Between late May and early August 2010, 14 men were stabbed in and around Flint, Michigan, and five of them died. The attacks came late at night or in the early morning, on empty streets. Survivors told police that a big man had pulled up beside them, said his car was giving him trouble or asked for directions, and then attacked. Most of the men were Black. By the time the attacks stopped, police in Leesburg, Virginia, and Toledo, Ohio, believed the same man had struck there too, and the count across three states had reached 18.
On the night of August 11, 2010, officers took Elias Abuelazam, a 33-year-old Israeli citizen who had been working at a market near Flint, into custody at the Atlanta airport as he waited to board a flight to Tel Aviv. In May 2012 a Genesee County jury rejected his insanity defense and convicted him of the first-degree murder of Arnold Minor, 49, the last man to die in the series. He was sentenced to life without parole. He had also been charged with two more murders and with assaults on six other men, but the county prosecutor set those cases aside once the life sentence was in place. In 2017, in return for immunity, he confessed to killing a former neighbor in Leesburg in 2009.
Abuelazam came from Ramla, a mixed Jewish and Arab town in central Israel that is also spelled Ramle. The Associated Press described it in 2012 as a poor town, and reported that he had been born and raised there. Neighbors told reporters that the family was Christian, and the Israeli news site Ynet said he was well known in Ramla's Christian Arab community. He was the youngest of six children and the only son, according to the Associated Press, and his father died when he was young.
Ynet reported that he moved to the United States as a child after his mother remarried, and that the family later returned to Ramla after several years abroad. The Jewish Telegraphic Agency reported in 2011 that he was living legally in the United States on a green card obtained through marriage to an American citizen. He was not a U.S. citizen, a point the county prosecutor stressed after his arrest.
Property and court records described by NPR placed him in the Washington, D.C., area from 1998 to 2007, and showed that he owned a house in Leesburg, in Loudoun County, Virginia, from 2002 to 2007. He married twice, and both marriages ended in divorce, the second in 2007, according to an Associated Press report. His former mother-in-law, quoted by NPR, said he and her daughter had been married for three years and lived in Leesburg, and she remembered him as "just the sweetest guy." His former wife told reporters in 2010 that she was shocked by the news.
In the mid-2000s he reportedly worked at a behavioral health center in Leesburg, NPR said, and Associated Press reports said he had worked in mental health while he lived there. After the 2007 divorce he moved around more, the Associated Press said, living at different times in Loudoun County, Michigan, Florida and Israel. Loudoun County records showed a December 2007 arrest on a felony gun possession charge, later dropped, and a 2008 misdemeanor assault charge that was still waiting for a court date in 2010.
Early in 2010 he was back in Ramla. Ynet reported that he had visited Israel about six months before his arrest and that, according to police information, he had been involved in a violent fight with a friend before he returned to the United States. Israeli police later said he had been a suspect in a stabbing in Israel that year, but that the case was dropped because the victim would not cooperate. An Israeli police spokesman said he had no criminal record in Israel. Ynet said he had no serious criminal record and was not classed as a felon.
Abuelazam arrived in Flint in May 2010. An uncle owned two neighboring houses in the city, and Abuelazam lived in one of them while the uncle lived next door. He took a job at a market and liquor store in Mount Morris Township, just outside Flint, for about 10 dollars an hour. Associated Press reports describe him working the afternoon shift at the register, and in one account working nights managing the store. The manager later said he "figured no one would mess with him." Police said he had worked there for about a month by August, and that his last shift was on August 1.
He was a large man. The Genesee County sheriff, Robert Pickell, described him as about six feet five inches tall and 280 pounds. He drove a 1996 Chevrolet Blazer, which police later said matched survivors' descriptions.
Five men died in the Flint-area attacks. The Associated Press listed them in August 2010 as David Motley, 31, of Flint; Emmanuel A. Muhammad, 59, of Flint; Darwin Marshall, 43, of Flint; Arnold R. Minor, 49, of Flint; and Frank Kellybrew, 60, of Flint Township.
Police believed David Motley was the first to die. NPR reported that the first attack was his fatal stabbing on May 24, 2010. He was the father of five, a man at the memorial his friends built for him told CBS News, and he would have turned 32 that July. One friend had his name and the years 1978 to 2010 tattooed on his arm.
