In the summer of 2001, in Jacksonville, Florida, nineteen-year-old Vickie Cook was spending the evening of Saturday, June 30th at home with her two young daughters, Jazmin and Alexis, and also babysitting two other children. Vickie, described as a smart young woman with a great sense of humor and a fierce devotion to her kids, was eventually planning on going to school to become a nurse.
Sometime that night, while the children were still awake, a vehicle pulled up in front of Vickie’s apartment building. One man stayed inside the car, but the driver got out and went into Vickie’s residence. Shortly afterward, police were summoned to the scene, where Vickie was found lying on the floor of her living room, a grievous stab wound in her chest. She was quickly rushed to the hospital, but died only hours later. The children in the home were unharmed.
Residents of the neighborhood reported that the perpetrators were two black men, one of whom had dreadlocks or corn rows, stood about five-foot-eleven, and weighed approximately two-hundred pounds. Witnesses agreed that the car the two men had driven up in was a black Lexus. The man who had entered the apartment and stabbed Vickie had driven this vehicle away from the scene, though the passenger of the car, who had not entered the house, had fled the scene in a stolen, medium blue Ford Astro van, possibly with a large gray stripe on the side. This vehicle also sported a temporary tag in the right rear window.
Authorities suspected that Vickie had been murdered during the course of a robbery, but gave no specific information as to why they believed this. The killer and his accomplice are still unidentified.
Crime Immemorial 