The Deck - Jaklyn Baccoli (5 of Clubs, New York)

Episode Date: September 24, 2025

Our card this week is Jaklyn Baccoli, the 5 of Clubs from New York.When demolition workers entered a vacant home in Rochester, New York, they expected asbestos—not a crime scene. But hidden inside was the body of 44-year-old Jaklyn Baccoli, a woman whose final moments were marked by unimaginable violence. As detectives dug into her life and the days leading up to her death, they uncovered a tangled web of addiction, survival, and street rumors—and a potential suspect with a story full of holes. But what they don’t have is enough to close the case. And someone out there still knows the truth.If you know anything about the murder of Jaklyn Baccoli, please call Rochester Police Department’s major crimes unit at 585-428-7157 or email them at [e-mail]. You can also call Crime Stoppers at 585-423-9300 or submit a tip online here.View source material and photos for this episode at: thedeckpodcast.com/jaklyn-baccoli Let us deal you in… follow The Deck on social media.Instagram: @thedeckpodcast | @audiochuckTwitter: @thedeckpodcast_ | @audiochuckFacebook: /TheDeckPodcast | /audiochuckllcTo support Season of Justice and learn more, please visit seasonofjustice.org.The Deck is hosted by Ashley Flowers. Instagram: @ashleyflowersTikTok: @ashleyflowerscrimejunkieTwitter: @Ash_FlowersFacebook: /AshleyFlowers.AFText Ashley at 317-733-7485 to talk all things true crime, get behind the scenes updates, and more! Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Our card this week is Jacqueline Bacoli, the five of clubs from New York. Nearly 15 years ago, demolition workers made a horrifying discovery in an abandoned Rochester home, the body of 44-year-old Jackie, who had endured unthinkable violence before her death. Her murder would set off a years-long investigation that's still open today, one filled with dead ends, unanswered questions, and a suspect. whose DNA would tell a story he claimed he didn't remember. I'm Ashley Flowers, and this is the deck. It's not unusual for city workers in Rochester, New York, to spend their days checking on vacant properties,

especially in certain neighborhoods where abandoned homes dot nearly every block. On the afternoon of Wednesday, September 22nd, 2010, they made a stop at one of those houses, 73 Walnut Street. a weathered structure that was contaminated with asbestos. It was already slated for demolition, and for a while now it had been fully boarded up and sealed off, just waiting to be cleaned up and then tore down. This wasn't this crew's first time at the property. I mean, they'd been out there a week earlier

and noticed that one of the boards covering a back window had been pried away, and the glass behind it was shattered. But they knew vacant homes were magnets for trouble like squatters and drug activity. So the damage hadn't raised any alarms then. What they found this time, however, did. Here's retired Rochester investigator, Kathy Farina. They actually thought it might have been a mannequin. One of the construction folks actually took a board

that they found outside and threw it at the body to see if it moved or anything like that. That's when they realized what any listener of crime junkie would have known from the jump, one of our life rules. It's never a mannequin. When they came to grips with what they actually actually found. They called 911.

Investigator Farina was one of the people to respond to the scene that day. She'd been with the department's major crime unit for a few years by that point. And in a city like Rochester, where major crimes aren't exactly rare, it took a lot to surprise her. But she had never seen anything like this before. This scene, it was very surreal. It reminded me of something that you might see on like a Law and Order episode or something like that, the victim's body was covered in like a slick, oily substance, which we believe was motor oil. We didn't know the intent behind that. Was it to destroy evidence? Was it to demean

her in some way? Her pants were pulled down and her clothes were in disarray. There was what looked like a gag around her mouth. There was some abrasions around her wrist, almost as if she had had her hands tied up. She had a lot of visible injuries. She had contusions all. over her body. There were signs that she had been there for a while, moderate decomposition and insect activity. The kinds of indicators that told police they were starting by playing catch up, and with no idea on her, just a set of keys, a quarter, and some chapstick in her pockets, they

didn't even know her name. But they did have a pretty good guess. She matched the description right down to the tattoos of a woman who had just been reported missing three days earlier. 44-year-old Jacqueline Bacoli, Jackie, for short. Jackie's friend-slash- roommate, Kenneth, had contacted police because he hadn't seen her for a week or so, not since September 14th or 15th. He knew she struggled with substance use disorder and that she sometimes turned to sex work to support it. His first thought was maybe she was on a bender, out somewhere getting high, maybe trying to make some money.

