Suspicious dive death remains a mystery
KEY LARGO -- Joanne Page was 51, a mother of two and manager of a Jackson Hewitt accounting firm branch in North Carolina on Oct. 30, 2008, when she joined boyfriend Eugene Jackson on a dive excursion to French Reef off of Key Largo.
The trip would turn out to be fatal.
According to Monroe County Sheriff's Office reports, the sea was rough that day, and as the vessel Sea Star, out of Pirate Island Divers, prepared to return to shore after a dive, the crew noticed the Page and Jackson were missing.
When a Florida Fish and Wildlife officer located the duo several minutes later, Jackson was alright. But Page was already dead. Jackson would later tell investigators that as he struggled through six-foot swells to get back to the boat, he turned around to see Page floating on her back, records show. He attempted mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, but was unable to revive his girlfriend of four years.
On its surface, Page's death didn't seem particularly unusual. Sixteen divers have perished in the Keys since that late October day.
But a suspicious autopsy would lead to a 10-month investigation centered on Jackson. Now, 18 months after Page's death, though authorities have called off the investigation without pressing any charges, they still say questions remain as to what happened to Page, and whether she was murdered.
Strangulation death?
Monroe County Medical Examiner Hunt Scheuerman, M.D., had been on the job just a couple of months when Page's body was brought to his Marathon office. And while he had done scuba-related autopsies by that time, his experience was limited.
So when his autopsy revealed that Page had neck cartilage fractures and a series of small bruises to the muscles of the front part of her neck -- injuries that would suggest strangulation, he said -- he responded cautiously.
Scheuerman turned to Capt. James Caruso, the U.S. Navy's point man for diving-relating autopsies. He asked Caruso to review his report and to opine on whether there could have been a dive-related explanation for Page's injuries -- a rough rescue from the sea, for example. In a Dec. 30, 2008 e-mail, Caruso gave his response.
"I have reviewed probably close to 2,000 scuba-related deaths at this point," he wrote. "For those that went to autopsy the neck is usually unremarkable. Occasionally a rough rescue may result in some minor injuries, but I would have to say that what you describe is more than I have seen personally in my case reviews."
The Navy examiner's answer aside, in January of last year Scheuerman ruled the cause of Page's death as "undetermined."
"I have done scuba but I haven't done that much," Scheuerman said in a recent interview. "It is just a matter of being cautious. If I call it a homicide, then they're stuck with an open homicide."
The determination would be critical. Assistant State Attorney Colleen Dunne says when she decided not to file charges against Jackson last September, the official autopsy finding was a major factor.
But Scheuerman still says he harbors strong suspicions about what actually happened to Page.
"Had this person been on dry land, I unequivocally would have said this was strangulation," he told the Free Press.
A lone suspect
Since Page and Jackson were alone at the time of her death, the then-58-year-old Jackson became the sole target of a Sheriff's Office investigation, which until now has never received public attention.
Sheriff's Detective Terry Smith, the lead investigator on the case, interviewed Jackson in the immediate aftermath of the death, before the autopsy had given reason for suspicion, and says he was the first person to confirm to Jackson that his lover had died. Jackson's reaction, he says, was appropriate.
"He looked like I had just kicked him in the stomach when I told him she was deceased," Smith said.
The next day, with the autopsy complete, Detective Mark Coleman called Jackson for more questioning, reports show. With the video camera running at the Roth Building on Plantation Key, the North Carolina man told Coleman of how he and Page had surfaced from their second dive that day about 100 yards from the dive boat, but hadn't been able to reach the vessel against the rough seas. When he lost track of Page, and then realized she was floating on her back, he tried to save her, he reportedly told Coleman.
Smith says that like his own discussion with Jackson the previous day, Jackson's demeanor gave no cause for concern during the Coleman interview.
"Everything seemed appropriate," he said, having viewed the tape.
But aside from the autopsy finding, there were other issues that gave investigators reason for pause.
For one thing, Smith's investigative notes show that upon removing Page from the FWC boat in which she was placed after being recovered, he noticed the valve on her dive tank was closed. Both FWC Officer Scott LaRosa and Pirates Island Divers mate Dan Goldsmith, the two men who pulled Page out of the water, told Smith they did not close the valve, Smith's investigative report says, leaving the detective with another loose end in the case.
"It's a mystery," Smith says of the closed valve. "But it's a minor issue."
Then there's the allegation of domestic abuse. During his investigation, Smith spoke on several occasions with Debby Melton, Page's younger sister.
In an interview last week, Melton, a high school teacher in North Carolina, reiterated what she says she told Smith: That Jackson had gotten physical with Page just a couple of months before their trip to Key Largo, leaving her with a black eye.
"He had abused her. He had hit her," Melton said.
That allegation aside, law enforcement back in Jackson's home town of Salisbury, N.C. told Smith there was no official record of any domestic violence, or violence-related calls, concerning Jackson and Page. When the Sheriff's Office asked police there to conduct one final interview of Jackson, this time in conjunction with a voice stress analysis, he turned them down.
"He indicated that he would not participate in any further investigation concerning the death of Ms. Page and any further contact between him and law enforcement would be directed to his attorney," the MCSO report says.
Jackson also declined to comment for this story, citing advice from his attorney.
With their subject having gone quiet, Smith turned the case over to the Monroe County State Attorney's Office last September. The office declined to file charges.
"After reviewing the investigative reports, and more specifically the medical examiner's report, which concluded that the cause and manner of death was undetermined, there was no evidence to indicate that a crime had occurred," Assistant State Attorney Dunne explained in an e-mail to the Free Press last week.
Melton says such reasoning is far from satisfying.
"Even though I am not a medical person, the minute that I read the autopsy I could tell just from the information I was reading that it was not a death caused by drowning or a natural death," she said. "There were too many odd parts in the autopsy."
Medical Examiner Scheuerman's statement that he would have ruled Page's death a homicide had it been on land also has Melton asking questions.
"I cannot understand why it would be murder on land but not murder on the water," she said.
Smith, meanwhile, says he simply isn't sure whether Jackson was responsible for Page's mysterious death.
"He did not exhibit any indications when I interviewed him," the detective said last week. "By the same token, when you look back at the physical evidence, the injuries cannot be explained. I do not know what other explanation there could be other than something happened when him and her were together."
rsilk@keysnews.com
