Those Who Knew HIm Cry Murder
By Leslie Linthicum - Appearing here by kind permission of the Albuquerque
Journal 12/12/93
What happened to Leroy Jackson?
Two months have passed since the environmental activist - a fit and strong
man who jogged to relieve stress and was committed to traditional Navajo
medicine - disappeared on a business trip to Taos and was found dead. He was
the victim, authorities said, of an accidental drug overdose.
But here on the western slope of the mountains that Jackson fought to
preserve from loggers' saws and chains, his untimely death has left pain and
many questions. A former engineer, Jackson was the steady articulate voice
of area traditionalists, the one who was willing to do battle with Navajo
tribal government and the Bureau of Indian Aff
airs. His beliefs and his work with the environmental group Dine CARE had
spawned enemies, and friends suspect he was killed in a sophisticated,
well-disguised murder plot to silence his protest.
Police have closed their investigation of Jackson's death, labeling it
"inactive" last week without reaching a conclusion about how his body came to
be found in the back seat of his van on a scenic overlook outside Tierra
Amarilla on Oct. 9. The medical investigator found no signs of trauma to
Jackson's body and a lethal dose of methadone in his bloodstream, as well as
Valium and marijuana.
Still, his death remains a vexing riddle: If he was killed, who did it and
how did they make it look like an accident? If he took the drugs himself,
had he lived with secrets well hidden from even his family and closest
friends?
Adella Begaye waited by the phone in her Tsaile home the weekend Jackson
disappeared, hoping her husband would call to say he had had car trouble or
was late in returning home for another reason. The call never came, and now
Begaye stands in her kitchen to make sense of his death.
Begaye and Jackson had three children, ages 17, 6 and 5, and Begaye says that
after 18 year together she knew her husband well enough to know he wouldn't
take methadone and smoke marijuana - even if he was suffering from one of the
crippling migraine headaches that had plagued him for years.
If he had a headache, he would have called friends in Taos or Santa Fe for
help or gone to an emergency room for Demerol as he sometimes did, Begaye
said. And if he had gotten desperate and taken something like methadone,
Begaye is certain he would have called her at the Tsaile Indian Health Center
where she works as a registered nurse.
The conclusion of the Office of the Medical Investigator that Jackson was
killed by methadone taken by his own hand offends Begaye and friends who say
they never knew Jackson to take illegal drugs.
"With all this drug stuff, I think they're trying to discredit him and
discredit the organization," Begaye says.
The timing of his disappearance also feeds Begaye's suspicion.
Jackson was scheduled to fly to Washington, D.C., days after he disappeared
to argue against a Bureau of Indian Affairs policy that would have exempted
Indian lands from logging prohibitions to protect the Mexican spotted owl.
"A lot of the stuff he was doing would impact the whole timber industry,"
Begaye says. "Somebody didn't want him going to Washington."
Police have focused their investigation on Jackson's last days and where he
might have come in contact with methadone, a synthetic narcotic used to wean
addicts from heroin and less frequently as a prescribed painkiller.
This much is known, according to police and friends: Jackson attended a
meeting in Window Rock, Ariz., on Sept. 28. He met with loggers, tribal
officials and officials from Navajo Forest Products Industries, the tribally
owned timber company. He called home later that day to ask his wife to bring
his prescribed migraine medication, Valium and Tylenol with codeine, when she
met him later in the week in Shiprock. Jackson spent the next three nights
in Rinconada, about 20 miles south of Taos, at the home of Mark Marcus, an
acquaintance.
Jackson traded in rugs, beadwork and other Native American crafts, and he set
up a vendor's table Sept. 30 at Taos Pueblo's San Geronimo Feast Day. He
called home again that night to say he hadn't been able to complete his
business in Taos and wouldn't be able to leave until a day later than he had
planned. He met the next day, Oct. 1, with a Taos business owner to receive
a $1,200 check in payment for a rug. He cashed the check at a bank and paid
off an $800 debt at another arts and craft shop. Jackson supposedly was
bound for Shiprock that afternoon.
What happened after that is a mystery. When he didn't show up in Shiprock,
Begaye called the police to report him missing, and several friends scoured
the roads leading from Taos to Shiprock. One friend, Dr. Dave Lang, drove
past the overlook where police eventually found Jackson's van Oct. 6 and
didn't see the vehicle. Autopsy results indicate that was about five days
after Jackson died.
Why did a hiker say he saw the van parked at the overlook on Oct. 2, but Lang
- who spent hours driving up and down the stretch of road - find nothing four
days later? That and other mysteries remain:
Why, if he felt sick or in need of a nap, would he pull off the road when he
was less than an hour away from the motels of Chama?
Why was his body found on the van's narrow back seat, where Jackson wasn't
know to sleep, and with a blanket pulled over his head and other blankets
hung over the windows?