But he told them it wasn't like her to vanish completely. and she usually would find a way to check in. Now, nothing much happened in the three days after taking that report from Kenneth, at least not until right before workers made their discovery. And I'm talking just hours before when another friend of Jackie's reached out to Rochester PD. Now, we're going to call this guy Neil.

And he didn't think Jackie was just missing. He was convinced that she was dead. He said that he was actually present when they went to purchase cocaine, purchase crack from a drug dealer. There is this system at this drug house where the buyer would put their money in a bucket that was lowered down from an upper window.

The dealer would reel the bucket back up, take the money, and put the drugs in, and reel it back down, and the customer would get their drugs. Apparently, during this deal, they put their money in for, I don't know, a bag or two of crack. The dealer wheeled up the bucket and mistakenly put their whole stash in the bucket

and lowered it back down. Apparently, Jackie saw that as an opportunity to score, a lot of dope. So allegedly, she took the whole stash of dope from the drug dealer. Taking drugs she hadn't paid for would have put a target on Jackie. And Neil became even more concerned when a few people had told him they'd seen Jackie walking on Lyle Avenue with an unidentified black man. Now, Lyle was near Walnut, where her body was later found, but Jackie typically stayed away from Lyle.

So Neil wondered if she had been lured away by someone who wanted revoked. for the drug theft. Given all this information, we actually brought a picture of Jackie to the scene when we responded to Walnut Street because we had an idea that it might have been her. They were right. Fingerprints confirmed Jackie's identity, and the autopsy showed just how brutal her final moments really were. Somebody put her through hell. The Emmy's report listed a multitude of injuries, abrasions and contusions to her head and neck.

Her jaw was broken. So was her neck and her wrist. Her voice box had been fractured. She had internal bleeding around her brain and her spinal cord. There were blunt force injuries all over her body on her back, her arms, her hips, her knees. She did have some minor injuries that were in stages of healing, but I think the majority of the injuries that she had were relatively fresh. Jackie's family had long feared something bad would happen to her.

In fact, when police called her brother, John Bacoli, with the news of her death, he was heartbroken, although not necessarily surprised. I mean, he'd spent years worrying about his sister. John told our reporter Nina that he and Jackie used to be close, both were athletic with a natural ear for music, and their childhood was full of joyful moments. Big family gatherings, their dad's company picnics, the kind of steady, happy memories that stay with you.

Things were pretty normal, probably all the way till high school for her. That's when John first noticed a shift. Jackie began hanging out with a different crowd. Her grades suffered, and she stopped participating in extracurricular activities. Still, lots of teens hit rough patches. And Jackie turned things around after that. She went on to hold various jobs, even ran her own restaurant for a while, and she started a family of her own.

She was married to a woman who had a couple of kids from a previous marriage. Everything seemed just fine. I was hoping by that point that, you know, she was on her way a little bit. Unfortunately, that stability didn't last. The restaurant closed. Her relationship fell apart,

and she was diagnosed with bipolar disorder. Things were starting to get better. And then by this point, she's, you know, 40 years old or late 30s. It was just going in the wrong direction. You'd hope by that point you've outgrown all that stuff and you're on the road, you know, to whatever. But it seemed to be getting worse for her.

She was in a goofy relationship with questionable people and in and out of apartments, in and out of going to my moms. By then, John and his wife had moved to Florida. And with that move came some distance, both physical and emotional. He knew his sister was using drugs. and while he tried to support her when he could, he also had to draw a line. Their mom, though, couldn't bring herself to do the same.

You're terminally ill, and you got this child that's just falling apart, and she would ask me, what's going to happen to Jackie, what's going to happen to Jackie, what's going to happen to Jackie? I think mom thought, if I catch you, you won't hit rock bottom. Their parents had split up years earlier, and while their dad wasn't especially close, close to Jackie. He had been sending her money for a while. But he had recently cut her off, and their mom, who'd been diagnosed with ALS, was declining quickly. John had just moved her into

a nursing home. So by September 2010, the last threads of Jackie's safety net had basically disappeared. Still, John tried to be there when she needed him. He'd traveled to Rochester to help her move some of her things out of their mother's empty apartment. They'd made plans to meet, but then Jackie never showed. It wasn't the first time. I wasn't surprised at all. I was probably pissed. I just thought, this pattern can't have a happy ending.

