Last March, 19-year-old Stachaun Jackson was shot dead outside the Dillon Beach trailer home where he had been paying weekly visits to a pair of older men. The teenaged Mr. Jackson was known as a “free spirit” in the Dillon Beach community; handsome and friendly, his violent death left many wondering why he, a young black man, took up with two much-older white men, one of whom committed suicide days after the shooting.
Ken Neville, 56, immediately admitted to shooting Mr. Jackson in self-defense after a fight broke out between the young man and his romantic partner, Eric Gillespie, 51, who rented the trailer at Lawson’s Landing. The trial for Mr. Neville began last Tuesday in Marin County Superior Court.
Mr. Neville faces voluntary manslaughter charges and has been booked at the Marin County Jail since his arrest on March 20, the day of the shooting. In June, Judge Andrew Sweet reduced Mr. Neville’s charges from murder to manslaughter, citing a lack of evidence to convict murder. He faces up to 11 years in prison for manslaughter and an additional 10 for weapons possession.
For over a week, the 12-member jury has heard testimony from county investigating officers, Lawson’s Landing employees and a few people who knew Mr. Jackson; they have watched video footage of detective interviews with Mr. Neville and Mr. Gillespie, considered some of the latter’s last living words.
Mr. Neville’s attorney, Marin Public Defender and Inverness resident Michael Coffino, is continuing to bring witnesses through this week, and possibly into next week.
Investigators responding to early-morning 911 calls on March 20 found Mr. Jackson’s body outside the trailer home, with bullet wounds to his chest and back. A bullet hole matching the height of where a bullet impacted Mr. Jackson was discovered in the wooden frame of a decorative mirror scattered among debris outside the trailer; no bullet was ever located from Mr. Gillespie’s loaded revolver, empty one slot in the chamber.
In a nine-hour interview conducted by Detective Scott Buer later that day, Mr. Neville described a chaotic domestic scene in the trailer that began around 9 p.m., when Mr. Jackson arrived carrying groceries, and ended in death after 2 a.m. According to Mr. Neville, a fight broke out between Mr. Gillespie and Mr. Jackson in the bedroom, a “tussle” so intense that it shook the entire trailer.
“The thing I remember is the jostling of the trailer,” said Mr. Neville, who said he had lived with Mr. Gillespie in a “non-sexual” way for the past 14 years. “I wasn’t there [in the bedroom], but they had to be jostling each other.”
In the interview, Mr. Gillespie said Mr. Jackson had shoved, pushed, hit and choked him in the bedroom for several hours before demanding that the older man hand over his keys and wallet. Mr. Gillespie complied, and Mr. Jackson left to toss a machine Mr. Gillespie used to treat back pain into the ocean.
“He said, ‘I’m going to teach you a lesson,’” Mr. Gillespie told detectives. “And, ‘I’m going to find those guns. Where are those guns at?’”
Weeks before, after a previous domestic dispute between the older men and Mr. Jackson, Mr. Gillespie and Mr. Neville had decided to move their two revolvers from a locked storage shed outside the trailer to an unlocked cabinet inside. Fearful of the teenager’s sudden violent mood swings, the men decided to keep one gun loaded.
“He’s very strong,” said Mr. Neville, who noted that he and Mr. Gillespie had discussed putting a restraining order on Mr. Jackson. “We were both afraid of him. A prickly, cactus personality. Volatile, moody.”
The final quarrel came after Mr. Neville asked Mr. Jackson to pay $480 to pitch in for rent. The tenants had not paid two month’s worth of rent, according to Lawson’s Landing owner Mike Lawson, and they were close to eviction.
Mr. Neville struggled to remember the exact sequence of events, but he said Mr. Jackson left the trailer multiple times and that he and Mr. Gillespie locked the door and windows and called police. But Mr. Jackson returned soon after and, as Mr. Neville stated, “heave[d] his whole body” through one of the trailer’s windows.
“I was very shocked that he was able to come through the window,” Mr. Neville said. “And I was scared.”
The two recalled Mr. Jackson grabbing a kitchen knife from a drawer and instructing the men to cancel the 911 call. At some point, Mr. Jackson forced Mr. Gillespie onto a couch and took the cell phone from him. When Mr. Jackson turned his back to return the knife to the drawer, Mr. Neville retrieved a revolver, and told the men to go outside. They complied.
