On April 17, 2011 a group of teens lured 15 year-old Seath Jackson to a house to “scare him.” What happened next was horrific and beyond anything Seath’s family or friends could have imagined. Part 1 of 2.
Seath Tyler Jackson was born on February 3, 1996. He grew up in Summerfield, Florida- an unincorporated community in Marion County. The population is about 25,000 and median household income is about $42,000 per year. In 2011, Seath Jackson was 15 years old and a sophomore at Belleview High School. His parents are Scott and Sonia Jackson and was the youngest of 3- his 2 older brothers are Scott Jr. and Stephan Jackson.
Seath “liked to make people laugh,” was kindhearted, and had dreams of becoming a Ultimate Fighting Champion. The family said Seath was a typical teenager who had many close friends who have always cared about him. They also said Seath was an animal lover who also loved four-wheeling with family and friends and was a hard worker.
His best friend was William Samalot. William says that Seath was a great wingman, “the best in the world.” He said they would BMX together and basically did everything together.
Our story takes place in the “spring” of 2011. I say spring in air quotes because the average high in the month of April in Summerfield is 82 degrees, and the low is is 60 degrees.
On Monday April 18th, 2011 William is attempting to get in touch with Seath throughout the day via text but he is getting no response. After most of the day not being able to reach him, he calls
Deputies respond to the missing person call from Seath’s mom Sonia, initially thinking that he was just an angsty teen who didn’t want to come home when he was supposed to. Sonia had text messaged with Seath the night before and asked if he wanted a ride home. His response was, “never mind bitch!” which she said was very out of character for Seath. She said he’d never spoken to her that way before in person or via text message. She thought that maybe he was in a bad mood and let it go. He told her he’d be staying with friends for the night so she assumed that was William since he stayed there very often.
When William called her to say he couldn’t get in touch with Seath since the night before, she knew something was very wrong.
In order to access Seath’s phone records, the police need a warrant. Sonia does give them permission to access those records- if they can find out who he’s been calling or texting, they can begin to piece together his movements. They also ask for a list of friends that police can question about Seath’s whereabouts leading up to his disappearance.
She immediately gives the name Amber Wright, Seath’s ex-girlfriend. Sonia says that Seath and Amber began dating in December or 2010 and had broken up only weeks ago- in March- and Seath was still pretty torn up about it. According to his best friend William, Seath was in love with Amber when he started dating her and wanted to be with her “forever.” Sonia and William both say that Seath took the breakup very hard and was not over it. He still wanted to be with Amber.
It’s typical teenage love, you meet someone and start dating and that’s it- you’re going to marry them and have lots of sex and babies and everything’s going to be perfect and you’re going to live together and always be happy forever.
So now we have a name. Amber Wright. Deputies immediately go to her house to talk with her. Her friend Charlie Ely happens to be there at the time and they both say that they saw Seath in the neighborhood the night before, but that he got into an argument with his mom between 9-10pm and he left, so they both assumed he went home.
Deputies separate them to question them, and Lieutenant Todd Spicher is talking with Charlie when she says that after she saw Seath she heard a “loud bang.” Lt. Spicher is like “hold up bitch. Did you say you heard a BANG?!?!” She replies that she didn’t know if it was a firecracker or a gun… NBD. And then Seath began running down the road. She didn’t know if he’d been shot or just scared when he was running.
And this is where EVERYTHING FALLS APART.
I listened to another podcast that covered this case (there’s literally only one) called Obscura and they did an amazing job from a unique perspective, but he said “6 people can keep a secret if 5 of them are dead.” And it’s so true. Of the 6 people who are ultimately charged with the murder, they all start to roll over pretty quickly.
Charlie said that about 35 yards away that night, she saw a “figure.” Maybe this person shot Seath? She says she recognized him as Mike Bargo- Amber’s new boyfriend. So Lt. Spicher is now basically like “wtf.” He asks if Mike Bargo knew Seath. Charlie replies that he did know Seath and they hated each other.
But I guess she didn’t know that would be pertinent information to the officers when they first asked about Seath going missing. Honest mistake, right?
Mike Bargo is 18 years old (so is Charlie) and was friends with Charlie and stayed with her often. Mike and Amber met at Charlie’s house partying and became romantically involved.
So now Charlie says she’s confused, she’s not sure what she saw…. She begins to back peddle.
When Deputy Grantham is talking to Amber, she gives a different version of events. She says after she and Charlie saw Seath, they went back home. No loud bang, no Mike Bargo. She says the breakup with mutual, they both knew it was for the best and there were no hard feelings.
When deputies press Amber to explain why her and Charlie’s stories are so different, she doubles down and denies hearing any loud noise or any shots fired. She denies seeing Mike Bargo at all that night. Lt. Spicher said that when he questioned her she was steadfast- no signs of deception, no signs of being nervous whatsoever. A 15 year old girl who basically stuck to her story no matter what and didn’t seem the least bit distressed that they were pointing out her lies.
So the one thing they do agree on is that they saw Seath at the corner of 140th Street and 58th Court.
William runs into the deputies at Amber’s house- he had gone there to see if she had seen Seath or knew where he could be. William tells them that Seath had been at his house playing video games earlier in the evening when Amber called him. He told Seath that Amber was bad news and to let her go, but Seath took the call. William says he heard bits of pieces of the conversation and that Amber said that she loved him and wanted to make things right.
