This case is so shocking that it’s difficult to know where to begin. It’s a mix of multiple disordered personalities and vicious actions that exploded into the incomprehensible.
The trouble apparently started when 15-year-old Seath Tyler Jackson of Belleview, Florida, a town of about 4,500 people located 65 miles north of Orlando, broke up with his 15-year-old girlfriend, Amber Wright. The breakup was public, played out in real time on Facebook.
Wright had apparently taken up with a new boyfriend, 18-year-old Michael Shane Bargo. Jackson and Bargo hated each other, and Bargo allegedly wanted to do something about it. Here is what happened, according to media reports that quoted police documents:
On Sunday, April 17, 2011, Wright sent Jackson a text message saying that she wanted to reconcile, and asking him to come to the home of a friend, Charlie Kay Ely, 18 (a female). At first Jackson declined. Wright then barraged him with texts and phone calls, wanting to see him.
Jackson went to the house. When he got there, 16-year-old Kyle Hooper, who is Amber Wright’s brother, and 20-year-old Justin Soto, began hitting him in the head with a piece of wood. Then Mike Bargo shot Jackson several times with a .22-caliber revolver.
Jackson tried to flee, Soto tackled him, and Bargo shot him again. They placed Jackson’s body in a bathtub, intending to break his knees so they could stuff him into a sleeping bag. But Jackson was still alive, so Bargo shot him again. When he died, the young men burned the body and the sleeping bag in the backyard.
Afterwards, with the assistance of James Havens III, 37, they shoveled the ashes into 5-gallon paint buckets and threw them into a dumpster and a lime quarry filled with water.
ABC News covered the story with both video and text. Watch the first two videos, which will be interrupted by a commercial:
Teen triangle and Faceboook feud lead to murder of 15-year-old Florida boy
The combustible elements of the story:
1. Michael Shane Bargo
He, apparently, was the mastermind of the plot. Here’s what the authorities wrote in their reports, according to CBS News:
Authorities said the teen, who has not been publicly identified, told investigators the group plotted the slaying because Bargo hated Seath.
Authorities, as well as family and friends, said Bargo was dating Seath’s ex-girlfriend and had gotten into a fight with him several weeks ago, WKMG reported.
Five of the suspects were gathered at the house Sunday “when Michael Bargo began to speak of his hatred for the victim Seath Jackson,” authorities wrote the 16-year-old boy told them. “The conversation then turned into a plan to lure Seath to the residence so that Michael Bargo could kill him with the assistance of other persons.”
In the ABC News video, two young girls who knew Bargo said, “He’s always wanting to fight people. Always threatening to kill people.”
2. Amber Wright
This 15-year-old girl lured Seath Jackson to the house where he was killed. There isn’t much more in the media about her, except her posts on Facebook (see below).
3. Facebook
In early March, Seath Jackson posted his love for Amber Wright on Facebook. By the end of the month, he announced that he was single, and made posts attacking both Wright and Mike Bargo. By April, Jackson and Wright were in a full Facebook battle.
Read the posts, as replicated by the Miami New Times.
4. The accomplices—Charlie Kay Ely, Justin Soto, Kyle Hooper
Jackson was lured to the home of Charlie Kay Ely. When he arrived, Hooper and Soto hit him with pieces of wood. It appears from a report on Ocala.com that these three people were followers—but they followed Mike Bargo.
See 6 arrested in teen’s murder on Ocala.com. Be sure to watch the video
5. James Havens III
James Havens is the stepfather of Amber Wright and Kyle Hooper. Havens allegedly knew about the plan to kill Seath Jackson, but did nothing to stop it. Afterwards, he helped the others dispose of the remains, and then gave Mike Bargo a ride out of town in an effort to avoid capture.
To see how self-centered this guy is, watch the video on CFN News13com:
Exclusive interview with James Havens
Havens is out on bond. All of the young people are in custody. Seath Taylor Jackson is dead.
I read some about this murder at the time it happened and was amazed by just how callous these young people seemed to be and the adult involved trying to “cover up” such a thing (can we say “stupid!”) Like this many kids involved in such a thing are all going to keep their mouths shut and not brag to their friends about participating in it for the next 50 years.?????
I am “awed and amazed” by the “drama” some people (especially young people, but actually adults, too) are willing to participate in for such trivial reasons. It almost seems like they don’t comprehend it is “real”—or that it is a video game or something.
To say that there is someone with apparent sociopathy involved in the leadership of this is an understatement, but what about the people who will FOLLOW such a lead?
