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Patricia Ann Jacobs -
Daniel MacGinnis
A man accused of killing a woman in 1988 pleaded guilty to the charge on Sept. 20, after a jury trial commenced in Judge John Stevens’ Jefferson County Criminal District Court. The accused, Daniel MacGinnis, was sentenced to 20 years in prison with credit for time served on top of a life sentence previously imposed for an unrelated 2017 firearm violation.
Originally pleading innocence in the 33-year-old cold case slaying of Patricia Ann Jacobs of Hardin County, MacGinnis, now in his 60s, was arrested for Jacobs’ murder in August 2019 and charged with the cold case homicide. Appearing in court on Sept. 20, the defendant was in a wheelchair.
Investigators with the Texas Rangers and Port Arthur Police Department joined Jefferson County District Attorney Bob Wortham in the wake of MacGinnis’ 2019 indictment, pointing to recent advances in DNA testing that led authorities to MacGinnis decades after the homicide.
Jacobs was killed, according to investigators and witnesses testifying in MacGinnis’ murder trial, on or about Oct. 5, 1988, sometime after she was last seen at the Silver Spur Tavern in Hardin County where her vehicle was still parked the following day. On Oct. 6, 1988, Jacobs’ lifeless body was pulled from the Neches River in Port Arthur, near the Rainbow Bridge, a victim of what the medical examiner performing the autopsy would determine as a “probable homicide” drowning with sustained trauma to the head and face.
According to the Texas Department of Public Safety Sex Offender Database, MacGinnis was convicted of sexual assault of a 19-year-old female in Texas in 1984, rape by force of a 35-year-old female in California in 1990, and attempt to commit aggravated kidnapping of a 39-year-old female in Texas in 2007.
When MacGinnis was arrested for Jacobs’ murder in Tyler County in 2019, the suspect was also under indictment for alleged criminal activities in his new neighborhood. Shortly after MacGinnis’ arraignment on murder charges in Jefferson County, a Tyler County court sentenced the now convicted murderer to life in prison for felony firearm violations and 99 years in prison for illegal drug possession, dating back to charges from 2017.
At sentencing for Jacobs’ murder, the victim’s daughter spoke to the man who admitted to killing her mother. At the time of her murder, Jacobs, 36, was the married mother of three children, ages 17, 16 and 12.
“We have not made peace with this and we do not forgive you,” she said on behalf of the family that has lived though this “unbearable” event. Jacobs’ daughter further commented on the judgment day that lies ahead that will not be in front of man. “You will have to answer for everything you have ever done in your miserable life. Then, and only then, will our mom rest in peace.”