Imogene Jackson, 28, a white woman, was found dead on March 10, 1988, inside her St. Louis apartment building, in the private stillness of her own bedroom. Investigators said she had been strangled and sexually assaulted, and the scene suggested she had known—or at least not feared—the person who came through her door, because there was no sign of forced entry.
In the days that followed, the building itself became part of the story.
Police focused on the tight circle of people who moved through its hallways and knew its rhythms, and attention narrowed toward a man who was described as acquainted with both Jackson and another woman killed in the same building’s orbit. As the pressure rose, the case was pulled into a wider pattern of violence that seemed to be stalking women in St. Louis, leaving behind a similar signature of rape and strangulation.
By late July and early August, authorities publicly tied their work to a concentrated push—an all-hands effort that culminated in the arrest of Jerry Lee Little Jr. on August 4, 1988. Charging documents described multiple counts that went beyond a single death, alleging three murders, two rapes, and a robbery connected to another victim in the cluster of cases. Little was held without bond as prosecutors moved forward.
According to published accounts, investigators said Little confessed during interrogation—an admission that widened the narrative from one killing to several, including Jackson’s—and that the statement was recorded. The alleged sequence painted an ugly portrait of proximity: women living ordinary lives, intersecting with someone close enough to blend into the background until he didn’t.
The case ultimately became part of a single courtroom reckoning. Little’s trial began in September 1990, with the charges handled together as the state pursued him for four killings in total. Reports describe a defense that argued his confession was unreliable and tried to raise questions about his mental state, but the proceedings ended with convictions and life sentences handed down in October 1990.