“I have the gun, and I mean business,” Mr. Neville said. “I tell him, ‘If you push me, I’ll shoot you.’”
According to Mr. Neville, Mr. Jackson then dropped the phone and “leaned forward.” Mr. Neville fired. Mr. Jackson fell to the ground.
“I said, ‘If you get back up, I’ll shoot you again,’” said Mr. Neville, who claimed he had not meant to kill Mr. Jackson. “I thought he was just injured. I honestly didn’t think he was going to die.”
It was the first time Mr. Neville had ever pulled a trigger, he claimed. Four days later, Mr. Gillespie was found dead, lying on the ground near Hooker Creek Bridge in Cottonwood, Calif. A suicide note, an empty bottle of wine and a wine glass containing a half-dissolved pill were found in his car.
Mr. Gillespie’s family removed the trailer soon after detectives finished their investigation.
Mr. Neville told Detective Buer that he and Mr. Gillespie had relocated from Hayward to Dillon Beach in July 2013. The previous October, Mr. Neville said, Mr. Gillespie brought Mr. Jackson home from a bar, the start of a “tense” relationship between the two. Soon after, Mr. Jackson began living in a Guerneville apartment rented by another “older gentleman,” according to testimony on Monday from a neighbor named Steven Kile.
Like Mr. Neville and Mr. Gillespie, Mr. Kile said he felt afraid of the teenager and began to avoid him once he “saw the violent streak in him.” Within a span of a few months, Mr. Kile twice called police when Mr. Jackson began banging incessantly on his neighbor’s door and windows. (Mr. Kile’s troubles with the teen started after Mr. Kile confronted Mr. Jackson about his decision to move Mr. Gillespie and his dog into the Guerneville apartment.)
“He would be yelling, ‘I’m going to hurt you, I’m going to hurt you,’” said Mr. Kile, a retired staff supervisor for the San Francisco Veterans Affairs Medical Clinic. “He could be very pleasant at one moment and in two seconds could become very violent. I never knew when the aggression would come up.”
Another Guerneville acquaintance recounted similar incidents. Jeffrey Faye, a convenience store clerk, told the courtroom on Monday that he had been seeing Mr. Jackson since the young man moved to Guerneville “sometime at the end of 2013.” Mr. Faye noted that Mr. Jackson had wanted to have a more serious relationship, but Mr. Faye refused, citing their age difference. (Mr. Faye is 46.)
He related several examples of Mr. Jackson’s violent behavior, which he said was often fueled by the use of LSD. But when the prosecuting attorney, Cassandra Edwards, cross-examined Mr. Faye and asked if he considered Mr. Jackson to have been a “violent person,” the witness gave an unexpected answer.
“No,” he said, and paused. “He seemed like a nice kid. Kind of like a moody teenager.”
Many others who knew Mr. Jackson had the same opinion—especially at Lawson’s Landing, where Mr. Jackson had recently become somewhat of a fixture. Employees remembered that he always had a jovial attitude, was friendly and intent on fitting into the community, and was a disquietingly handsome, young African American man.
“You know, he could’ve been a model,” said Mr. Lawson, whose family has run Lawson’s Landing since the 1950s. “And everyone always talked about his smile. He was like a free spirit. He had his whole life ahead of him, and he definitely could’ve done better than those two.”
Mr. Neville and Mr. Gillespie were much less approachable, even “creepy,” a word used by several Lawson’s employees. For Mr. Lawson, part of that impression stemmed from the fact that they were spending time with a youngster. Why was a bright, young black man taking up with such aloof, older white men, the community wondered?
“Plus, they always stunk,” Mr. Lawson said. “But the kid was clean and very well dressed.
And though Mr. Neville testified to the contrary, some wondered whether the older men were in a love relationship. Nor is it known whether Mr. Neville also had a sexual relationship with Mr. Jackson, though Mr. Neville has denied it.
“He did not have a father,” said Mr. Neville, who is listed as retired on the county’s public booking log. “So I think it was a father-son relationship for him [with Mr. Gillespie].”
Attorneys reserved the jury until Feb. 20, but expect that a verdict will be reached much sooner. On Tuesday Mr. Coffino laid the foundation to present several key pieces of evidence: texts and emails sent from Mr. Jackson’s cell phone to Mr. Neville’s.