African-American Bernard Jackson has been convicted in Waldo area rapes from the 1980s

A jury has convicted Bernard Jackson, 53, of seven counts of rape, seven counts of sodomy and four counts of robbery in one of the city’s biggest cold-hit rape cases of the last decade. Jackson was convicted of robbing and sexually assaulting four women who lived alone in the Waldo and Armour Hills neighborhoods in 1983 and 1984. Each of the women testified how an intruder surprised them in their homes, either late at night or early in the morning, demanded money and then raped them. All the women said he threatened them with a gun, although none saw it. Because of Jackson’s history as a prior and persistent sex offender, he faces a minimum of 30 years in prison for each of the 14 sex-related convictions. He also faces sentences of 10 years up to life for the robbery convictions. The convictions set the stage for Jackson’s next trial, as yet unscheduled, which focuses on similar assaults in the Waldo area. Jackson is suspected of five attacks that occurred about 18 months ago and terrorized women who lived alone in that Kansas City neighborhood. He faces charges in two of those cases. Jackson first was found guilty of rape in 1977, at age 19, for an attack in late 1976. Paroled after serving less than six years, he became a suspect again in 1984, after a string of five attacks in the Waldo area. He pleaded guilty in 1985 to attempted rape and other charges in one of those cases. In that case, the victim was able to escape her attacker. The trial that just ended involved the four other cases from that series of assaults. Jackson was sentenced to 30 years in 1985 for the 1984 attack. He was paroled in December 2008. The first attack reported in the recent string of Waldo-area sexual assaults happened on Sept. 29, 2009.