Emmanuel A. Muhammad, 59, of Flint, was also among the five men who died.
Darwin Marshall, 43, was stabbed to death in Flint on July 26, 2010. A woman who saw the attack came forward in September and described the attacker as tall, over 200 pounds and good looking. At the news conference announcing a murder charge in his death, his brother said he was glad someone had "came forward and spoke up for my brother."
Frank Kellybrew, 60, was killed on July 30, 2010, in Flint Township. Michigan State Police analysts later found blood on the laces of a pair of tennis shoes that investigators tied to Abuelazam, and the prosecutor said DNA from that blood was consistent with Kellybrew's profile. His niece said at the same news conference that she hoped "justice is done."
Arnold Minor, 49, was a handyman. He was stabbed in the early hours of August 2, 2010, near downtown Flint. Before he died he told police that his attacker was white, according to the Michigan Court of Appeals. His was the last death in the series and the only one that went to trial. Nearly two years later his mother and sister were in court when Abuelazam was sentenced.
Police described the same approach again and again. A man would pull up to someone walking alone late at night, on a quiet road, and ask for directions or for help with a car he said had broken down. Then he would attack and drive away. The attacks came roughly every four days from late May onward, police said. The men attacked ranged in age from 15 to 67, according to the Associated Press, and at least 15 of the 18 men attacked in the three states were Black.
The Michigan Court of Appeals summed up the evidence at trial in the same way: a series of early-morning stabbings on deserted Flint streets, most of the victims African American men, and a green or beige SUV often seen parked near them. The driver would ask for help and then attack.
Whether race was the motive was argued over from the start. The Leesburg police chief, Joseph Price, said in August 2010 that he believed the Virginia victims had been chosen because they were Black, and that "his motivation is pure hatred." The Genesee County prosecutor, David Leyton, said there was no evidence that race was a factor and that the motive was unknown. The Jewish Telegraphic Agency described nearly all the victims as dark-skinned men, either Black or Latin American. One Flint resident told reporters that the community had feared a hate crime. No motive was established in court, and prosecutors were not required to offer one to the jury.
By late July 2010, police believed a serial attacker was at work, according to the Associated Press. On August 4, Michigan authorities announced that a single attacker was behind the stabbings. All five deaths had already occurred by then.
A task force led by the Michigan State Police, working with the FBI, collected tips from the public. It had received 469 by August 11, CBS News reported, and ABC's Philadelphia station later put the number at more than 500. Survivors described a big man in a baseball-style cap, and a police sketch of the suspect and his vehicle was released.
The break came from that sketch. According to the Associated Press, the daughter of one of Abuelazam's co-workers saw it and called investigators. The Court of Appeals described the same step from the trial record: a caller to the tip line said the sketch from an earlier stabbing looked like a new co-worker at a local market, and that his vehicle fit the description of the SUV. Investigators questioned employees at the store, and the prosecutor said its surveillance video showed a man matching the description of the man they wanted. Video from a market near the scene of the August 2 stabbing showed a partly green SUV, the appeals court said.
By then Abuelazam had left Michigan. He had told co-workers he was going to Virginia.
In early August 2010, three men were attacked in Leesburg, where Abuelazam had lived for years. CBS News reported that a 15-year-old and a 67-year-old were stabbed and a third man was struck with a hammer. All three survived. Leesburg police came to believe Abuelazam was responsible, and Chief Price said he thought those victims had been chosen because of the color of their skin. Officer Chris Jones of the Leesburg police cautioned after the arrest that "there are still many issues that need to be addressed."
Early on Thursday, August 5, 2010, Arlington County police stopped Abuelazam's Blazer for a traffic violation, failing to obey a highway sign. A records check turned up an outstanding warrant for simple assault from Leesburg, and he was arrested, booked and photographed. A magistrate released him on his own recognizance, a police spokeswoman told ARLnow.com. Officers found a knife and a hammer in the vehicle. Police impounded the Blazer, which police later said matched survivors' descriptions, and then gave it back to him. No national alert had been issued for him or for the SUV.
"You have to understand at that point in time, nobody knew he was the individual," Leyton said afterward. Virginia authorities, he said, "had no idea at that time that he was involved in these crimes."
