Jonathan Kellerman - The Best American Crime Reporting 2008

HE WAS BRIAN ST. PIERRE. And he wooed Annie [3]with stories about teammates and autographed footballs for kids in her neighborhood. When he suggested she look for him on the sideline, during a game, on TV, she took him up on the offer. But when the camera showed the real St. Pierre, their relationship took a sudden turn. After the game, she called him out as a liar and he called her “crazy” and, according to court documents, said she’d “be sorry” if she pressed charges. He even impersonated Roethlisberger in a phone call not long after, in which he vouched for himself as St. Pierre. Then he followed her home in different cars and materialized wherever she went, which, frankly, scared her to death. That was at the end of 2004, and she still won’t speak of him. “She’s moved on. I don’t want her to relive it,” says Annie’s boyfriend. “She doesn’t want to either.”

Jackson didn’t harass Kristin the way he did Annie or bother her the way he did Tara. No, one day he just went away. He stopped calling Kristin to say good morning or to ask for advice. He stopped picking her up at work so she could buy him fish sandwiches. When he changed cell phones, his old number was the last trace of a man who never existed.

She saved that number, and now it reminds her of that night in March 2006 when she was partying like everyone else on the south side and, after a few cocktails, had picked up her girlfriend’s cell. She was interested and curious and-football fan’s curse-attracted even though she’d never seen him. Like it would be with a lot of people, she says, her desire to talk to him took control. She wanted to find out what he might say, because, “Who doesn’t want to talk to a Steeler?” She left him a message that went something like, “So, what’s up? My girl tells me you’re a Steeler, so…”

But Kristin isn’t stupid. Maybe just a little naïve.

IS IT HIM? Well, yes, of course it’s him, in a baggy gray hoodie and jeans that fall off his behind. He’s been watching out the window of his redbrick house, the one with the unattached trailer in the front yard. He grudgingly opens the glass screen of his front door to greet the unwelcome company, and nearly slips when he steps on the porch.

He doesn’t look so threatening as he clings awkwardly to the door frame. He looks like he hasn’t slept, though, just as he looked when he turned himself in to Detective LaQuatra last year after Kristin came forward and his gig was up. He groveled to LaQuatra that day: “I can’t help myself, I really can’t.” And he doesn’t sound so cocksure now, as he didn’t when he called Kristin right before she pressed charges, to offer this rambling admission: “I just idolize these guys and what they do, and the attention they get from women, and I just want that for myself, and I don’t think I can do it on my own and I just want to be them.”

On this February morning, Brian Jackson just looks angry or nervous or both, like a man about to face felony charges who doesn’t want to be bothered. As the sun hits his face, he stares off to the side, eyes bloodshot-red like kindling.

Are you Brian Jackson?

“No. I’m his brother,” he says.

Well, is your brother home, then?

“No.”

Do you think he’d want to talk about…

“No, he wouldn’t.”

He’s tall, all right, his head is square, his body sturdy. His voice is as heavy as lead, and standing in front of him, it is not only conceivable he could pass for a Steeler, but understandable, especially in a town that sanctifies the men who wear that uniform but are often unrecognizable without it.

This morning, the Denali with tinted windows is docked in the drive, without the rims. Taking a step back, Jackson shuts the screen door. He’s not wearing his Steelers hat. But he does have on a nice pair of sneakers, with a metallic swoosh on the side.

JUSTIN HECKERT is a native of Cape Girardeau, Missouri, and now lives in Atlanta. He is a contributing writer for ESPN: The Magazine. After graduating from the University of Missouri School of Journalism, he was a staff writer at Atlanta magazine for two years, where his narrative work was awarded the City and Regional Magazine Association’s gold medal for Writer of the Year in 2005 and its silver medal in 2006. He has also written for Esquire, the Oxford American, the Los Angeles Times, the Washington Post, Vox magazine, the Columbia Missourian, and the Southeast Missourian.

Coda

He swindled other women, too. No one knows how many, but the number is probably a lot more than three. Though Kristin, Tara, and Annie all came forward and shared their stories about Brian Jackson with the Pittsburgh police, officials at the Allegheny County Courthouse postulated there were maybe a dozen more women who had been afraid to speak out, even when encouraged to. Not because they were afraid of his physically imposing presence, or his anger, or the thought of vengeance-but because they were much more scared of what something like this, in a relatively small city that thrives off its football team no matter the season, would do to their reputations. The Steelers wouldn’t touch this story. Their PR people, the security director, the players, their agents-nearly all of my calls and requests went unanswered, no matter my vigilance. It was a coup to even get Ben Roethlisberger on the phone, finally, two days before the story was put to press. (When he did talk, he was lighthearted and seemed unbothered when reflecting about all of this trouble.) I walked around Pittsburgh, and drove across its bridges, and passed the empty stadiums, heading into the hills in the ice and cold to ask people if they knew about this. Nearly everyone remembered something about him, or had heard about him, or the women, or had some vague recollection of the guy who had pretended to be a Steeler. No one remembered his name. It was an important topic on local radio stations, but for the most part the hosts just mocked the women, ran bits about how stupid they were, and the sentiment from more than a few Steelers fans was that they deserved what they got, because they were “gold-digging” anyway. Kristin even sent me a recording of one station that (though they didn’t have her name) was merciless in its excoriation of her. The women who did agree to speak with me-none of them had spoken on the record before, and getting to them involved a great deal of groundwork-provided invaluable insight into Jackson, and though none of them had ever spoken to each other, they all had pretty much the same things to say, despite the different experiences they had hanging out with him. While I doubt these women are perfect angels, I also know they’re not the money-grubbing, gold-digging harlots the local radio made them out to be. I literally staked out Jackson’s house to try and speak with him. His lawyers asked him, but he didn’t want to talk. Every day in the morning I’d drive to Brentwood and sit for a few minutes by his driveway; I’d come back at lunch; then at night; and then I’d go again, to ask his neighbors if he still lived there and what times he might be home. I was always looking for the white Denali. It was only the last morning I was in town that I saw it there, finally. (Though he didn’t speak to me when I approached his door, he had his lawyers call me just as the story was going to bed and we were able to print part of his confession in the magazine.) In August of last year, Jackson was sentenced to ninety days in prison and five years probation after pleading guilty to impersonating Tuman and taking $3,200 from Kristin. He gave back all the money he owed her, writing a $1,950 check and paying the rest in cash. He seemed very sorry for what he had done, as though it really had ruined his life. I have wondered if he’ll do it again, though; if we’ll be seeing another blurb in the paper, or on one of the news websites, like the one that originally sparked an interest in me to embark on this story. I’ve wondered if that old feeling, whatever’s inside him, will rear itself, and if he’ll put the gloves or jersey on and take the Denali out of the driveway and head back to the strip on the South Side of the city one night, and what might happen if he does. I asked Kristin what she thought about that. “I don’t know. I think it’s over,” she said. “I’ve moved beyond it. Although, training camp has started here. You never really know.”