Her stepfather was found dead in a barrel at Lake Mead. She’s elated.
BULLHEAD CITY, Ariz.
Sundae Schor is relieved that her stepfather was shot in the head, stuffed in a barrel and dumped into Lake Mead.
“I’ve been waiting to hear this news my whole life, ever since I was hiding in my closet from the guy who would come and find me in the closet and rape me,” Schor said of Edward Lelburian Jackson upon learning of his death from a Las Vegas Review-Journal reporter.
Jackson’s recent identification answered years of speculation about a decades-old murder first discovered in May 2022. But it also brought much-needed closure to Schor, 77, who said Jackson often sexually assaulted her as a child.
Schor believes Jackson was alive as late as 1987, the year of her grandmother’s funeral. She said a family member had mentioned Jackson’s intention to attend. His existence then would challenge the notion that he died in the early ’80s, as Las Vegas police have speculated.
The clothes Jackson was found in — a dirty Idle Time button-down, jeans and Kmart sneakers, as well as a digital Timex watch — were unlike anything Schor said she ever saw him wear. He trended toward flashier outfits that he saw as sharp and she viewed as corny, but Schor added he could have changed his style in the years after they last saw each other.
Schor has imagined Jackson’s life since he left hers. Maybe he fled to Mexico, abused other children or got himself killed, she has considered.
Jackson’s fate shocked Schor, but she isn’t surprised. To her, he had it coming.
“The guy made me so paranoid and scared, and the fear that I had with him around was so intense,” Schor said. “I thought, maybe something will happen to him someday that’ll make him feel this way.”
‘Shot and left out in the desert’
Jackson, born and raised in Arkansas, entered Schor’s life when she was 3 by marrying her mother, Mauna Ross. Along with her brother, John Dorn III, the four lived in Long Beach, California, through most of the ’50s and ’60s.
Jackson was a self-employed painting contractor who sold bomb shelters on the side, and Ross was a prison guard on Terminal Island in Los Angeles County. Jackson earned the nickname “Eldorado Ed” among his peers for the classy Cadillacs he drove, though Schor said he worked at car dealerships just long enough to get the employee discount.
Schor described Jackson, a heavyweight boxer, as an egotistical bully unafraid to lie — the type of guy who would come home expecting a glass of iced tea in his hand before he sat in his chair.
“He was king of the house,” Schor said, and he made his painters “treat him like he was the boss.”
Even as a child, Schor said, she remembered seedy figures in her stepfather’s circle. Shady men would visit her home when Ross was at work. Conversations hushed when they sensed Schor was listening. The girl couldn’t understand their talks but felt the group was up to no good.
Her descriptions conjure up scenes from old Mafia films. Schor likened her stepfather’s associates to the “Ocean’s Eleven” heist crew. But while his friends were “mobbish,” Schor thinks it more likely that Jackson was hanging with biker gang members than made men.
Older photos of Jackson show an unassuming but burly man with slicked dark hair and a clean-shaven square jaw. Schor said Jackson once pressed her surfer boyfriend on why he had a beard. The surfer flippantly responded, “We get all the girls,” Schor recalled.
Jackson abruptly abandoned his family around 1969, Schor said, leaving behind only a note explaining that his departure was because of Ross’ “crying and whining.”
Schor had seen him only a handful of times since but heard eerie accounts of his life.
Holly Schkoda, a childhood neighbor of Schor’s, said Jackson’s whereabouts were brought up at a party in December 2006.
“Oh yeah, well, you know he was shot,” one of his former associates, who since has died, said matter-of-factly, according to Schkoda.
Schkoda discussed the memory during a phone interview on Wednesday.
“He had heard — where, I have no idea — but that he had been shot and left out in the desert,” she said.
Investigators believe Jackson was in his mid-to-late 50s when he died.
The last time Schor saw Jackson was in Sacramento, California, at her second wedding in 1974. Jackson was not invited by the bride, who said his presence nearly made her cancel the ceremony.
A photo from the day shows Jackson wearing rose-tinted glasses and a white jacket over a red dagger-collared shirt, partly unbuttoned to reveal his chest. His hair was bleached blond, and his beard was full.
Sunken memories
Beneath Jackson’s bravado, Schor said her stepfather was a deeply perverted man.
Schor said Jackson sexually assaulted her when her mother was at work, beginning when she was 5 or 6 and stopping when she was around 15.
“I think I got about too old for him then,” she said.
She remembered denying her stepfather’s requests to bring her schoolgirl friends home with her.
Schor said Jackson scared her into not revealing the assaults. Doing so, he said, would cause her mother to go to prison for killing him while Schor and her brother would be separated by foster care, she recalled.
Fear of familial implosion caused Schor to stay silent, she said, adding that she never reported the abuse to the police.
When her mother or aunt asked if Jackson was touching her, “no” was always Schor’s response. It wasn’t until around her grandmother’s 1987 funeral that she told any family about how he abused her.
Despite the denials, Jackson’s harm lingered.
Schor’s romantic relationships with men, especially muscular ones, often fizzled out. Long ago, hiding from Jackson in the closet, she vowed never to have kids.
“I don’t want any child to feel the way that I feel,” Schor remembered thinking.
When she married for the first time, Schor changed her name to Sundae from Beth.
“I would always hear his voice saying my name, and it would remind me of him,” she said of her birth name.
As she has approached old age, Schor said she still carried the weight of uncertainty, not knowing if Jackson would one day come knocking at her doorstep. She feared he could return from the grave she dug for him in her mind. That fear has led Schor to search Jackson’s name online every few years for an obituary.
“I’d go, ‘Oh, I should look up and see if anybody’s murdered this guy yet,’” she said.
Schor has tried not to dwell on Jackson’s abuse, to not let it define her.
Few of Jackson’s close relatives are alive today. His sister has died, and Schor’s mother and brother died in 2012 and 1991, respectively, she said. Jackson’s remaining relatives did not respond to Review-Journal inquiries about his death.
Schor regrets not reporting Jackson’s assaults to her family or the authorities. She feels her mother would have blamed herself and shot Jackson dead if she had discovered it.
“My whole big plan in my life was not to let my mom find out so that she wouldn’t feel horrible because there was no point in ruining her,” she said.
She said police have never contacted her about the homicide. The Metropolitan Police Department did not respond to a request for comment on Wednesday.
Schor has started her own investigation into her stepfather’s background and his death since she learned of it on Sunday, reconnecting with acquaintances such as Schkoda and tapping into her past experience as a private detective.
She can’t imagine any of her relatives killing him.
Schor now resides in a Bullhead City, Arizona condo along the Colorado River, downstream from the lakebed where her stepfather’s corpse rested for decades. The answer to why and how he got there may rest for decades more.
On Schor’s walls, her handpainted canvases are mounted and offer splashes of color.
One hangs by the door. Pointy mountains flank a turbulent cove as the bright sun peeks through clouds that attempt to shroud it, turning them vibrant purples and oranges. It is signed with the name Schor gave herself.
The knock she always feared will never come.
She’s glad he’s gone.
Contact Spencer Levering at slevering@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0253.
