Michael Hughes was convicted twice of murder in Los Angeles, fourteen years apart. In 1998 he was found guilty of killing four women in 1992 and 1993 and was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. A decade later, cold-case detectives tested evidence from older unsolved killings and named him as a suspect while he was still in prison. In November 2011 a jury convicted him of three more murders, of a 15-year-old girl and two women, committed between 1986 and 1993. In June 2012 he was sentenced to death.
His victims were among the many women killed in South Los Angeles during the 1980s and early 1990s, years when police at first believed a single man, called the Southside Slayer, was responsible. Investigators later concluded that several men had been killing women in the same part of the city in the same years, and the Associated Press counted Hughes among them.
During the crack cocaine epidemic of the 1980s and early 1990s, inner-city Los Angeles saw a long run of killings of women. CBS News, reporting with the Associated Press in 2011, said as many as 90 women were killed in that period. ABC News, citing prosecutors in 2008, put the number at as many as 80. The Associated Press in 2012 described the victims of the Southside Slayer attacks as dozens of women.
Police had first linked the deaths to one unknown killer. A task force later reviewed the killings, and the Associated Press reported that investigators eventually concluded at least three serial killers, Hughes among them, had been stalking women in the area. ABC News reported in December 2008 that police and prosecutors believed four or more men might be responsible. Bobby Grace, a deputy district attorney, told ABC News at the time that he knew of nothing similar, with several people separately targeting the same kind of victim in the same way in the same area.
Other men were named in the same reports. Chester Turner, a pizza deliveryman, was convicted in 2007 of killing 10 women, the Associated Press reported. ABC News also noted that Louis Craine had died in prison in 1989 after being convicted of strangling four women. No report connects Hughes to any of those men's cases beyond the shared time and place.
Detective Paul Coulter of the Los Angeles Police Department, who worked on the Hughes case with Detective Cliff Shepard, told ABC News that the women who were killed in those years were vulnerable, and that the killer drew them away to vacant houses or vehicles before strangling them.
Little has been reliably reported about Hughes's life before prison. The Los Angeles Police Department named him in 2008 as Michael Hubert Hughes, aged 51. CBS News, in a report written with the Associated Press in November 2011, described him as a former security guard. His age was given as 52 in December 2008, as 54 and 55 in different reports in late 2011, and as 55 when he was sentenced in June 2012.
In 1998, Hughes was convicted of killing four women in 1992 and 1993, according to an ABC7 report on his 2008 court appearance. He was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole, the sentence CBS Los Angeles also reported in 2011. The Los Angeles Police Department described those convictions in 2008 as "similar murder convictions."
The names of the women in that case and the details of that trial were not reported.
By the 2000s, Los Angeles detectives were reexamining unsolved killings from the Southside years with DNA testing. ABC7 reported that cold-case detectives identified Hughes as a suspect after running new tests on DNA evidence taken from the victims. ABC News reported that detectives reinvestigating unsolved cases from that era with DNA evidence had come to believe that many of the killings had been committed by several men working the same area at the same time.
On June 30, 2008, the Los Angeles Police Department announced that its Robbery-Homicide Division had obtained a warrant for Hughes's arrest. The warrant charged him with four counts of murder, with further charges. The killings had taken place between 1986 and 1993, three in the city of Los Angeles and one in Inglewood. Robbery-Homicide detectives had taken over the Inglewood case, the department said, because of what it called overwhelming similarities and forensic connections with the others. The department did not release the victims' names at first, saying detectives were still notifying their families.
The department also said that other police agencies in Southern California had asked about similar unsolved cases from the periods when Hughes was not in custody. No charge arising from those inquiries was reported.
Hughes appeared briefly in court in Los Angeles on a Thursday soon after the charges were announced, ABC7 reported. He had not yet hired a lawyer, and the case was continued to August 6. The report said he could face the death penalty if convicted.
In December 2008 he pleaded not guilty, according to ABC News, which reported his age as 52 and said his attorney declined to comment. ABC News named the attorney as Michael Kallen; CBS News, reporting on the trial three years later, gave the name of his defense attorney as Norman Kallen.
Yvonne Coleman was 15 years old. Her body was found in Inglewood on January 22, 1986. The man who found her was the first witness at Hughes's trial a quarter century later, and he called her just a young, precious girl, according to CBS Los Angeles.
Her killing was the earliest of the three for which Hughes was later convicted.
Verna Williams was 36 years old, according to the Associated Press. She was killed in 1986 or 1993; the reports give 1986 and 1993 as the years of the deaths of Williams and Deborah Jackson without saying which year belongs to which woman. The Associated Press reported that DNA evidence tied Hughes to her death.
Deborah Jackson was 32 years old, according to the Associated Press. Like Verna Williams, she was strangled, and DNA evidence linked Hughes to her killing. She was the third victim named in the 2011 verdicts.
