Emanuel Lovell Webb

Victims

4 killings covered by convictions - 3 murders in Connecticut, entered as CONDITIONAL PLEAS OF NOLO CONTENDERE rather than admissions of guilt and affirmed on appeal in 2011, and 1 in Georgia where the conviction was for INVOLUNTARY MANSLAUGHTER, not murder. A fifth death, of Sheila Etheridge, was charged and the prosecution dropped in May 2008

Years active

1990 - 1994

Location

Georgia/Connecticut, USA

Method

Strangulation

Status

Arrested in Georgia in 1994 after being found with Evelyn Charity’s stolen car; he admitted the killing but said it was an accident during a consensual act, and was convicted of involuntary manslaughter, robbery and theft of a motor vehicle, receiving twenty years. Paroled in 2001 and detained on a parole violation in November 2005, when a DNA sample was taken and matched to three unsolved Bridgeport murders. Extradited to Connecticut in February 2007. He entered CONDITIONAL PLEAS OF NOLO CONTENDERE to three counts of murder, accepting the consequences without admitting guilt and reserving his right to appeal, and was sentenced on June 23, 2008 to sixty years. The state dropped its prosecution over the death of Sheila Etheridge in May 2008. The Connecticut Appellate Court affirmed the convictions on May 24, 2011, rejecting his challenges to the consolidation of three of the cases for trial and to the admission of uncharged misconduct evidence. Held at MacDougall-Walker Correctional Institution.

Emanuel Lovell Webb, born in 1966, strangled women in Georgia and later in Connecticut between 1990 and 1994. He was convicted in Georgia in 1994 and sentenced to 20 years, and was released on parole in late 2001. Connecticut reporting called him the Bridgeport Killer.

He was subsequently charged in Hartford, Connecticut, with the strangling of three women, and on June 23, 2008 was sentenced to 60 years. The victims named in the case files are Sharon Cunningham, 39, Minnie Sutton, 37, Elizabeth Gandy, 34, Sheila Etheridge, 29, and Evelyn Charity, 37.

Four convictions can be accounted for against five attributed deaths, and the recorded toll is given as four to five for that reason. English-language sourcing for the Georgia case is limited to brief wire coverage of the 2008 Connecticut sentencing, which does not set out which death the earlier conviction concerned.