Murder of Seath Jackson

On April 17, 2011, 15-year-old Seath Tyler Jackson was killed in Summerfield, Florida, after being lured to a friend's house by his ex-girlfriend, Amber Wright, who had told him she wanted to reconcile. Jackson and Wright had dated beginning in December 2010 but broke up by March 2011. Wright then began dating 18-year-old Michael Shane Bargo Jr., who came to believe, incorrectly, that Jackson had abused Wright. In the weeks before the killing, Bargo and Jackson exchanged threats, and Bargo reportedly told Jackson he had "a bullet with your name on it." Bargo organized a plan to kill Jackson with Wright, her 16-year-old brother Kyle Hooper, and their friends Charlie Ely (18) and Justin Soto (20).

On the day of the murder, Jackson was attacked by the group after arriving at Ely's house. He was beaten, struck on the head, and shot while trying to escape; Soto struck him with an axe handle, and he was carried back inside and placed in a bathtub, where Bargo fatally shot him. His body was placed in a sleeping bag and left in a backyard fire pit for hours. The following morning, James Havens, the stepfather of Wright and Hooper, helped dispose of Jackson's remains, which were placed in paint cans and dumped in a water-filled rock quarry in Ocala, Florida. The group also cleaned the house with bleach.

Jackson's mother reported him missing on April 18, 2011, and investigators quickly linked the group to the crime; all six were arrested on April 20, 2011. The five youths were charged with first-degree murder, and Havens was charged as an accessory. Charlie Ely was the first convicted, found guilty on September 23, 2011, and sentenced to life without parole. Justin Soto pleaded guilty on May 30, 2012, and was sentenced to life without parole. Kyle Hooper and Amber Wright were convicted on June 12, 2012, and initially sentenced to life without parole on August 22, 2012, though this conflicted with a U.S. Supreme Court ruling barring mandatory life-without-parole sentences for juveniles. Michael Bargo, the ringleader and shooter, was convicted on August 20, 2013, and sentenced to death on December 13, 2013.

Subsequent appeals altered several outcomes. In 2014, Florida's 5th District Court of Appeal vacated Hooper's sentence for re-sentencing and ordered a re-trial for Wright due to a Miranda rights violation; Wright was re-convicted in January 2016 and re-sentenced in February 2016 to life with parole eligibility after 25 years, and Hooper was similarly re-sentenced in December 2016. Bargo's death sentence was vacated by the Florida Supreme Court in June 2017 due to a change in state law requiring unanimous jury verdicts for death sentences; following a re-sentencing trial, a jury unanimously recommended death again in April 2019, and the sentence was reinstated in September 2019. A further appeal by Bargo was denied in June 2021. Charlie Ely's conviction was vacated in March 2020 on ineffective-counsel grounds; she pleaded guilty to second-degree murder in June 2020 and was released due to time served and good behavior. James Havens, initially found mentally incompetent to stand trial in 2014, pleaded guilty in 2018 to accessory to first-degree murder.