Waldo person of interest officially charged in 80s attacks
Yesterday, Jackson County prosecutors filed 15 charges against the man suspected in the recent Waldo-area rapes — all of them involving four unsolved rapes from 1983 and 1984. Authorities did not charge him in any of the recent assaults that have terrified women living in and near Waldo.
Bernard Jackson, 52, a twice-convicted sex offender who had been living in a halfway house since late 2008, faces six counts of rape, five counts of sodomy and four counts of first-degree robbery. He faces up to 15 life sentences, if convicted, prosecutors said. DNA tests that the Kansas City crime lab conducted over the last April weekend linked Jackson to evidence from the four mid-1980s attacks, police said. All happened in the Waldo area.
Police recently identified Jackson as a “person of interest” in the recent cases and had been following him since at least April 30 before arresting him last Wednesday. Police didn’t immediately arrest him because they believed they had more work to do first. They continued to track him while the crime lab pulled DNA evidence from four cold cases that originally were linked to the attempted rape for which Jackson was convicted in 1985.
Read more here to see what happened to the Waldo person of interest while he was in police custody.
Categories: Help the Cops!, News: Cold Cases, Unsolved
Tags: Crime Labs, Crime Scene, Cruelty, DNA, Evidence, Forensics, Identification, Investigations Division, Missouri, Police, Prisons, Rape kits, Victim, Waldo Rapist