Page 18 - Finding David Jackson News Today : Breaking News, Live Updates & Top Stories | Vimarsana

>> no. >> now years later, the investigation was back in high gear. judy told detective velasquez in some corner of her heart, she still hoped that david just might turn up safely, some way. but the detective was not inclined to false hope. she did not for a minute think he was still alive. had he died accidentally, surely a sign of him would have approved. no, she believes when bodies aren't found, it's because someone has intentionally hidden them. but david jackson might show up, just not alive. >> and my wheels started turning, and i started thinking, you know, we live in florida. with the...

>> sat there all those years, even as those who loved david held out a shred of hope that he was alive, somewhere. >> as far as i know, he was disappeared. he was missing. >> but now detective velasquez had a hard truth to tell. david jackson was dead. not missing. and the way he had been hidden made it perfectly clear he had been murdered all those years ago. most likely before his friends or family even noticed he was gone. which have put a final period on his mother's lingering hope for his return. and apparently an ex-wife's what ifs. were you seriously thinking, you know, maybe some day i...

Things have a way of coming up. things buried in the ground in the past, or both. it was july 2003, beaches quiet, snowbirds back up north. so no one noticed at first what was starting inland, a little, in a town called pembroke pines, where donna velasquez, just three months a detective, a rookie, really, had just been assigned to a brand-new cold case unit. >> the sergeant came into the office and dropped a box of papers right on my desk and said, here, see what you can do with this. and i began to wonder, mm, is this a test to see, can she really do this? >> that the case was a challenge wa...

No pointers, nothing, really, beyond the basic bio. to unearth the truth, even the rookie cop knew she'd have to learn about the victim. and so she began with something easy. she found david jackson's mother, judy carlson. she found judy's son, actually, who called his mom. >> and he said, are you sitting? and i said, yes, and they said, they reopened david's case. >> the detective and the mother talked about david for hours. it wasn't a problem for judy, she loves talking about her boy, even now, to us. >> david was my first child. he was just -- loved everything and everyone. ♪ happy birth...

And david jackson worked together at a burger king, where david became a manager. brown also had a front row seat to the budding romance between jackson and a pretty 16-year-old coworker named barbara britton. >> they were together, and that's awesome. i mean, if you can find love, that's what we all want. >> and so all of these years later, detective velasquez paid a visit to the woman who had been the girl that had fallen in love with david jackson. happy to help, she told the detective. same thing when we called on her to talk about the david she knew. >> he was a very good-looking man. you...