In the late summer of 1994, the discovery of a young man's body in a Suffolk, Virginia ditch marked another chapter in a string of terrifying serial killings that had cast a shadow over the Hampton Roads area. The victim was identified as Garland L. Taylor Jr., a 24-year-old man from Portsmouth. His death on September 17, 1994, was the ninth in a series of twelve homicides that shared a grim and distinctive pattern.
At the time of his death, Taylor was a brickmason and was married.
His family and friends were left to grapple with the shocking loss, while law enforcement officials faced mounting pressure to solve the string of murders that had plagued the region for years. Investigators from a multi-agency task force, including local police, Virginia State Police, and the FBI, were assigned to the case. The killer they were hunting was known for leaving the nude bodies of his male victims on rural roadsides.
The investigation into Taylor's death, and the others in the series, was a long and arduous process. A significant breakthrough came with the arrest of Elton M. Jackson in connection with the twelfth murder in the series, that of Andrew D. Smith in 1996. While Jackson was charged with and ultimately convicted of Smith's murder, he became the primary suspect in the entire string of slayings, including that of Garland Taylor.
Despite being the main suspect, Elton M. Jackson was never formally charged with the murder of Garland L. Taylor Jr. due to a lack of sufficient evidence. However, authorities publicly named him as the sole suspect in all twelve homicides. Jackson was sentenced to life in prison for the murder of Andrew Smith, bringing a close to a dark period of fear and uncertainty in the Hampton Roads community, though leaving the families of the other victims, including Garland Taylor's, without a specific conviction in their loved one's case.
