In the late summer of 2018, the life of 34-year-old Jessica Shaunti Jackson, a Black female and single mother, came to a tragic and violent end. Her body was discovered on September 13, 2018, in a wooded area on the grounds of Joint Base Lewis-McChord near Spanaway, Washington. An autopsy would later reveal the horrific nature of her death, determining that she had suffered from multiple gunshot wounds and blunt force trauma to her head.
The investigation into her death would quickly be classified as a homicide.
Jessica was reported missing on September 8, 2018, four days after she was last seen alive. Surveillance footage from a convenience store in Tacoma on September 4, 2018, captured her in the company of two men, who would later be identified as the primary suspects in her murder. The investigation into her disappearance and subsequent death was spearheaded by the FBI, as her body was found on federal land.
Two men, Bobbie Anson Pease, 49, of Tacoma, and Jeremy Jay Warren, 30, of Forks, were arrested and charged with second-degree murder in connection with Jessica's death. According to the criminal complaint, the events leading to her murder were brutal. It is alleged that on September 4, 2018, the two men took Jessica to the wooded area on the military base. There, she was pepper-sprayed, beaten with a baseball bat, and shot multiple times. Investigators were able to link the suspects to the crime through surveillance video showing Pease's car traveling to and from the area where the murder occurred. A firearm believed to have been used in the killing was later recovered from the Puyallup River.
The motive for the killing was not immediately clear, though court documents revealed that Warren told investigators that he and Pease had used methamphetamine with Jessica on the day of her death. Warren claimed that Pease had expressed a desire to go "pop a couple rounds off." The two men provided conflicting accounts of the events, with each seemingly attempting to shift the primary blame for the murder onto the other. The case proceeded through the federal court system due to the location of the crime.
