A tale of two Jacksons who met untimely ends

There is already a stone monument in Chicago emblazoned with the name "Jackson."

However, you don't need a ticket to mourn this Jackson. You can just walk up to the Chicago Police Memorial near Soldier Field, look for the name "Erwin Jackson" and say a quick prayer in remembrance.

On April 24, 1969, when Officer Erwin Jackson was killed in the line of duty, there was no global weeping. A million people didn't try to get tickets for his wake, unlike the solemn ceremony being held tomorrow in a basketball arena for the "King of Pop."

Erwin Jackson, CPD badge number 12433, wasn't the king of anything on that spring day in '69. He was just a guy in uniform, riding the West side in a radio car, responding to a routine call.

"Man with a gun," were the four words that dispatched patrolman Jackson to his final call. He and his partner arrived at 3320 W. Roosevelt Road and walked into the tavern where the guy with the gun was waving it at bar patrons.

Jackson, 33, and his fellow cops tried to talk the guy into dropping the weapon, according to the few reports on the incident from 40 years ago. When the gunman refused to comply, the officers attempted to disarm him.

In the struggle, three shots went off. Two of them hit the gunman. One struck Officer Jackson in the chest. These were the days before cops were required to wear bulletproof vests.

Jackson died at Cook County Hospital, leaving a wife and two children.

Thirty miles away, around the south end of Lake Michigan in Gary, Ind., another child named Jackson was just getting started on an unusual life and career.

Michael Jackson was only 11 years old that day when Officer Jackson was shot and killed. Maybe the Jacksons of Gary, Ind., heard about it on the news and wondered if they were related to the dead cop. More likely though, the news was lost in the excitement of the family's Motown contract that was being signed.

Just as Officer Erwin Jackson had no way to know that the man with a gun in that bar would be his last call, 11-year-old Michael Jackson was no prophet, able to see how his life would end four decades later.

Eventually though, Michael Jackson and those close to him were seers of the future and knew that his behavior would bring an early end to his life.

At least 15 years ago, according to sources very familiar with the singer's behavior, he was warned that continued substance abuse would lead to his death.

As early as 1993, Jackson's entourage traveled with a steamer trunk that contained a virtual operating room of anesthesia and other prescription drugs, report former concert tour employees.

An article in Vanity Fair magazine several years ago stated that the black suitcase contained an array of "pre-loaded syringes and IV bags and a collapsible IV pole." The article cited Jackson's year's-old prescription drug problem and described how he was receiving injections from numerous doctors.

In the late 1990s, Jackson was already on a deathly spiral from drug abuse. He was unable to fall asleep and checked into a hospital where he was administered anesthesia to get some rest. That may have been the beginning of the end.

A Jackson friend told Vanity Fair that in December 2001 the star's brothers and sister attempted an intervention to get him some help. Michael "told them to leave him alone," the friend recalled. Jackson said "Look, I'll be dead in a year anyway."

He was wrong, but only in the timing. Michael Jackson lasted another 8 years, traveling with a mini-clinic, according to CNN, and an anesthesiologist who would "take him down at night" and then "bring him back up in the morning."

As Michael Jackson is remembered and mourned and his life rehashed and retold countless times the next 48 hours, I'll be thinking of a different Jackson.

Erwin Jackson, a Chicago cop who died facing reality, not trying to escape from it at the end of a dripping needle.

• Chuck Goudie, whose column appears each Monday, is the chief investigative reporter at ABC7 News in Chicago. The views in this column are his own and not those of WLS-TV. He can be reached by e-mail at chuckgoudie@gmail.com and followed at twitter.com/ChuckGoudie.