The Bizarre Disappearance of the Jackson Family

by Amanda Greengrove for NYCColdCases.com

Anyone who grew up in New York in the early 2000s remembers the Percy Jackson story with crystal clarity. It's one of those localized true crime events that transcended the actual horror of what occurred to attain an almost meme status. Just like everyone in Michigan has a theory about where Jimmy Hoffa is buried, everyone on Long Island thinks they know what really happened to Perseus Jackson. The story has been told and retold since it first broke the morning of June 5th, 2006, gaining magic and misinformation with every repetition until the real tragedy of what he and his mother Sally Jackson endured was buried under the public consciousness. 

I will even admit, when this story landed on my desk I was more than a little skeptical of covering the Percy Jackson case, fearing whatever I wrote would simply disappear into the internet among hundreds of other similar conspiracy pieces. The deeper I dug, however, the more I realized that no one has ever covered the full scope of this case, which extends far beyond a single kidnapping of a mother and son in 2006, without diving into wildly implausible conspiracy theories, and so that is what I have set out to do. Without further ado, dear readers, I bring you the case that started it all: the disappearance of the Jackson family.

The story of Percy Jackson doesn't begin with a car crash, it begins with a boy born to a single mother on August 18th, 1993. Sally Jackson listed no father on the birth certificate of her son Perseus, named quite aptly for a Greek myth. There is nothing unusual reported in Jackson's first five years of life, but in school he went through significant troubles. In 2000, his third grade teacher filed a police report stating that a man had been stalking Jackson, something significant considering what will later happen to him, but no suspect was ever identified in this case and no charges were filed. He also began acting out in school from an early age. Two incidents made the news, the first being the 2001 incident in which a student later identified as Jackson pulled the lever controlling the catwalk over the dolphin tank at SeaWorld, causing his entire fourth grade class to fall in. There were no deaths as SeaWorld employees and the Fire Department worked quickly to rescue everyone, but several students were hospitalized. The following year, Jackson apparently caused the firing of a cannon during a class trip to Saratoga Battlefield that blew up the school bus (thankfully unoccupied at the time). This second incident has been debated by internet sleuths, however, as it is doubtful that a nine year old would have known how to fire the cannon at all unless it was fully primed, something that wouldn't have happened without trained re-enactors or National Park Service employees on site. 

"I've fired light six-pounders [the cannon Jackson reportedly fired] at the Trenton reenactment, and these things don't just go off," stated John Ashton, a Revolutionary War reenactor who responded to my request for comment. "I'll spare you the whole process, but they have to be packed properly and then loaded with a blank shell, which obviously wouldn't just be lying around. Even if Percy could get his hands on all of that, which would be negligence on the part of the National Park Service in my opinion, the chances he could go through the whole process without blowing himself up are crazy small."

No other suspects have ever been identified, however, and no charges were ever filed by the school or Park Service, contingent on Jackson's expulsion from the school. This was not a unique case, with Jackson being expelled from more than six schools in six years. Some blamed his learning disabilities (Jackson was diagnosed with ADHD and dyslexia at age seven), while others pointed the finger at his troubled home life (police were called to the Jackson residence several times after neighbors reported that Sally's common-law husband, Gabriel “Gabe”  Ugliano, was physically abusing her). Regardless, Jackson had accumulated a long disciplinary record by age 12, culminating in his expulsion from Yancey Academy.

The strangeness that surrounds the Jackson case amps up beginning on June 4th of 2006. According to Ugliano, Sally Jackson began acting erratically after Jackson's return from Yancey, deciding to take him on an impromptu vacation to a cabin they rented in Montauk in Ugliano's car. The Jacksons are known to have checked into the cabin that night, but nothing else is known about their whereabouts over the next twelve hours until a passing driver reported Ugliano's 2005 Chevrolet Camaro wrecked by the side of a road on Long Island. Police investigation determined that the Jacksons car rolled over after a collision with a second, unknown, vehicle, likely an attempt to force them off the road. Why they chose to drive 70 miles in the dead of night during one of the worst storms of the season, and what they were doing on the deserted stretch of country road is the first of many mysteries surrounding this case. 

Police traced the car by its license plate back to Gabe Ugliano, who then reported both Sally and Percy missing, citing in his police report that he believed his troubled son had wrecked the car and kidnapped his mother, though analysis performed after the Jacksons were found ruled out the possibility of a one car crash, so if Percy did orchestrate the whole thing, he did it with help. There were no reports of either Jackson for around a week, though the police searched extensively for them and Ugliano did several tearful interviews where he continued to blame Percy for the incident.

On June 11th, however, Jackson made a reappearance. He was spotted with two other similarly aged children on a Greyhound bus, where he is reported to have threatened three elderly women with a baseball bat. The women themselves have never come forward, so some have speculated they may have been affiliated with his captor. The main suspect is a still-unidentified man, but Percy and Sally refused to comment on their abduction to the media and the FBI still class this as an open case, so the public has little to go on regarding how many people may have been involved in this plot. In a less sinister turn, some suspect that the women had simply recognized Jackson from the news and he was threatening them to protect himself, as telling the victim they will come to harm if they go to the police is a common tactic used by abductors. 

