Dateline: Missing Marie— Who was Marie Singleton-Jackson, and what happened to her? Disturbing details of 1994 homicide, revealed

In 1994, a Los Angeles woman went missing without any warning, prompting a search that would ultimately span years on end.

Marie Singleton-Jackson, a CIA communications specialist and mother of two kids, vanished on November 11 and was later revealed to be dead inside the back trunk of her own car. What originally gave the impression of the case being a mystery executed with a whole lot of intelligence soon turned into something far more familiar — and tragic.

As seen on Dateline, the episode delves into the crime; what started off as a promising marriage promptly skyrocketed into a terrifying nightmare, uncovering alarming sheets of domination, duplicity, and violent behavior.

It would take a lifetime, forensic developments, and a determined cold case team to expose the actual truth behind this murder.

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Dateline covers behind the marriage: A happy façade hiding tension

The official synopsis for the NBC Dateline episode reads as follows:

"Marie Singleton was a single mom who fell hard for Andre Jackson, a single dad raising his two kids. The couple married and seemed happy. Then Marie vanished and investigators discovered secrets. Was her disappearance related to her undercover job?"

This Dateline episode talks about Marie Singleton. Marie was a single mother managing her steady career at the CIA when she first met Andre Jackson, a man who was also a single father.

Their relationship seemed to be a stable one to the outsiders who did not know them personally. But the ones who did know them up close? Well, sadly they have a different story to account for.

Friends close to Marie testified that the relationship between the couple had started to move to a narrow end just months into their marriage, which took place in 1994. Jackson gradually started becoming controlling, erratic, and unpredictable. Jackson mostly asserted that their marriage was stable, but he did share his suspicions that Marie was seeing another man with some members of his social circle.

One of the most significant records comes from Singleton-Jackson’s own son, Marcus. Interviewed years later by detectives, he is reminded of a fight that took place a few weeks before his mother’s death. Marcus told the police,

“He put a hand over her mouth and the other around her neck.”

A lingering and discomfiting memory that became important in understanding the toxic forces present in the household.

Adding to the toxicity and growing distance between the couple, doubts of infidelity and secrecy soured their already strained relationship.

According to investigators, Marie had told Jackson she was working offsite a few days before her death. He later discovered this to be untrue.

Their argument was what investigators believe to be more than just a marital dispute, and over time, it is this that eventually led to the couple reaching a breaking point.

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The disappearance, the discovery, and suspicion

Marie vanishing out of the blue led to a pressing missing persons case being filed. However, no one could even predict the horrible outcome that was waiting to be unwrapped merely five days after Marie went missing.

A passerby near a beach recognized her car from a flyer that was distributed all over the neighborhood. The passerby immediately alerted the police.

Inside the parked car, the investigators found two parking tickets, an extracted battery, and some of Marie’s belongings — the whole lot except Marie herself. Then came the vexing moment when the officers snooped around and opened the trunk of the car.

As the Dateline episode narrates the incident, a cold and lifeless Marie was found with injuries all over her face, and an autopsy report later confirmed the theory of strangulation as being the cause of death.

The detectives immediately started to suspect her husband. However, regardless of Jackson’s odd behavior in this ‘wife being murdered' situation'—including an exaggeratedly dramatic outburst, which was later followed by an offhand visit to a car wash shop— there wasn’t enough legitimate verification to charge him with murder in 1994.

The case then fell into a hush. But Dateline rings a bell to inform its audiences that silence doesn’t mean case closed.

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A break in the case years later

Years later, in 2002, the case was picked up by the FBI along with local authorities.

The turning point came with high-tech progress in DNA examinations. As Dateline elucidates, some skin that was once recovered from under Marie’s nails and a tiny ounce of blood on the hood of her car, two pieces of key evidence that were once thought to be insignificant and insufficient, now become the most crucial, which eventually led them to the killer.

Investigators couldn’t trace Andre Jackson straightaway, so they hunted down his son, Andre Jr., to check for a possible familial DNA match.

When the FBI crime lab report came back with a success, the road to fairness and justice reopened. Jackson was arrested in Arizona in 2008, practically fourteen whole years after the murder took place. He stood on trial in 2012.

The prosecution maintained their stance that Marie’s unhappiness in the marriage, the domestic violence endured by her, and her intent to leave the marriage may have triggered her death at the hands of her own husband. After only a few hours of pondering, the jury found Jackson guilty.

The Dateline episode brings to light that Jackson was sentenced to 25 years to life in prison — a long-awaited ruling in a case that had troubled the minds and hearts of Marie’s family for years.

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Marie Singleton-Jackson’s case is a lingering reminder that even after years of justice being silent, it can still catch up.

As seen on Dateline, it took perseverance, sets of fresh new eyes in the form of the FBI, and developing forensic studies to finally bring the truth to light.

While no ending can undo the tragedy that has already taken place, the firmness of her case offers some comfort to those who never stopped looking and fighting for answers.