my father's bones

8/3/2019 My Father's Bones

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JUNE 23–29, 2011 I VOLUME 14 I NUMBER 34 BROWARDPALMBEACH.COM I FREE

MAN WHO PROVED INNOCENCE SITS IN JAIL. PAGE 12 YOUR GUIDE TO PERUVIAN CEVICHE. PAGE 30

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ohn Henry Wolfe went to the Pembroke Pines police station every Wednesday evening for its Police Explorer program. He took courses and shadowed detectiveson the job to prepare for a career in law enforcement. By July 9, 2003, when he was19 years old, he had attained the highest rank of explorer major.

The young man — tall and thin with glasses and his father’s loping gait — lived withhis mother and grandmother in Hollywood and spoke little of his father. He had learnedthat asking questions about the man, whom he had not seen since he was 4, did notresult in satisfying replies.

As he later recalled in a deposition, that night he went into the community affairsoffice to put away some documents. A few detectives kept their desks there. Beforehe got to the filing cabinet, he noticed a foldout display board covered with images of a missing person: David Churchill Jackson. From a photograph, a young man with arough mullet and a wide smile stared back. Wolfe froze. He recognized “a tattoo andother stuff I remembered from the past.”

An officer in the room noticed. “Hey, can you help me find that guy?” he joked.“I can’t help you find him, but I do know about him,” said John.“How do you know him?” asked the officer.“He’s my father.”“Get out of here.”“No,” replied John. “I’m dead serious.”The officer, stunned, shooed away the other Explorers and began to question Wolfe.

Later that night, he called Detective Donna Velazquez at home. “You’re not going to believe this,” he said when she picked up the phone.

Velazquez was a blond, motherly woman closing in on middle age. A few monthsearlier, she had been taken off a patrol unit and promoted. In addition to her everyday caseload, her supervisors made her the lead detective on the department’s oldest un-solved missing-persons case, that of Jackson.

Determined to break open the cold case, Velazquez pored through files that >>p16



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had been compiled when Jackson went missing in 1988. She had created the display board to visually organize the information that wouldhelp her imagine Jackson’s life.

“I was the lead detective,” she saysnow, “so it was going to be up to me. I hadto put something together, reconstruct-ing it in a way I could understand.”

At this point, she knew very little:that Jackson had been married and wasinvolved in a custody dispute over his young son in the months before he disap-peared forever on a summer night.

Velazquez never imagined that the son— who now had the last name of anotherman — was filing documents in her own of-fice on Wednesday evenings: “I had beenlooking for John Henry Jackson, not JohnHenry Wolfe. He had never told anyoneat the station about his father. It was ashock to me; it was a shock to everyone.”

The unexpected meeting of a boy searching

for his past and a detective on a quest for justicewould ultimately lead to one murder convic-tion and, now, another trial on the horizon. For young John Wolfe, the cloud of doubt wouldshift from the father he had hardly known tothe mother who had always kept him close.

arbara Britton, John’s mother, movedaround as a child because of her fa-ther’s career in the Army. She spenttime in Germany and Oregon before

her family moved to Hollywood, Florida, ac-cording to statements she gave to police. In

1982, when Britton was 17, she took a job at aBurger King in Pembroke Pines to earn money while attending McArthur High School.

She was pretty and petite, with wavy brown hair, dark features, and high cheek- bones. People who knew her say she livedunder the protective control of her father,who gave orders like a drill sergeant.

David Jackson, two years her senior, washer boss at the restaurant. Jackson’s stepfa-ther worked in the Burger King corporateoffices and had gotten him a job as an assistantmanager. Jackson graduated from HollywoodHills High School but didn’t have the money

to pay for college. Instead, he worked for awage and led a fun-loving life: hunting, fixing trucks, listening to country music on cassettes,and drinking whiskey straight. He had blondhair and sparkling eyes, his height occasion-ally accentuated by a pair of cowboy boots.

Jackson’s close friend Bill Brown,now a union carpenter in Wisconsin,also worked at Burger King in those early days. He saw that Britton was eyeing Jackson during their shifts together.

“You know, Barbara’s pretty into you,”Brown remembers telling Jackson one day.

“Yeah, I know,” Jackson replied. Atfirst, Brown recalls, Jackson was ner- vous about flirting with a subordinateon the job. But Britton had set her sightson him, and soon they were together.

Barbara told police about her initialattraction to Jackson: “He was great.There was no other way to describe it.Someone that you like to be with.”