Still, he had never expected it to end like this. It was awful because you fear for it, then it happens. That doesn't make it any easier. In fact, for me, it almost created the picture. Like, oh, God, I can just imagine how bad that must have been. When John and his wife broke the news to his mom, they spared her the worst of it. I didn't want to give her too much detail. In fact, she asked at one point, well, they didn't hurt her, did they?

And I said, oh, no, she was just with the wrong crowd, and it didn't end good, and she didn't ask too many questions. Investigators, though, had plenty of them, and they were already running into serious challenges as they tried to get them answered. Police knew the scene had been unintentionally compromised by the demo crew. Plus, the condition of the house was exactly what you'd expect from a long abandoned city property. There was just crap everywhere inside the scene. Broken glass, garbage, construction debris. It's tough because you have to try and figure out what's important without knowing what happened. And the technicians had their hands full for sure.

There were a lot of items that they collected. Among those items were a condom box, a used condom, a matchbook, cigarette butts, a single hair extension, and several bottles of what police referred to as used motor oil, some of which they found on the driveway, others in the backyard, and clustered on a small landing tucked into the exterior of the house right in front of the broken window where Jackie's body had been found. Now, that window appeared to be the only possible point of entry. It's possible that she and her attacker both crawled through the window to partake in some sort of, you know, prostitution-related activity

and the attack happened inside. But it's also possible that the attack happened somewhere else since she was pushed through the window. But I think it would be difficult for somebody to lift a body and push it through a window. I suppose it's possible. She was a small person, small stature, thin. so I doubt she was, you know, wait a lot.

It just seems like it would have been too hard for somebody to do without catching the eye of somebody walking down the street. Police canvassed the neighborhood trying to find someone willing to talk to them who had seen or heard something that might help explain how Jackie ended up in that house. But that proved to be difficult. The area tended to have a more transient population,

the kind of place where people mostly kept to themselves and didn't ask questions. and the few people they did get to speak with them, each gave police small threads that formed a tangled web of street gossip, drug connections, and contradictory witness accounts. We got a lot of information that sent us in a lot of different directions. It's like trying to drink from a fire hose.

One of the first people they interviewed was also probably one of the last to see Jackie, a neighbor of hers who lived across the hall from her and Kenneth, and he had at least a somewhat familiar story to the one that they had gotten when Kenneth called to report Jackie missing. He last saw Jackie on Tuesday night, which was the 14th. She was walking southbound on Lake towards Lila Avenue

and she was wearing jeans in a bandana. And he described the pink bandana that she wears a lot, which I believe is the one that she had on her when she was found. At the time, he denied that she was with anybody. But that neighbor hadn't been alone that night. He'd been hanging out with someone else. a man who gave investigators a different version of what happened. According to him, Jackie had spent some time talking to a black man

that he didn't recognize and then walked off with him toward Lyle Avenue. He describes the male as a black guy, medium to dark skin, about 585,59, average build, and said he was wearing a blue jacket, a black baseball cap, blue jeans, had a mustache, a brush cut, and was in his late 30s or early 40s. Everywhere police turned, they were being full. fed new names, street names, nicknames, sometimes multiple aliases that all seemed to blur together. Still, one lead kept surfacing again and again, the drug theft. Jackie's friends had pointed police toward a specific crew that they believed might have been involved.

I think this was the one theory that had like some meat on the bone. It was like a lead that we could actually follow up on. Our vice squad served warrants and brought some of these people in that were. involved in that particular drug house, and, you know, they didn't offer any information relative to this crime, unfortunately. We're dealing with drug dealers who have been through the system before, and they aren't usually very truthful with us, so. So while detectives kept an eye on them, they also explored other angles, too.

You can't just hyper-focus on one thing and take it in one direction. You have to consider all options as additional leads or tips come in. While the viciousness of the attack suggested something personal, Jackie's involvement in sex work meant that there were other possibilities and other people who might have wanted to harm her. Because her pants were pulled down, obviously, it's a pretty good indicator that there was likely some sort of sexual assault. It could potentially have been like a red herring or maybe to throw us off.

Investigators hope that talking to other women who worked the same streets as Jackie might point them in the right direction. And they heard plenty of horror stories about aggressive, shady clients and close calls that could have ended just like Jackie's did. But none of those stories led to anything concrete or anything that actually connected back to Jackie's murder.