None of which she mentioned to police.
After Seath talked to Amber, he left William’s house. He told William he was just going home and needed to think about things. William didn’t think he was going to meet up with Amber that night. They agreed to hang out after school the next day.
Little did William know this was the last time he would ever see Seath alive again.
William tells them that Mike Bargo was a self proclaimed thug and wanted to be this ring leader that had people around him to do his bidding basically. He was a piece of trash that thought tattoos and piercings would make him look tough. William says that he and Seath didn’t like that crowd so they stayed away.
The deputies think at this point that Seath “is a troubled kid” and has just run away. William gets extremely upset and feels that there is no way that Seath has run away. This prompts them to continue investigating. While waiting on the cell records to come in, they begin searching for Seath.
William is an amazing friend. If you go missing, you want this guy looking for you. He starts his own investigation- he says he thought the detectives weren’t asking the right questions and weren’t moving quickly enough so he wasn’t going to sit idly by and just wait for answers. He felt that his friend was in danger and he knew that Amber was not to be trusted.
When William talks to Amber, she says “There are some things you DON’T NEED TO KNOW.” He was shocked by her statement, and now he was on a mission to find out what happened to his best friend.
He posts on Seath’s facebook page: “Seath this is starting to freak me out- where r u? And another post: Yo text me when you can.”
Facebook happens to be a hotbed of evidence- as is typical of high school kids in the days of social media, every issue they had was public and on social media.
Amber and Seath had some all-out fights on Facebook in the weeks leading up to Seath’s disappearance. They called each other names, aired out their dirty laundry, went back and forth beginning in March. Then, Seath found out that Amber was dating Mike Bargo and his anger intensified.
In late March, Seath went to a party to confront Mike Bargo about his dating Amber. According to William, Seath essentially “laid Mike Bargo out,” and “his ego was crushed.”
On April 4th, Amber posts “lots to think about, goodnight.” Mike writes that he hopes she isn’t sad about him and a kid named Dalton posts that Seath will beat Mike’s ass. Back and forth comments ensue, and it ends with Seath posting:
“ok…your hous is giting (burned) the fuck down…. with your moma kyle your (expletive) dady and yo (expletive) boy frind and i will dip out but ummmmm just for the recered how does it feel to be cheated on”
On April 7th, Seath posted a status update directed at Amber which started an online argument:
There are a ton of other comments on this post from friends- either telling him “that’s not nice,” and he defends his position with explaining that she cheated on him so that’s fucked up, or people encouraging him saying that Mike Bargo is a p*ssy and he is only 15 and can kick his ass.
According to most of the articles I read, Seath didn’t update his facebook page all that much. But during this 2-3 week period, he was posting about Amber pretty often.
He also posted a very derogatory status on March 23rd that was extremely racist. There’s nothing else in any of the records that show anything like that from him before, but it is very disturbing. Friends and family say he was a great person, always smiling and have wonderful things to say about him, and his critics point to this post and the posts that talk about fighting Mike Bargo as defining his character.
I think the truth is somewhere in the middle… those posts do not show excellent character by any means. The area in which he grew up is a very poor area, it seems that there is little parent supervision either because they are always working (which I believe is the case in the Jackson household) or because they simply don’t care, and drugs are EVERYWHERE. These kids were doing what they wanted when they wanted, and it is obvious that none of their parents are monitoring their social media pages.
And someone needs to arrest the teachers at the school all these kids go to. They cannot spell ONE WORD correctly. The word “you” is spelled “y-u-u” on Amber’s replies EVERY TIME. But she does spell “fucking” right. Priorities, I guess.
Anyway, the Facebook Feud is getting pretty heated. Not only is Seath now arguing with Amber and Mike online, he is also fighting with Kyle Hooper, Amber’s brother and his one time good friend. Kyle is telling him to stop bashing his sister online or their friendship is over.
From all accounts, Mike Bargo is a dangerous guy. He is known to carry a gun and he recently had a restraining order taken out against him by another juvenile earlier that year. He is a person of interest in Seath’s disappearance, but police cannot locate him.
But this isn’t going to stop William- he looks for Mike on his own. At this point he says he thinks that Seath and Mike maybe had gotten into a fight and Seath ran away or was hiding out somewhere for a bit to clear his head. Seath had been challenging Mike to fight him, which Mike never wanted to take him up on, so William thought maybe Seath had finally gotten him to accept the challenge. When William is looking for Mike, he sees Kyle outside. He asked Kyle where Seath was and he was stuttering, saying he didn’t know and gave the same answer about Mike. William knew something was weird about his response and how nervous he seemed to get with those questions in particular. After Kyle leaves without talking with him, he said he searched for Seath all night long.
The next morning, Tuesday April 19th, Tracy Wright calls the Sheriff’s department. She is the mother of Amber Wright and Kyle Hooper and she wants an officer to come out to talk with her son, Kyle. She says Kyle has information about Seath Jackson’s disappearance.
Part 2 will be available to the public on March 16th.
Sources:
Killer Women with Piers Morgan (interrogation audio)
Sonia Jackson Victim Impact Statement
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