A Houston man facing trespassing charges has filed property claims on roughly a dozen homes he does not own, including two tied to high-profile killings, and when confronted on camera, offered a Bible verse instead of answers.
Matthew Jamal Jackson appeared in a Houston court on trespassing and criminal mischief charges related to a separate property, but the court appearance was the least of his legal problems. ABC13 reported that Jackson has filed deed claims on approximately a dozen properties across the Houston area, using multiple companies including one called Save A Life Homes LLC. Two of those properties are connected to murders that shook the city.
The first: a home in Houston's River Oaks area where police said Matthew Mitchell killed restaurateur Thy Mitchell, the owner of Traveler's Table, and then took his own life in May. Just days after that murder-suicide, Jackson filed a deed of adverse possession on the property. The second: a home in the Heights neighborhood where Lee Gilley is accused of killing his wife. Gilley reportedly cut off his ankle monitor and fled to Italy. Jackson filed paperwork earlier this year seeking to claim that property too.
In both cases, families already devastated by violence found a stranger laying legal claim to their loved ones' homes.
Attorney Dennis McQueen, who reviewed Jackson's filings for ABC13, did not mince words about what the paperwork actually represents.
"Because he's filing clearly fraudulent deeds. They're not forged, but they're fraudulent because he has no ownership interest in the property; he's deeding it from his own company to his own company, and it's clear he has no interest in the property."
McQueen explained the practical damage in plain terms. Even a fraudulent deed filing places what attorneys call a "cloud on the title", a legal defect that prevents the rightful owner or their heirs from selling, transferring, or inheriting the property without first going to court to clear it up.
"In this case it's like if I signed a deed from me to me for your house. Oh, that gets me nowhere, except it does put a cloud on the title, or whomever the owner is. In this case, the estate will have to take some type of action to clean that up."
That legal burden falls squarely on the victims' families, people already dealing with grief, estate proceedings, and in the Gilley case, an accused killer who fled the country. Jackson's filings force them to hire lawyers and petition courts just to reclaim what was already theirs.
The damage is not hypothetical. ABC13 spoke with the son of a deceased man who said he has been unable to inherit his father's house because Jackson has tied the property up in legal filings. The son's name was not disclosed, and the specific property was not identified, but the situation illustrates how a few pages of paperwork, filed by someone with no legitimate ownership interest, can freeze a family out of its own inheritance.
Jackson has also filed several lawsuits, including one in federal court, seeking to claim ownership of multiple homes and apartments. The status of those suits remains unclear. At the Heights property connected to the Gilley case, authorities said Jackson went further than paperwork: he allegedly changed the locks and installed cameras at the home.
In an era when businesses face scrutiny for far lesser deceptions, the alleged scheme here targets something far more personal than consumer trust, it targets grieving families' homes.
When ABC13 caught up with Jackson outside the courthouse, he did not deny the filings. He did not explain them. He offered fragments.
Asked what he does, Jackson said: "I provide housing to homeless VA veterans." Pressed on how he provides housing in homes he does not own, he shortened his answer: "I provide housing." Asked directly, "In houses you don't own?", Jackson replied: "No comment."
Questions about targeting families who had suffered violent tragedies drew the same two-word answer. Questions about the trespassing charges, the criminal mischief charges, and the deed filings all received: "No comment."
His only other remark was a line of scripture: "There's no condemnation for those in Christ Jesus."
Whatever Jackson's spiritual convictions, they did not extend to answering straightforward questions about why he filed legal claims on dead people's homes.
Jackson currently faces charges for trespassing and criminal mischief tied to a separate, unidentified property. Those are the only charges on the books so far. But law enforcement is investigating the broader pattern of deed filings, and ABC13 reported that additional criminal charges remain possible.
Thy Mitchell's family members are in contact with law enforcement regarding Jackson's attempted claim on the River Oaks-area property. Which specific agency or agencies are running the investigation has not been disclosed.
The gap between what Jackson has allegedly done and what he has been charged with so far is worth noting. Filing fraudulent deeds on roughly a dozen properties, allegedly changing locks and installing surveillance equipment on at least one, and launching federal lawsuits to seize homes from estates, all of that, and the only charges to date involve trespassing and criminal mischief on a single separate property.
Property fraud of this kind thrives in the cracks of a system where filing a deed is cheap and easy, but cleaning up a fraudulent one costs the victim time, money, and legal fees. It is a problem that extends well beyond Houston. Across the country, vacant or transitioning properties can become targets for opportunists who exploit gaps in oversight.
For readers unfamiliar with the term, adverse possession is a legal doctrine that allows someone to claim ownership of property they have openly occupied and maintained for an extended period, typically years, when the actual owner has abandoned it or failed to assert their rights. It is not a shortcut. It is not a paperwork trick. And it does not apply to homes where the owner died weeks earlier in a violent crime.
What Jackson allegedly did, filing a deed of adverse possession days after a murder-suicide, does not meet any recognized standard for such a claim. As McQueen noted, the filings are not forged; they are simply fraudulent, because Jackson has no ownership interest in the properties. The legal system recorded them anyway, and now the families have to spend their own resources undoing the damage.
That is the core failure here. A man with no legitimate claim can walk into a county office, file a piece of paper, and saddle a grieving family with a legal mess, and the system processes it without a second look. The burden of proof and the cost of correction fall entirely on the people who already owned the property.
In a broader sense, it reflects the same kind of institutional gap that affects communities nationwide, from neighborhoods losing anchor businesses to families losing homes, the people who play by the rules absorb the consequences when the system fails to stop those who do not.
Several important details remain unclear. The full list of approximately a dozen properties Jackson targeted has not been published. The names of his other shell companies beyond Save A Life Homes LLC have not been disclosed. The status of his federal lawsuit and other legal actions is unknown. Whether Jackson has prior convictions for similar conduct has not been reported.
And the most basic question, why the system allowed these filings to proceed without any verification of ownership, has not been answered by any official. Property recording offices in most jurisdictions operate on a ministerial basis: they record what is submitted. That is how the system is designed. But when someone exploits that design to prey on murder victims' families, the design itself becomes part of the problem.
The retail world has its own version of this dynamic. When major companies invest hundreds of millions in legitimate property improvements, they navigate layers of regulation and oversight. A man filing fraudulent deeds on dead people's homes apparently faces fewer hurdles.
Jackson quoted Romans 8:1 when the cameras were rolling. The families whose homes he targeted are still waiting for something more useful, like accountability.