A Rage To Kill And Other True Cases

There was no evidence that showed Jackie had any endocrine dysfunction. He was more likely to be a passive-role homosexual.

    Such delineations might seem to be nit-picking. But they were vital when it came to selecting a prison for the man with the long eyelashes and sweet smile.
    Jackie had been dumped by his male lover two years before Brad Bass was murdered, and the examining psychiatrist was convinced that his demands for a sex change operation had sprung from that rejection. “I think this is more of a transsexual reaction to severe rejection in a homosexual relationship,” he wrote. “This reaction is chronic, severe, and needs to be observed under psychiatric supervision to determine where the client eventually stabilizes. For this reason, I recommend that [he] be observed for an extended period of time in the mental health unit at Monroe Reformatory.”
    He went on to surmise that—if Jackie turned out to be a true transsexual—he probably should be transferred to the women’s prison at Purdy. If Jackie proved to be only a man in women’s clothing, he probably should be kept in segregation at a male prison. “In no case,” the psychiatrist wrote, “should this individual be integrated into the general population of either Purdy or the male institutions.”
    Whatever else Jackie Emerson might prove to be, he was clearly a man completely devoid of empathy or conscience. He had taken what he wanted all of his life, and Wright doubted that he would change. Armed with the suggestions of experts in deviant sexual behavior, Chuck Wright made his recommendation on July 14, 1976: “It is our recommendation that Mr. Jonathan Emerson be sentenced to the Department of Social and Health Services, and before he receives a specific institution, that he be evaluated at Monroe’s Mental Health Unit.”

    Wright’s counsel was sound. But apparently no one listened to him. In less than two years, Jackie Emerson was a fixture in the Washington State Penitentiary in Walla Walla, the state’s largest prison for men. Although he could not wear his wigs and dresses in Walla Walla, Jackie managed to maintain his feminine persona with makeup, a velvet cap and sheer tank tops. He found a “husband,” and the two shared a cell. One of about a dozen transvestites in Walla Walla, Jackie was the most popular, and charged other inmates $30 for his “favors.” He had one protector after another, but, if he found himself in a tight situation, he used his own fists and muscles to fight back.
    He no longer desired surgery, saying, “If God truly wanted me to be a female, he would have given me all the female equipment. I know I can be happy and loved without a sex change.”
    Jackie Emerson’s sentence was akin to the old fable of Br’er Rabbit, who begged Farmer Brown not to “throw me in that cabbage patch,” which was, of course,
exactly
where he wanted to be.
    Jackie served a long sentence in Walla Walla, and returned to western Washington when he was paroled. Today, he is an aging prostitute, nearly fifty years old, who continues to get into penny-ante scrapes with the law. Nothing has really changed in Jackie’s life, and the memory of a young man named Brad Bass is buried so deep in his consciousness that he scarcely recalls the rainy night in February twenty-three years ago.

    Brad Bass would have been forty-four years old today. He left only a few bequests, but they still exist. The most important were the perfect kidneys and eyes he donated to help people he never knew. His father kept his 1957 Chevrolet pickup, testimony to the fact that Brad could do anything once he made up his mind to do it. What Brad might have accomplished with the rest of his life will never be known. He was fooled by an expert at disguise and he paid for it with his life.

The Killer Who Talked Too Much
    “Show me a homicide where we don’t pick up any meaningful physical evidence and I’ll show you a ‘loser,’ ” the Seattle police detective said vehemently. “It doesn’t matter how much circumstantial evidence we have, or what our gut feelings are, or even how much probable cause we have to arrest. You still have to show a jury something they can see.”
    Although I have written articles and books about well over a thousand true crime cases, I have seen only a very few convictions on circumstantial evidence, and I know that detective was right. Homicide investigation has become a science involving physics, chemistry and