DATE: Sunday, September 14, 1997            TAG: 9709140087

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B1   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: BY JUNE ARNEY, STAFF WRITER 

                                            LENGTH:  173 lines

POLICE TIGHT-LIPPED ON PURSUIT OF SERIAL KILLER EXPERTS OFFER INSIGHT INTO HOW SUCH A CASE IS USUALLY HANDLED.

When police arrested 41-year-old Elton Jackson in May for the murder of Andrew ``Andre'' Smith, had they nabbed a serial killer?

Police didn't deny there were similarities between Smith's death and those of 11 other victims, many of whom were strangled and then dumped along remote roadsides.

But four months later, police decline to say whether they think Jackson is the serial killer who has stalked Hampton Roads for a decade - nor will they rule him out.

In fact, with Jackson's trial slated for October, their work on the case is a closely guarded secret.

They will answer no questions about Elton Jackson or about their search for a serial killer. No questions about strategy. No questions about who is working on the case, beyond a single detective who has handled it since May 1996.

But national law enforcement experts offer a glimpse into what could or should be happening in the Chesapeake department's investigation - boosting manpower, establishing a strategy to interview Jackson, and tracking any paper trails that might show whether the paths of the suspect intersected with those of the victims.

It boils down to that challenge: finding any points where the paths of the suspect and the victims may have crossed.

``I would go back to friends, lovers and family of the victims and try to piece together their lifestyles and habits and see if there were any touchstones with others,'' said Ed Sulzbach, retired after nearly 25 years with the FBI. He now teaches and runs a consulting firm based in Richmond. ``You'd find out what the victims had in common and then where it overlapped with the suspect.''

Sulzbach and other experts interviewed for this story made it clear that they are not second-guessing Chesapeake police, since they have no information on what is being done. They simply shared their thoughts on what they would do if a case with similar facts landed in their laps.

Jackson, who is in Chesapeake jail, has said he did not kill Andre Smith and is not the serial killer sought since 1987.

What police are saying is that Elton Jackson has been charged with one murder, period.

``The other cases are still active and open, and we're obviously pursuing every lead available to bring those to a successful conclusion,'' said Dave Hughes, a spokesman for Chesapeake Police.

Sulzbach and other experts say that extra manpower can be critical once police have a suspect. In the serial-killer case, police are trying to piece together the lives of a suspect and as many as a dozen victims, and extra investigators could quickly chase down multiple leads.

In Chesapeake, it's unclear how many people are currently working on the case. Police will answer no questions about their work to link Jackson to the unsolved deaths or to eliminate him as a suspect. Police Chief Richard A. Justice has declined to be interviewed.

In past years, a loosely organized task force collaborated on the investigation, but in May 1996, Detective Cecil Whitehurst was put in charge of the murders. Police will not say who, if anyone, has been added to help Whitehurst.

Sulzbach, the former FBI man, recommended having the lead investigator continue to head the team, but have two or three other skilled detectives chasing the as-yet-unrelated murders.

Whatever Chesapeake authorities are doing to crack the case has not included interviewing John Hogge Jr., an inmate at Rustburg Correctional Center, since Hogge made the first public link between Jackson and Charles ``Chuckie'' Smith, the first victim of the serial killer.

In a recent interview, Hogge told The Virginian-Pilot that his best friend, ``Chuckie'' Smith, received money for allowing Jackson to perform oral sex on him in the months before Chuckie Smith was found strangled.

Prison authorities are surprised that Chesapeake investigators haven't called or visited Hogge. ``I would think they'd be trying to beat the door down to further the inquiry,'' one prison official said Friday.

Nor have local authorities recently contacted Chuckie Smith's mother, Donna Smith, she said. Earlier this month, a prosecution witness in the Jackson murder case told The Virginian-Pilot that he saw Chuckie Smith with Jackson on the night that Chuckie Smith disappeared and later was found dead.

In an earlier court hearing, the witness testified that Jackson paid him for sex in December 1996. He said that Jackson tied him up, tried to slip a strap around his neck and then came at him with a pillow.

Sulzbach said Chesapeake authorities may have crafted an interview strategy for getting Jackson to admit to the crime.

``What you do is study the suspect, try to assess his personality,'' Sulzbach said.

