A nude body found on the side of a dead-end road in the Deep Creek area of Chesapeake, Virginia, turned out to be 38-year-old Andrew D. Andre Smith of Portsmouth. A Virginia Power worker discovered the scene on Yadkin Road near the intersection of Interstate 64 and George Washington Highway in the summer of 1996. Police identified Smith from fingerprints on file; an autopsy confirmed he had been strangled.

Investigators noted unsettling similarities between Smith’s death and eleven other unsolved murders in the Hampton Roads area dating back to 1987 — many victims found nude in rural Chesapeake locations, strangled and left in conspicuous places — and treated Smith as a possible twelfth victim in that series. Evidence developed linking Elton M. Jackson to sexual activity with Smith at Jackson’s Portsmouth home before Smith was strangled and his body dumped on the dirt road; Jackson was charged in Smith’s murder. In August 1998 a jury found Elton M. Jackson guilty and recommended a life sentence.

Did anyone in the Portsmouth or Deep Creek area know Andrew Smith, his routines, or who he spent time with in 1996?