On the night of March 14, 2015, 66-year-old Myrtle Messenger was at her home at 711 Poplar Street in Clarksdale, Mississippi, where she lived with her husband, George Messenger, and their adult grandson, Michael Messenger. Answering a knock at the front door around 11 p.m., she was tragically shot in the neck and killed. The incident was not a random act of violence but the culmination of a dispute that had occurred earlier in the day involving her grandson.
Earlier on the day of the
murder, Michael Messenger had been involved in a disagreement with Dantrell 'Pole' Jackson over Jackson's girlfriend. This altercation escalated, leading Jackson and another man, Connell Gray Jr., to seek out Michael at his grandparents' home later that night. When Myrtle Messenger opened the door, she was shot. An investigator from the Clarksdale Police Department later testified that only one shot was fired. A forensic scientist confirmed that a. 357 revolver was the weapon used in the homicide.
In the investigation that followed, both Connell Gray Jr. and Dantrell Jackson were identified as suspects. Gray was arrested in December of that year, while Jackson was apprehended nearly two weeks after the murder. The ensuing legal process saw both men face charges for their roles in the death of Myrtle Messenger. Connell Gray Jr. stood trial in December 2019 and, after a three-day trial, a jury took less than an hour to find him guilty of first-degree murder. He was subsequently sentenced to life in the Mississippi Department of Corrections. His conviction was later affirmed in May 2021.
Dantrail Jackson was also convicted of Myrtle Messenger's murder in November 2021 and sentenced to life in prison. However, in a significant turn of events, the Mississippi Court of Appeals overturned his conviction in October 2023, citing insufficient evidence presented by the state.
