Police in East St. Louis, Illinois, arrested Lorenzo Fayne on July 24, 1993, in connection with the murder of Faith Davis, who was 17. Within a short time he had confessed not only to her death but to the killings of four other young people in the city, the youngest of them a six-year-old child. The Illinois Appellate Court later listed the five as Aree Hunt, 6, Faith Davis, 17, Fallon Flood, 9, Glenda Jones, 17, and Latonda Dean, 14. The Associated Press, reporting in 2009, put the killings in 1989, 1992 and 1993.
He was tried first for the murder of Aree Hunt. In 1994 a St. Clair County jury rejected his insanity defense and found him guilty, but the same jury could not agree on a death sentence, and the judge sentenced him to natural life in prison. Prosecutors then sought the death penalty in the four remaining cases, and in 1998 the appellate court ruled that the first jury's decision did not stand in their way. Illinois prison records now list a life sentence in each of the five cases. In 2009 he was charged in Milwaukee with a 1989 killing that DNA testing had linked to him. In October 2026 he was held at Menard Correctional Center in Chester, Illinois.
Illinois Department of Corrections records give his date of birth as April 2, 1971. The fullest public description of his childhood comes from the evidence his lawyers presented in 1994, when they asked the jury in the Hunt case to spare his life, as summarized by the Illinois Appellate Court in 1998.
That evidence showed that his mother drank heavily and took drugs throughout her pregnancy with him. The court described her as an alcoholic and a crack cocaine addict who beat him with whatever was within reach, including broom handles and extension cords. On one occasion, the court wrote, his stepfather choked him until he lost consciousness. The defense also presented evidence that he had been abused in other ways as a young child, that his biological father had schizophrenia, and that he had suffered brain damage from the beatings. Experts testified that he had limited intellectual abilities and a low IQ. His grandmother was among the witnesses who described his early years.
By the summer of 1993 he was living in his grandmother's home in East St. Louis, according to the appellate court. When he moved there, and where he had lived before, has not been made public.
The five people Fayne was convicted of killing in Illinois were all young, and all lived in East St. Louis. Beyond their names and ages, little about their lives has been made public.
Aree Hunt was six years old. The Hunt case, numbered 93-CF-785 in the St. Clair County Circuit Court, was the first to go to trial, and it is the only one in which a full trial verdict is described in the published appellate opinions.
Fallon Flood was nine. Her case was numbered 93-CF-944.
Latonda Dean was fourteen. Her case was the last of the five to be filed, under number 94-CF-66.
Glenda Jones was seventeen. Her case was numbered 93-CF-945.
Faith Davis was seventeen. Her death in July 1993 led directly to Fayne's arrest, and her case was numbered 93-CF-786.
When the appellate court considered whether the outcome of the Hunt trial should block a death sentence in the other cases, it noted that the victims differed from one another in gender, age and background, and that the facts of each killing were different. The court described stabbings in three of the cases and a strangling in another. It did not set out the dates on which each victim died, and those dates have not been reported.
The Associated Press, in 2009, described the five as girls aged 6, 9 and 14, and two aged 17. That description of all five as girls does not match the appellate court's statement that the victims differed in gender.
The investigation that ended the series began with a fire at the home of Faith Davis in July 1993. The fire led investigators to her murder, the appellate court wrote, and physical evidence then led them from the Davis home to the home of Fayne's grandmother, where he was living. He was arrested on July 24, 1993.
Illinois prison records give July 25, 1993, as the custody date in the Hunt case.
In custody, Fayne confessed, first to the murder of Faith Davis and then to the murders of four other victims, the appellate court wrote. According to the court, he admitted to each of the five killings in statements to investigators, and those admissions formed part of the evidence the State presented when it later sought the death penalty.
How police first connected him to the earlier killings, how long the questioning took, and whether anyone else was ever suspected in those cases have never been made public.
The State of Illinois charged Fayne with five counts of first-degree murder in St. Clair County, in five separate cases. The Hunt case was tried first.
Fayne was 23 at the time of that trial. His lawyers raised an insanity defense. The jury rejected it and returned a guilty verdict for the first-degree murder of Aree Hunt.
The State asked for the death penalty. A sentencing hearing was held from August 16 to August 18, 1994. The State presented evidence about all five killings, including photographs from the scenes, so that the jury heard about the four cases that had not yet gone to trial.
The defense answered with the evidence about his childhood, his brain damage and his low intelligence. The jury could not agree that there were no mitigating factors sufficient to preclude the death penalty. Because the jurors could not reach that finding, the trial judge sentenced Fayne to natural life in prison.
Prison records give August 31, 1994, as the date he was admitted to the Illinois Department of Corrections.
Fayne appealed the Hunt conviction and sentence. The Illinois Appellate Court affirmed them in 1996, in a decision reported as People v. Fayne, 283 Ill. App. 3d 382.
With the Hunt case finished, the State turned to the four remaining murders and announced that it would again seek the death penalty. On March 15, 1996, Fayne's lawyers filed a motion to dismiss the remaining cases and to bar a death penalty hearing. They argued that the first jury had already considered all five killings when it declined to impose death, and that the constitutional protection against being tried twice for the same offense should prevent the State from asking a second jury to do what the first had refused to do.
The trial court denied the motion in the Davis case on April 24, 1996, and in the Flood, Jones and Dean cases on June 5, 1996. Fayne appealed, and the appeals were consolidated. The State asked the appellate court to dismiss the appeal for lack of jurisdiction; the court rejected that request in orders in January and June 1998, holding that an Illinois Supreme Court rule allowed a defendant to appeal the denial of a double jeopardy motion before trial.
