Elton Manning Jackson was convicted in August 1998 of the first-degree murder of Andre Smith, a 38-year-old man who died in Chesapeake, Virginia, in July 1996. He was sentenced to life in prison, and the Court of Appeals of Virginia upheld the conviction in September 2000.
Smith's death was counted as the twelfth in a group of deaths of men around Norfolk and Chesapeake that began in 1987. Police and the FBI named Jackson the leading suspect in the eleven others; he was never charged in any of them. Court documents showed that the FBI came to regard him as its "best suspect." The prosecutor who tried him said the similarities with the other cases made sense as a pattern, but that this was "not enough to say he's a serial killer." The jury that convicted him was not told he was a suspect in the other deaths.
The Associated Press described Jackson in 1997 as a man "of Portsmouth, Va." GayToday gave his age as 43 when he was convicted in August 1998. The Virginia Parole Board recorded his age as 65 when it decided his case in April 2020, and listed him as a Black man. His date of birth, his schooling and his work are not on record.
By the summer of 1997, the deaths of men around Chesapeake had become a national story. On August 4, 1997, the Associated Press reported that activists counted five unsolved series of killings in several states, and that one of the five was in Virginia. The AP listed twelve men from the Norfolk area who had died, from 1987 on. The last name on the list was Andre Smith.
The first of the twelve was an 18-year-old who died in 1987. His mother, by then living in Cocoa, Florida, told the AP that the Virginia case had not been pursued with the same fervor as the hunt for Andrew Cunanan, the man suspected that summer in the killings of the fashion designer Gianni Versace and four other men, whose suicide had just ended that case. "What's the difference between my son and Versace?" she asked. "All the victims were seen as expendable," she said.
Police and the FBI named Jackson the leading suspect in the eleven deaths other than Smith's. No charge was filed against him in any of them, and the suspicion that linked him to them was not tested in court.
The only death that reached a courtroom was Andre Smith's. Reporting gave his full name as Andrew D. Smith and said he went by Andre. He was 38.
According to the Court of Appeals of Virginia, two people who were with Smith in the early hours of July 21, 1996, testified that he left them at about 2:30 that morning and said he would be back in fifteen minutes. He did not come back. One witness testified that Smith had said he was going to Jackson's house. Smith died in Chesapeake in July 1996.
On July 23, 1996, police officers canvassing the neighborhood spoke to Jackson. He told them he did not know Smith, though he recognized his picture from television. A detective who spoke with him described him as jittery.
On May 6, 1997, Jackson was arrested and gave a videotaped statement to Detective Whitehurst of the Chesapeake Police Department. In it he now said that Smith had visited his home on the evening of July 20, 1996. The detective also asked him about one of the three men who later testified against him.
The AP reported in August 1997 that Jackson was due to stand trial the following month. In the event the trial did not open until August 1998.
The case was a prosecution in the Circuit Court of the City of Portsmouth, with Judge James A. Cales Jr. presiding. GayToday reported that the jury that heard it was a Newport News jury. Pamela Hampton and M. J. Massie appeared for the prosecution, and Brenda Spry for the defense, according to GayToday.
The evidence against Jackson came in several layers. There was his own changing account: first that he did not know Smith, then that Smith had been at his house the evening before he disappeared. There was the testimony that Smith had said he was going to Jackson's house. And there was forensic evidence, which the appeals court said linked Smith and Jackson.
The most contested evidence came from three other men. Each testified about a separate encounter with Jackson, in May 1995, in the summer of 1995 and on December 11, 1996, that he described as violent. Each got away. Jackson claimed that one of the men had invented his story after the two had fallen out. The defense objected that the three encounters were too unlike Smith's death to be put before the jury, but Judge Cales admitted the testimony.
Jackson testified in his own defense. He told the jury that Smith had been at his home on July 20, 1996, that he had given him twenty dollars, and that Smith had left at about 10 p.m. On his account, Smith left alive.
"No one deserves to die like Andre Smith died," Hampton told the jurors, according to GayToday.
On August 21, 1998, the jury convicted Jackson of first-degree murder, and then turned to the sentence. Spry asked the jurors for the minimum of 20 years. After about 20 more minutes of deliberation, GayToday reported, they recommended the maximum, life in prison.
On October 27, 1998, Jackson was formally sentenced to life imprisonment.