But finally, in December, after months of chasing leads that went nowhere, they got a break. Lab testing confirmed the presence of sperm, both in the sexual assault kit and on the condom found near Jackie. his body. Now, in a different kind of situation, that evidence might have closed this case. In this one, however, things were more complicated. The issue with DNA being part of this case

is that, you know, Jackie was a sex worker and she had sex with people for money, so it wouldn't be unusual to find sperm inside of sex worker's vagina. Still, this was a major development, biological evidence that at the very least had the potential to point investigators in the right direction. So they flagged it as a priority for DNA testing. Now, the condom wasn't eligible for inclusion in CODIS because although it was found near Jackie's body, it could have easily been left behind during some unrelated encounter in that abandoned house. And when it comes to CODIS, the rules are strict. Labs can't upload a DNA profile unless they are confident it belongs to the offender,

since putting the wrong person's DNA in that system risks flagging innocent people. Now, they were able to DNA sequence the vaginal sample, though. But the thing is, priority must be a relative term because for some reason, it wasn't until almost a full year later in October of 2011 that the lab analyzed that DNA and finally uploaded it to CODIS. And almost immediately, police were notified of a hit. The DNA from Jackie's vaginal and anal swabs matched a 44-year-old convicted felon, a man who we're going to call Dan. Now, he had never been on their radar before, at least not in connection to Jackie's murder.

The first time that we heard Dan's name was when we got that codice hit. Luckily, Dan wasn't difficult to locate. He was in prison on a parole violation. And as investigators dug into his background, they uncovered a criminal history that stretched back decades. days, starting in the mid-80s. Now, it was mostly property crimes like burglary, a couple of drug offenses, and one assault. I mean, it really wasn't the kind of record that screamed killer. Though, it did paint a picture of someone who had spent a lifetime crossing the line.

Dan also loosely fit the description of the man last seen walking away with Jackie the night that she disappeared, although so did a lot of guys. And when police circled back to that witness, the one who'd actually seen the man and showed him a photo lineup that included Dan. He didn't recognize anyone in that lineup. With Dan safely behind bars, investigators figured that they had some time to strengthen their case before trying to question him. So they revisited an early witness, an ex-girlfriend of Jackie's who knew the various

players in the local drug scene. She said that she thought he was someone that she had seen hanging out with these drug dealers who Jackie allegedly stole the drugs from. It wasn't the most solid ID. She told them that the guy she remembered looked younger than Dan. And as investigator Farina pointed out, it's not best practice to show someone a single photo and ask if they recognize the person.

I mean, ideally, you'd have a full photo array. But in this case, they weren't asking her to pick out a suspect. They just wanted to know if she recognized Dan at all, if he had any connection to Jackie's world. It wasn't perfect. But it gave them something that they didn't have before. A possible thread tying Dan to Jackie. While investigators looked for more evidence against Dan, other forensic results that began to come back weren't nearly as promising.

Jackie's fingernail clippings had been contaminated with the oil that she was doused in, which made testing difficult. And while the lab was able to isolate some male DNA from underneath one of her fingernails, they couldn't figure out who it belonged to. Tests on other items from the scene didn't help much either. Nothing useful came back from the matchbook, the oil jug handle, or a wooden sand. stick found near Jackie's body. The extra time they took to build this case before going and interviewing Dan wasn't paying off. In fact, it ended up backfiring in a big way. In December of 2012, the district attorney's office accidentally revealed information about the DNA hit to Democrat and Chronicle reporter John Hand. They hadn't shared.

that publicly before because their plan had been to catch Dan off guard, show him Jackie's photo, and if he denied knowing her, denied ever having sex with her, they would have caught him in a lie. But now that opportunity was gone. He'd have time to come up with a story, some reason that his DNA might be there that didn't involve murder. And that made the next news they got, which should have been good news, somewhat of a letdown. Despite the earlier issues with contamination, they did manage to get advanced DNA testing done on Jackie's fingernails, which showed DNA under one of them that belonged to Dan. You may initially think that, oh, well, that's exciting, right?

Because that might be her clawing in self-defense and getting DNA under her fingernails. But it could also be me grabbing your arm and squeezing it and getting a little something under my fingernails. So that's not a huge deal breaker either. We really wanted something beyond the DNA to hopefully hang our hats on. And we just weren't getting it. So we said at some point, we got to interview him about this DNA and figure out why his DNA was inside of Jackie. It was kind of like, let's just go do this and see what happens.

