Transcript of The Bluegrass Mystery New

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This is Telemundo Deportes' lead play-by-play voice, Luis Omar Tapia. Wondering who you should root for at FIFA World Cup 2026? I'm hosting my new favorite futbolista, where I will introduce you to soccer's brightest stars and the causes they are championing.

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I've always been a glass half full kind of guy. And now I'm talking to some people who look at the world that way too. Some really fascinating folks who share their defining moments, their triumphs, their challenges. Their stories are funny and quite candid. So I hope you'll join me each week. And who knows? You might just come away with your own glass half full.

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Tonight on Dateline.

Here's your friend, your brilliant, funny, beautiful friend. Your face is up on a TV screen missing and you don't know how to help her.

We knew Ella had disappeared.

You searched the house. What do you find?

Her car is still there. And most importantly, her phone.

You know something happened. She was not going to leave her son.

Officers talk to Ella's husband, Glenn.

A spouse is the first place police are going to look.

But Ella also has an ex-husband, right?

They were still really close.

You find out his previous wife was murdered. Does that just kind of stop you in your tracks?

Sure.

It's enough to raise our eyebrows. They find Ella's diary. It's kind of hidden. She wrote how scared she was.

And then the phone recordings.

I'm done. I'm done with you. You're a monster.

I was terrified. Any day might be her last.

A phone, a diary, secret recordings—

all clues she left behind.

Could a missing mom help solve her own mystery? I'm Lester Holt, and this is Dateline.

Ah.

Here's Blaine Alexander with The Bluegrass Mystery.

Ella was my mom, and to me, she was perfect. She loved me. She cared for me. She made me feel safe, happy, and loved.

It's a beautiful song.

It was the only thing Alex Jackson could give his mother His words, loving memories captured on tape.

My mom deserved peace. She deserved safety. She deserved to live without fear.

The depth of that fear we'll likely never know. But we do know that on October 20th, 2019, Ella Jackson vanished from her home in Richmond, Kentucky. Spasibo, can I just talk?

Can I help you?

Hi, my name is Glenn Jackson. This is not an emergency.

The first sign of trouble came when Ella's husband Glenn called 911.

I haven't heard from my wife in over 24 hours.

He said his wife of 7 years left a day earlier while he was at the dog park with their 5-year-old son, Alex.

Okay, is the child with you?

Yes, yes, and he's fine. Everything's great. I don't personally think anything is wrong, but I heard on a show a while back that you don't wait 3 or 4 days to report somebody missing. Right. Has she ever done this before? Yes, and sometimes for weeks, but, uh, it's been a long time since she did.

Detective Jason Friend is with the Richmond Police Department.

Glenn made it very clear that she wasn't missing, that she just left, which that in and of itself isn't a crime and that's not a cause for an investigation.

And so from that, really nothing happens, right?

That is until the next day when they got another 911 call.

Hi, I need a wellness check done on my mom. I'm sorry, welfare. What's going on with her? Um, I last heard anything from her on Sunday.

The call was from Philip Hans, Ella's 29-year-old son from another marriage.

I sent her a message yesterday and she didn't reply to it, which is very weird. I mean, I talk to her every day, all day long. So I just want to know that she's OK, if she's even there.

This time, dispatch sent Officer Walker Crace and his partner to Glynn and Ella's home.

So when I first got here, it was just like this. This storm door was closed, but the main door was open. We knock and announce, and we do a sweep of the residence.

No one was home, and there were no obvious signs of foul play. So they did some basic background checks on the couple. Glen was a respected English lecturer at a nearby college.

Everybody's familiar with him, especially people that are local, especially people that go to Eastern Kentucky University.

They learned Ella was Russian and had immigrated from Ukraine to the US about 15 years earlier.

From what we had learned, she has no family here. She is not from here. So at this point in time, we have Miss Jackson is gone. No one knows where she's at.

The officers later found Glen back at the home. You know that you didn't see it? The couple's young son, Alex, was playing outside.

What kind of games you play?

I just play a lot of Roblox.

Glen said he was now getting concerned. When his wife had left before, she had always checked in by this point.

And the fact that she didn't even call to yell at me, didn't respond to my texts, my message, or eventually my email. And then, you know, that's happened before, but only for a few hours.

Glenn added that on the day she left, he overheard her on a lengthy Skype call with someone overseas. She was speaking Russian, but he did make out a few words in English.

