The peacoat-wearing killer who surveillance recordings captured jogging from the Midtown Manhattan location where he left a 66-year-old man hanging on to his final moments of life on Monday night, handed himself over to authorities at the NYPD's Time Square substation just after midnight on Tuesday, March 21. "You need to arrest me. I have a knife in my coat," he reportedly told officers, before admitting to having contemplated stabbing more people with what he confessed would have been a racially motivated spree.
An investigation into the background of 28-year-old James Harris Jackson found him to be an Army veteran of the war in Afghanistan, as well as a full-fledged member of a documented white nationalist hate group. “It is believed he was specifically intending to target male blacks. It’s been well over 10-years that he has been harboring his hate towards blacks,” said head of Manhattan detectives, NYPD Assistant Chief William Aubrey, at a press conference announcing Jackson's detainment. “The reason why he chose New York because it is the media capital of the world and he wanted to make a statement.”
Jackson reportedly traveled in from his home state of Maryland on St. Patrick's Day, and had wandered the city during his days and laying at a Midtown hotel at nights. At around 11:25 p.m. on Monday, his intentions for sticking around the city became clear when he picked out Timothy Caughman, who was 38 years his senior, and started an argument with him as he picked cans out of the trash on W. 36th St. and Ninth Ave. Jackson would follow Caughman three blocks to W. 39th St. where he proceeded to pull a 26-inch sword that he plunged into the victim multiple times through the chest and back. Caughman was able to stagger to a police precinct stationhouse on W. 35th St. and was rushed to Bellevue Hospital, but was pronounced dead shortly thereafter.
Police report that Jackson divulged anger over interracial relationships to have been at the root of his violent motive.
Source: nydailynews.com
