General Hospital Classic Character Recap: Jerry Jacks

He reigned as one of the all-time biggest rouges on General Hospital and yet Jerry Jacks has always been a fan-favorite earning him an enviable spot in soap opera history as one of the genre’s most beloved villains.

Who Is Jerry Jacks?

Jerry is the son of John and Lady Jane Jacks and the only brother of Jasper “Jax” Jacks. The brothers have a complicated and tumultuous relationship but underneath it all, they love each other.

Jerry first arrived in Port Charles in April of 1998, ostensibly to make the acquaintance of his future sister-in-law Brenda Barrett, but within minutes of his arrival, he and Jax were engaging in a punch up.

The Female Persuasion
With his good looks and easy-going charm, Jerry certainly never had a problem enticing the lady folks. Having been a playboy for most of his life, Jerry found himself becoming enamored with Bobbie Spencer to whom he proposed marriage.

A subsequent relationship with a woman named Irina nearly proved to be his undoing. The two became involved in some shady dealings overseas and after being captured, Jerry had to make the choice between saving himself or his new paramour.

Self-preservation won out but rather than meet her maker, Irina joined their captors and eventually tried to break her former lover’s heart by kidnapping and threatening to murder Jax. Jerry’s response to an irate Irina? A bullet!

The only other woman whom Jerry would ever truly feel something for on General Hospital was Alexis Davis – who, ironically, was his brother’s former wife. He tried to persuade her to marry him and at one point he even kidnapped her at gunpoint, planning to force her to accompany him to a foreign locale.

Devilish Deeds

As a career criminal, Jerry’s litany of misdeeds could fill an entire drawer at the Port Charles Police Department. In the early days though he manly concerned himself with more delicate white-collar crimes, such as knowingly accepted but still illegally earned cash for business purposes and laundering money for fellow crooks.

Jerry would later involve himself with criminal associates who operated on a much larger scale and, as his criminal enterprise expanded, Jerry’s actions would become more and more outrageous – and deadly!

Upon returning to Port Charles after many years abroad, Jerry Jacks found himself acting as a go-between for crime baron Lorenzo Alcazar and a consortium of top-level criminals. But, when Lorenzo was shot and developed amnesia mere days before a crucial business transaction could be completed, Jerry enacted the first of his many audacious schemes.

Desperate to obtain a briefcase that Lorenzo had stowed away in a safe at the Metro Court Hotel, Jerry and a team of masked mercenaries stormed the establishment and attempted to take the item by force. When Sam McCall tripped a silent alarm, Jerry initiated a lockdown and made threats to kill every person he had taken as a hostage if the police tried to intervene.

Wanting to prove a point, Jerry shot – and critically injured – Robin Drake Scorpio and refused to allow her to be removed from the scene. Instead, he forced Emily Quartermaine, Elizabeth Webber, and Carly Corinthos to operate.

Jerry eventually managed to escape the hotel with the briefcase but he was now a murderer, owing to the fact that Alan Quartermaine died following a series of heart attacks brought on by the strain of being held captive.

A list of other fiendish plots enacted by Jerry includes his poisoning of Nikolas Cassadine, the tainting of the Port Charles water supply and ransoming of an anti-toxin, and his kidnapping of Robin whom he held hostage in a bid to use her medical knowledge to stave off the disease from which he was suffering.

Medical Maladies on General Hospital

Proving that even the wicked have to suffer occasionally, Jerry Jacks has had to face his own mortality on a number of occasions. He nearly died in a car accident during his first stay in Port Charles and he later narrowly avoided death when the boat he was on exploded.

Despite the best efforts of an assassin – hired by his former partner-in-crime The Balkan – Jerry managed to survive a bullet and a plunge into the Port Charles harbor. However, the hired killer’s ammo had been laced with a deadly substance known as plutonium.

Subsequently, Jerry developed severe radiation poisoning and it was in hopes of curing this disease that led him to kidnap Robin Scorpio. He tumbled from a hotel balcony before an antidote could be administered but he later abducted fellow plutonium sufferer Luke Spencer – who had been injected with a cure – and used his blood to synthesize an antidote.

Familiarity
Having initially lived in Port Charles in the late 1990s – before absconding into the night following a run-in with some jail-minded FBI agents – Jerry Jacks eventually returned to town under the guise of James Craig.

Thanks to extensive facial reconstructive surgery – courtesy of fellow criminal Dr. Ewen Kennan – Jerry was able to masquerade as an entirely new person until his mother managed to rumble his true identity and he had to reveal the truth to Jax. General Hospital (GH) airs weekdays on ABC. Check your local listings for airtimes.