CBS Los Angeles reported that Deputy District Attorney Beth Silverman told the jury DNA evidence "conclusively" linked Hughes to four strangulation killings: those of Yvonne Coleman, Verna Williams, Deanna Wilson and Deborah Jackson. The verdicts reported in November 2011 covered three victims, and Deanna Wilson was not among them. The reports do not explain why, and no conviction for her death was reported.
Hughes went on trial in Los Angeles in 2011. The case against him rested on forensic evidence. Police said DNA evidence linked him to the killings, and the prosecutor, Deputy District Attorney Beth Silverman, told jurors that the DNA connected him "conclusively" to the deaths.
The defense did not have eyewitnesses or a confession to answer. Norman Kallen, his attorney, pointed to exactly that. There were no eyewitnesses to the murders, he said, and Hughes had never confessed, CBS News reported.
In early November 2011 the jury convicted Hughes of three counts of first-degree murder, for the deaths of Yvonne Coleman, Verna Williams and Deborah Jackson. CBS News reported the verdict on November 4, 2011, saying he had been convicted on Thursday. The jurors also found special circumstances, because of his earlier first-degree murder convictions. Those findings made him eligible for the death penalty, and prosecutors said they would seek it. The penalty phase was set to begin the following Monday.
By December 13, 2011, the jury had recommended that Hughes be sentenced to death, CBS Los Angeles reported. He was then 54, by that report, and already serving life without the possibility of parole for the four earlier murders. Sentencing was set for March 30.
Sentencing took place later than first planned. The Associated Press reported on June 22, 2012 that Hughes, 55, had been sentenced to death that Friday for strangling Yvonne Coleman, 15, Verna Williams, 36, and Deborah Jackson, 32. The judge's name and any statements made in court that day went unreported.
At the time of the sentence, the Associated Press noted, Chester Turner was under sentence of death for killing 10 women and a fetus, and Lonnie Franklin Jr. had pleaded not guilty to 10 counts of murder and one count of attempted murder in the Grim Sleeper case, accused of killing women and girls between 1985 and 2007.
No decision of the California Supreme Court in Hughes's case has been reported.
On March 13, 2019, Governor Gavin Newsom signed an executive order placing a moratorium on executions in California. The order withdrew the state's lethal injection protocol and closed the execution chamber at San Quentin State Prison. The governor's office said 737 people were then on California's death row. The order did not release anyone from prison and did not change any conviction or sentence. It covers every person under a death sentence in the state, and so it covers Hughes as long as his death sentence stands.
In 2024 the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation moved people under sentence of death out of San Quentin to other prisons, ABC7 Los Angeles reported. The department said Proposition 66, a measure approved by voters, requires people under sentence of death to work to pay court-ordered restitution to their victims, and that the transfers placed them in prisons with work programs. Where Hughes is held was not reported.
As of June 22, 2012, Michael Hughes was under sentence of death for three murders and serving life without the possibility of parole for four others.
The number of women killed in South Los Angeles during the years of the Southside killings is reported differently: as many as 90 (CBS News with the Associated Press, 2011), as many as 80 (ABC News, citing prosecutors, 2008), and dozens (Associated Press, 2012). These are counts for all the killings of that era, not for Hughes.
The number of men responsible is also reported differently: at least three (Associated Press, 2011 and 2012) or four or more (ABC News, 2008).
Hughes was charged in 2008 with four killings from 1986 to 1993, and the prosecutor told the 2011 jury that DNA linked him to the death of Deanna Wilson as well as the three women and girl named in the verdicts. The reports record no conviction for her death.
The Los Angeles Police Department said in 2008 that other Southern California agencies had asked about similar unsolved cases. No charge from those inquiries is on the record.
Hughes did not confess. His lawyer told the jury there were no eyewitnesses and no confession, and the convictions of 2011 rest on the forensic evidence the jury accepted.
January 22, 1986: Yvonne Coleman, 15, is found dead in Inglewood.
1986 and 1993: Verna Williams, 36, and Deborah Jackson, 32, are killed (which year belongs to which woman has not been reported).
1992 and 1993: four women are killed in Los Angeles; Hughes is later convicted of their murders.
1998: Hughes is convicted of the four 1992 and 1993 murders and sentenced to life without parole.
June 30, 2008: the Los Angeles Police Department announces a warrant charging him with four counts of murder, with further charges, for killings from 1986 to 1993.
2008: he appears briefly in court; the case is continued to August 6.
December 2008: he pleads not guilty.
2011: trial in Los Angeles.
Early November 2011: convicted of three counts of first-degree murder with special circumstances, for Yvonne Coleman, Verna Williams and Deborah Jackson.
December 2011: the jury recommends death (reported December 13, 2011).
June 2012: sentenced to death (reported June 22, 2012).
March 13, 2019: Governor Newsom orders a moratorium on executions in California.
2024: the state moves people under sentence of death out of San Quentin to other prisons.