By Stephen Dubois
Associated Press
PORTLAND, Ore. — A man accused of kidnapping and torturing two women in suburban Portland is back in jail after being on the run for nearly 25 years.
Paul Erven Jackson, 45, was arrested Monday by Mexican immigration authorities at a hotel in downtown Guadalajara, Deputy U.S. Marshal Eric Wahlstrom said. He was then flown to the United States and booked into a Los Angeles jail.
Jackson was most recently featured on CNN’s John Walsh’s “The Hunt,” and was profiled several times on “America’s Most Wanted.”
A tipster who watched “The Hunt” told authorities to look in Guadalajara and provided a possible name. Investigators used the information to find out where he was working.
“We always follow up with everything we get and this one turned out to be it, so we’re very happy,” 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.
Copyright 2015 The Associated Press