Dellmus Colvin was a long-haul truck driver from Toledo, Ohio, who pleaded guilty in 2006 to the deaths of five women in northwest Ohio and later admitted a sixth. In 2011 he pleaded guilty in New Jersey to strangling a woman in Atlantic City in 1987, a death that had first been ruled an accidental cocaine overdose. His guilty pleas account for seven deaths in court records and press coverage. In 2020, speaking by telephone from an Ohio prison for a podcast, he said he had killed as many as 52 women across several states. His description of one of those killings set off a search in La Salle County, Illinois, which ended without any human remains being found. None of the killings he claimed beyond the seven has led to a charge.
Little is known of Colvin's early life, and his date of birth has never been published. He was 47 when he pleaded guilty in Toledo in 2006, according to the Toledo Blade as cited by the Orlando broadcaster WFTV, 51 when he was sentenced in New Jersey in April 2011, according to WNWO in Toledo and WPVI (6abc) in Philadelphia, and 61 in September 2020, according to WFTV.
What is known of his childhood comes from his own account. In the 2020 podcast interview, as WFTV reported it, Colvin described a normal upbringing on a farm near Akron, Ohio, with no abuse or neglect. He said he wrestled and played football, and that he had never been suspended from school. "I was a square," he said. He told the interviewer that he hunted as a boy, that he came to hate his stepmother, and that at 14 he had fantasized about killing her. He said he began killing at about age 24. None of these statements has been tested in court; they are his own claims.
At some point he moved to Toledo and drove trucks for a living. In the 2020 interview he said his work on the interstates had helped him avoid detection for years, WFTV reported.
The earliest death tied to Colvin in a court record is that of Donna Lee White, 27, of Somers Point, New Jersey. She was found dead in Atlantic City on September 15, 1987, according to WFTV. At the time Colvin was charged in New Jersey with hindering and tampering with evidence, WPVI reported in 2011. An autopsy concluded that she had died of acute cocaine intoxication, and the case was closed. WNWO described the original ruling as an accidental cocaine overdose, and said Colvin had been a suspect in her death even then.
What became of the 1987 hindering and tampering charges has never been made public.
Between 2000 and 2003, the remains of several women were found in and around Toledo. WFTV, drawing on reporting by the Toledo Blade, gave these dates:
Valerie Jones, 38: her remains were found on January 6, 2000.
Dorothea Wetzel, 40: she was killed in Toledo, and her body was found on August 5, 2000.
Jacquelynn Thomas, 42: her body was found on September 2, 2000.
Lily Summers, 43: her body was found on April 8, 2002.
Jackie Simpson, 33: she was killed in Toledo in 2003, and her remains were found on April 23, 2003.
Melissa Weber, 37: she was killed in Toledo in 2003. Her body was found on May 9, 2005.
One of these dates is in conflict. WNWO, in June 2010, gave the year of Simpson's death as 2005 and Weber's as 2003; WFTV, in 2020, put both deaths in 2003. Simpson and Weber were both from Toledo, WNWO reported.
Little else has been published about the women as people beyond their names and ages.
The case against Colvin began with a separate complaint. In 2004, according to the Toledo Blade as cited by WFTV, a woman got away from him and called the police, and investigators took a DNA sample from him in connection with that sexual-assault complaint. In 2005, the Blade reported, his DNA profile was linked to the deaths of Melissa Weber and Jackie Simpson and to a sexual assault in 1998. DNA found under Weber's fingernails was part of the link.
Colvin was charged with murder in the deaths of Weber and Simpson. WNWO reported that he was "originally charged" with those two killings. The charges carried the possibility of a death sentence. Colvin himself later described it as "a capital case," according to WFTV's account of the 2020 interview.
The case went to trial in Toledo in 2006. As the trial neared its end, according to WNWO, Colvin offered to plead guilty to the murders of Weber and Simpson and to the deaths of three other women, and in return prosecutors agreed not to seek the death penalty. The three other women were Valerie Jones, Jacquelynn Thomas and Lily Summers, according to WFTV.