The only words I could make out on the phone were Uber, Lyft, airport, Passport and Motel 6.

Police also called Ella's adult son Philip and asked him to come to the house but to wait at the top of the driveway. After he arrived, Officer Crase tried to reassure him.

I honestly feel like there's— it's nothing foul.

But Philip said he was worried and confused after trying to reach his mom when all of a sudden her phone appeared to be back online.

And I was calling it all day today and it was off. And she was not receiving messages on Facebook until suddenly around 6:30 PM, her phone turned on. It started ringing.

There was no answer. Philip hadn't arrived alone. He brought along a man named Jason Hans, Ella's ex-husband.

Many times she has contacted me when something happens. Some— she was feeling upset. Unsafe, needing someone to talk to.

Investigators felt something wasn't right but couldn't put a finger on it. Not yet.

So a lot of circumstantial things. Nothing to say anybody's guilty, but definitely something to tell us something's going on here.

All 3 men were brought to the station for further questioning.

Philip was on your radar.

Everybody was on our radar.

This is—

When you learned that detail about Ella's ex-husband, what did you think?

I thought, oh, man, that's— that's not good. Especially when I learned exactly what took place surrounding her murder.

Now, police would zero in on Ella's inner circle.

Everything okay? Any reason why you're on your knees right now?

No, I'm sorry. I'm a teacher, so I get down to talk to students.

Richmond, Kentucky— population about 40,000— is nestled among the rolling hills of the Bluegrass State. Here, the bourbon is strong and horse farms are king.

For people who've never been here, what is this community like?

Richmond, I call it one of the smallest big town you'll ever be in. It's got the small town feel where everybody knows everything that's going on.

Rodney Richardson is the police chief. Ella Jackson was missing, but so far there were no signs of a crime. Still, investigators wanted to know more about 3 men in her life. Her ex, her son, and her husband Glenn.

What do you come to learn about Glenn? Just his standing in the community.

He was teaching college kids, just been the average husband in a quiet little community whose wife had walked away.

And that's what Glenn told investigators.

What do you think happened to her? Where do you think she's at?

I don't know.

I—

going to get her mother is my best guess because it's It's like, "Oh, so nice, on time." He said after overhearing Ella's Skype call, he thought she might have gone to meet her mother, possibly in Russia. Glen told police he cared about his wife and wanted her home soon.

We waited forever to get married, you know, wait till late in life. And we were together for 5 years before we got married. And I've just always been horribly serious about marriage.

They just always seemed absolutely happy and just full of, you know, love and seemed like a wonderful couple.

Jo Ham thought the world of his close buddy, Glen.

He kind of had all the— all the checks, you know, as far as being a good neighbor, being somebody that you could rely on.

It just provided us, like, a warmth and just a sense of belonging and connection.

Dana Caproni was one of Ella's best friends.

Do you remember what she first told you about him?

You know, she's falling for him. He's kind. He's a— you know, he's a professor.

Did she seem excited about him?

Yeah, I think she was giddy.

And these home videos captured that giddiness. That's Ella laughing off camera with baby Alex and Glenn. A seemingly perfect family picture. Jolyn Stevenson says she and Ella evolved from neighbors to confidants.

What was your first impression of Ella?

Soft-spoken, very easy to smile. She had a comfort about her, like, you know, good old Southern cooking or something. She wasn't nice. I feel like there is a difference between nice and kind. Nice is very surface level. But she would go, how are you? And she would wait for that real answer.

She really wanted to know.

She wanted to know.

She cared.

Right.

In fact, Ella was a friend to many, including her ex-husband Jason. They met in 2003 when he was traveling in Ukraine, where Ella was living after a recent divorce.

She's like the most intelligent woman I've ever met.

That's something that really stood out to you?

Yeah, absolutely.

Jason and Ella got married and moved to the U.S. with her young son Philip. Jason was a professor at the University of Kentucky. Their marriage ended after 5 years. He said they just couldn't make it work.

To have two people who are married go through a divorce but then still remain very close, very present in each other's lives, close friends, you don't see that very often.

Yeah, you know, uh, I didn't want to be married to her, but I still loved her.

Jason had remarried, but was he still in love with Ella? That's something Glen wondered too.

Have you ever questioned that she might be doing something that would be adultery-wise as far as your guys' relationship?

I have.

I have.

And including her most recent ex-husband, she talks to him regularly.

