In the winter and spring of 1994 and 1995, six women died in Englewood, a neighborhood on the South Side of Chicago. In June 1995 police arrested Hubert Geralds Jr., a 30-year-old man whose own sister had called them, and under questioning he confessed to all six killings. A Cook County jury convicted him in November 1997 and he was sentenced to death.
The case did not end there. In January 2000 another man, Andre Crawford, confessed to the killing of Rhonda King, the first of the six women. On February 10, 2000, prosecutors moved to vacate Geralds's conviction and death sentence for her murder. The National Registry of Exonerations lists him among the people exonerated in the United States, with a false confession as the contributing factor, even though he is still serving sentences for five murders.
Little about his early life appears in the court record. The Illinois Department of Corrections gives his date of birth as November 13, 1964. The National Registry of Exonerations, which summarized the case in 2011, describes him as mentally challenged, with what it calls "the mind of an eight-year-old," and reports his sister's account of him to the police as a drug addict who sometimes became violent when using drugs.
The Department of Corrections record lists one earlier conviction, for residential burglary, in a Cook County case with a custody date of November 21, 1992. The sentence was five years, and the record shows it as discharged.
The Registry summary names two of the six women. The first was Rhonda King, 18, who was found on December 21, 1994. The last was Mary Blackman, 42, who was found on June 17, 1995. The names of the other four women whose deaths were tried in 1997 have not been reported; the 2013 appellate opinion that later examined the King case refers to them only as Geralds's other victims.
Little has been reported about Mary Blackman's life beyond her age. The Registry says it was Geralds's sister who then went to the authorities.
Rhonda King's death would become the center of the case. In the appellate court's account of the evidence, the Cook County medical examiner recorded the cause of her death as undetermined. Geralds would later describe her, in a written statement, as a friend of his sister's.
On April 14, 1995, according to the Registry, a seventh woman was attacked and escaped. She later identified Geralds as her attacker. The Department of Corrections lists a conviction for attempted murder, with a 30-year sentence, among his Cook County cases; the Registry lists rape as an additional conviction. Her name has not been reported.
The Registry says Geralds was arrested after his sister contacted police in June 1995. The Department of Corrections record gives June 11, 1995, as the custody date for each of the murder cases. The two dates do not fit together; the Registry's account ties the arrest to the discovery of June 17.
Under police interrogation, the Registry says, Geralds confessed to all six murders. On June 19, 1995, while he was in custody on six murder charges, Assistant State's Attorney Kevin Byrne interviewed him about Rhonda King. Byrne later testified that when he showed Geralds a photograph of King, Geralds said she was one of the women he had killed. Geralds chose to write a statement himself rather than give a recorded one, and he signed a short note on the back of the photograph. No video recording was made.
In that written statement, as summarized by the appellate court in 2013, Geralds said he had met King sometime before Christmas in December 1994, that he knew her through his sister, and that he had killed her. The court later observed that the statement lacked substantial detail and contained no physical description of her.
Geralds was tried in the Circuit Court of Cook County. The trial lasted three weeks, the Registry says. On November 14, 1997, the jury convicted him of murdering six women. It then found no mitigating factors sufficient to preclude a death sentence.
On January 9, 1998, Judge Michael P. Toomin sentenced him to death. The Department of Corrections record shows that he was admitted to the state prison system on January 16, 1998.
When CBS News reported a new arrest in the area in January 2000, it noted that Geralds had been convicted of killing six women in Englewood and sentenced to death in January 1998.
The killings of women in Englewood did not stop with Geralds's arrest. In September 1999 Newsweek reported that Chicago police had linked 12 unsolved murders and three rapes in the neighborhood over the previous four years, and that DNA testing at the Illinois State Police crime laboratory had sorted them among four different offenders, whom investigators called Patterns A, B, C and D. About three dozen detectives were assigned to the cases. The magazine quoted James Alan Fox, a criminologist at Northeastern University, who warned that once a killer is identified, police may be tempted to attribute unsolved murders to that person in order to close them.
A new arrest came at the end of January 2000. CBS News reported on January 31, 2000, that Andre Crawford, 37, had been arrested on a Friday after a tip and charged that Sunday with the murders of 10 women, in a series that began in September 1993. Police Commander Frank Trigg said Crawford had confessed to seven of those killings and to three others police had not linked to the series.
The appellate opinion in Crawford's case sets out how the King killing came back into question. On January 29, 2000, after giving statements about other killings, Crawford told Assistant State's Attorney Margaret Wood that he remembered three more, and Rhonda King was among them. Wood testified at Crawford's trial that she knew Geralds had already confessed to King's murder, had been convicted of it with five others, and had been sentenced to death. She said she still believed Crawford, not Geralds, had killed King, because of the details he gave.
At Crawford's trial the parties stipulated that on February 10, 2000, the State moved to vacate Geralds's conviction and death sentence for King's murder. The National Registry of Exonerations gives the same date and describes Crawford's confession as credible.
Accounts differ on what followed for the five remaining murder convictions.