Why would he have taken off his shoes in the cold?
Where was the second key to the van that Jackson carried in case he locked
himself out?
Why did Jackson's personal diary, which he kept religiously, end with an
entry on Sept. 28?
And where would Jackson, who friends and family say didn't use drugs, obtain
a lethal dose of methadone?
Police have talked several times to Marcus, the silversmith Jackson stayed
with in Rinconada. He has told them little about Jackson's stay at his
house.
"We have really been leaning on him," New Mexico State Police Maj. Frank
Taylor says.
Police are interested in Marcus' relation to Jackson because Marcus'
girlfriend, Francesca Lorimer, began serving a four-year sentence for
possession of a controlled substance Oct. 28 at a Missouri prison. She was
found with 27 pounds of marijuana and a vial of methadone during a traffic
stop and told police she got the methadone from her boyfriend, Taylor says.
Earl Tulley, a former drug and alcohol
abuse counselor who worked with Jackson in Dine CARE, said he doesn't believe
Jackson experimented with drugs or could have kept drug use a secret from
him.
"I would have seen residue on his fingers, I would have smelled it in his
truck. I never saw anything like that," Tulley says. "That this was a guy
who had another side to his character that nobody knw about, I'll challenge
that."
Tulley spent a lot of time with Jackson during the past three years. He
never saw him drink alcohol or smoke a cigarette, althouth Begaye says the
pack of Camel cigarettes, matches and rolling papers found inside the van
probably belonged to her husband, who recently started smoking again and
often rolled his own cigarettes.
When Jackson would feel a migraine coming on, Tulley says, he would squint,
rub his head and then usually go for a walk or run before taking medication.
When he was without his prescribed medication, Tulley never saw Jackson
borrow someone else's, he says.
Tulley speculates that Jackson was forced or tricked into taking the
methadone.
Family and friends also dispute the conclusion of Dr. Patricia McFeeley, the
pathologist who ruled Jackson's death due to an accidental overdose.
According to McFeeley, Jackson had ingested enough methadone to kill him,
although the level in his system was near the low end of what is considered
the lethal range. Methadone comes as a liquid or a pill and is usually taken
orally.
Because there were no needle marks, no signs of bruising or injury that might
suggest Jackson struggled with someone, McFeeley concluded the methadone was
taken willingly. And without a note or any behavior that pointed toward
taking his life, she ruled it an accident rather than a suicide.
McFeeley is aware of murder theories regarding Jackson's death.
"I think you can always come up with those scenarios for almost any case,"
McFeeley says. But, she concedes, "we obviously couldn't tell how the
methadone got into his body."
McFeeley says she is certain Jackson died shortly after he disappeared.
Decomposition points to a time of death of around Oct. 1, she said.
And bloodstains found on the back seat where Jackson's head had lain were
consistent with blood that routinely purges from the nose upon death,
McFeeley said.
Begaye has been critical of the autopsy and police investigation, alleging
that when the body of an Indian man was found, it was assumed "it was another
drunk Indian" and not aggressively investigated.
But, on the Navajo reservation, Jackson was well known. Dine CARE was formed
in early 1991 when several grass-roots community organizations on the Navajo
reservation incorporated as a single group. Because of his ties to the
Chuska Mountains, Jackson became the group's expert on logging and led the
fight to require the BIA to complete environmental assessments before
allowing on-reservation timber cuts by NFPI. About 100 contract loggers were
put out of work and another 100 sawmill workers laid off a
s proposed timber cuts were appealed.
Like other members of Dine CARE, Jackson was held responsible for the layoffs
by some loggers and sawmill workers. He was the object of catcalls and was
hung in effigy by loggers at a rally last year.
"He was directly putting people out of work," NFPI operations manager Norman
Birtcher says. Still, he says, Jackson was respected for his dedication and
easy manner. "They respected him, they didn't agree with him, and they
suffered because of him," Birtcher says.
Birtcher bristles at innuendo that anyone involved in the timber industry
would have been involved in a murder conspiracy.
"I think it's ludicrous and frankly annoying," Birtcher says. "Even if they
disagreed with him, nobody would go to those lengths for a job."
Tulley remembers walking with Jackson in Tsaile in August and talking about
their unpopular position.
"Do you ever worry about somebody going after you?" Tully asked.
"It's hard to think along those lines," Jackson said, "because you don't know
who the enemy is."
Begaye and the other members of Dine CARE are continuing Jackson's
forest-preservation work. And Begaye says that even though police have
closed their investigation, she believes he was killed and that the killers
will face some kind of justice.
"Maybe the police couldn't find anything, but I know Leroy was doing what was
right," Begaye says. "I know the Gods were on his side. They're not going
to get away with it."