When we were outside the house that night, I do know you guys were pretty tight. From what I can gather, y'all are very close.

The police officer asked me, knowing our past and our relationship and that we remain close and so on. You know, he's like, you know, sometimes couples who break up, they get back together for flings or whatever.

Do you know that she might have ran off with a guy before?

No, uh, she's—

how to say—

she— you can tell me however you gotta tell me. I'm just—

no, she—

that's not her character.

While the officer never directly asked Jason if he was sleeping with Ella, Jason understood what he meant.

You know, were you guys sort of fooling around? What's going on here?

And you can kind of see in his questioning that—

yeah, like, he's thinking, like, what were you up to? Yeah.

That was only the beginning of the questions police had for Ella's ex, especially after they discovered something about his first wife.

You talk to her ex-husband and find out that his previous wife was was murdered in a case that is still unsolved. I mean, does that just kind of stop you in your tracks?

Sure, it's enough to raise our eyebrows.

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Such an ordinary thing to walk home from high school.

Her name was Mickey Costanzo, just 16.

She didn't have far to go, seemed perfectly safe until it wasn't.

What happened to Mickey?

I'm Keith Morrison and this is Five Miles from Home. An all-new podcast from Dateline.

Listen to all episodes of 5 Miles from Home now wherever you get your podcasts.

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People are reported missing every day, and people come back, or they make contact with a family member, so then we know what happened to them.

But that hadn't happened with Ella Jackson. At some point, does this shift to Maybe she ran away to—

maybe something was done to her.

Yeah, I think it does. I think we have a mother that left a child behind. Her car that was still there with her purse still in it. Car keys were still there.

They had asked Glenn about that.

How would she leave if her car is at the house still? Well, I would assume that she'd get picked up, which she has done before. Who's picking her up? She says that she calls Uber. I never noticed a bill from them or anything, but she talked about it.

And there was something else. Ella hadn't taken her phone with her. Glenn said he found it the day after she went missing and turned it over to police.

I mean, this day and age, almost everybody, we're connected with our phone. Most of us wouldn't leave our phone behind.

You don't go 5 feet without taking your phone with you.

48-year-old Ella Jackson has been missing since Sunday afternoon. Police had added Ella to the missing persons database And after 5 days with no sign of her, Chief Richardson decided it was time to ask the public for help.

We're concerned. We're deeply concerned. But like I said, we're going to eventually find out what happened to Miss Jackson.

In those first days, what message were you trying to get across?

We're looking for any information that anybody has.

As the search for Ella grew, even Glenn called the police tip line.

I'm worried about the missing poster that I just saw for my wife. Ella Jackson? Uh-huh.

He'd spotted something wrong.

The problem is one of the two pictures is not my wife. It's someone else in her family. And I'm worried that that is not going to help locate her.

Family and friends were doing everything they could to find out what happened to Ella.

We went to the places where we had known, you know, that we had gone to her with. We went to the park. We had gone to the libraries.

No luck. Detectives considered every lead, including one more than 500 miles away. It happened 17 years earlier. A young woman was shot and killed walking home from a metro station in Prince George's County, Maryland. When something like this happens in the community, does it just kind of strike a sense of fear? It is very scary because Prince George's County is a pretty safe place. County Executive Aisha Braveboy oversees the police department in charge of the case. I think it's just such the randomness of it. A young woman to have her dreams cut short because of, uh, a gunshot. Sergeant Greg McDonald worked the case.

Where was she found?

Her body was found lying on the roadway right here. She made it to this point here. She was, um, fatally shot.

Shot in the head, left, right?

Shot in the head.

Left, right here.

It appears that she didn't see it coming.

Police found her clutching a can of mace but no signs of a struggle. How far do you think that the shooter was?

6 feet minimum.

Was this somebody who was almost laying in wait for her?

Maybe.

Possibly.

A day planner, credit cards, and work ID were all still in her backpack. That's how police were able to identify her as 26-year-old Irina Hans. She was the wife of a young professor, Jason Hans. At 2 in the morning, 2 police officers knocked on UK professor Jason Hans' door.

I was pretty much— I was a mess. If we catch the person or persons that did this, will it give me satisfaction?

No.

When you learned that detail about Ella's ex-husband, what did you think?

I thought, Oh man, that's, that's not good. You still got an unsolved murder of a wife, and then we have a wife that's missing who's still really close with the ex-husband.

