[azathoth777]

Norfolk, Va.--A sailor pleaded guilty Monday to killing a Camp Pendleton Marine corporal he had been duped into thinking had been involved in the rape of a woman the sailor knew only through e-mails and phone calls.

Petty Officer 3rd Class Cooper Jackson, 23, pleaded guilty to premeditated murder, kidnapping, impersonating a Naval Criminal Investigative Service agent and obstruction of justice in connection with the slaying of Cpl. Justin L. Huff.

In exchange for his guilty plea, prosecutors agreed to spare him a possible death sentence.

Jackson told a Navy judge during his court-martial that he posed as a special NCIS agent and took Huff to North Carolina to get information about the rape. He said he then slit Huff's throat twice and later buried the body to avoid being caught.

Defense attorney Don Marcari said outside of court that if the judge accepts the plea, Jackson could be sentenced to serve life in prison without the possibility of parole.

"I'd broken several laws and I had a missing Marine with me," Jackson told the judge, Capt. Daniel O'Toole, during questioning about his actions. "Quite frankly, I was scared of the consequences of what would happen, of being caught, more so than I was of the consequences of taking his life."

Huff was assigned to the Brigade Service Support Group 1, First Marine Logistics Group, Marine Expeditionary Force, based at Camp Pendleton in San Diego County, Calif. He had served two combat tours in Iraq.

The 23-year-old Indiana Marine was reported missing Jan. 2 after he didn't show up for class at the Navy and Marine Corps Intelligence Training Center in Virginia Beach, where Jackson also was a student.

Agents said Jackson, of Boones Mill, confessed when they took him in for questioning on Jan. 12. The next day, he led NCIS agents to Huff's body buried in a wooded area in Currituck County, N.C., just south of the Virginia-North Carolina border.

In June, federal agents testified at an Article 32 hearing, the military equivalent of a grand jury investigation, that Jackson had been fooled into falling in love with a woman over the phone who called herself Samantha and made up a story about being raped by several service members.

"Samantha" turned out to be Ashley Elrod, a 22-year-old hotel clerk on North Carolina's Outer Banks. She testified at the hearing that she had talked to Jackson by phone and sent him e-mails and that she lied by telling him she had been raped.

She also testified that she "might have" told Jackson the Marine was named Huff or Huffman, and she said Jackson called her after Huff was killed.
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