The entire scenario is “beyond belief”—-yet, in reading the police report about the murder my own son committed—where he planned it in advance by at least several days, talked to several of his friends about “when” he would do it, and “how and were he would hide the body”… and no one warned the victim that she should stay away from him, and no one informed the police until after he told them he had done it.
This whole murder reads like a bad soap opera script, and the one my P son did also reads like a bad soap opera script, and as much as I’ve been around psychopaths it still amazes me that ANY of the people involved in this actually thought (a) this was a good idea and (b) that they could really get away with it. (head shaking here)
I think the situation described in this post (as disgusting and depressing as it is) goes hand in hand with Donna’s earlier post “A new generation of victims”.
We really have to question: are ALL of these people pure genetic sociopaths; how many of them could have been saved if they had proper caring firm intervention when they were younger?
Stories like this really do make you question where we as a society are headed.
(head shaking going on here….)
Would love to get Dr. Leedom’s perspective here as to whether or not the approach she’s taking with her son could have helped some of these people.
Annie,
I think part of the problem is that too many of the parents of the children who grow up to be like this are essentially illiterate themselves and have little if any idea of how to nurture or care for an infant…they are too busy with their own entertainments to pay much attention to feeding or changing the baby much less trying to instill empathy into the child’s world. If they even knew what the word EMPATHY meant.
So many children are born to dysfunctional (if not psychopathic) parents who don’t raise or nurture the children but let them essentially fend for themselves…use a TV with violent media as a baby sitter, cuss and slap the kid, and then we wonder why they grow up violent and shallow.
Children don’t see a moral compass at work in their home, they don’t see respect and caring, compassion and love….and sometimes even if they do, the pull of the genetics and society is too strong to over come.
What Donna wrote the other day about the grooming of the next generation of victims and abusers has been going on for more than a generation already and I think the examples here are perfect to show what violent media and slacking off on moral standards has produced in a segment of our society.
My late husband came from Perry County, Kentucky, eastern mountain region where “feuds” and gun fire (like the Hatfields and McCoys) were so bad that witnesses were literally shot out of the witness chairs at trials, and death by ambush was common, and to some extent still is….gangs and violence and mobs have not just started recently, but I think have always been part of our society, waxing and waining depending on the times, but it seems to be progressing in the last few years (20-30) since I was a young woman. In my high school, the “bad boys” were the ones who smoked cigarettes out behind the gym, and MIGHT get into a fist fight, in my son’s times, the bad boys brought guns to school and there was a murder on the campus the first day of school. A bit of a change in the level of violence.
Here’s another story about a similar murder by a gang of kids…planned on facebook yet over an inconseqnential argument. WTF? This one took place in England is about the only difference.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1387599/Five-teenagers-facing-jail-hunting-stabbing-death-boy-15-Victoria-Tube-station.html
Hi all ~ Just my 2 cents worth…
I remember growing up with a couple of kids that were “always in trouble”. Each of them always had a small group of “followers” to do their bidding. Thankfully, it was never anything major. Generally, just little things like soaping someone’s windows, or dropping tomatoes from a walking bridge onto cars driving underneath (probably the worst). It was just nuisance type stuff.
The “problem” with both of these kids, is that their parents did not parent them. They were mostly left to their own devices.
I know that one of them had a father that was alcoholic and a mother that was very intimidated by her husband. They had 3 other children, all of whom where great students, and grew up to be wonderful adults. It was only the “rebel” of the family that was a problem.
This problem has become more prevalent in the more recent past partially due to both parents having to work to make ends meet. The bigger problem though, is a LOT of kids these days are just not held accountable for their actions.
I really think that the law has made it very difficult for parents to properly punish their children. Don’t get me wrong, I would NEVER condone beating a child. I do believe that a good swat on the rear can be a teaching tool.
I am also a firm believer in taking away privileges as punishment for misbehavior. I have seen way too many instances where the parent threatens to take something away for x number of days, only to give it right back to the child rather than deal with the attitude of pouting etc. It just makes me ill!
Dear Hope2,
The myth about “both parents having to work NOW” is really more a myth than a truth….actually, through out history both parents DID work, just the mother usually didn’t work away from home, and the kids were put to work within the home, on the subsistence farm etc….my egg donor went to the fields as a toddler and by the time she could hold a hoe was working along side her folks.
Children participated in the family and had responsibilities….jobs to do according to their ages. I taught my kids work ethic and that they were responsible for part of the daily life of the family from picking up their clothes and toys, to setting the table to washing the dishes….then mowing the yard, sweeping and mopping the floors, working in the garden….
