Man Charged With Murdering Missing Wife After She Enacts Marriage “Exit Plan”

A Kentucky man is in custody and his professor wife is presumed dead after she allegedly told loved ones she was worried for her safety in the days leading up to her disappearance last fall.

Though Ella Jackson’s body has never been found, Richmond police arrested her husband, Glenn Jackson, 39, on Friday and charged him with murder-domestic violence and tampering with physical evidence, the Lexington Herald-Leader reported.

A police search of the couple’s Richmond property turned up a “significant amount” of the missing woman’s blood in the trunk of her husband’s car, according to a news release.

Law enforcement noted they also “located several recordings that Mrs. Jackson secretly made of her and Mr. Jackson’s arguments” and that “Mrs. Jackson also told several individuals that she was afraid of Mr. Jackson, and if anything ever happened to her, her husband would be responsible.”

Ella Jackson, 48, had met with a domestic violence advocate days before she vanished, the statement added.

Glenn Jackson said he last saw his wife, who taught English at Eastern Kentucky University, on Oct. 20. He reported her missing two days later.

Shortly before Ella Jackson’s disappearance, her spouse allegedly said she asked him and their now-6-year-old boy to leave the house for an extended amount of time, Lexington’s WLEX-TV reported.

Phillip Hans, the missing mom’s oldest son from a previous marriage to Jason Hans, countered the claim at the time, telling the station: “Everything of hers is at the house, she wouldn't leave her kid behind, her car is there, her phone is there,” he said. “All her stuff is there.”

On Apr. 24, the day of Glenn Jackson’s arrest, Jason Hans detailed on Facebook his “devastating heartbreak” over his former wife’s disappearance and suspected murder.

Hans wrote that he met Ella Jackson in 2003 — one year after he became a widower following his first wife’s murder. The two married, and he noted their “love and appreciation for one another never wavered” — even after they divorced over a decade ago.

He alleged that starting in 2015 his ex-wife began telling him “she feared for her safety” and wanted to leave her new husband, Glenn Jackson.

“The messages and rushed phone calls were all too regular in recent years: ‘I need your help,’ ‘I am very scared,’ ‘I am scared to the point of not being ok to get out of the bedroom to get a cup of milk or change my tampon,’ ‘I am being awakened at almost 3 in the morning and dragged through the house,’ ‘It is getting seriously scary [and] I am very worried about my child and myself,’” Hans claimed Ella Jackson said.

According to Hans, a University of Kentucky professor of family sciences, “After years stuck in a cycle of violence, [Ella] had recently begun working in earnest with a lawyer on an exit plan.”

Hans recalled his ex’s alleged warning to him before she vanished: "If smth happens to me that might look like an accident, don't believe it."

Glenn Jackson, who reportedly lost his job as a senior lecturer at Eastern Kentucky University in February, remains in custody without bond. He has not yet entered pleas to the charges against him.

Hans claimed on Facebook he was granted guardianship of Ella and Glenn’s young son.