Maybe he didn't read the article. Maybe we'll catch him flat-footed, and he'll totally deny being involved with prostitutes or knowing Jackie. So we took a shot. In April of 2015, nearly five years after Jackie's murder, Investigator Farina and a colleague drove to the medium security prison where Dan was serving time for burglary and drug charges. We told him that we were working on a case

in which a girl named Jackie was hurt a few years ago. We asked if he knew anybody named Jackie, and he said no. We showed him a picture of Jackie. It was like a booking photo of her. At first he said he didn't recognize her, and then he said, you know, well, I might have seen her before. He was very noncommittal about all of his answers. He said he was doing a lot of drugs.

Things were a little cloudy in his brain, so he might recognize her. He's not really sure. He did tell police he thought she was a sex worker and that he didn't use condoms with sex workers. And I asked if he had ever been a customer of hers, and he said, no, he didn't think that he was. So again, I'm feeling hopeful, right?

I asked him if he and Jackie had ever used drugs together. And he said he wasn't sure. He said it was possible, but he didn't really remember. Again, more of that noncommittal answers. And again, I asked him if he was a client of hers or if he might have been. and he thought about it for a little bit. He said he didn't remember her, but it's possible.

That was the last thing they wanted to hear. He wasn't confessing, but he also wasn't denying things strongly enough to catch him in a lie. I asked him if he would be surprised if his DNA was in Jackie's vagina. He paused and he shook his head, and he said, no, I wouldn't be surprised,

but I don't remember having sex with her. Then came the gut punch. He admitted that he read this, article that was in the Democrat and Chronicle. So he knew about the DNA hit. However, he claimed he had never heard any gossip about Jackie ripping off a local drug dealer. He denied being associated with that particular crew, and he said he never went inside 73 Walnut Street. He's walked past it, so he was somewhat familiar with it because it was near where he lived, but he'd

never been inside. And just like that, any momentum they'd been building seemed to dissolve. While the case never officially closed, with no new leads to pursue, it quietly slipped into the background. These days, Kathy Farina is retired from law enforcement, though her theory about what happened to Jackie hasn't changed. My money, if I was a betting person, would still be on Dan, but I believe that maybe someone asked him to do it or paid him to do it. It's just a shame because I do feel like some of these witnesses haven't given us the whole truth. Is there anything that could take this case from what it is now to, like, over the finish line, besides a confession? I think any bit of information, whether it's anonymous or an actual witness that we can talk to, would be helpful at this point.

I hope somebody somewhere has heard something about this or has a tidbit of information about what happened. And even a tidbit can turn into something big. God forbid this happens to somebody else. If you come forward with information, you may help prevent this happening to somebody else. Dan's out of prison now, at least he was as of this recording. And Nina tried to interview him when she was in Rochester reporting on this case. At the time, he didn't seem to have a permanent address, so she went to the last place police had contact with him, a relative's home.

A woman there told us she wasn't sure where Dan was. Nina left her business card, but we never heard back from him. She also went to John Bacoli's house, where he and his wife Carol shared photos of Jackie. It's jarring to look at them now. snapshots of Jackie and John and their parents smiling from one year to the next, knowing how it all ended. Their mom passed away eight months after Jackie, and their dad died a couple of years ago. John is the only one of the four who are still here,

still hoping for justice for his sister, whose life started out so full of promise and ended with unimaginable cruelty. The guilty party should be held accountable. That's all I want. It's not going to help me any. It's not going to bring Jackie back. It's not going to give my mother any peace. It's not going to change anything.

But how do you just get away with murder? It's a question that haunts so many families in cases like this, where victims are often overlooked or dismissed. I think a lot of people have a tendency to write off a lot of our victims because of their occupation or their drug use or whatever the case may be. But these are all people. They're all human beings. If you know anything about the murder of Jacqueline Bacoli,

please call Rochester Police Department's major crime unit at 585-4287157 or email them at major crimes at city of Rochester.gov. You can also call crime stoppers if you want to remain anonymous at 585-423930 or submit a tip to them online. The deck is an audio chuck production with theme music by Ryan Lewis. To learn more about the deck and our advocacy work, visit the deckpodcast.com. I think Chuck would approve.