Whether something's happened to her, whether she left, this is gonna be a tough one.

And now here he was again, two decades later, talking to police about his ex-wife who'd gone missing.

I've got to keep an open mind, as in She's left, right? That's—

and I know that's— there's a lot of stuff that keeps me wanting to go down that trail very far.

I, I, I've tried to go down that. Yes, there are things that don't allow it.

Jason said he only wanted to help the investigation.

Is there anything we can do more? And, you know, it's not comfortable to sit at home and not do anything at this point.

Oh, I know.

Meanwhile, police turned to some someone else close to Ella, her son.

The more they learn about Phillip, I think he's definitely somebody that we would want to look into.

Sit here?

Yeah, that'd be good.

What was it about Phillip that made you say, let's take a closer look?

I think him just being as close to his mother as he was and that he used to live there and now he's not.

When did you move out?

A couple months back. Um, but we've also come back, like me and my girlfriend have come back and like stayed a couple, 3 weeks, not too long ago, maybe 3 weeks ago or something like that.

Could there have possibly been some bad blood that made him leave the house or any number of questions?

Did, uh, did Ella ask him to leave?

Yeah.

Was he there too long? Did he overstay his welcome?

I was actually planning to move back in, um, this Sunday when the last time I spoke to her was.

The three men were giving investigators a lot to ponder. An ex-husband with a past, a son who couldn't pull away, and a husband who would keep drawing attention to himself.

What's wrong? Okay, is everything okay with you?

After more than a week with no word from Ella, police concluded she must have been the victim of foul play, but they didn't know what happened or who was responsible.

Initially, yeah, everybody was on our radar.

That included Ella's son Philip, but he insisted he had a great relationship with his mom and he knew she would never leave her young son Alex.

I know something happened. That's why I've been crying all day, and I'm trying to keep—

I understand.

I understand.

Both Phillip and Ella's ex-husband Jason said they were with other people in another town when Ella went missing, and those alibis checked out. Jason also said he did not have an affair with Ella. Detective Friend found no evidence that he did and also learned Jason was never a suspect in his first wife's murder.

We We were able to substantiate all of it.

So you talked to Jason, you talked to Philip, you cleared them both?

Yes, that's right.

Philip was adamant that they needed to take a second look at his mother's current husband, Glenn.

She's told me numerous times that if she ever goes missing, that she would never, ever, ever do that. She would never just take off, and that it's not an accident if anything like that happens. That it's hair, 100%.

The detective was ready to take that second look.

Glenn's a very smart guy, and you kind of get the sense when you talk to Glenn that he thinks he's the smartest guy in the room.

9 days after Ellen went missing, police got a search warrant and collected evidence from Glenn's house and his car. And Detective Friend brought him to the station for another chat.

Even though we brought you up here, You know, you can, you can leave anytime you want to.

Glenn didn't leave. In fact, he stayed in that tiny room for more than 6 hours.

He definitely likes to talk. The way he would pontificate, it almost felt like a verbal judo match.

He wanted to be the smartest one in the room. Did you kind of lean into that a little bit?

Sure.

Yeah.

I even call it my Columbo. Columbo, the famous detective, he would give the impression that he was not very smart, that he was a dullard. You've read too many mystery stories, Columbo.

Oh no, sir, I never read them.

I tried. Can't figure them out.

And that was this detective strategy: let Glen be the smart one and do all the talking.

When they have that boost of confidence, then they're more likely to say things that they probably shouldn't have said.

Friend focused on the day Ella went missing.

I would ask him a very straightforward question. I would say, Glenn, what were you wearing on October 20th, 2019? And he would say, well, I almost never put jeans on anymore.

I don't wear boots. I've just got a whole lot of clothes that look just like this.

Gosh, you can't remember exactly what color shirt or anything like that?

I had very recently found my green flannel, but I don't think I had that on.

Not only had he not answered the question, but we ended up on a completely different topic of conversation.

And never has he told you what he was wearing on that day?

Exactly.

Glenn said he went to a dog park that Sunday, and when he got home, Ella was gone.

What route did you guys take to get to the dog park?

Glenn launched into a long detour talking about a police officer he met at the park.

He's in an English class with the guy that is my former officemate. And the reason that that's especially ridiculous is that he was the guy that cleaned the— that part of the building.

In case you forgot, the question was, what route did you take to the dog park?

