The crazed white nationalist accused of murdering an African-American man in Manhattan last year told police he was on a mission to rid the Earth of Black people.
“I think we should just preserve the best people and get rid of all the dead weight,” James Jackson, 30, said in a chilling confession tape played at a pretrial hearing Tuesday. “In my opinion, Blacks are inferior people.”
“I think they need to be exterminated,” he added.
James Jackson (left) fatally stabbed Timothy Caughman as part his plan purge the Earth of Black people. (Images courtesy of Steven Hirsch / CBS News)
Authorities said Jackson traveled from Baltimore to New York to commit the heinous crime, with the specific intent of hunting and killing Black men. On March 20, 2017, he spotted his victim, 66-year-old Timothy Caughman, hunched over a garbage can, scavenging for bottles and stabbed him in the back with a mini sword blade.
As Caughman screamed in distress, the suspect stabbed him several more times in the chest, right above his heart. The homeless man, bloodied, managed to stagger to a nearby police station, where he died.
As for James, he told investigators he’d disposed of the knife in a trash can in Washington Square Park and continued roaming the city for hours looking for his next victim(s). He still had two knives hidden in his pockets.
“It was weird,” he said in the videotaped interview. “I didn’t feel great. I didn’t feel horrible either. I thought it [the murder] would send me into a blood rage fury.”
“I thought it would be a lot easier,” James added, referring to the difficulty of subduing Caughman. “It was a lot harder.”
After the killing, the suspect said he stalked as many as 15 people and was particularly interested in targeting interracial couples, or Black men with white women. He said he wanted to spark a national dialogue about the “evils” of race mixing, he told authorities during questioning at the Midtown South Detective Squad.
Jackson also told police he wanted maximum exposure for his crime, so much so that he traveled over 200 miles by bus from Baltimore to the “media capital of the world.”
He said Caughman’s murder was “practice” for his grand scheme, but said he became discouraged after seeing so many mixed-race couples in the city.
“It just seemed like I was seeing interracial couples everywhere,” said Jackson. “It was really demoralizing me. This is the new way and we can’t restore what we had 50 years ago.”
James failed to strike again and turned himself into police 24 hours later, the New York Post reported.
A lawyer for the veteran said his client has “obvious psychological issues.” According to CBS News, James has pleaded not guilty to murder as a hate crime and murder as an act of terrorism.
Shortly before he was taken to booking for his arraignment, Jackson allegedly asked Det. Joseph Barbara if he’d be alone when he got there. Barbara said Jackson told him, “If I’m in with a black man, I’ll definitely kill him.”
