone killed the child's mother, probably in front of the baby, then stuffed her in the trunk of her car. I suppose the best that can be said is that the baby is still alive.
Has everyone gone completely mad?????????? We kill women and children at an alarming rate and we are worried where the otrher parents are??
I've been following this in the St. Louis paper since the baby was found. When the mother got to St. Louis, she did contact one relative by phone and said she was staying with "a friend." She also was seen going to another relative's home, but no one was there. After that, no one heard from her or saw her. She had, in the past, had a brain tumor, and she had part of it removed. After that, she would have periods of confusion, but she would always call her mother in Colorado to talk to her. She was a very good mother, according to relatives. Her mother had not heard from her since she left Oklahoma. The child was clean, dressed well, and a baby bottle of fresh milk was left with it in the car seat. Someone had put the baby in a hallway out of the elements and the cold. They ran the child's picture on the front page of the St. Louis paper, and that is how the relatives knew that something dire had happened. They are caring for the child now. At this time, they are sorting all her known movements out up until the time there was no communication. They are also sorting out jurisdiction priorities. Breckinridge Hills is a very small community with a small police force. When they found the car and the body, the body was in a state of advanced decomposition, indicating that several days had passed since the murder. That is all that has been reported, so everything else is supposition at best.
Thanks for the local update!
But the Great Yendor says differently!
All very sad, including some of the unkind remarks here! I hope the "TRUTH" of the matter is found out and that justice is served and the child is loved and well taken care of!!! RIP Momma!
Umm, according to the local news she was 20, not 30, and her car was found in N. St. Louis, not 16 miles outside. I thought news outlets were supposed to be accurate.
Can't help wondering if the father didn't actually arrive earlier for his paternity test, made sure the baby was safe, killed the mother and now is back prove paternity and take custody of his child.
Maybe,,,call the chief of police and fill him in!!
Sounds like the chief might be to good a person for that hell hole city.
All I can see in this story is a baby without a mother, a young woman who died under mysterious circumstances, a good cop going above and beyond the call of duty to HELP solve the case, people donating their money to HELP solve the case, a man trying to prove the child is his, and a lot of people playing Sherlock Holmes and trying to solve a case just from a couple of stories. Well, I hope you Sherlocks don't quit you day jobs.
Considering possibilities and "trying to solve a case" are not the same thing. Don't you wonder what happened? Haven't you considered possible scenarios? Maybe you shouldn't be so hard on other people without provocation.
who is to say she abanded baby? she may have been abducted while leaving with baby..baby was healthy in car seat why didn't she abandon the child 3 months ago she obviously took good care of the child, if she was going to leave it she would have at known drop off points church , hospital, or firehouse and if father was a suspect he would be held for questioning don't any of you idiots think they check his alibi first? as for the officer helping..god bless him
People have to get paid before they come forward with information?
No different than the people that just stand still, watching, as some thug is tugging on an old ladies purse.
What a sad society we have become.
For those waiting for a hero to intervein, there is no Batman ... just Bertmern without a clue.
I lived in kansas city, Mo a few years ago..and would go to st louis mo on occasion...crime there is rampant..same as kansas city....an entire mall was closed down in kansas city mo because of the robberies that took place...even a walmart had to close ..it was near a black community...when the mall closed down some of the blacks tried opening clothings stores that sold mainly clothes for blacks and even that didnt work...someone tried to open a sports store..spent lots of money getting it open hopeing to save the mall...didnt work...my husband worked at a hospital there in kansas city...and there were deaths all the time...murders and robberies..single parent families were rampant then...when I got there...there was something called white flight..whites leaving the inner city...I lived their almost 10yrs...within that time..even some of the blacks left and went to the outer parts of kansas city, mo...then some of the whites decided to take back the inner city...and they got their young selves brave enough to go back in and buy up the older homes and refurbish them and bring that neighborhoood back up....less crime...its a shame...lots of the crime that happened while I was there...was blacks who worked in the stores...late at night...having friends drive up to the back door and haul out merchandise....its why the stores went out of business ..esp walmart..what walmart that you know ever go out of business...where I live now the walmart and there are 2 in this small town is so over shopped at..its so busy ..and so was walmart there in kansas city, mo....busy yet being constantly robbed by the blacks in the area and they werent poor...you would think they were poor but they werent...st louis is worse...my car was stolen in kansas city, just before I left the area...I was at the movies with my kids and sister and some blacks stole my car and used it to rob a house and then one of the guys in that car killed someone ...I reported my car missing and they found it and traced what had been done in it and with it...it was an old burb....now if this sounds racist..its a sad thing..made me cry....also the high school ...at one of the highschools or maybe even two there...was a baby nursery in the basement of the school....it was because nearly all of the blacks there had kids without being married...by the time a girl graduated she sometimes had up to 3 or 4 kids...and in the high school grad book ..the school didnt mind posting the pics of the graduates with their kids in the pic...they werent ashamed of their actions...having babies starting in jr high school and keeping it up and some not having grandparents to raise them...and having to take them to school and put them in the basement with care takers ...what kind of life is that...there is no childhood with any of these black kids....and all the kids having different fathers..saw this also in mississippi....same thing....its a lifestyle that for some reason is hard to change...many say they believe in God but yet dont do as God would have them do...there are good people everywhere and why this policeman wanted to collect money to take care of this problem..its hard in Mo to find anyone who murdered or commited a crime same as kansas city....glad Im not in that area anymore...and also I lived in houston tx ...same thing except in texas a nursery isnt allowed in the basement of a high school....I think that girls who get pregnant without being married and are school age ..should go to different schools...decency is hard to teach when all around you is indecent....and the poor grandparents...or parents even shouldnt have to raise more children...this isnt right...I hope that they are able to find the person who killed this woman...but in this town as in some others..it will be very hard to do...
thats is exactly what the liberal mentality causes!
Your post would have been a lot more readable had you tried to sort it into paragrahs. When I encounter a lot of run-on sentences all crammed together in one huge block, I skip over. Too difficult to sort out. Help it along a bit with some sensible paragraphing. Or didn't they teach grammar and style in your school?
Ha! When this story first broke, all people here would say is "ooh, what an evil mother who would leave her child like that..." But now, you can see that you assumed, rushed to judgement and made a mistake. Do you think you ever to this with other stories? With you life?
Speaking of jumping to conclusions, Obama think he can issue an XO to confiscate all guns and get away with it.
He will be the anti Lincoln. throwing the country into civil war.
WTF are you even talking about?
Kudos to the Vacationing Police Chief. To care so much that he wants to help solve a case that has nothing to do with his Jurisdiction just says a lot about him. Before anyone chime in and make negative remarks on my comment, I just want to say. It's sad when we can't put our faith into the ones who serve and protect due to some of them being corrupt. However, when I read the article I thought about him as a man who may have daughters, a mother, a wife. A man who saw that maybe his helping can give this child closure when they grow up. He comes off as a caring parent who saw some sort of calling to help even when he wasn't asked to. We never know when we'll have to say goodbye to someone we love or vice versa due to an act of deadly violence. I only hope that there is someone like this man waiting to help us in our time of need.
the reward part sounds reasonable but having the police chief collecting it on a street corner sounds a little shady. it's usually the boyfriend or husband in which case they won't have to look far or need a reward.
Everybody has an opinion on what happened.
I think people watch too many crime shows on tv.