Local News

Fugitive Found Guilty of Murder

Posted 2006-08-04T18:11:07+00:00 - Updated 1997-03-14T05:00:00+00:00

A Florida jury has found a Duplin County, N.C., preacher guilty of second degree murder. In October, his Tar Heel neighbors had learned that the man they knew as Curtis Jackson for the past six years is really Calvin Jackson -- and that he was wanted for a 10-year-old murder.

Jackson had lived in the town of Faison, where he had worked his way out of the migrant work camps and gotten a job at the Cates pickle plant. He was considered a model employee at Cates. He married a Duplin County woman and became an ordained minister. No one knew of his past until last October, when he was arrested at work.

Jackson was convicted of killing a man in 1986, after the man taunted him with racial slurs.

Faison, which has but one stop light, is a rural town where everyone knows everyone else. Those who knew Jackson felt he could not be capable of murder.

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