Laura Wright 
On a January night in 1959, the Jackson family was returning home to Apple Grove, Virginia.
Twenty-nine-year-old Carroll Jackson, a husky truck driver, was behind the wheel. His wife, Mildred, rode beside him. Their two young daughters were also in the car: four-year-old Susan Ann and 17-month-old Janet.
They never made it home.
Their disappearance would begin a horrifying investigation into a killer some called “The Beast.”
The Jackson Family Disappears
When the Jacksons failed to arrive home, worried relatives contacted authorities.
Concern quickly turned to national alarm when the family’s automobile was discovered abandoned beside the road.
Carroll was gone.
Mildred was gone.
So were Susan and Janet.
There was almost nothing to indicate what had happened to them.
One haunting clue remained behind.
One of the little girls’ dolls.
A Terrible Discovery
Months passed without any sign of the missing family.
Then, in March, the search finally produced an answer.
The bodies of Carroll and Janet Jackson were discovered beneath a heap of brush and debris outside Fredericksburg, Virginia.
Carroll had been shot and bludgeoned.
His body had fallen across his 17-month-old daughter.
Janet had smothered beneath him.
The discovery answered part of the mystery.
Mildred and Susan were still missing.
Mildred and Susan Are Found
Eighteen days later, searchers found the remaining members of the Jackson family.
Mildred and four-year-old Susan had been buried in a shallow grave outside Annapolis, Maryland.
Both had been beaten and sexually assaulted.
Nearby stood a cinderblock shack.
At first, there seemed to be little investigators could do. The Jackson family was dead, but authorities still had precious little evidence identifying the person responsible.
Then someone decided to seek help from a very unconventional investigator.
Peter Hurkos Enters the Case
Dr. F. Regis Riesenman, a physician at St. Elizabeth’s Hospital in Washington, D.C., was outraged by the murders.
He was close to the case and desperate to find the person responsible.
Riesenman decided to bring in noted psychic Peter Hurkos.
Hurkos was a Dutch painter who had suffered a serious fall from a ladder in 1941. When he regained consciousness, he claimed that something about him had changed.
He believed he had developed psychic abilities.
The Psychic Investigation
Hurkos was frequently criticized and ridiculed for his supposed abilities, but he also developed a reputation for providing surprisingly accurate information.
By 1969, he was credited with helping solve 27 murders in more than 16 countries.
Hurkos was brought to the location where the Jackson bodies had been discovered.
Within approximately two hours, he claimed to have formed an image of the killer.
According to Hurkos, the man responsible for murdering the Jackson family had killed before.
He placed the killer’s victim count at nine.
Hurkos also claimed the murderer was sane and fully understood what he was doing.
The Jackson murders, he said, were very different from the cases he normally encountered.
When the Psychic Was Wrong
Hurkos’s abilities did not provide investigators with a perfect solution.
At one point, he drew a picture showing where he believed the murderer lived.
Police quickly went to the location and questioned the resident.
The man turned out to be a harmless trash collector.
Nevertheless, he remained under suspicion for some time.
Another possible solution appeared in 1969, when a sawmill worker confessed to the murders.
He later recanted.
The Jackson murders still appeared impossible to solve.
Then investigators heard the name Melvin Rees.
In Search of the Beast
A man from Norfolk, Virginia, became suspicious of an acquaintance.
That acquaintance was Melvin Rees.
The informant had known Rees for some time and recalled the young musician making a disturbing statement.
Murder, Rees had said, could sometimes be acceptable.
The FBI began investigating him.
Suddenly, pieces of several mysteries began falling into place.
Who Was Melvin Rees?
Rees had once been a popular student at the University of Maryland.
He eventually dropped out of college to pursue music and became a jazz musician in Washington, D.C.
But Rees also had a criminal history.
In 1955, he was arrested after allegedly attempting to force a 36-year-old woman into his automobile.
The woman ultimately decided not to press charges.
The incident faded away.
Two years later, another woman encountered a killer on a lonely road.
The Murder of Margaret Harold
On June 26, 1957, Margaret Harold and her boyfriend were traveling along a rural road near Annapolis.
A man driving a green Chrysler approached from behind and forced their vehicle from the road.
He produced a gun and ordered the couple from their car.
Then he demanded cigarettes and money.
They refused.
The gunman shot Margaret in the face.
Her boyfriend ran.
He continued fleeing until he reached an old farmhouse, where he was finally able to contact police.
When authorities returned to the scene, Margaret’s clothing had been removed and she had been sexually assaulted.
The killer was gone.
But nearby investigators discovered something disturbing.
The Cinderblock Building
A small cinderblock structure stood nearby.
Inside was a grotesque collection of material.
There was violent pornography.
There were photographs of female autopsies.
There were images of women’s corpses and photographs of bound women.
According to the account, this was the same cinderblock building near which the bodies of Mildred and Susan Jackson were discovered in 1959.
Suddenly, the earlier murder and the Jackson family case appeared much closer together.
Another Couple Escapes
Detectives received another disturbing account shortly after the Jackson investigation began.
A couple had been driving on the same evening the Jackson family disappeared.
An old blue Chevrolet approached them from behind.
The driver honked repeatedly and flashed his lights until the couple finally pulled over.
A man stepped from the Chevrolet and began walking toward their car.
Something about him frightened them.
Instead of waiting to discover what he wanted, the couple sped away and left him standing beside the road.
They may have escaped whatever happened to the Jackson family that night.
Melvin Rees Disappears
By the time investigators recognized Rees as their strongest suspect, he had already fled Virginia.
For a while, it appeared that he had escaped.
Then a mysterious letter arrived.
The letter claimed Rees had fled to Hyattsville, Arkansas.
Authorities finally captured him.
The Beast had been found.
The Murder Journal
Rees was ultimately convicted of murdering five people.
He later confessed to two additional murders, while authorities believed he might have been responsible for another four.
Like a number of serial killers, Rees also left behind documentation.
Investigators discovered what became known as his “murder journal,” containing material about his crimes.
The young jazz musician who had reportedly argued that murder could sometimes be acceptable was now exposed as a murderer himself.
What Happened to Melvin Rees?
Despite claims repeated in some sources, Rees was not executed in 1961.
He underwent formal psychiatric testing in 1966.
In 1972, his sentence was converted to life imprisonment.
Melvin Rees remained incarcerated until 1995.
He died of a heart attack.
The man once known as “The Beast” was gone.
The Beast
The Jackson family murders began as a baffling disappearance.
An abandoned car.
A child’s doll.
Four missing people.
Then the bodies appeared, and investigators were confronted with a crime of extraordinary brutality.
The involvement of Peter Hurkos added one of the stranger chapters to the investigation. Some of his impressions seemed intriguing. Others sent police completely in the wrong direction.
Ultimately, the solution came through conventional investigation and the growing suspicions surrounding Melvin Rees.
The former university student and jazz musician had already crossed paths with law enforcement. He had been connected to violence before the Jacksons disappeared. Once investigators began looking closely at him, several terrible events appeared to converge.
Rees had reportedly once expressed the belief that murder could be acceptable.
He spent the remainder of his life imprisoned for committing it.
As the original account rather neatly observes:
Apparently, Rees felt murder was acceptable, so long as it wasn’t his own.
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