The other concerning part of this first Percy Jackson sighting is that he wasn't alone. He was and continued to be sighted in the company of Annabeth Chase (see related articles), a girl who was reported missing from her home in California in 2000 before mysteriously contacting her father, who subsequently transferred custody of her to a Charles Brunner of Long Island, New York. Internet sleuths have made a link between him and the Charles Brunner who appears in Yancey Academy's yearbook only in 2006, though no official connection has ever been drawn, leading to the theory that Annabeth's father was somehow forced to sign over custody of her to her kidnapper. This connection has also lead some to theorize that Brunner was involved in what happened to the Jacksons, though it would be impossible for him to be working alone, as the yearbook also reveals that he is wheelchair-bound, and as such could not be the man later seen with Jackson, Chase, and a third, unidentified child. Dubbed "Rasta Cap Boy" by the media, he has been spotted with many of the missing children involved in these cases without ever being formally identified, and is widely believed to be a victim of whoever is behind this that has been brainwashed into assisting him in the capture of others. This sighting of them in a different state is what caused the FBI to become involved in the case.

Two days later, on June 13th, there was another Percy Jackson sighting, though this one is debated to have been a hoax. CCTV footage shows Jackson, Chase, and Rasta Cap Boy boarding the elevator at the Gateway Arch in St. Louis, Missouri, however there was a malfunction on the way down, allowing a sliver of doubt over what happened next. Eyewitnesses report an altercation between Jackson and a woman with a service Chihuahua that ended with a small explosion and him leaping from the top of the arch into the Missouri River below. A pane of glass on the arch walkway was confirmed to have broken that day, but there is no real chance of Jackson having survived a fall like that, as the Gateway Arch is 630 feet tall, and humans can't survive a free-fall into water higher than 186 feet. No human could have survived a fall around three times that, which debunks this part of the sighting entirely despite conspiracy theorists' insistence that this proves Jackson is some sort of superhuman creature.

There is a strong argument to be made for a fabrication of the entire sighting, however. The other sightings of the trio make sense, as they are all normal places someone would end up while traveling cross-country, but what possible reason would a child abductor, potentially one with multiple victims and years of success under his belt, have to let his captives go sightseeing? It seems like a free pass to be spotted or for them to go for help. Just as likely are some St. Louis teens seeing the story of the altercation on the bus and deciding to dress up as Jackson, Chase, and Rasta Cap Boy, though the FBI's official stance is that they believe this sighting to be legitimate, and that the jump from the arch was a suicide by an entirely different person.

The very next day, a waitress at a diner in Denver, Colorado called in a tip to the local police that would serve as the lynchpin for much of what is believed about the Jackson case. She stated that Jackson, Chase, and Rasta Cap Boy entered the diner together in the afternoon of June 14th and were quickly joined by a man. She reported him to be of average height, with dark hair in a buzz cut, dark sunglasses, a leather jacket, and open-carrying a pistol. The children became visibly frightened by his arrival, and he threatened them with a knife and paid for their meal in gold coins before leaving on a motorcycle. Due to the same man's reappearance at the beach incident, it is believed by both the FBI and most internet sleuths that this man was ultimately responsible for Sally and Percy's abduction. He likely ran them off the road, abducted them, then imprisoned Sally somewhere within the state before handing Percy over to Rasta Cap Boy (and possibly Chase), and charging him with making sure Percy got to California safely, likely to be taken out of the country as part of a human trafficking operation. This was likely one of several check-ins he made with them along the route to ensure his control over them and enforce the idea that he was always watching them. 

The final Percy Jackson sighting didn't occur until the 21st, which still remains a source of confusion in the investigation. It doesn't take nearly that long to drive between Denver and Los Angeles, so they had to have been doing something else or taken a detour, though what it could have been or where they went was unknown. All that is known is that the three appeared in LA in the early morning, and Percy and their captor had an armed standoff at Santa Monica Beach. How Jackson obtained the gun is also unknown, though he likely stole it from one of his captors. He did not know how to use it, as the abductor was the only one to fire any shots, one of which caused a gas main rupture. The ensuing explosion destroyed five police cars and injured several people, and the chaos allowed their captor escaped, leaving Jackson, Chase, and Rasta Cap Boy in the hands of the press and LA field office of the FBI. Before they were submitted to anything more than minimal questioning, however, the three were released to get on a plane back to New York.

