A 22-year-old man was charged Friday with killing six of seven women strangled here since September and with the assault Monday night of another woman whose attack was interrupted by a passerby.
The charges against Ray Shawn Jackson of Kansas City were announced at a news conference held by police Chief Larry Joiner, Jackson County prosecutor Albert Riederer and Kansas City Mayor Richard Berkley.Joiner said that the six strangled women had all been lured to the areas where they were slain, in or near Gillham Park in midtown, by the promise of obtaining crack cocaine.
Many blacks have said authorities and the media failed to give the case adequate attention because the victims were black prostitutes and drug addicts. "Gillham Park has become a death trap for black women," Ron Finley, a member of the Ad Hoc Group Against Crime, had said. Jackson is also black.
The chief said the charges were the outcome of thousands of hours of investigation that speeded up again last week after the death of Michelle Mitchell, 22.
Circulation of a composite drawing of a man believed to be a suspect in her death produced more than 300 phone calls, Joiner said.