WNWO's reports describe the plea in two ways. In June 2010 the station said he had confessed in 2006 to killing five women in northwest Ohio between 2000 and 2005. In April 2011 it said that in October 2006 he had admitted in Toledo that he killed four women and helped to murder a fifth. Which of the five deaths was the one in which he helped has never been made public, and no one else has been named in connection with it. The Blade's report on the plea, as WFTV relayed it, gave his age as 47 at the time.
Colvin was sentenced to life in prison. WNWO reported in 2011 that he was serving two life sentences, and WFTV said in 2020 that he was serving consecutive life sentences for the deaths of Simpson and Weber. In June 2010 WNWO reported that he was held at Toledo Correctional Institution and would be eligible for parole in 2072.
In the 2020 interview Colvin gave his own view of the deal. "I was on my way to death row, so I made a deal with them at the last minute," he said, according to WFTV, adding that he had told investigators he could give them some cold cases.
After his plea Colvin admitted a sixth killing in Toledo, that of Dorothea Wetzel, 40, according to WFTV, which cited the Toledo Blade. Her body had been found on August 5, 2000. No record shows whether he was charged or sentenced in her death, so it stands as an admission rather than a conviction.
The Atlantic City case was reopened in 2009, after detectives in New Jersey learned that Colvin was under investigation in Ohio for killing six women, WPVI reported. WNWO said Atlantic City detectives compared notes with investigators in Toledo. By June 2010 Colvin had been indicted in White's death, and prosecutors in Mays Landing, New Jersey, said they believed he was responsible, according to WNWO.
He was brought to New Jersey, and on Friday, April 8, 2011, he pleaded guilty to killing White. He admitted that he had strangled her, WPVI and WNWO reported. A judge sentenced him the same day to 30 more years in prison, according to WNWO. The charge to which he pleaded, the judge's name, and whether the term runs after his Ohio sentences or alongside them have not been made public.
WFTV, citing the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction, said in 2020 that he had been in prison since 2006 for the deaths of seven women.
In August 2020 Phil Chalmers, a Florida-based criminal profiler and author who studies serial killers, released a 43-minute podcast episode built on telephone interviews with Colvin, as part of a series called "Where the Bodies Are Buried," WFTV and Shaw Local reported. Colvin was then 61 and held at Lebanon Correctional Institution in Ohio.
In the interview, according to WFTV, Colvin said he had killed women across the United States between 1987 and 2005. He put his total at as many as 52, and said, "I never counted." He told Chalmers he had averaged one or two killings a year. He said some of the women had worked for him. He declined to talk about killings in states that have the death penalty, saying he kept a list of them, WFTV reported. He also said his first killing had been of a hitchhiker in New Jersey. None of these claims has been tested in court.
Chalmers told Shaw Local that many of Colvin's statements had been corroborated and that Colvin had never boasted of crimes he did not commit. He put the confirmed total at 40 or more, and said Colvin's estimate of 52 rested on his pace of killing over about three decades. Shaw Local reported that Chalmers believed Colvin's killings had begun in 1983. None of these figures comes from a court or a police agency.
Chalmers also addressed one well-known Illinois case. He told Shaw Local that Colvin was not responsible for the 1992 death of Tammy Zywicki, a college student, because her case did not fit the pattern of the women Colvin described.
The most specific claim in the interview concerned La Salle County, Illinois. Colvin described meeting a woman at a truck stop in the county and killing her. At first he did not give a year; after a follow-up call he told Chalmers it had been in 2005, which would make it one of his last killings, Shaw Local reported on September 3, 2020. He said he did not know the names of his victims, and he described leaving her clothing in Council Bluffs, Iowa, according to WFTV.
