Accused killer says: 'I'm not God ... I'm the man of the house.' Conley says girlfriend cheated with 'bully;' kids turning into 'monsters'

David Conley, who is accused of killing six children and two adults, was interviewed in jail Wednesday. David Conley, who is accused of killing six children and two adults, was interviewed in jail Wednesday. Photo: Ken Ellis Photo: Ken Ellis Image 1 of / 111 Caption Close Accused killer says: 'I'm not God ... I'm the man of the house.' 1 / 111 Back to Gallery

David Conley walked into the visiting room on the sixth floor of the Harris County Jail Wednesday afternoon, sat down by a phone on his side of a plastic glass divider and calmly recounted his tumultuous relationship with the woman he is accused of fatally shooting, along with her common-law husband and six children.

It has been four days since authorities arrested the 48-year-old man at his ex-girlfriend's northwest Harris County home. Authorities say he slipped through an unlocked window and shot 40-year-old Valerie Jackson, Dwayne Jackson and the children, one by one in the head.

Showing little emotion, Conley refused to talk about the grisly crimes he's accused of committing, citing his lawyer's advice. Instead, he dwelled on his relationship with Valerie Jackson, casting himself as the partner of a woman who constantly cheated on him with a "bully" and who failed to properly raise her children.

Conley said he met Jackson in 1999 through a dating service, shortly after he had finished serving a stint in jail for unauthorized use of a motor vehicle.

"I liked her. I thought she was OK. ... I was trying to do the right thing in life," said Conley, a short, stocky man with a partially shaved head and a newly trimmed goatee, dressed in the yellow jumpsuit worn by those accused of capital murder.

But tensions soon shivered through the relationship several weeks after they met, he said, when she appeared to be high on crack cocaine.

Conley and Jackson had their first child, a daughter, about a year later in Houston, he said. Jackson grew up in LaCrosse, Wis. It is not clear when she first came to Houston.

Domestic violence case

A short time after their daughter was born, a few weeks before Christmas in 2000, Conley was arrested and charged in a domestic violence case after Jackson told police he shoved her onto a bed at her Houston apartment and straddled her with a knife to her throat.

Conley said he was not going back to prison because of her, a Houston police officer wrote in his report at the time. Jackson told police he cut her neck and punched her in the face and then wrapped a cord about her baby's neck. Conley was sentenced to five years in prison for these attacks, records show.

After he was released, his young daughter, at her mother's behest, asked Conley to come back and resume his relationship with Jackson, he said.

Valerie Jackson went back and forth between Conley and a man named Dwayne Jackson, a long-time family friend, said her brother Earl Yanske. Her first two children were with Conley, then she had five with Jackson.

"I never tried to hold her back ... but then she would always try to run off and be with him," Conley said of Jackson.

During a half-hour interview with the Houston Chronicle, Conley said Dwayne Jackson's presence was a problem.

"He's a demon. He was a bad person. He (was) not on God's side," Conley said. "He threw a brick through my van window. He never bought the kids nothing."

Disciplining the kids

Earlier this month, Conley said, he decided to leave the Harris County home he had been sharing with Valerie Jackson. He was angry because she wasn't disciplining the kids, he said, his voice rising. She was feeding them spoiled food, he said. They were wild and constantly disrespectful, he said, turning into "monsters." Valerie put "bogus cases" on him, he said.

"I understand how it looks, but it's not like that," he said, hunched over and shackled. "The Bible says 'Thou shall respect your mother and father or your days shall be short,'" he said. "I'm not God, but you know, then, I'm the man of the house."

The children were "very intelligent," but constantly disobedient and sassy, he said. The problems extended to Nathaniel, slain on Saturday, whom authorities have identified as his second child with Jackson.

Conley said he believed that he wasn't Nathaniel's father, explaining that he had tried have a paternity test performed, but Valerie never allowed it.

"I loved him like my own son, I wouldn't turn my back on him ... but he had a discipline problem," Conley said.

In August 2008, Valerie Jackson had filed a "paternity acknowledgement" suit in La Crosse County Circuit Court, which listed Conley as a respondent. It's unclear why she filed the suit in Wisconsin, or whether it was resolved. Documents weren't immediately available online from the Wisconsin court system.

"They never cleaned without me having to fuss at them," he said of the children. "They also argued with Valerie. ... She was letting them run around wild - like they were gangsters and stuff."

Was a 'demon'

He said another reason he left Jackson was because she was cheating on him with Dwayne Jackson, who he said was a "demon."

"She was still seeing Dwayne. ...," he said. "She would argue about going to do something (and leave). That's how I knew."

After their relationship reached a breaking point this month and Conley left, he said, he went to a motel for three days before he "found himself homeless." He called Valerie to tell her was going to return to the house. She did not tell him Dwayne Jackson had moved back in, he said. It was a situation he found annoying, he said.

"I had been watching her movements. ...," he said. "I knew by her actions she would do stuff like that."

Asked what he would tell Valerie Jackson's mother - who called the Harris County Sheriff's Office on Saturday from Minnesota after she could not contact her daughter - Conley was unrepentant. "She stole my kid years ago and never gave her back," he said of Valerie Jackson's mother, who still has custody of the child. Jackson and her mother, he said, "were against me."

Lomi Kriel, Brian Rogers and Jim Pinkerton contributed.