Former Towson Man Pleads Guilty To Murder, Domestic Terrorism

NEW YORK, NY — A former Towson area man who said he went to New York City to kill black men and inspire a race war pleaded guilty to murder and domestic terrorism, Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr. announced Wednesday. He is expected to be sentenced in February.

James Jackson, 30, could face life in prison for charges of murder as an act of terrorism, murder as a hate crime and weapons possession, prosecutors announced.

Jackson stabbed 66-year-old Timothy Caughman with a replica Roman sword the evening of March 20, 2017, on Ninth Avenue near West 36th Street in New York, prosecutors said.

Caughman survived the initial stabbing, and was able to walk into the Midtown South Precinct station house on West 35th Street while suffering from wounds to his back and chest, police said. Paramedics then rushed him from the precinct to the hospital, where he was pronounced dead, police said.

Jackson grew up in Towson, graduated from the Friends School in 2007 and served in the Army from 2009 to 2012, including a 2010 to 2011 deployment in Afghanistan as an intelligence analyst, according to WJZ.

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He turned himself in the day after stabbing Caughman, according to prosecutors.

During interviews with investigators, prosecutors said Jackson told authorities he considered his act a "political terrorist attack," a "call to arms" and a "declaration of global total war."

He had traveled by bus from Baltimore to New York City because he figured "the media capital of the world" was his best bet at drawing proper attention to such a crime, police said.

Jackson confessed to police that he had stalked other black men days before killing Caughman, according to the criminal complaint against him. He also told police that Caughman's murder was "practice," and that he was planning to kill more black victims.

"White nationalism will not be normalized in New York," the Manhattan district attorney said a statement. "If you come here to kill New Yorkers in the name of white nationalism, you will be investigated, prosecuted and incapacitated like the terrorist that you are. You will spend your life in prison without possibility of parole because there is no place in our city or our society for terrorists — 'domestic' or otherwise."

Jackson's family lives in Towson, and he most recently lived in a Hampden rowhouse, The Baltimore Sun previously reported.

After the 2017 slaying, Jackson's relatives said in a statement to the newspaper that they were "shocked, horrified and heartbroken by this tragedy."

— By Brendan Krisel and Elizabeth Janney

Photo by Seth Wenig/Associated Press