On Wednesday, September 2, 2020, La Salle County sheriff's deputies and crime scene technicians searched the area near La Salle and Peru with cadaver dogs. They found two small bones, and it was not clear at first whether they were human. The bones went to the Illinois State Police for analysis. Sheriff Tom Templeton said the dogs struggled in the afternoon heat, and the search was set to resume on September 9, Shaw Local and WFTV reported.
On October 26, 2020, Shaw Local reported that the search had been halted. A second search, carried out quietly the week before, found only animal bones, including deer bones, and an earlier find had proved to be a fragment of cow bone. Investigators still considered Colvin credible. "He was and is telling us the truth," Templeton said. The investigators believed any remains had probably decayed or been scattered by animals over the years. La Salle Police Chief Mike Smudzinski pointed to nearly two decades of hard winters and damp springs. Peru Police Chief Doug Bernabei said recovering and identifying remains was "highly unlikely" after so long. Templeton said there were no immediate plans to resume the search, and he doubted that investigators would learn the woman's identity, since she could have come from anywhere in the country.
Chalmers praised the county for looking at all. Many police departments, he told Shaw Local, would not have searched for a woman killed some 20 years earlier.
When The Times of Ottawa, Illinois, a Shaw Local paper, listed its top stories of 2020 in January 2021, the search was among them. Nothing was found, the paper said, but the authorities believed Colvin's statements were credible.
Colvin was held at Lebanon Correctional Institution in Ohio in September 2020, serving life sentences, according to WFTV; Shaw Local described him in October 2020 as serving natural life in an Ohio prison. No charge has followed from the killings he claimed in the 2020 interview.
Total number of victims. WFTV, citing Ohio prison records, linked him to seven deaths in 2020: five covered by the 2006 Toledo plea, Dorothea Wetzel by his later admission, and Donna Lee White by the 2011 New Jersey plea. Colvin's own figure of up to 52 and Chalmers's figure of at least 40 are unverified.
The La Salle County killing. Two searches in 2020 found no human remains, and the woman he described has not been identified. Local officials called his account credible.
The New Jersey hitchhiker. Colvin said his first killing was of a hitchhiker in New Jersey; no charge or identification has been reported.
The start of the killings. Colvin said he began killing at about 24; Chalmers placed the start in 1983. The earliest death in a court record is White's in 1987.
The dates of the Toledo deaths. WNWO gave 2005 as the year of Jackie Simpson's death; WFTV gave 2003.
Parole. WNWO reported a parole eligibility year of 2072 for the Ohio sentences; other reports describe life sentences without giving parole terms.
September 15, 1987: Donna Lee White, 27, of Somers Point, is found dead in Atlantic City; her death is ruled a cocaine overdose, and Colvin is charged with hindering and tampering with evidence.
January 6, 2000: the remains of Valerie Jones, 38, are found.
August 5, 2000: the body of Dorothea Wetzel, 40, is found in Toledo.
September 2, 2000: the body of Jacquelynn Thomas, 42, is found.
April 8, 2002: the body of Lily Summers, 43, is found.
2003: Jackie Simpson, 33, and Melissa Weber, 37, are killed in Toledo; Simpson's remains are found on April 23, 2003.
2004: a DNA sample is taken from Colvin over a sexual-assault complaint in Toledo.
May 9, 2005: Melissa Weber's body is found.
2005: his DNA profile is linked to the Weber and Simpson deaths and to a 1998 sexual assault; he is charged with murder.
2006: during his trial in Toledo he pleads guilty to five deaths in exchange for prosecutors not seeking the death penalty, and is sentenced to life in prison.
2006: he admits the death of Dorothea Wetzel.
2009: Atlantic City detectives reopen the White case.
June 2010: he is under indictment in New Jersey for White's death.
April 8, 2011: he pleads guilty in New Jersey to killing White and is sentenced to 30 more years.
August 2020: a podcast episode built on interviews with Colvin is released.
September 2, 2020: a search near La Salle and Peru, Illinois, finds two small bones, sent for analysis.
October 26, 2020: the search is reported halted after only animal bones were found.