McKnight was born in 1954 and lived in Oakland, California.
Between September and December 1985 five women and girls were abducted in Oakland, sexually assaulted and stabbed to death. He was arrested on January 24, 1986.
The five who died were Diane Stone, seventeen; Talita Dixon, thirteen; Monique Franchone Davis, eighteen; Beverly Ann Bryant, twenty-four; and Betty Lynn Stuart, twenty-two.
The prosecution took more than two decades. He was tried and convicted, and sentenced to death on November 17, 2008, twenty-three years after the killings, on evidence that included DNA testing not available at the time.
He remains on California's death row, where no execution has been carried out since 2006 and a moratorium has been in force since 2019, so a sentence imposed in 2008 has never been close to being carried out.
Five deaths, all charged, all convicted, which is uncommon in this roster. The delay is the notable feature: the victims' families waited twenty-three years for a verdict on a case in which a suspect had been arrested within weeks.