By EMILY BAZELON
AUG. 1, 2017
Noura Jackson called 911 at 5 a.m. on Sunday, June 5, 2005. ‘‘Please, I need, I need an ambulance, I need an ambulance right now!’’ she cried. ‘‘Someone broke into my house. My mom — my mom is bleeding.’’ She panted as she waited a few long seconds for the operator to transfer her. ‘‘She’s not breathing,’’ Noura said, sounding desperate, when an emergency dispatcher came on the line. ‘‘She’s not breathing. She’s not breathing. Please help me. There’s blood everywhere!’’
When the police arrived, Jennifer Jackson’s body lay on her bedroom floor in the brick home she owned in a well-kept Memphis neighborhood. Noura’s mother, a 39-year-old successful investment banker, had been stabbed 50 times. The brutal violence on a quiet block made local headlines, generating shock and anxiety in the middle-class corners of the city.
The police began their investigation with few leads. Jackson lived alone with her only child, Noura, who was 18 at the time. She had divorced Noura’s father when Noura was a baby. Investigators found broken glass on the kitchen floor, from a windowpane in the door that led from the garage to the kitchen. But the window seemed to have been broken from the inside, because the hole it made lined up with a door lock that could be seen only from the kitchen. And no one had seen an intruder…
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