Since the mid-eighties a number of homosexual men have abducted in and around the Norfolk area and their bodies dumped in the Chesapeake/Portsmouth areas. Chesapeake. Ten were strangled; the others were too decomposed to determine how they died. All but one were found nude. Many of the victims were gay, nearly all were drifters or transients and some were hustlers. Nearly all were last seen in or near gay bars in Norfolk or Portsmouth.
On March 5, 1998, Chesapeake Police Chief Richard A. Justice named Elton M. Jackson as the suspect in all 12 homicides by the "Hampton Roads Killer". Jackson, 41, was arrested in May, 1997. Jackson has only been charged with the July 1996 strangulation of Andrew "Andre" D. Smith in a case that court documents say is the most recent of the serial killings. Smith's body was found on the shoulder of a dead-end road in the Deep Creek section of Chesapeake. Court documents confirm that DNA testing showed that Jackson and Smith had sex hours before Smith's death.
The Chesapeake Police Department was the lead agency in the serial killer investigation until September, 1997, when the case was moved to Portsmouth based on evidence that the Smith killing apparently occurred in Jackson's Portsmouth home. Authorities never before named Jackson as the serial killer suspect, but also never ruled him out. FBI documents showed that a year ago the Feds believed Jackson was their killer and that they had suspected him previously. A letter to the FBI lab in August 1996 called Jackson the "best suspect in its nine years of investigation."
Andrew Smith's body was the last to be discovered. There have been no other similar slayings since Jackson's arrest in May 1997. Court documents indicate Jackson had contact with some of the other victims and the blood of one, Reginald Joyner, was found in Jackson's bed along with the blood of Smith. On August 21, 1998 a jury found Jackson guilty of the murder of Smith. "We're disappointed in the verdict, and he still maintains his innocence," said Jackson's attorney, Pamela Hampton.