The jurors had not been told that Jackson was a suspect in other deaths. Speaking after the verdict, Massie said the similarities between Smith's death and the eleven other deaths "make sense" as a pattern pointing to Jackson, but added that this was "not enough to say he's a serial killer." Law enforcement officials told GayToday that the evidence was insufficient to convict him of any of the earlier deaths, though they said he had known some of the men.
The FBI and the state police had first profiled the person responsible for Andre Smith's death as a white man. Jackson is Black. GayToday reported that later court documents showed the FBI had changed its view and had come to consider Jackson the "best suspect."
Jackson appealed to the Court of Appeals of Virginia, represented by Dianne G. Ringer, a senior assistant public defender. Assistant Attorney General Eugene Murphy argued for the Commonwealth, and Attorney General Mark L. Earley was also listed for the Commonwealth. The case was argued in Chesapeake before Judges Willis, Lemons and Frank. Lemons took part before his investiture as a justice of the Supreme Court of Virginia.
The appeal raised three points.
The first was the testimony of the three men. Jackson argued that their encounters were too different from Smith's death to show a common method, and that the physical evidence in Smith's death differed from what the three men described. The court was not persuaded. Under the rule set out by the Supreme Court of Virginia in Spencer v. Commonwealth (1990), evidence of other crimes may be admitted to prove a fact in issue, such as the identity of the perpetrator, if its value outweighs the unfair prejudice it causes. The panel found what it called "significant similarities" between the three encounters and Smith's death, enough to support an inference that the same man was involved, and held that the trial judge had not abused his discretion in letting the jury hear them. The weighing of value against prejudice, the court noted, will not be disturbed on appeal "in the absence of a clear abuse."
The second point was the part of Jackson's videotaped statement in which the detective asked about one of the three men. Jackson argued it should have been excluded for the same reasons as that man's testimony. The Commonwealth answered that the objection had not been properly preserved under the court's Rule 5A:18. The panel rejected that procedural argument and decided the point on its merits: the statement was relevant because it corroborated testimony the jury was entitled to hear.
The third point was the testimony that Smith had said he was going to Jackson's house. The trial judge had treated the statement as hearsay but admitted it to show Smith's state of mind. The appeals court assumed, without deciding, that admitting it was an error, and held that any error was harmless. Jackson had himself said that Smith had been to his home, so the statement "adds nothing to the evidence already before the trier of fact."
On September 5, 2000, in a memorandum opinion written by Judge Robert P. Frank and not designated for publication, the court affirmed the conviction.
Jackson entered the Virginia prison system as inmate number 1116076. In April 2020, when he was 65, he applied for geriatric release. The Virginia Parole Board turned him down on April 30, 2020, and certified the decision the next day. The board gave two reasons: that releasing him would diminish the seriousness of the crime, and the serious nature and circumstances of the offense. Its published record lists the offense as first-degree homicide.
The link between Jackson and the eleven other deaths rests on police and FBI suspicion and a prosecutor's view of a pattern. None of it was put to a jury, and no charge was filed in any of those cases. The prosecutor who convicted him in the Smith case said publicly that the pattern alone did not make him a serial killer.
The AP's 1997 list of the twelve men dated the series from 1987 to 1994, although Smith, the twelfth man on the list, died in 1996. GayToday reported the jury as a Newport News jury, while the appeal record describes the case as a judgment of the Circuit Court of the City of Portsmouth.
1987: An 18-year-old dies in the Norfolk and Chesapeake area, the first of the twelve deaths later counted together.
From 1987: Eleven men die in the Norfolk and Chesapeake area over about a decade; police and the FBI later name Jackson the leading suspect. He is never charged in any of the deaths.
1995: Two men later testify about encounters with Jackson that year.
July 21, 1996: Andre Smith, 38, leaves companions in the early hours, saying he will be back in fifteen minutes.
July 23, 1996: Police canvassing the neighborhood speak to Jackson, who says he did not know Smith.
December 11, 1996: A third man later testifies about an encounter with Jackson that day.
May 6, 1997: Jackson is arrested and gives a videotaped statement to a Chesapeake detective.
August 4, 1997: The Associated Press reports that activists count five unsolved series of killings in the United States, one of them in Virginia.
August 21, 1998: A jury convicts Jackson of the first-degree murder of Andre Smith and recommends life in prison.
October 27, 1998: Jackson is sentenced to life imprisonment.
September 5, 2000: The Court of Appeals of Virginia affirms the conviction.
April 30, 2020: The Virginia Parole Board denies Jackson geriatric release.