Ahron Kee : child rapist and murderer who turned the projects of East Harlem into his personal killing ground.
Kendall Francois: known as "Stinky," Francois was arrested with the bodies of eight murdered prostitutes decomposing in his attic.
Carlton Gary: a truly heartless murderer who preyed on frail old ladies, strangling them to death in their beds.
Alton Coleman & Debra Brown: this murderous pair embarked on a killing spree across five states, leaving a trail of death in their wake.
Calvin Jackson: necrophile rapist who terrorized a New York hotel, claiming nine elderly victims in under a year.
Cleophus Prince Jr: killer who held San Diego in a grip of fear, as he raped and stabbed six young women to death in their apartments.
Wayne Williams: suspected of murdering 29 children, teenagers and young men during a series known as the Atlanta Child Murders. Doubts persist over his guilt.
Vaughn Greenwood: the Skid Row Slasher hacked and stabbed eleven men to death during a killing spree spanning a decade.
Plus 15 more riveting true crime cases. Click here to get your copy now.
Blood Brothers Volume One
Henry Louis Wallace
The Charlotte Strangler
“There’s only one Henry, a bad Henry” – Henry Louis Wallace
For almost two years, from 1992 to 1994, the women of East Charlotte in
Charlotte, North Carolina lived in a state of perpetual fear. During that time nine
young black women were raped and strangled to death by a killer whose ferocity
seemed to increase with each crime. His identity, when it was revealed, would
shock friends and baffle investigators because the Charlotte Strangler operated
differently to almost every serial killer they’d ever heard about.
The first killing occurred on June 15, 1992
and went undetected until two days later. On that date, the manager of Bojangles
Restaurant phoned Katy Love to tell her that her sister, Caroline, had not
reported for work the last two days. Disturbed by this piece of information,
Katy rushed to Caroline’s apartment. Caroline didn’t seem to be at home, but
there was no evidence of anything amiss so Katy left a note and went on her
way. However, Caroline’s sudden disappearance perturbed her, so she contacted
Caroline’s roommate Sadie McKnight. Sadie confirmed that she hadn’t seen
Caroline either and the pair decided to report the matter to the police.
Detective Anthony Rice was sent to
investigate, and became immediately suspicious when he entered Caroline’s
apartment. Some of the furniture stood askew, as though shoved aside during a
scuffle. In addition, the sheet had been removed from Caroline’s bed, and
appeared to be missing from the apartment.
However, there were no other clues to
indicate what might have happened to Caroline, and despite the best efforts of
Charlotte PD, they were unable to find her. She would remain missing for nigh
on two years.
On February 19, 1993, eight months after
the disappearance of Caroline Love, Sylvia Sumpter came home to the house she
shared with her daughter, Shawna Hawk. Shawna wasn’t in the house when Mrs. Sumpter
arrived and that troubled her, especially as Shawna’s coat lay over a chair,
her purse beside it. She doubted her daughter would have gone out in such cold
weather without her coat. Her concern growing, she placed two calls, one to
Darryl Kirkpatrick, Shawna’s boyfriend, the other to the local Taco Bell, where
Shawna worked part-time. Neither Darryl, nor Shawna’s co-workers at the
restaurant, had seen her.
As Mrs. Sumpter continued to fret, Darryl Kirkpatrick
arrived and conducted a search of the house, hoping to find some clue as to
where Shawna might have gone. As he reached the downstairs bathroom, he noticed
that the carpet was wet and that the shower curtain stood askew. Drawing the
curtain aside he let out an involuntary scream. Shawna lay naked in the
bathtub, her head submerged, her eyes staring lifelessly at the ceiling. An
autopsy would later reveal that she’d been raped and strangled to death.
Then, in June 1993, another victim showed
up. Twenty-four-year-old Audrey Spain had been a colleague of Shawna Hawk at
the Taco Bell. When she didn’t arrive at work on June 23 and 24, her manager at
the restaurant first phoned and then called on her apartment. Getting no reply
to his knocks, he left a note. When he still hadn’t heard from Audrey the
following day, he asked the superintendent of her building to go into the
apartment and make sure that she was okay. The man found Audrey lying naked on
the bed, items of clothing knotted around her neck. Like Shawna Hawk, she’d
been raped and strangled.