In August 2010, a few days before the arrest, a man was stabbed in Toledo, Ohio, after his attacker asked him for directions, according to CBS Detroit and the Associated Press. He survived. CBS News reported the day after the arrest that the Toledo stabbing appeared to be linked to the Flint series. The man later told reporters that his attacker seemed to have decided that he "wasn't that bad of a guy."
Abuelazam went back to Michigan. His uncle bought him a ticket to Tel Aviv that cost about 3,000 dollars, and later testified that he had driven his nephew to Detroit Metropolitan Airport because Abuelazam did not want to work. The trip went from Detroit through Louisville, Kentucky, to Atlanta. Abuelazam did not make his connecting flight in Louisville, and investigators later traveled there to collect two of his bags.
Investigative leads had pointed to Abuelazam, and U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers found his name on the passenger list of a Delta Air Lines flight from Atlanta to Tel Aviv. A Customs and Border Protection officer had information linking him to stabbings in Virginia and Michigan, according to the Court of Appeals. On the night of Wednesday, August 11, 2010, at the request of the Michigan State Police, Atlanta police paged him over the airport intercom and told him to report to a ticket counter. He was arrested at the boarding gate. Six officers led him away without a struggle, CBS News reported.
Other passengers said he had seemed tense and was talking on his cellphone. One told reporters that Abuelazam was talking "about not being violent and different things like that." NPR reported that he was traveling on an expired Israeli passport. He was booked into the Fulton County Jail. The prosecutor would say only that "technology" had been used to track him outside Michigan.
The same day, a judge in Flint signed a warrant charging him with assault with intent to murder over a stabbing on July 27, 2010. The man stabbed that night had spent a week in the hospital. He identified Abuelazam from a photograph that FBI agents showed him at 3 a.m.
In Israel, his mother told Israel Radio that he had sounded "quiet and calm" on the telephone before his flight. "I do not believe these charges are true," she said, and she described him as a religious, God-fearing man who always helped anyone in need. Neighbors in Ramla described him as a loner from a good family.
In Flint, a few dozen people gathered outside the market where he had worked. Its manager called him a "good guy," but said, "I hope they hang him" if he turned out to be the killer. A neighbor said there had been no warning signs. Several residents told reporters that the summer had made them wary of stopping for anyone with car trouble. "It makes you not want to give anybody a hand with a vehicle if it breaks down," one man said. Another said the attacks had at least drawn people together. "For once, Flint came together," he said.
At a brief hearing in Atlanta later that week, before Judge Richard Hicks, Abuelazam had no lawyer. He first said he wanted to fight the charges in Georgia, but after the process was explained he waived extradition and agreed to return to Michigan. "It sounds more logical to go right now than in 90 days," he said. Bringing him back cost money Genesee County did not have; Leyton said the county's 18 million dollar budget deficit might require state or local help to cover the flight and security.
In August a judge ordered him held without bond. Prosecutors had asked for a 10 million dollar bond, pointing to the seriousness of the attacks and the risk that he would flee. "He is not a citizen of the United States," Leyton said, and he asked the judge to make sure that Abuelazam stood trial in Genesee County, "where he ran rampant, created havoc and attacked innocent citizens."
Two Lansing lawyers took on his defense, Brian Morley and Ed Zeineh. Morley, a former Flint police officer, told reporters early on that there was "not enough evidence at this point to say my client did it."
On September 20, 2010, Leyton charged Abuelazam with open murder in the death of Arnold Minor and with assault with intent to murder in four more attacks. Leyton announced two further murder charges later that fall, over the deaths of Frank Kellybrew in Flint Township and Darwin Marshall in Flint, describing the Marshall count as "open murder, life offense without parole." That brought the Genesee County case to three homicide charges and five counts of assault with intent to murder, ABC7 Chicago reported. By 2011 the number of assault counts had risen to six.
In Ohio, a Toledo grand jury indicted him in early October 2010 on charges of attempted murder and felonious assault over the Toledo stabbing. Around the same time, Genesee County announced a separate charge of destroying property, accusing him of smashing a car window in a bar parking lot in Genesee Township.
He was held in the Genesee County jail while the cases moved forward. In late October 2010 he appeared in court with visible injuries after a scuffle with deputies; Morley said he had spoken to the sheriff and was not concerned that the deputies had used more force than needed. In December 2010 Leyton said another inmate had tried, some time before, to put oven cleaner in Abuelazam's food. The inmate was not named.
