Lorenzo Gilyard

Victims: 6 CONVICTIONS and 1 ACQUITTAL, all tried together in 2007 before a judge rather than a jury. Thirteen deaths are attributed to him in the Kansas City series; the six convictions cover 1986 and 1987 only, and he was acquitted of a seventh count at the same trial
Years active: 1977 - 1993
Location: Kansas City, Missouri, USA
Method: Strangulation
Status: Arrested on April 19, 2004 after DNA linked him to a series of unsolved Kansas City killings. He waived a jury and was tried by a judge, an arrangement made after prosecutors agreed to drop their pursuit of the death penalty. On March 16, 2007 Jackson County Circuit Judge John O’Malley convicted him of six counts of first-degree murder and ACQUITTED HIM ON A SEVENTH, and on April 27, 2007 he received six consecutive terms of life imprisonment without parole. All six convictions concern killings of 1986 and 1987; the wider 1977 to 1993 span in this entry covers the deaths attributed to him and never charged.

Lorenzo Gilyard was born in Kansas City, Missouri, in 1950, one of a large family, and ran a refuse collection company. He was married and was described by employees as a competent and ordinary employer.

Between 1977 and 1993 he killed thirteen women in the city, aged between fifteen and thirty-six. Almost all worked as prostitutes and most were dependent on drugs. He strangled them, in several cases with their own clothing, and left them in alleys, in derelict buildings and in industrial ground. The Kansas City press called him the Kansas City Strangler.

He had a long documented history before any of it: complaints of rape and assault going back to his teens, several of which were not prosecuted. Kansas City had a series of unsolved killings of women running through the 1980s and the connection between them was not made.

He was identified in 2004 when DNA from the old cases was run against the state database and matched a sample taken from him on an unrelated matter. He was arrested on April 19, 2004.

He was convicted of six murders and sentenced on April 14, 2007 to life without parole. Thirteen are attributed to him. He has never given an account of any of it.