Two strangulation murders and the
disappearance of another young woman had now occurred in the space of just a
few months. In retrospect, it seems impossible to imagine that police didn’t
see a pattern. But without evidence linking the cases together, without
eyewitnesses reporting anyone suspicious near any of the crime scenes, the
connection wasn’t clear yet. And the killer was about to vary his M.O., making
it even more difficult for investigators to detect a series.
On the night of August 9, Zachary Douglas
was approaching the apartment of his girlfriend, Valencia Jumper, when he
smelled something burning. As he got closer he was dismayed to see black smoke
pouring from under Valencia’s door. He tried to enter the apartment but found
the door locked. He then roused a neighbor and got him to call the fire
department. A unit was dispatched to the scene, where firefighters found
Valencia’s severely burned body lying on the bed.
Her death was ruled accidental, the cause
recorded as “thermal burns.” It would remain so until the Charlotte Strangler confessed
to the crime.
With the next murder, on September 15, the
strangler again varied his M.O. As well as strangling Michelle Stinson, he also
stabbed her. Michelle’s body was discovered by her two young sons, one three, the
other just a year old. The older child went to the apartment of a neighbor,
James Mayes, and told him that his mom was “sleeping on the floor.” When Mayes
arrived he found Michelle lying in a pool of her own blood. A knife had been
driven into her back and an autopsy would later show that it had ruptured her
heart. In addition, she’d been raped and strangled.
Five women had now died violently within a
five-mile radius in a little over a year, and yet police were still not sure
whether the murders were the work of a single perpetrator. However, the
residents of East Charlotte were in no doubt that a serial killer was among
them. The mood on the street was angry. Citizens felt that local politicians
and law enforcement officials were indifferent to their plight. Even the local
newspapers had been low-key in their reportage of the crimes. Charlotte’s 31%
black community felt abandoned by officialdom and the media.
Something had to be done, so the Charlotte
Police Department convened a press conference at which they pledged to solve
the East Charlotte murders. Detective Sergeant Gary McFadden, an
African-American officer with an excellent arrest record, was appointed to lead
the investigation. McFadden got to work immediately, meeting with the families
of the victims and committing himself to bringing the killer of their loved
ones to justice. Still, the community hated him, McFadden would later recall.
“They treated me like a scapegoat. It was total conflict.”
No sooner had McFadden taken up his new
post, than the killer dropped out of sight. There were no further murders
through the fall of 1993, into the holiday season and beyond. Perhaps the
killer had been scared off by the increased police presence on the streets?
Perhaps, he’d moved on? If that was the belief, it would be shattered on Sunday,
February 20, 1994.
Vanessa Mack worked at the Carolinas
Medical Center and her mother, Barbara, routinely looked after Vanessa’s four-month-old
child while Vanessa was at her job. On this Sunday, Barbara arrived just before
6 a.m. to pick up her grandchild. She was surprised to find the door ajar but
she let herself into the foyer. The apartment was quiet and when she saw the
baby asleep on the sofa and no sign of Vanessa, she sensed something was wrong.
She walked quickly through the apartment, searching the kitchen and bathroom
before entering her daughter’s bedroom. Vanessa’s semi-naked body lay across
the bed, a ligature of some sort knotted around her neck.
Thus far, the killer had been careful,
killing at will, disappearing without a trace, leaving not the sniff of a clue
for police to work with. But in the second week of March 1994, something seemed
to unhinge him. Between March 9 and March 11, he went on a murder spree,
claiming three victims in as many days.
Betty Baucom was the assistant manager at
Bojangles, the same restaurant where the strangler’s first victim, Caroline
Love, had worked. On March 9, Baucom failed to report for work. Her boss,
Jeffery Ellis, placed a call to her home and got no reply. He figured she was
probably running late and would show up soon. But Baucom didn’t show that
night. When she was still absent the following evening, Ellis called the
police.
Police officer Gregory Norwood picked up
the call and went to Baucom’s apartment where the building superintendent let
him in. He found Betty Baucom lying face down on her bed. She was fully
clothed, a towel knotted into a tight noose around her neck.
