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A picture of Paul Erven Jackson in 1990 The Associated Press
Mexico

Man on the run for 24 years arrested after featuring on a TV programme

The man had been living in Mexico under an assumed name.

A MAN HAS been arrested on suspicion of kidnapping and torturing two women after 24 years on the run.

Paul Erven Jackson has been tracked down by Mexican immigration officers to a hotel in the town of Guadalajara.

He has now been extradited back to the United States where he will likely stand trial for the alleged crimes from almost a quarter century ago.

Jackson was tracked down after being featured on CNN’s John Walsh’s ‘The Hunt’. The programme prompted a viewer to get in contact with information about Jackson’s assumed name and place of work.

“We always follow up with everything we get and this one turned out to be it, so we’re very happy,” US Marshal Eric Wahlstrom said.

Jackson appears to have been living in Mexico for several years under the name Paul Bennett Hamilton, Wahlstrom said.

Jackson denied his identity when contacted by Mexican authorities on his way to work in what Wahlstrom described as a job in the electronics field. He offered no further details on Jackson’s job. The details of Jackson’s personal life in Mexico also are unclear.

“Who’s been helping him — that’s the next phase of this,” Wahlstrom said. “Usually on these fugitive cases we start taking a hard look at who did what as far as assistance. How was he surviving?”

Police said Jackson and his older brother, Vance Roberts, kidnapped prostitutes and drove them to Roberts’ home in Hillsboro, west of Portland. The brothers were arrested in 1990, but vanished early the following year after their mother bailed them out of jail.

Roberts surrendered in September 2006 and was convicted the following year of kidnapping, rape, sodomy, sexual abuse and sexual penetration with a foreign object. The 61-year-old is serving a 108-year prison sentence.

The first victim was 20 in September 1988 when she was kidnapped after agreeing to perform a $30 sex act on Roberts in his pickup, according to details from the older brother’s trial. She said Roberts kept her in a locked closet when she wasn’t chained to a bed. She was sexually abused for a week and forced to call him “Master X.”

The second victim was pulled off the streets in June 1990, when she was 17. After a day as a sex slave, she escaped her handcuffs, jumped through a window and reported the men to police.

Read: When Francis met Barack: Here’s what the Pope spoke about during his White House visit

Also: The US claims this man cost the TV and film industry more than $500m

Author
Associated Foreign Press
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