Coroner: Examiners will check if bones found in Southern KY are missing Richmond mom
Medical examiners will try to determine if skeletal remains found in Pulaski County are those of a missing Richmond woman whose husband was recently charged with killing her even though her body hadn’t been found.
Pulaski County Coroner Clyde Strunk said the remains had not been identified by late Thursday.
However, medical examiners will check to see if the remains are those of Ella Jackson, who has been missing since last October, Strunk said.
“That’ll be the place that they start,” Strunk said.
Officials will have to get dental records from Jackson to compare with the remains, Strunk said. If dental records don’t work, DNA may be compared.
If the remains are not those of Jackson, authorities will widen the search to other missing people, he said.
Richmond police arrested Glenn Jackson, 39, on April 24 on charges of killing his wife and evidence tampering.
Police said that while they hadn’t found Ella Jackson’s body, they had found “a significant amount” of blood in the back of Glenn Jackson’s vehicle.
Witnesses told police that Jackson was abusive to his wife. She had a card from a domestic violence victim advocate in her things and had met with a divorce lawyer not long before she disappeared, according to a police affidavit filed in the case.
Police said they found “several recordings that Mrs. Jackson secretly made of her and Mr. Jackson’s arguments. Mrs. Jackson also told several individuals that she was afraid of Mr. Jackson, and if anything ever happened to her, her husband would be responsible.”
Glenn Jackson was once an honors instructor at Eastern Kentucky University, where he taught English and rhetoric.
A university spokeswoman said Jackson had not worked at the school since February.
Pulaski County Sheriff Greg Speck said that someone hunting mushrooms called police about 8 p.m. Tuesday to report finding skeletal remains in the southern part of the county, not far from the McCreary County line.
The remains were 40 to 50 yards off U.S. 27, in a wooded area over an embankment, Speck said.
Strunk said the gender of the person was not obvious at the scene, nor was it clear the person died as a result of foul play. The remains had been there long enough that there was no flesh left, he said.
However, there were items of female clothing found with the body, Speck said.
Speck said there are no missing-persons reports from Pulaski, McCreary or Wayne counties that might fit with the remains.
Authorities worked into the night to collect the bones. Animals had scattered them, Strunk said.
The affidavit in Glenn Jackson’s case indicates he owns a house near Lake Cumberland in neighboring Wayne County.
Glenn Jackson told police last year that his wife often disappeared, sometimes for days at a time, and that she was depressed at times and talked of suicide, according to the police affidavit in his case.
However, Ella Jackson’s son, Phillip Hans, denied that she disappeared.
A doorbell camera at the couple’s house showed that Glenn Jackson left at a time when he said he hadn’t, police said in the affidavit.
Glenn Jackson told police he had not been physically violent toward his wife, and when a detective asked him if he had killed Ella Jackson, he said, “he would never hurt his wife.”
This story was originally published April 30, 2020 at 7:21 AM.
