8 months after triple homicide, Fort Worth police still seek killer

Ronney Jackson and his common-law wife, Elizabeth Bernard Sessums, could not turn away a stray cat.

Every morning, neighbors would spot Jackson standing outside his home, feeding more than a dozen cats that the couple had unofficially adopted.

So when several mornings passed in late May and early June with no sign of Jackson, one neighbor suspected something was wrong and called Jackson’s father — the home’s owner — on June 2.

“She called me one day and told me about what was going on over there, that she hadn’t seen my son,” recalled Elton Jackson, 80. “She said he always came out around 7:30 a.m. in the morning and fed the cats. He hadn’t done that in about four or five days.”

Elton Jackson drove to the house in the 200 block of Sunset Lane in west Fort Worth — the place where he had raised his two sons — and peered through a window. He saw someone lying on a couch in the living room.

“That was all I could see,” Jackson said. “They had been dead a number of days and were decomposing. The stench, you could smell it from a block away. I knew something had happened. I immediately called 911.”

When Fort Worth police arrived, they found the bodies of Jackson, 57, Sessums, 47, and David Adams, 50, a friend who had been visiting the couple. Each had been shot once: Sessums and Adams in the head and Jackson in the chest.

“I talked to everybody over there,” Elton Jackson said. “Nobody heard the gunshots or anything. They didn’t have any indication that any of that happened. It’s just a mystery to me.”

More than eight months later, homicide detectives are also stymied about the identity of the killer or killers who have left three families grieving.

Adams’ family is offering a $15,000 reward for information leading to an indictment in the case.

Homicide Detective Kyle Sullivan said he believes the slayings took place the evening of May 28 and that Jackson and Sessums were the targets.

“They were known to use drugs and have a lot of people over at the house sometimes,” Sullivan said. “But they were very particular about who they would let into the house. I personally think it was someone they know. Someone that was familiar to them. Someone they let into the house.”

Adams, who was known to visit from time to time, appears to have just been in the wrong place at the wrong time, Sullivan said.

“It looked like they didn’t see it coming,” he said. “It happened suddenly.”

A life marred by addiction

Donna Lott, Sessums’ older sister, said Sessums grew up in Nederland, southeast of Beaumont.

“She was very outgoing, very beautiful,” Lott said. “She was always the guy’s catch. They were always wanting to go out with her.”

But at about 13, Lott said, her sister began experimenting with drugs — developing an addiction that she would battle the rest of her life.

“We did everything. We put her in rehab. We went to Al-Anon,” Lott said. “My mom and dad went to therapy with her.”

Lott said her sister studied financial management in community college and worked for a loan company. But with her addiction came many struggles, Lott said.

One of Sessums’ four children died as a toddler from medical problems caused by being born with drugs in her system.

A former husband shot Sessums on Christmas Day 1989 in Port Arthur, then took his own life. After that, Lott said, her sister became addicted to Oxycontin and signed over the rights of the couple’s two young sons to their grandparents.

Sessums would raise another son for about 10 years before he, too, went to live with relatives.

Lott said her sister met Jackson about 13 years ago while he was working in Beaumont. Six months later, she left her problems behind and followed him to Fort Worth.

‘Friendly kind of guy’

Elton Jackson said his son was a giving man, almost to a fault.

“That was one of his problems: He never had anything, but anything he did have, he would just give it to anybody he thought needed it. He was a kindhearted, friendly kind of guy,” Elton Jackson said.

But like Sessums, Ronney Jackson had been waging a losing battle against addiction. Elton Jackson said he warned his son about the dangers that come with the drug lifestyle.

“I had talked to him about that. They tried for years there to get straightened up and get rid of the riffraff that was in and out of the house all the time,” Elton Jackson said. “I guess they just never seemed to get away from all of it.”

Lott said she and her sister had been estranged for some time but had reconnected last year after Sessums sent her a friend request on Facebook. She last spoke to her sister about a week before the killings. Sessums called to ask about her nephew’s wedding — an event that she and Jackson had to miss because he was sick.

On the day before police believe she was killed, Sessums sent relatives one last Facebook message, Lott said.

“She put at the end, ‘Love you,’” Lott said.

‘The wrong road of life’

Joe Adams never met the friends his brother was visiting on the day he was killed.

“David was pretty secretive,” Joe Adams said. “The people that he wanted us to know about, he talked about. Those were far and few in between.”

Joe Adams said he and his younger brother were Air Force brats who moved around a lot. David Adams would later serve in the Navy for 10 years, working in different U.S. embassies, including in London, before moving to Texas and working at various water departments.

“He was a very smart individual,” his brother said. “I wish I had his brains. A very intelligent man who just kind of went down the wrong road of life in his later adult life.”

In more recent years, David Adams made his living as a handyman, doing odd jobs while caring for his elderly mother, a former secretary at the Fort Worth Police Department who retired several years ago.

“It’s been really hard on Mom,” Joe Adams said.

Joe Adams said that when his brother didn’t return home, their mother was immediately concerned. When he still had not turned up days later, the family reported him missing to Fort Worth police May 30.

“She thought something had happened to him right off,” Joe Adams said.

When the bodies were discovered, Adams’ car was found parked on the street in front of the home. Sullivan, the homicide detective, said items were missing from inside the house but declined to disclose what police believe was taken.

There were no signs of a struggle — a fact that further puzzles Elton Jackson.

“How do you go in and kill three people without having an altercation with them?” Jackson said.

This story was originally published February 20, 2015 at 4:47 PM with the headline "8 months after triple homicide, Fort Worth police still seek killer."