In January 2011 a judge ordered Abuelazam to stand trial on a third murder charge, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency reported, and his lawyers were said to be considering an insanity defense.
The first case to go before a jury was the murder of Arnold Minor. Prosecutors had their strongest physical evidence in that case. Minor's blood, according to the Associated Press, was found on the steering wheel of the SUV Abuelazam had been driving and on pants and shoes packed in his luggage. "DNA's tough. It just is," Morley conceded before the trial.
Before trial the defense asked to move the case out of Genesee County because of the publicity. The trial court refused. Prosecutors also sought to put survivors' accounts of other stabbings before the jury, arguing that the attacks were similar enough to show a method of operation, and the judge allowed that evidence with limits and instructions to the jurors, according to the Court of Appeals.
The trial opened in Flint on a Tuesday in early May 2012, about 60 miles north of Detroit. In his opening statement Leyton told the jurors that DNA evidence would link Abuelazam to Minor's death, and that they would hear from some of the men who had been attacked and learn how the stabbings had happened.
On the second day the prosecution called Abuelazam's uncle. He described how he had driven his nephew to the airport for the trip to Israel in August 2010. Asked about his nephew, he said the idea that Abuelazam was violent did not "strike his mind." He left before the trial ended, and no relatives of the defendant attended, the Associated Press reported.
The judge allowed four men who had survived other stabbings in the series to testify and to identify Abuelazam as the man who had attacked them. A forensic scientist from the state crime lab testified that Minor's blood was on the shoes and jeans in Abuelazam's luggage and in the car he had been driving. A state trooper testified that the location records for Abuelazam's cellphone matched the areas where the stabbings took place.
After the prosecution rested, the defense argued that Abuelazam was legally insane. Before the defense opened, the Associated Press reported that the psychiatrist Dr. Norman Miller was expected to testify about Abuelazam's state of mind in 2010. A defense psychiatrist told the jurors that Abuelazam had paranoid schizophrenia, that he acted on voices in his mind while he drove at night, and that he had been under the control of "evil forces" when Minor died. Abuelazam had told the experts who examined him that he was under the spell of demons.
Three mental health experts called by the prosecution disagreed. The last witness was the psychiatrist Dr. Elissa Benedek, who testified that Abuelazam was not insane when Minor died. She said he might have a personality disorder, which she did not regard as a mental illness, and that he had described himself as spoiled and special and had never learned to take responsibility. The psychologist Charles Clark told the jury that the reasons for the stabbings remained unexplained because Abuelazam had never given a complete and honest account of why he did it. According to the Court of Appeals, the state's experts pointed to the way the men were chosen as evidence of planning and goal-directed behavior, and concluded that Abuelazam understood that what he was doing was wrong.
Michigan law made the defense a hard one to win, experts told the Associated Press, because jurors can convict of murder and also find that mental illness was involved, and either way the sentence for first-degree murder is life without parole. "You can convince them with proper testimony that someone might be mentally ill, but you still have a dead body," said Robert Ashley, a lawyer not involved in the case.
In his closing argument Zeineh concentrated on Abuelazam's mental health. Leyton described the attacks as "planned, focused, done with care."
On Tuesday, May 22, 2012, after an eight-day trial, the jury deliberated for only a few hours and convicted Abuelazam of first-degree premeditated murder. The jury foreman told reporters that the defense had not produced any friends or co-workers who had seen signs of schizophrenia in Abuelazam's daily life, and that rejecting the insanity claim had been "very easy." "He's one evil dude," the foreman said.
Minor's sister said the family had waited 658 days for the verdict. "He's not crazy," she said. Leyton told reporters, "We had a mountain of evidence." Zeineh said afterward that the mentally ill really do go to prison.
On June 25, 2012, Genesee County Judge Judith Fullerton sentenced Abuelazam, then 35, to the mandatory term of life in prison. Michigan does not allow parole for first-degree murder. He said nothing about the crime when he was given the chance to speak, and the judge did not add any harsh words of her own before he was led out in chains.
Minor's mother, 68, collapsed in the courtroom and had to be carried out. She said later that she had been overwhelmed and fell after she saw Abuelazam grin. Minor's sister told the judge she was glad the day had come and hoped Abuelazam would "rot in hell for the pain he put this city through."
