Jason Whitely's update

CROSBY – Catherine Jacobson never knew she would live long enough to see this day.

“No I really didn’t,” said the 81-year-old widow. “It was just such a surprise!”

Her husband Leonard was running the pro shop at Indian Shores Golf Club near Crosby on a sunny afternoon in August 1997 when he was brutally murdered inside.

“This whole side of his head was beaten and dented,” Jacobson remembered about her husband’s body referring to the left side of her own skull. “Then they started here,” she continued motioning to her neck, “Then four fingers were gone.”

She said detectives originally surmised Jacobson’s fingers were cut off as he held his hands up to protect his face.

11 News

Leonard Jacobson (L) and Frank Daniel Johnson (R)

But with little evidence and no witnesses, the 1997 murder case went cold. No one was arrested, until now.

An anonymous tip in April led Harris County Sheriff’s deputies to 44-year-old Frank Daniel Johnson, a golfer himself.

“He went to the golf course that day to try to hook up with some other golfers,” Sheriff Tommy Thomas explained, “and was hanging around the pro shop and was there evidently for some period of time when Mr. Jacobson asked him ‘What are you doing.’ Or ‘Are you going to do anything or just hang around’ or whatever.”

Thomas said Johnson took offense. Investigators believe he confessed to going out to his car, retrieving a ratchet and then beating 75-year-old Jacobson to death.

Investigators said partial fingerprints found at the scene matched Johnson’s.

He is already locked up at the Harris County jail charged with breaking into his ex-wife’s house and beating her with a pipe wrench. After confessing to Jacobson’s killing, Johnson now faces a murder charge.

“Well, no I don’t really forgive him. I want him to do some time,” Catherine Jacobson told KHOU. “I want him to go to prison.”

It took ten years to bring closure to this crime and peace to an 81-year-old widow.

The confessed killer suggested to detectives he would have admitted to the murder years earlier but no one ever asked.