Calvin Jackson (born March 5, 1948) is an American serial killer and rapist responsible for the murders of nine women in Manhattan's West Side between 1973 and 1974.
In early 1972, Jackson and his partner found accommodation at the Park Plaza Hotel in Manhattan's West Side which, at the time, was plagued by poverty and crime.
One of them stated that in the early morning, he had noticed a dark-skinned young man who, with a TV in his hands, left the house where the murder took place using the fire escape, and then disappeared on the opposite side of the street.
Another witness, a resident of the Park Plaza Hotel, told police that on the morning of that same day, a friend of his, 26-year-old Calvin Jackson, came to his room with a request to leave a number of items of material value, including a TV, for safekeeping.
Despite the fact that Jackson's confessions reflected a great deal of correspondence in the description of details of the victims' appearances, the times and dates of their murders, his claims were questioned, since in most cases, no signs of a struggle or burglary were found at the crime scenes.
In order to confirm his testimony, in the following months, the police exhumed the bodies of a number of murdered women so they could examine them and find traces of a homicide, but the test results proved inconclusive.
They demanded that the New York City mayor, Abraham Beame, should investigate and appropriately punish the officials, as their failure to connect the murders and take precautions led to senseless death.
Law enforcement officials would later confirm that they did not suspect a serial killer was operating in the area and were forced to admit that the cases were connected only after Jackson's arrest.
This confession led protestors to claim that the high crime rate in the West Side was a result of the city service's failures to respond on all levels.
[7][8][9][10] Despite the fact that in at least four cases, the investigation was unable to establish signs of a violent death due to the rate of decomposition, Calvin Jackson was charged with 9 murders and about 40 other crimes, including numerous rapes, burglaries and thefts.
After reading out his 182-page long confession and accompanying audio recordings lasting more than 3 hours, on May 25, by a jury verdict, he was found guilty of 9 murders and numerous other charges.