Those involved claimed that they were moved by Jackson's story of bravery and his insistence that all he wanted was to return to his "loving stepfather," but this move has been heavily controversial and the source of major speculation ever since. The FBI claimed that the incident was gross negligence on the part of their agents there, and LA field office director Aaron Ross and four other agents were summarily fired, while some point to this as evidence of a wider conspiracy, insinuating that the children were allowed to leave to prevent them from revealing, or possibly to integrate them back into, a wider reaching child trafficking ring. Believers of this theory also point to the positive manner in which Jackson spoke of Ugliano as further evidence of this theory, as his abuse of Sally was well-documented and it is very hard to believe that he would have found that same man to be "loving."

When asked in 2008 why they were not contacted for interviews by members of the New York field office, field office director Katelyn L'Enegel stated "We tried. We went knocking on the Jackson's door on the twenty-second. Sally answered and told our agents in no uncertain terms that they were to drop the case. Apparently neither she nor Percy had been abused and they did not feel as if they were in further danger, and that it would only be re-traumatizing for both of them to discuss what happened. We don't suspect either of them of being involved, so there was nothing we could do. We of course continued to pursue every lead, but there's only so much you can do after a while. Annabeth's guardian said basically the same thing, and we still don't know who the third boy is."

Perhaps the most mysterious part of the whole 2006 case is Sally. She disappeared from the car on the 4th or 5th, and wasn't heard from again until she walked straight back into her house on the 21st. After having spent more than two weeks in captivity, her escape itself, and why she chose to just go home afterward remains shrouded in uncertainty. The fact that she refused to give testimony to the FBI is also confusing. While her reasoning is to some extent understandable, some also point to this as evidence of a greater conspiracy, that she and her son were threatened not to talk in the same way Annabeth's father was threatened to give up custody of her.

For those who have only heard the story of Percy Jackson, this is the end of the road. He gets home safe and life moves on. For those who look into the facts, however, it is only the beginning. Just like there are little-known mentions of Percy in the news before this incident, there are more after, tying him not only to Annabeth Chase, but several other missing persons cases and other unsolved mysteries in a tangled web, and many unsolved questions remain to do with this case. Though the FBI maintains Annabeth Chase was a second victim in the Jackson case, the fact that no missing persons report was ever filed on her behalf and that this incident was neither the first or last missing children's incident she is involved in leave many wondering if she, like Rasta Cap Boy, has been indoctrinated into this ring, perhaps from as young as seven years old. 

How or why Percy Jackson was targeted also remains a mystery. Beyond the Charles Brunner theory, internet sleuths have also connected the stalking incident from his childhood, pointing out that he was seven at the time, the same age Chase was at her initial missing persons report. While pedophiles do often have a preferred age, this is not believed to be the work of a pedophile, and although age is certainly an affecting factor on the black market, it does not explain why the abductor waited years to go after Jackson again considering he didn’t move or enter a significantly safer situation follow the first incident.

What all of the theories also fail to adequately explain is Sally Jackson’s role in the whole thing. No other adult victim has ever been tied to these cases, so if there is a trafficking ring at play she would not have been a target, and if she was taken simply to remove a witness to Percy’s kidnapping, why was she allowed to live? Some use this as evidence that either Percy or his step-father Gabe Ugliano orchestrated the whole thing. The Percy theory can be disregarded, as Ugliano is the only one to perpetuate it and there is little supporting evidence, but there is a stronger case for Ugliano’s involvement. He collected a significant car insurance payment on the Camaro, and was in the process of collecting a life insurance payment on Sally Jackson when she escaped. Ugliano was deeply in debt due to his gambling addiction at the time, and could have used the money to resolve his debts. Some have theorized a connection to the mafia, but as this seems to be based solely on Ugliano’s Italian heritage and the “biker gang” look of Jackson’s captor it can be disregarded as shallow and unfounded.

The last thing to note about Ugliano is that he left Sally Jackson within a month of this incident, which is extremely atypical for an abuser. His co-workers initially reported him missing, but Sally told the police he had told her he was going to Florida with a new girlfriend, and that case was soon closed. Around the same time, Sally also sold a hyperrealistic stone statue of Ugliano, titled "The Poker Player" to a Soho gallery for a significant sum of money. Considering this was her only major work, there is much speculation around why Sally did this, but no theory has ever risen to the top. 

And so that's that. When I started researching Percy Jackson, I'll admit, I was convinced that conspiracy theorists had simply blown this one out of proportion and it was a simple insurance fraud case. I couldn't have been more wrong. I don't necessarily believe that the whole LA FBI office is involved in a child trafficking ring, or even that child trafficking is what's going on here, but I definitely think there's more to it than the police think. There are definitely a lot of people involved in this, and once this group gets its claws into you, it never lets you go, considering the way Jackson, Chase, and Rasta Cap Boy will continue to pop up, purportedly voluntarily, in more strange cases for years to come. I also firmly believe there are many more victims out there, likely more even than we know the stories of, and I just hope wherever they are they're ok and coping with what happened to them.

Stay tuned for next week's article, when I'm going to be covering what Percy and Annabeth got up to in the year 2007 and how it ties into an infamous California ghost story and a money laundering scam!