They started talking about getting mar-ried once she graduated from high school.But by Christmas, she was pregnant. Plansaccelerated: They married on April 2, 1983

— the day before Easter. The reception wasa traditional affair featuring an elaboratemultitiered cake and souvenir matchbooks.

But the relationship had fractured by thetime the cake was cut. Britton had started to

withdraw. She did not stay with Jackson ontheir wedding night, say Jackson’s friendsand family, and did not spend much timewith him in the house he rented on HoodStreet in Hollywood. Instead, she returnedto the safe confines of her parents’ house.She graduated from school that June.

“He started changing,” Barbara said to po-lice, “and things were going wrong with us.”

The baby, John, was born into thisuncertain family on August 25.

David was not at the birth, althoughnow, 23 years after his disappearance, itis hard to ascertain why. David’s mother,

Judy Carlson, claims that Barbara was in-explicably distant from the beginning of the marriage and that Britton did not evennotify Jackson when she went into labor.

Britton admitted that Jackson found outhe had a son only when he received the hos-pital bill for the delivery. She contended thatJackson wasn’t interested in her pregnancy.

Records show that the couple di- vorced on April 2, 1985, two yearsto the day after they married.

At first, the young parents shared custody of baby John, who was not yet 2. Although

Jackson’s friends and family maintain thathe was a loving father, Britton’s claims aremuch darker. In police interviews and de-positions, she alleged that Jackson abusedthe boy (although, according to Velazquez,she never called authorities about her con-cerns). When Jackson had custody, she said,he would taunt her by putting the crying boy on the phone so she could hear him. Hewould “come back scraped and bruised,”she said, or “with a knot on his head.”

Britton said that her own father steppedin and guarded John. “Grandpa becamedad,” she told police, “and I was his little

girl.” When she told him that Jackson mis-treated his grandson, Harry Britton becameincensed. Said Barbara: “I was very close tomy dad. He was like the strength for me.”

In late 1986, when she was 21 and John was3, Barbara met a married man named MichaelWolfe, who lived in Arizona. They were bothworking for Toys ‘R’ Us; he had come to Floridafor a corporate training session. He was tall,with a strong jaw and thinning hair. Like her fa-ther, he was a military veteran who had servedin Germany. Like her father, he was twice herage. She married him in Florida in June 1987.

Barbara and Wolfe moved immediately to Arizona, with John, two days after they were married. Court documents suggestthey informed Jackson about the plan justhours before they were to leave. His mother,Carlson, remembers her son driving aroundwith John during their last hours together,madly calling Britton from pay phones,pleading that she not take John away.

With time and 2,000 miles betweenthem, their relationship eventually im-proved. Barbara told police that they matured and spoke on the phone. “We

Top: John Wolfe (center) with other mem-bers of his Police Explorer unit. Bottom:

Young John with his father, David Jackson,at Jackson’s mother’s house in Hollywood.

My Father’s Bones from p15

Photos courtesy of Judy Carlson



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talked, [decided] that we could be friends,”she said. “It’d be better for John.”

David went to court to fight for visits withhis son, and a judge awarded him extended visits with John every year. The first wasset for the following summer, July 1988.

Barbara may have gone to Arizona, buther father remained in Florida. Jackson’slawyer, Steven Berzner, recalled seeing himshow up at one of the custody hearings,

waiting in the hall outside the courtroom.The elder Britton gave Jackson a word-less, hateful stare as he walked past.

The lawyer noticed the menacing expression and gave Jackson a wordof advice: “You should cover your ass, because that guy has a problem.”

fter work on June 25, 1988 — the eve-ning he disappeared — David Jacksonsat on the couch with his roommate intheir new apartment. By now, Jackson

had left Burger King and had landed a jobdriving a delivery truck for Coca-Cola. His

roommate worked as a cargo inspector.Jackson had spent the afternoon mov-

ing a set of new Modernage furniture intothe two-bedroom apartment: seating and acoffee table and a big, handsome wall unit.Costing thousands of dollars, the purchasewas a deep hit on Jackson’s credit cards, buthe had just paid all of his bills and his shareof the rent. His mother remembers that a big wooden bar was still on its way: a 24-year-old’s totem to freedom and masculinity.

Friends and family say Jackson was pre-paring for Barbara to bring their son fromTucson. A friend who visited Jackson in theapartment remembered him joking abouta new vacuum cleaner he had purchased,“to get the floors clean for [John].” Recordsfrom the Coca-Cola plant show that hehad put in for 11 days of vacation time.

Jackson’s roommate said that as they wererelaxing, around 7 p.m., a woman called forJackson. He took the call and headed into hisroom. Soon after, he showered and dressed,then emerged in a fresh T-shirt and shorts,smelling of Drakkar Noir cologne. He carrieda gray comb to smooth down his blond mullet.

