In the summer of 1996, a disturbing discovery on a remote road in Chesapeake, Virginia, brought a long-running series of fears to a grim conclusion. Andrew D. "Andre" Smith, a 38-year-old Black man from the neighboring city of Portsmouth, was found dead, his life cut short by violence that had haunted the Hampton Roads area for nearly a decade. While details about his personal life, family, and work are not widely known, his death became the final and pivotal chapter in a string of unsolved murders, ultimately leading to the capture of a killer.
On the morning of Monday, July 22, 1996, a Virginia Power employee traveling along Yadkin Road, a dead-end street in the Deep Creek area near Interstate 64, stumbled upon a harrowing scene. The nude body of a man was lying on the grassy shoulder of the road. Chesapeake Police were called, and investigators quickly identified the man as Andrew Smith through fingerprints on file. An autopsy later confirmed the cause of death was ligature strangulation. There were no other obvious signs of trauma on his body.
Detectives immediately recognized unsettling parallels between Smith's murder and at least eleven other unsolved homicides that had plagued the region since 1987. The victims, mostly men, were often found nude in isolated, rural areas of Chesapeake and surrounding cities, many of them also strangled. This pattern led investigators to suspect that Smith was the twelfth victim of a serial killer who preyed on men, some of whom were gay or connected to the local nightlife. The series of killings had cast a shadow over the community, particularly as the cases remained unsolved for years.
The investigation into Andrew Smith's death, led by the Chesapeake Police Department, soon focused on a Portsmouth resident named Elton M. Jackson. According to friends of Smith, in the early morning hours of July 21, he had left, saying he was going to Jackson's house to get some money. He told one friend he would be back in fifteen minutes, but he was never seen alive again. When first questioned, Jackson denied knowing Smith, but he later admitted they were acquainted and had engaged in consensual sexual activity at his home.
The forensic evidence gathered by investigators proved crucial. A bloodstain on Jackson's mattress was a DNA match to Andrew Smith. Furthermore, Jackson's DNA was recovered from Smith's body, and DNA from Smith was found on cigarette butts in Jackson's car. This physical evidence directly contradicted Jackson's initial statements and placed Smith in his home shortly before his death. Evidence presented at trial suggested Jackson kept Smith's body for at least eight hours before abandoning it on the desolate stretch of Yadkin Road.
In May 1997, Elton M. Jackson was arrested and indicted by a grand jury for the first-degree murder of Andrew Smith. While the FBI and local authorities considered him the prime suspect in the eleven other related homicides, he was formally charged only with Smith's murder. His trial began in August 1998. Jackson took the stand in his own defense, testifying that he was innocent and had lied to police out of fear, stating, "I'm black. I'm gay. (Andre) and I had a nice time that weekend, and then he turns up dead."
On August 21, 1998, after five hours of deliberation, a jury found Elton M. Jackson guilty of the first-degree murder of Andrew D. Smith. The jury recommended a sentence of life in prison, which the judge imposed in October of that year. With Jackson's arrest and conviction, the string of similar slayings that had terrorized Hampton Roads for a decade came to an end. The case against Elton Jackson for the murder of Andrew Smith was officially closed, bringing a measure of justice, though not for the eleven other victims whose cases remain officially unsolved.
