DATE: Tuesday, September 2, 1997            TAG: 9709020117

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B1   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: BY JUNE ARNEY, STAFF WRITER 

DATELINE: SUFFOLK                           LENGTH:  150 lines

STALKING SERIAL KILLER TOOK ITS TOLL ON POLICE THE CASE THAT HAS SEEN 12 MEN KILLED REQUIRED A SPECIAL TACTICAL APPROACH.

For more than two years, Suffolk Detective John K. Cooke chased a killer who stalked Hampton Roads - a killer who sought out men under the cover of darkness, won their trust and then snuffed them out, dumping their naked bodies on rural roadsides.

Cooke, now 41, hung out in gay bars until 2 or 3 in the morning, and drove the streets of Ocean View in Norfolk and Truxtun in Portsmouth, looking for clues, talking to the transients and hustlers he met along the way.

Cooke worked on the serial case mostly between 1994 and 1996, when his work days typically stretched to 11 or 12 hours. He also worked other, less notorious, cases during that time. But his main mission was to find the serial killer and keep the body count from mounting in a series of similar deaths that dated back at least to 1987.

He tried to go where the killer went, think what the killer thought.

Many of those nights he teamed with Chesapeake Detective Mike Fischetti, who devoted three years to the serial case.

The two detectives were partners in a macabre game of cat and mouse. ``A lot of times Fischetti would look at me and I'd look at him and we'd say, `We could have just talked to the guy,' '' Cooke said. ``That's what got to me - not knowing.''

Chesapeake police did not allow Fischetti to be interviewed by The Virginian-Pilot about his work with the serial case, which essentially ended in 1996.

Chesapeake Detective Cecil Whitehurst now heads the serial murder cases and is handling the case of Andrew ``Andre'' Smith, whose death bears striking similarities to the deaths of 11 other men over the past decade. Whitehurst declined to talk about the Smith case and the serial murders.

Elton M. Jackson, 41, of Portsmouth was charged in May with the Smith killing. He has admitted to having consensual sex with Smith but denied killing him. Authorities have said they have not ruled out Jackson as a suspect in the serial killings. He is scheduled for trial in the Smith murder in October.

Cooke agreed to talk about his work on the serial case under the conditions that he not be asked about specific evidence or asked to discuss Jackson.

Recently, The Virginian-Pilot's interview of a prison and a jail inmate have revealed that Jackson knew the first victim - a death that police have attributed to a serial killer. It is unclear whether police knew that Charles F. ``Chuckie'' Smith, killed in 1987, may have paid for sex with Jackson.

Jackson knew at least one other serial killer victim and may have known a third, according to neighbors and acquaintances.

Cooke was assigned to work with Chesapeake police in 1994 when 24-year-old Garland L. Taylor Jr. was found dead in a Suffolk ditch on Sept. 17. By that time local authorities had decided they had a serial killer on their hands.

There already had been eight killings including that of Reginald Joyner, found March 7, 1993, in Suffolk, near the intersection of Greenwood and Holy Neck roads.

At one point, a loosely organized task force included help from Isle of Wight County, Virginia State Police, Naval Criminal Investigation Services and the FBI.

Nevertheless, ``We weren't stumbling over each other with manpower,'' Cooke said.

At first, he worked the case full time. But Suffolk didn't have the manpower to give him up completely. So he returned to his job and made forays back to Chesapeake when there was work to be done.

In May 1996, Whitehurst took over as head of the serial cases.

Cooke continued to work on the case with Whitehurst for a while.

``We more or less had run down all our leads,'' he said. ``If I felt like I needed to stay, I could have pushed the point, but there was nothing else I felt I could do at the time.''

But in July 1996, police had another body. Cooke was called to the crime scene when Andrew Smith was found dead.

When Jackson was arrested this spring and charged with Smith's murder, Cooke and Fischetti read about it in the newspaper.

The stress of a high-profile series of killings took its toll on the investigators over the years, Cooke said.

``I admit it, I was getting worn down,'' he said. ``You try to anticipate what his next move will be. You think what would this guy do next? How could he get the individual here, in this situation, to do what he did?''

Long hours and leads that fell through added to the frustration.

Then a new body would be found.

The first question on everyone's lips when a body was found in an isolated area was whether the victim was clothed. All but one of the serial killer victims were found nude.

That's how investigators knew the unthinkable happened again.

But each tragedy offered another chance at tracking down the killer. ``The hope was that maybe this time the guy would slip up,'' Cooke said. ``Maybe he left us something we can do something with.''

Each time, the killer left them nothing.

``He was either very careful or very lucky,'' Cooke said. ``We were very careful in what we did. The evidence just wasn't there. You're back to scratch again.''

In each case, the victims were killed elsewhere and then taken to a secluded road and dumped. The bodies yielded none of their secrets.

Investigators resorted to doing the only thing they could do. They tried to learn everything they could about the victims. Their goal was to profile the suspect through information about his victims.

``You just go wherever your victims have been,'' Cooke said. Even that proved difficult, since a lot of the victims were drifters, who spent a lot of time roaming the streets.

``It's hard to profile an individual with the lifestyles of these people,'' Cooke said. ``A lot of these people would go anywhere with anyone and get in anyone's car.''

Cooke has been with the Suffolk department since 1979 and worked homicides since 1987, but murders in the serial case were more all-encompassing than any others.

``When I'm working a homicide in Suffolk, nine times out of 10, there are a lot of people in Suffolk who know them,'' he said.

Not so with the bodies that turned up in Suffolk that were believed to be victims of the serial killer. Investigators had to go into other areas and build up trust in unfamiliar territory.

For instance, in Truxtun, Cooke drove around, getting to know people.

``I told them, `This man died for nothing,' '' Cooke said. `` `I'm here as a friend to you, to him, to his family.' ''

Sometimes, the investigators went to bars with their badges displayed. Other times they went in without advertising that they were police, to talk and listen.

Months stretched on and the investigators had mounds of paperwork and numerous binders - so many that Chesapeake bought a computer system to keep the unwieldy information organized. Seven secretaries came down from the FBI and spent a week keying in all the information, Cooke said.

``Fischetti and I leaned on each other,'' Cooke said. ``A lot of times we thought we were real close (to finding the killer) and then it falls through. You build up, your adrenaline is pumped up and you think this is it. And then when it isn't, it knocks you on your butt.''

They were good collaborators. ``Fischetti and I hit it off,'' Cooke said. ``We fed off each other. We knew what each other was thinking.''

Cooke, Fischetti and others who worked the serial killings are in a unique position, because few law enforcement officers get the chance to work a serial case.

``The stress levels in a case like this with the number of bodies you have, the places you have to go and the people you have to talk to are astronomical,'' said Cooke's supervisor, Lt. W.M. Bunker. ``They're on an emotional roller coaster out there.''

Cooke knows the case will stay with him.

``I'll take it to my grave,'' he said. ``I think all of Hampton Roads hopes that the man they've arrested in Chesapeake is the one who did it. We sure don't want any more bodies. But that man is only charged with one murder.''

For now, it doesn't matter whether he's at home or at work, thoughts of the case creep in.

``I think about it every day,'' Cooke said. ``I think about what I missed, what I could have done differently. . . .

``You think about what the victim went through. You try to think what happened to this guy right before his death, and did he see it coming?'' ILLUSTRATION: Color Photo

JOHN H. SHEALLY II/The Virginian-Pilot

Suffolk detective John K. Cooke spent 2 years on the case. KEYWORDS: SERIAL KILLER MURDER HOMOSEXUAL GAYS

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