He asked to borrow some money for

beer and cigarettes. His roommate reachedfor a few bills and handed them over.Jackson left. He may have taken the .22caliber pistol he was known to carry.

Detective Velazquez believes that Jacksonmade a stop at a Mobil station for cigarettes anda six-pack of Heineken. Back in the driver’s seatof his black 1976 Celica, he might have openedone of the beers to drink on the road, as hecruised past houses and farmland, headed east-ward. Five unopened beers and a receipt fromthe gas station would later be found in his car.

Velazquez and prosecutors say that he thendrove toward the beach, passing the jai-alai

fronton on Dania Beach Boulevard, and turnedinto the parking lot of an isolated motel (now aMotel 6), where he expected to meet Britton.

he day after the Explorers’ meeting, Velazquez met with John Wolfe in heroffice, beneath the images of his father.Now she and the boy were like two

reunited friends, desperate to fill in the past.“It was like a fact-finding mission

for both of us,” remembers Velazquez.“Face to face, we went back and forth.”

According to her, John was happy tolearn that police had reopened the case. “I’vealways wanted to know what happened tomy father,” she remembers him saying. Hismom had never given him a straight an-swer. Sometimes she would say she hopedhe was alive. Other times, when upset orangry, she would snap, saying that he wasdead. Two years earlier, he had recruited afriend’s father, who worked in law enforce-

ment, to look for leads. Nothing surfaced.John’s recollections of his father were vague, and he couldn’t tell if they had been poisoned by his mother’s input.He struggled to sift out his independentmemories from Britton’s allegations of his father abusing him — forcing him toeat or burning him with a cigarette.

“I do remember happy memories [with my father],” he would later say in a deposition.“I had two [Cheez Doodles] in my mouthlike a walrus... and I remember running around [a] glass table just making noise. AndI remember falling... I remember crying.”

But did his father then put him on thephone with Britton, as she claims, hit-ting him to make him cry louder so shecould hear? In a deposition last year, John

could not remember. “Honestly... my mom is very, very paranoid,” he said.Britton’s new husband, Michael Wolfe,

adopted the boy when he was 5 yearsold, and the couple changed the boy’slast name to Wolfe. But Britton began todistance herself from this husband too,according to people who knew them.

By 1990, she and 7-year-old John were back in Florida living with Britton’s parents.Michael Wolfe faded out of their lives.

Britton went to work at a new Walmartthat was opening in Miramar, at PembrokeRoad and University Avenue. It was just acrossthe airport grounds from the Burger King where she and Jackson had met as teenagers.

It was also built almost directly ontop of the scene of a grisly discovery.

A year earlier, a construction crew had been clearing land near the site of the newWalmart. An 18-year-old worker found askeletal hand, wrapped around a vine, onthe surface of the excavated dirt. Then hefound more bones. He called police. The bones, enough to form a partial skeleton,were not identified. The medi- >>p18



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cal examiner’s staff stored them on a shelf,where they would sit for 15 years.

fter Velazquez and John had ex-changed all they could about fam-ily history, the detective set abouther work with a renewed focus.

She dug up old police reports and found an

instance of a call for service from the Brittons,claiming that Jackson had “kidnapped” John.

She checked the Florida Unidentified De-cedent Database, a public repository that listsunidentified remains from around the state.She entered Jackson’s basic characteristicsand date of disappearance and got about 50results. Methodically, she sorted throughthem one by one until she found a likely match: the bones from the Walmart site. Sheordered a report from a forensic anthropolo-gist and brought in David’s mother, Judy Carlson, to see if her DNA matched the bones.

The results were positive. Velazquez

reclassified Jackson’s case from adisappearance to a homicide.

“At times, the case felt overwhelm-ing,” Velazquez recalls. “It kind of tookon a life of its own, but I wasn’t intimi-dated. I let it speak to me. I followed it.”

She was motivated in part by sympathy for Jackson’s mother. Velazquez and Carlsonwere becoming friends, and Velazquez relatedto “just needing to know where your child is.”

And John proved a tremendous resource inher investigation. From the boy’s description of his stepfather, Velazquez tracked down Michael

Wolfe. He was living with a new wife in Ketter-ing, Ohio. Velazquez found it odd that he hadmarried Britton so quickly after meeting her, just a few months before Jackson disappeared.

Velazquez spent a year directing a flurry of phone calls, subpoenas, and interviews.In June 2004, detectives turned up the heaton Wolfe. Velazquez’s partner met him inOhio on June 17, and he began to talk.

