Jailed by Mistake, Man Freed After 10 Months

An illiterate, penniless drifter from Kentucky walked out of county jail a free man Friday evening after spending 10 months in custody for two throat-slash murders that prosecutors now say he did not commit.

“I feel good,” Johnny Massingale drawled, his chin trembling with emotion, after he stepped out of the jail exit. “I just want to go home and be with my family.”

Later, he added: “I just thank God in Heaven.”

Massingale, 30, was ordered released by Superior Court Judge Barbara Gamer after prosecutors said new evidence suggests that he did not kill Suzanne Camille Jacobs, 31, and her 3-year-old son, Colin, in her Normal Heights home on May 24, 1979. Massingale had at one time told police he was guilty of the murders.

Investigators for the San Diego police and district attorney’s offices now view David Allen Lucas, who was arrested three weeks ago in connection with three other throat-slash slayings of area residents, as the primary suspect in the Jacobs murders but have not charged him. Lucas, who previously spent four years in California Youth Authority custody for a rape conviction, is also charged with the kidnaping, rape and knife attack on a Seattle woman.

Massingale had been scheduled to go to trial Jan. 14 in the Jacobs murders. Although physical evidence found at the scene of the Jacobs slayings provided no link to Massingale, defense lawyer James W. Tetley said a jury could have easily convicted the defendant because of a confession he made to police interrogators.

Massingale first became a suspect in the Jacobs slayings in 1981. An Alabama man reported to a Texas Ranger that he had hitched a ride with a man he identified only as “Johnny,” who told him he had decapitated a woman named Sue Ann and her young son in a town east of San Diego. The heads of Suzanne Jacobs and her son were nearly severed in the knife attack, Deputy Dist. Atty. Bernie Revak said.

Investigators ultimately tracked down another man the informant said was in the van with “Johnny.” The other man corroborated the informant’s story and pointed investigators to a Johnny Massingale of Harlan County, Ky.

A warrant was issued for Massingale, and San Diego investigators flew to Kentucky to question him. During the interrogation, he said he committed the crimes.

“Let me put it this way,” Tetley said, “Johnny Massingale never got out of the 6th grade. He can’t read or write anything, except for his name, and he usually misspells that. Revak said Friday he had long had “certain reservations” about the case because of evidence found at the scene, such as the strands of blond hair in Suzanne Jacobs’ hand. Massingale’s hair is brown.