And you're just sitting back letting him do all of this?

I was letting him talk.

He's giving you a dissertation?

Yeah, he would veer off the conversation. It was, it was just, it was weird.

It was a quirky interview but useful and created a detailed record to investigate. And a lot of what Glenn described did check out.

We drove to the dog park. Oh, it's 2 minutes away or something.

Surveillance cameras confirmed Glenn was at the dog park that Sunday. That was important for the investigation, but the rest of what Glenn said what he said about that visit and his dog just felt like too much.

You never been parked as a new dog park?

Sure.

Well, we got this new dog by almost running over.

One thing was clear after Detective Friend's marathon conversation: Glenn's behavior was odd. But odd isn't a crime, and Glenn was sticking to his story that he had nothing to do with Ella's disappearance.

What could have happened to her? I just don't know. I just don't know.

Investigators were stuck too, awaiting results from the crime lab on that evidence taken during the search. And that's where things stood when a call came in to the Richmond PD that seemed to have nothing to do with the case.

We get a call for a suspicious male that is approaching females at the park. And the females thought it was creepy, so they called 911.

That guy turned out to be Glen. An officer's body camera captured the scene.

What's going on?

I'm Glenn.

Glenn, what's going on today?

Nothing. Here's my boy. I'm okay.

I don't want to shake hands, sir.

He was aggressively and insistently trying to flirt with females at the dog park.

Hitting on women when your wife is missing? What was going on?

What's wrong? Okay, is everything okay with you?

I'm okay.

Any other reason why you're on your knees right now?

No, I'm sorry, I'm a teacher, so I get down to talk to students.

Really? Dropping to your knees might make sense for a kindergarten teacher. Glenn taught college students.

He completely crumbles. He falls to his knees. He goes, yeah, no, I know, I normally do this. The officer said, what, what are you, what are you talking about?

I mean, since I've gotten here, the The most odd thing is you getting down on your knees.

I'm a teacher. I just— they're, they're down there. I'm tall. They're in the chair.

Okay, I mean, I'm shorter than you, but I don't, I don't feel like you need to get on your knees to address me with anything, right?

Sir, thank you.

I'll do a fist bump. How's that?

It's very, very bizarre. What's wrong?

Glenn denied harassing anyone and wasn't arrested, but his interaction with the The answer was bizarre and suspicious. Still, Detective Friend needed more than suspicions to prove Glen had something to do with Ella's disappearance. And he would get much more in a most unusual way from Ella herself.

She had a secret recorder app on her phone.

You're a monster.

I'm done.

I'm done. I'm done with you.

Honey, did you invite the Minions over? Well, you know how we talked about getting Wi-Fi from Xfinity?

Yeah.

I ordered it this morning, was online in minutes, then they showed up.

So they just came over to use the Wi-Fi?

For what?

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Not available in all areas. Learn more at xfinity.com/samedaywifi. The incident in the park was as strange as it was suspicious.

Everything okay? Any of the reason why you're on your knees right now?

I'm a teacher, so I get down to talk to "And like the growing list of evidence, it led police to look at Glen Jackson as the prime suspect in his wife's disappearance. Remember that Skype call Glen said Ella made?" "She actually did have about an hour, 45-minute long Skype conversation with her family member." "But when the detective reached out to Ella's family in Russia, they said she wasn't there. And they gave a very different version of the conversation." Did they talk about Uber, Motel 6, airport, passport?

No, none of those 4 things.

No, none of those 4 things came up.

It looks like Glenn was caught in a lie spun to make officers believe Ella did run away. Other evidence painted an ugly picture of Glenn.

You find a notebook and you come to find out it's her diary.

That's right, we find that in her bedroom and it's kind of Hidden.

A diary with just one very disturbing entry.

She had wrote how scared she was of Glenn. She called him a pathological liar and a narcissist, a sociopath.

I mean, I'm just stunned by that. In this whole diary, there's only one entry, and it's just detailing how terrified she is of her husband.

That's right.

Like she was leaving clues for someone to if necessary, find later.

Yeah. Ella's phone revealed even more clues she left behind.

She had a secret recorder app on her phone that she had downloaded on her phone. There was about 70 or 75 different recordings on that app, and most of them were arguments that she had had with Glenn.

Wow.

In one of the arguments, Ella accused Glenn of having a tryst at a hotel.