Unfortunately today, children don’t get the kind of teaching about responsibility at home, or the parents “pay” them to mow the yard, I think, and the kid gets a feeling of entitlement that mom and dad OWE THEM cool clothes, a car at age 16, and so on, rather than the kid having the idea that HE OWES SOMETHING TO THE FAMILY UNIT.
I told my kids when they were teenagers that the law said I had to feed them, and oatmeal 3 x a day is food, and that I had to dress them, and that 2 sets of clothes from good will is clothing, and that I had to give them a place to sleep and a roof over their heads,, and a blanket and a pillow in a bare room was a Home and a place to sleep—but that ANYTHING ABOVE THIS WAS GRAVY BECAUSE I LOVED THEM, not what the law required.
Son C “got it” but to this day P-son tells people how his mother abused and neglected him (this from a kid who had his own horse by age 12, and lots of other perks that made him the envy of the neighborhood kids) who got flying lessons, scuba lessons etc. until he turned into a oppositionally definant arsehole, thief, and pathological liar, and guess what…I quit furnishing him “goodies.”
I do agree with you Hope2 that many kids do not have boundaries set for them because it is easier not to enforce them, easier to give in than to be a parent and teach the kids. It is work to teach kids. Requires more time and effort to teach them to pick up their clothes than to do it yourself.
Dear Oxy ~ It is DEFINITELY work to teach kids. In our case, it is doubly difficult since we don’t have placement of my stepson. His no-account egg-donor does.
She is the type of parent that I described in my above post. Flaps her jaws about things like, volunteering for school functions as being “part of being a parent”. Although, it may be true, it is the ONLY thing that SHE does as a “parent”. Otherwise, there is virtually no supervision. So of course, the now 16 year old, pulls all kinds of shiat. I’m just waiting for the phone call that says he has broken the law, or is going to be a father in the near future.
Just recently, we got a call from his egg-donor telling my husband that he “should call” the mother of a girl that stepson has been forbidden to have contact with. Apparently, she had caught him sitting in her place of work, obviously visiting her daughter. The girl’s mother was VERY upset and told him that he’d better stay away from her daughter or charges would be filed.
Egg donor told my husband that he’d better let the girl’s mother know that she needed to leave HER son alone or there would be legal action taken. WTF??
Both kids were told, over a year ago, that they are FORBIDDEN to see each other PERIOD. Yet, they obviously have been in contact all along.
So now, we just wait for “the other shoe to drop”.
Ok, just have to comment on this. It ties 3 different ideas that we have been discussing: Values, Catholicism, Children
My parents did NOT teach us values. I’m rudderless, my bro and sis are sociopaths, but my oldest sis is a devout practicing catholic and teacher (she wanted to be a nun), but she married a narcissist instead.
I have confronted my parents about this and mom said, “we know we raised you wrong, but we were ignorant and we put you in Catholic schools hoping that THEY would teach you”
Kids are going to emulate parents, not teachers. Teachers might be role models, as they were with my oldest sis, but my sis does act a lot like my parents but with a stricter code of morals.
I think my little sis was a selfish narc from birth but is now almost a full blow sociopath capable of murder. Before she married her spath husband she was so obviously an “empty shell”, a “hollow vessel waiting to be filled”
That’s the problem with not teaching your kids values. Someone else will and you don’t know if the catholic school will have pedophiles or what. Or perhaps nobody will teach them until they meet a sociopath, who has the uncanny ability to spot an empty vessel.
Lastly, I guess I’ll defend my mother by saying that our society is constantly under pressure to produce for the government. GDP and all that, taxes and expectations. There is very little time to do anything but work hard to survive. With so many demands, the job of teaching love is neglected. Add to that, the fact that her own mom and dad experienced the same thing, so she was ill-equiped.
So yes, we are going to hell in a handbasket.
Dear Hope2 heal,
I am assuming that they were having sex or one or both sets of parents thought they were….and it is very difficult for parents to enforce this “no contact” between the kids if the kids are determined to be together.
I don’t know how to tell you or even suggest to you how it could be done unless junior could be sent to live with “uncle John” on the west coast. LOL
It must be very frustrating to your husband and ot you as well to have little control over what the boy is doing, and the fact that the “co-parent” is oppositional to any kind of cooperation between the parents. That and the genes, and the teenage years make for a bad combination of problems.
Kids need to know that there are limits and that the limits will be enforced, but the problem is too, like my P son looked me in the face the first time I had problems with him And he ran away from home…and he said “you can’t watch me 24/7, I’ll do this again.” And he was right. If they are determined to disobey authority and don’t really care about the consequences, there is nothing we can do to stop them. When they don’t respond to either the carrot or the stick…what can you do? Nada. Frustration, delux version.