Lorenzo Fayne

Victims

6 attributed - 5 MURDER CONVICTIONS in Illinois, for Aree Hunt aged 6, Faith Davis aged 17, Glenda Jones aged 17, Fallon Flood aged 9 and Latondra Dean aged 14. The sixth, Rita Scott in Milwaukee in 1989, was CHARGED in 2009 on a DNA match and the outcome is not established here. He was also suspected of the 1989 killing of sixteen-year-old Nicole Willis, which he denied and was never charged with

Years active

1989- 1993

Location

Wisconsin/Illinois, USA

Method

Beating - Stabbing with knife - Strangulation

Status

Arrested on July 24, 1993 for the murder of seventeen-year-old Faith Davis, and confessed to four earlier killings. Tried in early 1994 for the murder of six-year-old Aree Hunt and found guilty; eleven of the twelve jurors voted for death but Illinois law required unanimity, so he received life without parole. Tried again in St Clair County in 2001 on the remaining counts, convicted of five murders in all and sentenced to death. That sentence was commuted to life without parole in January 2003 when Governor George Ryan commuted every death sentence in Illinois over concerns about wrongful convictions. In October 2009 he was further charged in Milwaukee with the sexual assault and murder of Rita Scott on September 15, 1989, after a routine search of the national DNA database identified him. Held at the Menard Correctional Center, Chester, Illinois. His defence presented an IQ of 68, brain damage and a childhood of severe abuse.

Fayne was born in 1965 and lived in East St Louis, Illinois.

Between 1989 and 1993 he attacked children in the city, raping and killing five aged between nine and seventeen, beating, stabbing and strangling them. He was arrested on July 24, 1993 and confessed.

The victims named in the record are Rita D. Scott, thirty-two; Aree Hunt, six; Faith Davis, seventeen; Glenda Jones, seventeen; Fallon Flood, nine; and Latondra Dean, fourteen.

He was convicted and sentenced in August 1994 to life imprisonment without parole. He was subsequently linked to the killing of a child in Wisconsin, which is the sixth death in this roster's count.

East St Louis at that time was among the poorest cities in the United States, with a police department that had been through financial collapse. Five children were killed over four years in a small city and the entry records that context, because the length of the series is not explained by anything about him.

The accessible sourcing is Illinois press reporting of the conviction.