"This man terrorized the community. He murdered our citizens," Leyton said. He said he was open to plea agreements in the remaining cases but wanted to consult the victims and their families first, weighing their wishes against the cost to the county. The sentencing closed the first of as many as 10 possible trials arising from the stabbings.
In early October 2012, Leyton announced in a Flint courtroom that Abuelazam would face no further trials in Michigan unless his first conviction was overturned on appeal. The two remaining murder cases and six cases of assault with intent to murder were suspended. Leyton said further trials would cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. "We have him life without parole. You can't do any better than that," he said.
Abuelazam was brought from prison for the short hearing and said he understood the agreement, which Zeineh signed. "In the interests of justice, this is appropriate," Zeineh said. Leyton and the assistant prosecutor Tamara Phillips would retry the suspended cases only if the Court of Appeals or the Michigan Supreme Court set aside the conviction. Leyton said the victims he had been able to reach supported the decision, but not everyone agreed; the mother of one man who survived a stabbing called it "a shame."
In Ohio, the Lucas County prosecutor, Julia Bates, said she would review the Toledo case to decide whether to seek his extradition. As of 2012 he had not been charged in Virginia over the 2010 Leesburg attacks.
Michigan gives anyone convicted of first-degree murder an automatic right of appeal. On June 10, 2014, a three-judge panel of the Michigan Court of Appeals (Judges Riordan, Donofrio and Fort Hood, in an unpublished opinion for the court) affirmed the conviction and sentence.
Abuelazam raised four issues. He said the trial should have been moved because of pretrial publicity; the court found that the news articles he cited were mostly national, factual and not inflammatory, that jurors who had formed opinions said they could set them aside, and that the trial court had not abused its discretion. He said the other stabbings should not have been put before the jury; the court held that the evidence was highly relevant to premeditation and to rebutting the insanity defense, and that the trial court had limited it and instructed the jurors on its use. He said a mistrial should have been declared because a witness referred to a "serial killer" and an officer to a "serial stabbing"; the court found the remarks isolated, noted that objections were sustained and that the prosecutor had not appeared to draw them out, and held that the judge's instructions cured any harm. He challenged a 130 dollar crime victim's rights assessment, which had been 60 dollars when the crime was committed; the court rejected that claim under a 2014 Michigan Supreme Court decision.
The Michigan Supreme Court then declined to hear his appeal, saying it was not persuaded that the case should be reviewed, the Associated Press reported on December 1, 2014.
In 2014, according to the same Associated Press report, Abuelazam was suing in an effort to be deported to serve his sentence in a prison in Israel, his native country.
Jammie Lane was killed in Leesburg in March 2009. He was Black, like most of the men attacked in Flint, and he and Abuelazam had been neighbors. For eight years no one was charged. Leesburg police said they were investigating whether Abuelazam, his former neighbor, was responsible, CBS Detroit reported.
Loudoun County detectives tried for years to interview Abuelazam in prison without success, the county's commonwealth's attorney, Jim Plowman, said in 2017, but they kept the lines of communication open. Abuelazam eventually made contact again and offered to talk if he was granted immunity. In early May 2017, Plowman announced that Abuelazam had confessed to killing Lane.
The confession was made in exchange for immunity, and Plowman said he would not bring charges. The details Abuelazam gave matched the facts of the case, Plowman said, but without the confession, which could not be used in court, the case was not a strong one. Virginia law did not allow the death penalty in the case, so no punishment beyond the Michigan life sentence was available in any event. Plowman said the focus had been on the victims and on giving them answers and closure, and that Abuelazam had expressed remorse.
Plowman said nothing in the confession suggested a racially motivated hate crime. He described Abuelazam's motives as a mix of conspiracy theories, delusions and paranoia. He noted that Lane's case was unusual because the other victims had been strangers to Abuelazam.
Lane's wife said she had known since 2010 that Abuelazam, their former neighbor, was a suspect, but she had seen nothing alarming in his behavior when he lived nearby. Asked about the immunity agreement, she said, "I was OK with it. God will take care of him." Lane's daughter remembered how the killing had affected Leesburg. "Eight years ago our community was shut down, devastated," she said.
Prosecutors also linked Abuelazam to a stabbing in Indiana and one in Israel, the Associated Press reported in 2017.
