Vann was born in 1971 and lived in Gary, Indiana. He was a registered sex offender, having served time in Texas for a sexual assault in 2009, and had been released in 2013.
In October 2014 the body of Afrikka Hardy, nineteen, was found in a motel room in Hammond. Police traced the booking to him within a day and arrested him. In interview he began describing other killings and directed officers to abandoned houses in Gary, where the bodies of six more women were found: Anith Jones, Teaira Batey, Kristine Williams, Tanya Gatlin, Tracy Martin and Sonya Billingsley.
He pleaded guilty in May 2018 to seven counts of murder and was sentenced to seven consecutive terms of life imprisonment without parole.
He pleaded guilty to all seven counts in May 2018 and received seven consecutive terms of life imprisonment without parole. Corrected here.
Two things belong on the page. Gary had thousands of abandoned buildings, and six women lay in them without being found. And he had been released from a Texas sentence for sexual assault the year before the killings began, which is the part the Indiana reporting pursued.