In the spring of 1983, the life of a young Black/African American woman named Essie Jackson was tragically cut short at the age of 23. On March 23, 1983, her partially clothed body was discovered on the western edge of Overlook Park in North Portland, Oregon. At the time of her death, Essie was the mother of a young child and had been a victim of sex trafficking.
An autopsy determined that she had been sexually assaulted and that her death was a homicide caused by asphyxiation via strangulation. It was estimated that she had been deceased for about a week before her body was found, and it took two days for her to be identified.
For decades, Essie Jackson's murder remained a cold case, one of several unsolved homicides of young women in the Portland area during that era. The initial investigation received minimal media coverage at the time. Years later, investigators believed they had a breakthrough in the case and several other similar murders. In 2015, authorities arrested Homer Lee Jackson III, a man they suspected of being a serial killer responsible for the deaths of at least four women in the 1980s, including Essie Jackson. He was charged with multiple counts of aggravated murder.
Despite the initial charges against Homer Lee Jackson III, the path to justice for Essie Jackson took another unexpected turn. After further investigation, it was determined that none of the DNA evidence recovered from the scene of Essie's murder was a match to him. Consequently, in 2019, the murder charges against Homer Lee Jackson III in connection with Essie Jackson's death were dropped. While he was convicted of criminally negligent homicide in the deaths of three other women, he was never convicted for Essie's murder. Her case remains unsolved, and no other suspects have been publicly named.