You ended up going then, having the dinner, and then checking into the hotel with the woman. I will divorce you.

That's ridiculous.

I want you to be truthful.

I'm being truthful.

I will divorce you. I will actually divorce you.

So you hear this. I mean, immediately, are you thinking, okay, I've caught him in a lie?

Absolutely.

Yep.

Point number 1, he was very specific. To tell me that their marriage was great.

Dozens of conversations recorded over several months clearly showed not only was this marriage not great, it was downright toxic.

You're mean. Yes, you're a monster. You are destroying me physically and mentally every single day. You just injured me. I have Bruises.

Another piece of evidence: Ella's Fitbit found at the house. It recorded, among other things, her heart rate on the day she went missing.

6:15 PM that evening on Sunday, she had a brief and sudden heart rate spike. After a few minutes of a high heart rate, the biometric data went blank.

It stopped.

It stopped.

What does that show?

Well, you can interpret that as Ella taking off her Fitbit. Another way you can interpret that loss of biometric data is she didn't have a heart rate.

That her heart stopped.

Her heart stopped.

Glenn said he was at the dog park at 6:15 that evening. Detective Friend wasn't buying it.

We knew that was a lie because I had gotten surveillance from around the neighborhood showing when he actually went to the dog park. Glen was at that— at the house at that time.

Detective Friend had built a circumstantial case, but he still didn't have news from the crime lab about evidence taken months earlier during the search of Glen's house and car. So he waited and waited.

You all were sitting on— waiting on pins and needles for this to come back. That had to have felt like an eternity.

It was. Yep, it did. It was a long time.

6 months after Ella disappeared, the detective called Glen in for another interview.

It was different than the original 6-hour-long interview.

Different tone.

Different tone. It was more confrontational. The Columbo Act is over because up until this point, I wanted him to believe I was just this bumbling idiot of a detective. He had never talked to the real detective friend before.

And he met you that day?

He met me that day. She's dead and she's not coming back. I don't know that she is.

Yes, you do.

The detective told Glenn about Ella's secret recordings.

Turn my little laptop around. Well, let's listen to him, Glenn.

You brought out the receipts?

I brought the receipts. That's right.

You're a mean— yes, you're a monster.

He's getting me to believe, oh, she was just joking. That was just a joke.

She meant it in jest, like, you know, hey, Daddy Monster, haha.

It's that intellectual karate match. He still thinks he can outwit me. So every time that he tries to lie or manipulate, I cut him off and say, no, Glenn, no, no, I'm not going to let you do that. Stop, stop, enough with it.

Stop it.

We are so far beyond you trying to lie anymore. I said that to him. I know that you're responsible for your wife's death. So we're not playing around anymore.

Friend repeatedly pushed Glen to confess, to tell the truth for his son Alex's sake.

Are you going to let him go throughout his entire life without knowing the truth about what happened to his mother? This is the time where you tell me the truth with, um, what actually happened to Ella. Are you gonna allow that?

Friend pushed for hours, but there was no confession, at least not to him.

He says, I bet you didn't think I was that evil. What did you say?

I just kind of was flabbergasted and just kind of in shock.

The interview was tense, combative. Detective Friend already had Glenn on the defensive. Then the detective hit him with a piece of evidence from the crime lab report that had just come in, and it was a game changer.

I know there were There was bloodshed. I know there was bloodshed. Ella shed her blood because we found the blood.

Friend spelled it all out in detail. DNA testing showed Ella's blood was in the trunk of Glenn's car, and someone had tried to clean it up with bleach.

So we know 100% that that was Ella's blood.

You know more than I do.

There was a struggle. There was— we know that there was bloodshed.

But there wasn't.

There was.

There was, Glen.

But I've never hurt anyone physically.

Stop, Glen.

It's enough.

We're done.

What are you thinking in that moment?

I'm thinking that it's time that he's arrested. The jig is up, and you know the jig is up. You are being arrested today, and you will be transported to the Madison County Detention Center. That's going to happen.

Glen Jackson was charged with murder even though Ella's body had never been found. That could have been a problem for prosecutors. But just 4 days after Glen's arrest, a group of mushroom hunters stumbled upon human remains in a forest about an hour from Glen's home. Dental records confirmed it was Ella.

The not knowing, you think in the moment, is the worst pain, because even in the waiting, you could still have hope.

You had hope.

There was still hope.

And now that's gone.

Mhm.