On October 16, 1998, the Appellate Court of Illinois, Fifth District, ruled against Fayne. Justice Goldenhersh wrote the opinion, and Justices Rarick and Maag concurred. The court relied on two earlier Illinois decisions in a case called People v. Page, which had held that a decision against death in one murder case does not prevent a death sentence for a different murder in a later case. The question at a capital sentencing, the court reasoned, is whether a defendant should be sentenced to death for a particular murder.
The court gave several reasons why the Hunt jury's decision did not settle the question for the other four cases. Fayne had not yet been convicted of the other murders when the Hunt jury heard about them. The victims were different in gender, age and background, and the facts of each case were different. In the court's words, "the only question decided in the first prosecution was whether defendant should be sentenced to death." That all five killings had happened in the same county made no difference to the analysis.
The court concluded that the outcome of the Hunt sentencing did not stop the State from seeking and obtaining the death penalty in the remaining four cases, and it affirmed the trial court's rulings. Fayne was represented on appeal by the Office of the State Appellate Defender in Mount Vernon. The State was represented by the St. Clair County State's Attorney, Robert Haida, and the Office of the State's Attorneys Appellate Prosecutor.
Less has been reported about the later proceedings. Illinois prison records list each of the four remaining cases, Davis, Flood, Jones and Dean, as a murder conviction with a custody date of November 15, 2001, and with a life sentence. The records do not say whether the convictions came by jury verdict or by plea, and the details of the sentencing in those cases have not been reported.
Alongside the natural life sentence for the murder of Aree Hunt, Illinois prison records list all five of his St. Clair County murder sentences as life, none of them discharged, and give his projected discharge date as "Ineligible."
In October 2009 Fayne was charged in Milwaukee County, Wisconsin, with first-degree intentional homicide in the death of Rita Scott, who was 32. She had been beaten to death in Milwaukee in 1989, according to the Associated Press.
DNA evidence found at the scene had recently been retested, the Associated Press reported, and it was linked to Fayne. According to a criminal complaint filed in Milwaukee County Circuit Court, two cold case detectives interviewed him on October 23, 2009, at Menard, and he confessed to what the complaint called a "random killing." He was 38 at the time.
When the Associated Press reported the charge, online court records listed no defense attorney and no date for a first court appearance. No outcome of the Milwaukee case has been reported, and Illinois prison records list only his five St. Clair County sentences. He has not been convicted of the killing of Rita Scott, and her death remains a charge against him rather than a proven crime.
Fayne entered the Illinois prison system on August 31, 1994, and Menard Correctional Center in Chester, Illinois, is listed as his parent institution. In October 2009 the Associated Press reported that he was serving a life sentence there.
In October 2026 he was in custody at Menard, under inmate number B26556, serving five life sentences for murder from St. Clair County. His projected discharge date was listed as "Ineligible."
The number of people Fayne killed has not been settled in court beyond the five Illinois cases. His convictions cover the deaths of Aree Hunt, Faith Davis, Fallon Flood, Glenda Jones and Latonda Dean. The 1989 killing of Rita Scott in Milwaukee is a charge he faced in 2009, supported by a DNA link and, according to the criminal complaint, by his own confession; no conviction in that case has been reported, and none appears in Illinois prison records.
Accounts also differ on the five Illinois victims. The Associated Press described all five as girls, while the Illinois Appellate Court said the victims differed in gender. The years of the killings, 1989 to 1993, come from the Associated Press; the dates of the individual deaths have not been reported.
Finally, the details of the second set of proceedings, the trial or pleas in the Davis, Flood, Jones and Dean cases and the sentences that followed, have never been made public, and neither have the dates of those verdicts and sentences. The prison custody date for those four cases is November 15, 2001.
April 2, 1971: Lorenzo Fayne born, according to Illinois prison records.
1989 to 1993: Killings of five young people in East St. Louis, Illinois, which Fayne later confessed to and was convicted of; the Associated Press gives the years as 1989, 1992 and 1993.
1989: Rita Scott, 32, beaten to death in Milwaukee; Fayne was charged with her death in 2009.
July 1993: A fire at the home of Faith Davis, 17, leads investigators to her murder.
July 24, 1993: Fayne arrested in connection with the Davis murder; he confesses to five killings.
1993 to 1994: Five counts of first-degree murder filed in St. Clair County (93-CF-785, 93-CF-786, 93-CF-944, 93-CF-945, 94-CF-66).
1994: A jury rejects his insanity defense and convicts him of the murder of Aree Hunt, 6.
August 16 to 18, 1994: Capital sentencing hearing; the jury cannot agree on death, and the judge imposes natural life.
August 31, 1994: Admitted to the Illinois Department of Corrections.
1996: Illinois Appellate Court affirms the Hunt conviction (283 Ill. App. 3d 382).
March 15, 1996: Defense moves to dismiss the remaining cases and bar a death penalty hearing.
April 24 and June 5, 1996: Trial court denies the motions.
October 16, 1998: Appellate Court, Fifth District, rules the State may seek death in the four remaining cases.
November 15, 2001: Custody date listed in prison records for the Davis, Flood, Jones and Dean cases.
October 23, 2009: Milwaukee cold case detectives interview Fayne at Menard; he confesses to the Scott killing, according to the criminal complaint.
October 2009: Charged in Milwaukee County with first-degree intentional homicide in the death of Rita Scott.
October 2026: Listed by the Illinois Department of Corrections as in custody at Menard Correctional Center.