Elton Manning Jackson was born in Norfolk, Virginia in 1956 and lived in Chesapeake. The Virginia press called him the Hampton Roads Killer, after the region.
Between 1987 and 1996 twelve gay and bisexual men were strangled in the Hampton Roads area and their bodies left in fields and beside roads. All but one were found naked; nine were confirmed strangled and the rest were too decomposed for a cause of death to be established. Every one of them had last been seen at a gay bar in Norfolk or Portsmouth.
The twelve were Charles F. Smith, eighteen, found in Chesapeake on July 7, 1987, wearing only jeans and tennis shoes; Joseph Alex Ray, from Alabama, found near Military Highway and Interstate 64 on July 19, 1988; Stacey Reneau, twenty-one, a Navy veteran from Portsmouth, found in Deep Creek on January 7, 1989; John W. Ross Jr., thirty-seven, an ironworker, found in a ditch near Fentress Naval Airfield on January 21, 1989; Billy Lee Dixon, thirty-two, found beside a private road on July 2, 1992; Reginald Keith Joyner, thirty-two, found in a ditch in Suffolk on March 7, 1993; Raymond Allen Bostick, twenty-seven, found in Deep Creek on June 6, 1993; Robert A. Neal, twenty-four, found in Bowers Hill on September 8, 1993; Garland L. Taylor Jr., twenty-four, found in Suffolk on September 17, 1994; Samuel Eugene Aliff, thirty-one, a drifter who had called his family from California to say he was coming home to see his five-year-old son, found in a cul-de-sac on May 14, 1995; Jesse J. Spencer Jr., thirty, found in a ditch in Chesapeake on January 28, 1996; and Andrew D. "Andre" Smith, thirty-eight, found near Deep Creek on July 22, 1996.
For years almost nothing happened. By 1997 the local gay community was protesting the lack of police attention, and Shirley Lesser of Virginians for Justice put the reason plainly: there was no public outcry to solve gay murders, and police resources follow public pressure. Police later said the difficulty had been establishing that the deaths were connected at all.
He was arrested on May 6, 1997 for the murder of Andrew D. "Andre" Smith, thirty-eight, the most recent of the twelve, whose body had been found on July 22, 1996 near a dirt road in Chesapeake. He was charged with that one killing and tried for that one killing.
The case rested largely on his own account. He gave Chesapeake police a videotaped statement saying Smith had visited his home on the evening of July 20 and that the two of them had had a good time; at trial he testified that he had had sex with Smith and given him twenty dollars. The medical examiner put the time of death between eighteen and forty-eight hours before the body was found. A jury convicted him on August 21, 1998, deliberating about twenty minutes more before recommending the maximum, and Judge James A. Cales Jr. imposed life imprisonment.
Three men who survived encounters with him testified. Willie C. Simpson, who lived with him in 1995, said Jackson tried to loop a strap around his neck during sex in his parked truck that October; he broke free and ran into the woods. Tommy Anderson Jr., nineteen, said that in May 1995 Jackson pressed a forearm to his throat and later, at the spot where Smith's body would be found a year afterward, came at him from behind with a strap until he kicked free and fled. Kevin Michael Benton, twenty-nine, said that on December 11, 1996, with his hands tied at Jackson's house, he saw Jackson coming at him with a strap and fought him off. Jackson admitted the encounters with Simpson and Benton, denied the violence, and denied knowing Anderson.
He appealed on three evidentiary grounds: that three witnesses should not have been allowed to describe their own sexual encounters with him, that part of his statement about an encounter with Kevin Benton should have been excluded, and that a witness should not have been allowed to repeat what Smith had said to him. The Court of Appeals of Virginia affirmed on September 5, 2000, in an opinion not designated for publication.
He was never tried for the other eleven. The Chesapeake police chief told reporters after the verdict that Jackson was responsible for all twelve, and FBI documents released later showed the Bureau had believed he was the Hampton Roads killer as early as 1996. But contemporaneous reporting noted there was virtually no solid evidence implicating him in any of the eleven, and prosecutors gave no indication of intending to seek an indictment in any of them. He has denied killing anyone.
No further killings of the same kind were found in the area after his arrest. That is the strongest thing said for the attribution, and it has never been tested in a court.