And now there's just this deep sadness That just never leaves.

When Glen's friend Joe Hamm learned Ella's body had been found, it forced him to reckon with a shocking conversation he'd had with Glen. It happened months earlier. Joe and his daughter were visiting Glen and Alex. The kids were inside playing when Glen pulled Joe aside.

He just looks at me and just point blank says that I effing killed her. I bet you didn't think I was that evil.

He says this to you?

Yeah. I just kind of was flabbergasted and just kind of in shock.

After he told you, I mean, there were months that went by before he was arrested. Why didn't you call an investigator?

Because she was still technically missing, and I didn't know if he was just having, like, some kind of complex, you know, post-traumatic stress disorder from his wife missing. You know what I mean?

You didn't know if this was a real confession or not.

Yeah, that's exactly right.

After pleading not guilty, Glen was released on bond bond. He then spent more than 5 years under house arrest awaiting trial. Ella's friend Dana couldn't believe it.

I don't understand it. Someone needs to start asking, like, questions on that one.

Why do you think that he was able to spend so much time on house arrest?

I think he was afforded a really good lawyer.

All right, good morning everybody.

I'm Judge Mayer.

Then, just days before his trial was set to begin, Jackson took an Alfred plea, acknowledging there was enough evidence to convict him but not admitting guilt. Detective Friend was outraged.

Either take it to trial and let him be acquitted or convicted, but having this red tape loophole— oh, I'll plead kind of guilty, but I'm not going to admit to anything— I mean, that's, that's, that's ludicrous.

What is happening here is not truly justice forever. To guarantee Glenn didn't walk free, the prosecutor said she agreed to the deal for one person— Alex. I think it is the one thing that Ella would have wanted most of all, and that is that Alexander would never be subject to Mr. Jackson again. In May of 2026, Glenn was sentenced for manslaughter, abuse of a corpse, and tampering with evidence.

For a 14-year total sentence.

14 years. With credit for time served, Glenn could be out as early as 2032. He and his attorney declined our request for an interview.

He's getting a very lenient sentence. For never expressing remorse, never admitting what he did, in fact lying for years about what he did because he was comfortable sitting at home.

Yeah.

It's frustrating.

Is it hard for you coming here knowing—

The house where Glen, Ella, and their son Alex lived had become run-down and overgrown. Jason told us how much it meant to Ella.

When she first moved in here, she was sending me pictures and she just loved it. She loved the trees, the nature, the yard.

I'm so struck just looking around here. I see shadows of a sweet childhood for Alex. This play place, equipment over there where he could have fun as a kid.

Alex, after his His father was arrested, it wasn't clear what would happen to him. That's when Jason turned to his wife, Natalia.

We were thinking more about Alex, like where he's gonna go.

Having no children of their own, they decided to take Alex in until they could find a permanent home.

He came to us so calm.

Perfect.

Respectful. Intelligent.

And that's when a bright light suddenly filled a black hole.

When he came to our house, we fall in love with him.

The couple is adopting Alex, now 12 years old and a top student. He asked us not to show what he looks like today, but he did want to share one of the only keepsakes he has from his mom, her favorite necklace.

My mom mattered. Her life mattered.

Back when his dad was sentenced, Alex decided not to go to the hearing. Instead, he sent this recording that was played in court.

I'd only been in kindergarten for 2 months when my mom was murdered. When she disappeared, I did not understand what happened. I didn't know my mom had been taken from me forever.

What do you want him to know about his mom?

I want him to know how much she loved him. How much happiness I saw in her after he was born.

Eee!

She should have been here to watch me grow up. She should have been here for my childhood. My teenage years, and my future.

And that's all for this edition of Dateline. Don't forget to check out our Talking Dateline podcast, in which we'll go behind the scenes of tonight's episode, available Wednesday in the Dateline feed wherever you get your podcasts.

We'll see you again next Friday at 10, 9 Central.

I'm Lester Holt.

For all of us at NBC News, good night.

I'm Craig Melvin. Cheers, cheers, cheers. I've always been a glass half full kind of guy, and now I'm talking to some people who look at the world that way too. Some really fascinating folks who share their defining moments, their triumphs, their challenges, their stories are funny and quite candid. So I hope you'll join me each week, and who knows, you might just come away with your own glass half full.

Search Glass Half Full with Craig Melton from today on YouTube and wherever you get your podcasts.