Scottish homicide; a scary, demented killer. He confessed to killing two people during a bank heist in 1969 and in 1982, stalked and attacked actress Theresa Saldana in Hollywood.
Raised by an alcoholic dad and a schizophrenic mom, he was an odd and fanatical child, often lost in fantasy. He fixated on a neighbor girl when he was as young as ten. At 13, he had his first sex with an older boy. At 17, he had his first nervous breakdown after a series of unrequited attachments and spent a year in a psychiatric hospital.
Jackson began a lonely, aimless odyssey, working in London as a kitchen porter, moving to Toronto Canada where he worked in a zoo and to New York, taking menial jobs. He joined the U.S. Army in 1955 where he fell in love with a disinterested soldier. He had his second nervous breakdown. For his 21st birthday, he made a suicide attempt with pills.
After an Army discharge, he returned to Scotland in 1961 after making a threat to President John F. Kennedy. He moved a lot, a vagrant on the dole.
In 1979 he saw Theresa Saldana in a movie and envisioned her as the girl of his dreams. He wrote in his diary that he could win her by “sending her into eternity.” In early 1982 he entered the U.S. illegally and began tracking her, making cross-country bus trips to find her. He got her address from a private investigator whom he hired.
On the morning of 3/15/1982, Jackson waited near Saldana’s apartment in West Hollywood. When she exited, he asked, “Pardon me, are you Theresa Saldana?” When she answered “Yes,” he began to stab her with a hunting knife, so often and hard that the knife bent. Jeff Fenn, a delivery man, rushed to her aid, wresting the knife away from Jackson. Saldana was rushed to the hospital where she had heart-lung surgery that required 26 pints of blood. She recovered.
Jackson was given 12 years prison on his plea of manslaughter due to diminished response; diagnosed as a chronic paranoid schizophrenic. He was released on 6/15/1989 after serving just seven years of his sentence. On release, he was deported to London where he was convicted of the murder of Anthony Fletcher, 33, during the 1967 bank robbery. He served another five years and was then confined to a prison mental hospital 1/29/1997, London.