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Patrick Baxter Sentenced to 75 Years to Life for Three Westchester Murders Linked by DNA

For years no one connected the killings of Michelle Walker, Patricia England and Lisa Gibbens. New DNA tests tied all three to a former auto mechanic from Yonkers.

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Illustration of a suburban New York courthouse plaza. Not an actual scene from the case.

The three killings were years apart, in different towns, and no one thought they were connected until DNA said otherwise. On July 10, 2002, Patrick Baxter was sentenced to 75 years to life for all three.

A Westchester County jury had convicted Baxter, a former auto mechanic from Yonkers, of 12 counts of second-degree murder that May, and Justice West of the state Supreme Court in Westchester County entered the judgment and sentence. The victims were Michelle Walker, 14, who disappeared on June 6, 1987, while going home in Yonkers with a pizza and a carton of milk for her family; Patricia England, 19, of Yonkers, who left home on her birthday, New Year's Day 1988, and was found in February near the Greenburgh-Yonkers border; and Lisa Gibbens, 25, who was shot in Tuckahoe in July 1990 while walking to a train station. All three had been sexually assaulted.

The women were of different ages and races, and for years investigators saw no link between the cases. Semen samples recovered at the scenes had been too small to test, but newer DNA techniques let Westchester detectives match them. With a court order, prosecutors took a sample from Baxter, who was then in state prison for an auto-theft case, and in November 2000 he was charged with all three murders. District Attorney Jeanine Pirro said she would "definitely consider the person responsible for these crimes a sexual serial murderer."

Baxter denied killing anyone. In 2005 the Appellate Division of the state Supreme Court upheld his conviction and sentence.

The Westchester district attorney's office said Michelle Walker's body was found on June 6, 1987, while The New York Times reported that she was killed that day and found the next.

Sources