That includes careful selection of the interviewer, with consideration of gender and age: Should it be a father figure or a peer?

The idea is to look at the suspect's life and the tragedies he has suffered and approach him in a way that would encourage cooperation, he said. ``I've seen criminals with long criminal records, knowing that they're staring at a possible death sentence, begin to talk,'' he said. ``Most of us have a need to unburden our souls.''

Then the focus might shift to cross-examination techniques to use if the suspect takes the stand in court. Those techniques might include a plan to trigger the defendant's anger to show jurors another side of the accused, said Sulzbach, whose work with the FBI included two years as a profiler with the agency's behavioral science unit.

At the top of the priority list should be establishing any possible links with other unsolved cases, experts said.

A time line of Jackson's actions could help authorities clarify possible relationships stretching from the very first victim to the most recent.

Detective Sgt. Jim Rhinebarger of the Indiana State Police said Indiana authorities used credit card receipts and telephone and other records to help them in the case of Larry Eyler, who died on death row after confessing to 21 stabbing deaths.

Indiana authorities pieced together an outline of Eyler's activities and successfully matched it with the times and locations of various unsolved killings.

Rhinebarger was interested to hear about the unsolved Hampton Roads cases because they have some parallels to a series of unsolved murders that his department is investigating. Those victims, killed between 1981 and 1990, were hustlers or had connections to the gay community. Their bodies, in varying states of undress, were found in the counties surrounding Indianapolis and in Ohio.

Although decomposition prevented determination of a cause of death in some cases, at least several died of strangulation, Rhinebarger said.

Like the Chesapeake case, the killer left no physical evidence. As in Chesapeake, authorities banded together: the Central Indiana Multi-Investigative Task Force was formed to handle the cases.

Rhinebarger said he plans to call Whitehurst to compare notes. He knows how tough serial murders can be.

``It's extremely frustrating,'' he said. ``We can't offer closure to the families of the victims.''

Sulzbach is optimistic that local authorities are doing all they can do cooperatively to solve the killings.

``There's probably no place in the country where local police and state and federal authorities work together as well,'' said Sulzbach, who travels extensively working with various law enforcement communities. ``Egos don't get in the way here in Virginia. The more I travel, the more I'm impressed with what we have here.''

But not everyone agrees.

Shirley Lesser, executive director of Virginians for Justice, which is a gay advocacy organization, said she does not think the various law enforcement agencies cooperate well with the gay community here or nationally.

That, she believes, has hindered progress in the Hampton Roads serial-killings case.

In addition, she said, even members of the gay community distance themselves from the victims, she said, who are described by police and the media as transients and hustlers.

``I can't imagine any other group of people that would have a serial killer going for a decade and not have more attention,'' she said. ``It's because of the public's ability to distance themselves from the victims. Law enforcement doesn't feel the pressure to solve it.''

Investigators are generally naive when it comes to serial killer patterns, says Robert K. Ressler, the man who coined the term ``serial killer'' and detailed his career in the autobiography ``Whoever Fights Monsters.''

``They're reinventing every rule that's ever been made,'' he said. ``Oftentimes, the traditional investigative agency doesn't want to go elsewhere for help - it's an ego thing.''

The serial killer who authorities believe has stalked Hampton Roads has left little evidence, said Ressler, who spent 16 years tracking criminals as a pioneering profiler for the FBI and now runs a consulting business.

``The killer is playing it out by his own rules. The bodies are not dealing out a great deal of information,'' Ressler said. ``With mutilation or stabbing, there's more to read into the circumstances.''

But there's plenty to be learned from the victims, even when there isn't a suspect.

He cited the case of Milwaukee serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer, and the many people who knew Dahmer's victims and saw the victims leave gay bars with Dahmer the night they died.

Dahmer admitted that he was careless and that if investigators had looked at his victims closely, they would have found him sooner, Ressler said. All of his victims were strangled.

Ressler said there probably are people who ran into the Hampton Roads serial killer but ultimately did not become his victim.

``Serial killers do not kill every single victim they encounter,'' he said. ``They might rehearse and practice to see how to alleviate fears and anxieties.''

If there is a common thread among serial killers, it is dominance over another human being, Ressler said.

``The power of life and death becomes their sexual high.'' KEYWORDS: SERIAL MURDER SERIAL KILLERS

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