That same day, in Florida, Velazquez went to visit John.

“What your mom has told you has not been the truth,” she said, according to atranscript. “I didn’t want to be the one to tell

you. But as a man, you need to hear this... Iwholeheartedly believe that your father wasmurdered. And I wholeheartedly believethat your mother has firsthand knowledge of it... Your father was murdered because of hislove for you over child custody issues. Yourmother never wanted to share you with him.”

John’s response was chillingly calm. “Oh, Ido believe she’s holding information,” he said.

“I don’t think your mom is a bad per-son,” the detective continued. “I think[she] has some mental problems.”

John didn’t demur, but he doubtedthat his mother would provide any new

information. “She thinks you’re wait-ing for her to say something she didn’tsay 20 years ago,” he told Velazquez. “Iwould hook her ass up to a polygraph.”

“What will you do if your motheris arrested?” she asked.

“If she is an accessory,” said John,“I’ll put the cuffs on her myself.”

The detective asked him to persuadehis mother to meet with her that very night, after she got home. John agreed.

“She’ll probably be in her night-

gown... if you come to the door,” hesaid drolly. “That’d be funny.”

Before they parted, she encour-aged the dogged Police Explorer.

“Work your voodoo, man,” she told him.“Go do your cop thing. You are now the de-

tective. You are empowered. Go get her.”He did. That night, Velazquez and a part-

ner came back inside the house to talk withBritton. They had met before, six months ear-lier, and Britton had denied any knowledge of a crime. Velazquez pressed harder now, con-fident that she could use Wolfe as leverage.

She started with the facts. The bones.“We found David’s body,” said

Velazquez. “He’s been murdered.”“Where was he at?” asked Britton.“In a very isolated area not too far

from here. I have DNA results.”“Are you sure?”

“We’re positive.”She continued. “My partner [is] out in

Ohio where Mike Wolfe now lives,” shetold Britton, who was getting agitated.“Um, he said that... him and your dad wereinvolved, and that you knew about it.”

“I didn’t know about it, no way.”“Mike is willing to take a polygraph.

Are you willing to take a polygraph?”Britton didn’t answer. She was up-

set, focusing on the supposed role of her father, who had died in 1998. “My

dad — I don’t — I don’t understand,” shesaid, beginning to hyperventilate.

“The truth,” said Velazquez. “That’s theonly thing that’s important right now.”

“Do you want me to make y ’all some cof-fee or something?” interjected Britton.

“We’re good, thanks.” The de-tectives waited for an answer.

Britton broke down and was unable tospeak. Still, she would maintain that she was inTucson when David disappeared. “I was in an-other state. I don’t know what happened,” shetold police. “I have to go on what the police tellme. I have to go on what the newspaper said.”

The next day in Ohio, after hours of questioning and a lie-detector test, detec-tives asked Wolfe to put a statement in writ-ing. Wolfe wrote that a few months beforethe disappearance, on a visit to Florida, heand Harry Britton had been watching John

play at a park in Miramar — a park justacross a lagoon from the new Walmart.

“Harry was very upset about hearing fromBarbara that David had abused John during some of his visits with him,” Wolfe wrote inshaky block letters. “Harry expressed that he‘should be gone,’ or something to that effect,meaning to get rid of David... I wasn’t sure hewas serious, but I told him that the area wewere in would be a likely spot to dispose of a body... I didn’t know if he had listened or not.”

Wolfe was pointing de-

Top: John Wolfe as an infant with his mother, Barbara Britton (left), and grandmother.Bottom: Britton stands accused of murdering David Jackson. Her ex-husband MichaelWolfe (right) was already convicted of the murder.


>>p20

Courtesy of Judy Carlson

Broward Sheriff’s Office



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tectives toward a dead man.In the following months, Velazquez pur-

sued other leads. One led her to a womanwhom Wolfe married after divorcing Barbara.The woman told Velazquez that on severalevenings, after Wolfe had drunk himself into a near-stupor, he admitted to commit-ting the murder himself. Later, another of

Wolfe’s ex-wives would tell a similar story.In October 2004, Wolfe was arrested outsidehis Ohio home. As police took him to the curb,he summed up his predicament: “I’m fucked.”

ichael Wolfe went on trial for first-de-gree murder in November 2007. Hisex-wives’ stories were convincing. After a week of testimony and less

than an hour of deliberation, a jury convictedhim and sentenced him to life in prison.

Two days later, Wolfe’s public defend-ers requested a meeting with prosecutors.Wolfe had more information. Now that he

had been convicted, he wanted to makesure justice reached everyone involved.

