SERIAL KILLER: Homer Jackson

Essie Jackson is found strangled down a steep embankment in Overlook Park in North Portland.

Tonja Harry is found face-down at the bottom of a five-foot embankment edge of a marshy area in West Delta Park.

Angela Anderson is found strangled in a vacant house in Portland.

Around noon

Latanga Watts leaves her grandmother’s home.

~6:15 p.m.

A Portland patrol officer sees Latanga on Northeast Union Avenue and tells her to go home.

~7:00 p.m.

A caller threatens to kill a sex worker every day until he finds the woman who took his wallet.

~8:00 p.m.

Latanga’s ex-boyfriend later tells her grandmother he saw her sitting in a police car.Latanga’s ex-boyfriend later tells her grandmother he saw her sitting in a police car.

~6:15 a.m

A man walking to work finds Latanga’s body in a grassy lot below a pedestrian overpass.

Lawauna Triplet is found strangled about 80 feet from where Latanga was found six years earlier.

A latent fingerprint from the crawlspace door at Angela Anderson’s crime scene comes back through AFIS to Homer Lee Jackson III – his left thumb.

Detectives follow Homer to a parking lot and covertly collect DNA from a cigarette Homer throws away. The DNA matches a cigarette butt found near Angela’s body in 1983.

DNA from under Latanga’s left-hand fingernails is linked to Homer.

Detectives visit Homer’s apartment, and he agrees to accompany them to the police station. They questioned him over two days before executing a warrant for his DNA on October 16.

On Oct. 16, a grand jury indicted Homer on 12 counts of aggravated murder in the deaths of Angela Anderson, Tonja Harry, Latanga Watts and Essie Jackson.

The Oregon Supreme Court upheld the lower court’s decision to suppress certain statements Homer Jackson made during police questioning.

The charges in Essie’s case are dismissed. In her place, they add Lawauna Triplet.

A judge orders separate trials, one for each victim.

The Oregon Supreme Court upholds the decision to try the cases separately.

Prosecutors drop the murder charges. Homer enters an Alford plea to four counts of criminally negligent homicide, and with credit for time served, he is released.

Homer’s sister finds him dead at his home.