Rhonda Jackson was a 23-year-old woman from Pomona whose life ended in January 1987. Her body was discovered inside a dumpster in Pomona, reportedly in or near a parking area associated with Palomares Park. She had been left nude, and investigators determined that she died from ligature strangulation. A knotted section cut from the leg of a pair of pants had been tied around her neck. Court records place the discovery on January 25, while contemporary summaries commonly report January 26 as the date connected to her death and recovery.
The killing remained unresolved for years. Evidence collected from Jackson's body was preserved while investigators searched for a suspect. The case eventually became connected to Ivan Jerome Hill, a Pomona-area offender later known as the "60 Freeway Killer" because several victims were found near communities along the Pomona Freeway corridor. Hill was already in custody for other crimes when advances in DNA testing began tying him to a series of strangulation murders. In March 2004, sexual-assault evidence recovered in the Jackson investigation was matched to Hill's DNA. In May 2006, analysts obtained another match from fingernail scrapings collected from Jackson, strengthening the case that she had struggled with or scratched her attacker before her death.
Hill was initially prosecuted for six separate murders committed between November 1993 and January 1994. During that capital case, prosecutors presented the killings of Jackson and Lorna Reed, another strangulation victim found in 1986, as evidence of additional violent conduct. A jury convicted Hill of the six later murders in November 2006, and he received a death sentence. Prosecutors subsequently filed formal charges against him in July 2008 for the earlier deaths of Jackson and Reed. Hill tried to have the new prosecution dismissed, arguing that the two killings had already been used against him during the penalty phase of his capital trial, but the court rejected those claims.
On May 15, 2009, Hill pleaded guilty to murdering both Jackson and Reed. Under the plea agreement, he received life imprisonment without the possibility of parole for the two killings, a sentence imposed in addition to the death judgment he was already serving for the six later murders. His convictions formally resolved Jackson's case more than twenty-two years after her body was found. The evidence ultimately established Hill as the lone identified suspect and convicted killer; no reliable online source reviewed for the case identifies an accomplice or a second person who was arrested, charged or tried in connection with Jackson's death.