He confessed to killing Jackson.But he wasn’t the only one respon-sible, he said. According to Wolfe, thisis how David Jackson was murdered:

On the night of the killing, he said, Brit-ton lured Jackson into the motel room with aphone call. When he arrived, she sat with himside by side at the foot of the bed. Wolfe hid inthe bathroom, drunk near sickness on Jäger-meister and White Horse scotch, attempting to gather courage for what he was about to do.

Britton made small talk while she sum-

moned the nerve to pull out a large stun gun.Holding it close to Jackson, she shockedhim and shocked him again. Jackson stoodup, hurt and confused but still conscious.

Hearing the buzzes and sensing that theplan was going wrong, Wolfe wrapped atowel tightly around the pistol in his handand stepped into the bedroom. David hadpulled out his own pistol. But before hecould use it, Wolfe raised the towel to Jack-son’s eye level and shot him in the left sideof the head at a range of six or seven feet.Jackson stumbled crazily but did not fall.

Britton grabbed hold of his arm andguided him into a chair. Her father camethrough the door from the parking lot.

“He’s still breathing,” he barreled, looking down at the young man who his daughtersaid was a child abuser. “Shoot him again.”Wolfe fired another shot to the head.

Once Jackson’s corpse was wrapped ina heavy blanket and placed in the back of Harry Britton’s bright-orange Volkswagen,

Wolfe cleaned the room. “There wasn’ta lot of blood,” he told the prosecutor.

They drove to the empty lot. Harry hadalready dug a shallow hole, hidden by veg-etation in the sand. They dragged Jacksonfrom the car and dropped him into theground. When they saw the headlights of acar, they crouched low to avoid detection.

Wolfe said that he and Britton flew back to Tucson under assumed names.Two days after the murder, Jackson’sroommate reported him missing.

The whole plan had been Bar-

bara and Harry Britton’s idea, Wolfeclaimed. “Harry and I actually nevertalked about it. It went through her.”

After a year, he said, he got a call fromHarry Britton, who heard that developerswere planning to tear up the land where they had buried Jackson to build the Walmart.Harry had returned to the site and col-lected Jackson’s skull so no matches could be made through dental records. He told

Wolfe to come get the rest of the bones.Wolfe said he obeyed his father-in-law. He

flew back, drove to the site, ducked low in thedead of night, and tried to dig the bones upfrom the ground with the aid of a flashlight. Hegot whatever bones he could find and put themout with the trash in front of the Britton house.

olice believed Wolfe’s version of events. Once Wolfe made his state-ment, a grand jury met and agreedthat with this information from

an alleged co-conspirator, there was suf-

ficient reason to charge Britton with first-degree murder. Although no one allegesthat she fired the fatal shots, Florida lawallows the most serious murder chargefor someone suspected of helping to or-chestrate and perform a plot to kill.

In mid-December 2007, just sixweeks after Wolfe made his state-ment, detectives arrested BarbaraBritton as she left to go to work.

Velazquez drove to the police stationto meet her quarry in an interrogationroom, one last time, and read her the in-dictment aloud: “Barbara Britton... did killand murder David Jackson, a human be-ing... to the evil example of all others...”

Velazquez recalls that she said theword evil with particular relish.

Britton spent three years in jail awaiting trial. But in December 2010, with the case stillwinding through the State Attorney’s Officeat a glacial pace, she was released on $5,000 bond. A hearing is scheduled for September.

Britton’s private attorney, Keith Seltzer,

adamantly denies that his client is guilty.“This case is based entirely on Michael

Wolfe trying to get his life sentence short-ened,” Seltzer says. “I believe Barbara hadnothing to do with this... There’s no confes-sion [from her] anywhere... There are norecords from the motel room, not one single bit [of evidence] that implicates Barbara.”

Today, Britton lives at the same home,with her aging mother, her boyfriend, andher daughter from a husband she met whileworking at the Walmart beside the burial site.

She awaits her trial on house arrest.She wears a GPS monitoring brace-

let around her ankle and is allowedto leave the house twice a week forchurch services. She does not work.

Michael Wolfe, writing fromprison in Northern Florida, de-clined to comment for this article.

John Wolfe, now 27, recently movedout of the family home. He is not a police-man, but he works as a mall security guard.He also declined to comment for this ar-ticle, deferring to his mother’s wishes.

[email protected]

Left: Jackson as a young man. Right: His son, John Wolfe, at his mother’s house in Arizona.


Photos courtesy of Judy Carlson

my father's bones

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