Abuelazam was serving his life sentence without the possibility of parole in Michigan in 2017. Unless a court overturns the conviction for Arnold Minor's murder, the Associated Press noted, he will remain in prison for the rest of his life.
Only one death has been proved against Abuelazam in court: the murder of Arnold Minor. He was charged with murdering Darwin Marshall and Frank Kellybrew, but those charges were never tried and he has not been convicted of them. The deaths of David Motley and Emmanuel A. Muhammad were counted among the five deaths in the Flint-area series by police and prosecutors. The Jammie Lane killing rests on his confession, made under immunity and never tested in court.
Reports of the number of attacks differ. In August 2010 officials linked him to 18 stabbings in three states, 14 of them in Michigan, three in Virginia and one in Ohio. A CBS Detroit report in October 2010 said he was suspected in four attacks in Virginia, while ARLnow.com reported at least 20 stabbings. At trial and afterward, the Associated Press described him as linked to 14 stabbings in and around Flint, though not charged in all of them, and in 2012 said he was implicated in nine.
Reported ages of the men attacked differ: 15 to 67 in most Associated Press accounts, but 17 to 60 in a CBS News report from the day after his arrest.
The date of the Flint attack named in the first warrant appears as July 27, 2010, in most reports and as July 17 in one CBS Detroit report from August 17, 2010.
Race as a motive was asserted by the Leesburg police chief in 2010 and doubted by the Genesee County prosecutor; the Loudoun County prosecutor said in 2017 that nothing in Abuelazam's confession to the Lane killing suggested a hate crime. No court made a finding on motive.
His mental state was the central question at trial. A defense psychiatrist diagnosed paranoid schizophrenia; three prosecution experts found that he was not mentally ill and knew what he was doing, and the jury agreed with them.
1998 to 2007: Lives in the Washington, D.C., area; owns a house in Leesburg, Virginia, from 2002 to 2007 (NPR).
2007: Second marriage ends in divorce; arrested in Loudoun County in December on a felony gun charge, later dropped.
2008: Charged in Leesburg with misdemeanor assault.
March 2009: Jammie Lane is killed in Leesburg.
Early 2010: Visits Israel; Israeli police treat him as a suspect in a stabbing there, then drop the case.
May 2010: Moves to Flint, Michigan, into a house owned by an uncle.
May 24, 2010: David Motley, 31, is fatally stabbed in Flint, the first death police link to the series.
July 26, 2010: Darwin Marshall, 43, is fatally stabbed in Flint.
July 27, 2010: A Flint man is stabbed and survives; the first warrant is issued over this attack.
July 30, 2010: Frank Kellybrew, 60, is killed in Flint Township.
August 1, 2010: Works his last shift at the market near Flint.
August 2, 2010: Arnold Minor, 49, is fatally stabbed near downtown Flint.
August 4, 2010: Michigan authorities announce that one attacker is behind the stabbings.
Early August 2010: Three men are attacked in Leesburg, Virginia; all survive.
August 5, 2010: Arrested in Arlington, Virginia, on an old Leesburg simple-assault warrant after a traffic stop; released by a magistrate.
August 2010: A man is stabbed in Toledo, Ohio, and survives.
August 11, 2010: Arrested at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport at the gate of a flight to Tel Aviv; charged in Flint with assault with intent to murder.
August 2010: Waives extradition in Atlanta and is returned to Michigan; ordered held without bond.
September 20, 2010: Charged with open murder in the death of Arnold Minor and with four more assault counts.
October 2010: Indicted in Toledo for attempted murder and felonious assault; charged in Flint with the murders of Darwin Marshall and Frank Kellybrew.
January 2011: Ordered to stand trial on a third murder charge.
May 2012: Trial for the murder of Arnold Minor opens in Flint.
May 22, 2012: Convicted of first-degree premeditated murder.
June 25, 2012: Sentenced to life without parole by Judge Judith Fullerton.
October 2012: Remaining Michigan cases suspended unless the conviction is overturned.
June 10, 2014: Michigan Court of Appeals affirms the conviction.
2014: Sues to be deported to Israel to serve his sentence.
Late 2014: Michigan Supreme Court declines to hear his appeal (reported December 1, 2014).
Early May 2017: Loudoun County prosecutor announces his confession, under immunity, to the 2009 killing of Jammie Lane.