Once again, there were variances to the
killer’s M.O. Baucom’s TV and VCR had been taken and her car, a light-blue
Pulsar, was also missing. An alert was immediately put out on the vehicle while
officers were dispatched to check out local pawnshops, in case the killer had
tried to sell the stolen items.
Then a call came in about another murdered
woman and officers were astonished to discover that it was in the same building
as Betty Baucom.
The dead woman was Brandi Henderson. Her
boyfriend, Verness Lamar Woods, had arrived home from working the night shift
to find her lying lifeless on the bed, a towel knotted around her neck. Worse
yet, Brandi’s killer had also tried to throttle the couple’s 10-month-old
toddler (the child fortunately would survive without permanent injury).
With the community seething over these new
attacks, Det. Sgt. McFadden called his team together to revisit the evidence
they’d gathered thus far. Early in the year, McFadden had requested the FBI’s
help in drawing up a profile of the killer. The Bureau had responded that the
murders did not look as though they’d been committed by the same perpetrator.
After the latest attacks, McFadden was convinced that they were wrong. He asked
his team to look specifically at links between the victims. Had they worked
together? Attended the same school? Moved in the same social circle?
The police had followed this line of
enquiry before and drawn a blank. Now though, something jumped out at
investigators. They’d asked each victim’s family and friends for a list of people
with whom they had associated. The lists all had one name in common: Henry
Louis Wallace.
§ Wallace had been the manager of the Taco Bell where both Shawna Hawk
and Audrey Spain had worked.
§ Michelle Stinson, who often ate at the Taco Bell, would sometimes get
into conversation with Wallace.
§ Valencia Jumper was a friend of Wallace’s sister, Yvonne.
§ Vanessa Mack was the sister of one of Wallace’s ex-girlfriends.
§ Betty Baucom was a friend of Wallace’s current girlfriend, Sadie
McKnight.
§ Brandi Henderson was the girlfriend of Wallace’s friend, Verness
Lamar Woods.
§ There was also a link to the “missing person” case. Caroline Love
had been the roommate of Wallace’s girlfriend Sadie McKnight.
The pieces seemed to fit perfectly, but
McFadden was all too aware that it proved nothing. It could all just be a
coincidence. McFadden decided to approach Wallace’s girlfriend. Sadie McKnight was
at first shocked that police suspected her boyfriend of being the Charlotte
Strangler, but as she thought about it she remembered Henry giving her rings
and necklaces that had seemed vaguely familiar. She now realized that the
jewelry had come from his victims, many of whom, she had known.
The final piece of evidence came when the police
located Betty Baucom’s Pulsar. They lifted a clear set of prints from the trunk
– Henry Louis Wallace’s prints.
Wallace was taken into custody the
following day, surrendering without a fight. But even as the police were
transferring him to the Law Enforcement Center for questioning, news came of
another murder. Debra Slaughter was discovered raped and then beaten, stabbed,
and choked to death. She was the last victim of the Charlotte Strangler. Like
the others, she too, had been an acquaintance of Henry Louis Wallace.
At the Law Enforcement Center meanwhile,
Wallace was confessing to nine murders; Caroline Love, Shawna Hawk, Audrey
Spain, Valencia Jumper, Michelle Stinson, Vanessa Mack, Betty Baucom, Brandi
Henderson and Debra Slaughter. He also admitted to the murder of an unnamed
prostitute and gave police the location of Caroline Love’s body.
Over the next several hours he related in
sickening detail how he had killed the women, recalling even their final words
as he throttled them to death. Although he’d robbed all of his victims to feed
his crack habit, he said that the motive for the crimes was sex. They fulfilled
his fantasies of power and control.
Asked at one point if he thought he might
be schizophrenic, Wallace replied. “No, there’s only one Henry, a bad Henry.”
Wallace went on trial for murder at the
Mecklenburg County Superior Courthouse in September 1996. His trial lasted four
months and concluded in a guilty verdict and death penalties on all nine counts.
He is currently incarcerated on death row
at Central Prison in Raleigh, North Carolina.
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