The National Registry of Exonerations says that prosecutors, after moving to vacate the King conviction, also vacated Geralds's other five murder convictions, and that he then pleaded guilty to those five murders and was sentenced to life in prison without parole. The Registry lists his exoneration in 2000, with false confession as the contributing factor and DNA as a factor in the exoneration.
At Crawford's trial in 2009, Kevin Byrne, the prosecutor who had taken Geralds's 1995 statement, was asked about the other cases on cross-examination. According to the appellate opinion, Byrne agreed that there was a "link" among five of Geralds's six victims, and agreed that Geralds's other five murder convictions were "unaffected" by the vacating of the King conviction.
The Illinois Department of Corrections record, as of October 2026, lists five Cook County convictions for murder, each with a life sentence, and one for attempted murder, with a sentence of 30 years. It does not list a death sentence, and it does not say whether the life terms followed a plea, a resentencing or another order.
Andre Crawford was tried in Cook County in late 2009. On December 10, 2009, ABC7 Chicago reported, a jury found him guilty of killing 11 women in Englewood. Rhonda King was one of them. The jury found him eligible for death but did not impose it, and he was sentenced to natural life in prison.
On appeal, Crawford argued that the evidence did not prove he had killed King, in part because Geralds had confessed to the same killing and been convicted of it. The Illinois Appellate Court, First District, rejected the argument in an opinion filed on December 16, 2013, written by Justice DeLort.
The court set out the history directly. It said it was undisputed that the State had tried and convicted another man, Hubert Geralds, for King's murder, that Geralds had been sentenced to death, and that the State had later moved to vacate his conviction and sentence. "We find this series of events extraordinarily troubling," the court wrote.
It then weighed the two confessions. The court found that the physical circumstances of King's death, as described by the medical evidence, fit Crawford's account better than Geralds's. It noted that Geralds's statement lacked substantial detail and gave no physical description of King, that the place where Geralds said he met her was farther from where she was found than the place Crawford described, and that Geralds's account did not mention something Crawford's did. The jury, the court said, could reasonably have found Geralds's written statement less credible than Crawford's video-recorded confession.
At Crawford's trial, his lawyers had used the Geralds case in the other direction. In closing argument, as the appellate court summarized it, defense counsel relied on Geralds's earlier confession to King's murder and told the jury that DNA had linked four of the cases Geralds was convicted of, and that King's case was the one later vacated.
Accounts differ on the role of DNA in the King case. The National Registry of Exonerations says DNA testing identified Crawford and excluded Geralds in King's murder. The appellate opinion records Byrne's testimony that no DNA was recovered from King, and the court's review of the King conviction rested on Crawford's confession and the physical evidence, not on DNA.
The other five convictions. The Registry says they were vacated and replaced by guilty pleas and life without parole; a prosecutor testified in 2009 that they were unaffected by the King vacatur; the Department of Corrections lists five life sentences for murder. No record settles which account is correct.
DNA in the King case. The Registry says DNA testing excluded Geralds and identified Crawford; the appellate opinion records testimony that no DNA was recovered from King.
The arrest date. The Department of Corrections lists June 11, 1995, as the custody date in the murder cases; the Registry places the arrest after his sister's call about the discovery of June 17, 1995.
His age at trial. The Registry describes him as 34 when he was convicted and as 30 at the time of the crimes; the Department of Corrections gives a birth date of November 13, 1964.
The survivor's case. The Department of Corrections lists attempted murder; the Registry lists rape as an additional conviction.
The names and ages of four of the six women whose deaths were tried in 1997 have not been reported.
As of October 30, 2026, the Illinois Department of Corrections listed Hubert Geralds Jr., inmate B39967, in custody at Hill Correctional Center, with no projected parole or discharge date.
November 13, 1964: Born (Illinois Department of Corrections).
November 21, 1992: Custody date in a Cook County residential burglary case; five-year sentence, since discharged.
December 21, 1994: Rhonda King, 18, is found dead in Englewood.
April 14, 1995: A seventh woman survives an attack and later identifies Geralds.
June 11, 1995: Custody date for the murder cases on the Department of Corrections record.
June 17, 1995: Mary Blackman, 42, is found dead; Geralds's sister goes to the police.
June 19, 1995: Geralds tells Assistant State's Attorney Kevin Byrne that King was one of the women he killed.
November 14, 1997: Convicted of murdering six women.
January 9, 1998: Sentenced to death by Judge Michael P. Toomin.
January 16, 1998: Admitted to the Illinois Department of Corrections.
September 1999: Newsweek reports that DNA has sorted unsolved Englewood killings among four offenders.
January 29, 2000: Andre Crawford tells a prosecutor he killed Rhonda King.
January 31, 2000: CBS News reports Crawford's arrest and charges.
February 10, 2000: The State moves to vacate Geralds's conviction and death sentence for King's murder.
2000: The Registry records his exoneration in the King case and says he pleaded guilty to five murders and was sentenced to life without parole.
December 10, 2009: A jury convicts Crawford of 11 murders, including King's.
December 16, 2013: The Illinois Appellate Court affirms Crawford's convictions and calls the Geralds history "extraordinarily troubling."
October 2026: Listed in custody at Hill Correctional Center.