Shelly Andre Brooks was 37 when Wayne County prosecutors charged him in 2006 with raping and killing seven women in Detroit over five years. The Wayne County prosecutor, Kym Worthy, called him "a quintessential serial killer" when the charges were filed, according to United Press International. Police had arrested him on July 30, 2006, after a tip from a woman who had survived an attack.
He was tried twice in 2007. In March a Detroit jury convicted him of first-degree murder in a killing from 2002. A second trial, in another of the deaths, also ended in a first-degree murder conviction. In Michigan a first-degree murder conviction carries a mandatory sentence of life without parole, and he received it. The Michigan Court of Appeals upheld one of the two convictions in June 2008. The Wayne County prosecutor's office later said the other cases were not pursued in court once his life imprisonment was assured.
In January 2025, Detroit police announced that DNA testing and genealogy research had identified a woman found in the city in June 2006, and known since then only as Jane Doe, as Darylnn Washington. The Associated Press, reporting the identification, wrote that Brooks had been charged in 2006 with killing seven women and was blamed for at least seven deaths.
The Michigan Court of Appeals caption gives his full name as Shelly Andre Brooks, and UPI used the same name when he was charged. News reports gave his age as 37 in August 2006 and 38 in March 2007. He lived in Detroit.
The appeals court, reviewing whether his statements to police had been voluntary, noted that he understood English, communicated well and had prior experience with police. It said he was already in custody on another charge when detectives questioned him about the killings. The opinion does not describe his schooling, work or family.
When the charges were announced, the prosecutor offered an explanation of motive. Worthy said, as UPI reported, "He really thought he was killing his mother all over again." UPI added that Brooks seemed to believe he was killing his mother again. The appeals opinion makes no finding on that point; it describes the killings in the terms Brooks himself gave detectives: disputes over payment with women he had paid for sex.
The 2008 Court of Appeals opinion does not name the women. It describes the woman whose death was before the appeals court and six other women whose cases the jury heard about. The victim in the appealed case was found in Detroit and died of blunt force trauma.
Of the six other women, five died of blunt force trauma to the head. The court said their bodies were found in remote locations in Detroit. His DNA was found on the bodies or belongings of three of them. The sixth woman survived. She identified Brooks as the man who attacked and sexually assaulted her, and she testified at his trial.
The prosecution also asked to tell the jury about a seventh woman, who had been strangled. The trial judge refused to admit that evidence, and it played no part in the trial.
Darylnn Washington was born on June 15, 1959, according to Othram, the Texas forensic laboratory that helped identify her. Her body was found in Detroit in June 2006. Her death was ruled a homicide, and she was believed to have died only days before she was found. Investigators at the time described her as a Black woman between 20 and 30 years old, about five feet tall. Her case was entered in the national missing and unidentified persons system, NamUs, as UP7935, and it went cold for nearly two decades.
Her family, Othram wrote after the identification, had long believed that she had been killed by a serial killer, but they had never learned where she was. Othram described her as one of the victims Brooks confessed to killing.
Police caught Brooks on July 30, 2006, UPI reported, after a woman who had survived an attack gave them a tip. The appeals court later recorded that the survivor identified him as her attacker. He was in custody on another charge, the court said, when detectives began to question him about the deaths of other women.
The questioning produced ten statements, according to the Court of Appeals. Before each interrogation and each statement, the court said, Brooks signed a form acknowledging his rights, and he made corrections to the written statements where he thought they were needed. He was not injured, ill or intoxicated, and he was not deprived of food or sleep. The officers often ate meals with him, the court noted.
In those statements, by the court's account, he said that he had given money or drugs to the women for sex and that each attack followed a dispute over payment. In the case that went to the appeals court, he told police he had paid the woman for sex and struck her during an argument over money. He admitted striking each of the six other women in the head after a dispute over payment.
Prosecutors charged Brooks on a Tuesday with raping and killing seven women over five years, UPI reported in a story datelined August 30. UPI said he was also suspected in seven other killings. He was held without bail. A preliminary hearing on the rape and assault charges in the survivor's case was set for September 11.
Brooks later challenged the statements he had given detectives, arguing in court that they had not been made voluntarily.
Two pretrial rulings shaped the trial that the Court of Appeals later reviewed, in Wayne Circuit Court case 06-010881-01.
The first concerned the other women. Under Michigan Rule of Evidence 404(b), evidence of other acts cannot be used to show that a defendant has a bad character, but it can be admitted for other purposes, such as intent, motive or a common scheme. The prosecution moved to admit evidence of the attacks on the six other women and on the woman who had been strangled. The trial court admitted the evidence about the six and excluded the strangling case.
The second concerned the confessions. Brooks asked the court to suppress his statements as involuntary. In Michigan, a hearing on that question is called a Walker hearing. Brooks claimed that he had been interrogated over and over, that two officers had threatened him with violence, and that he had been taken out of jail for questioning every day for a month, sometimes for twelve hours or more. He also said he had asked for a lawyer.
The trial judge did not believe him. Jail records did not support his account of daily interrogations, the court found, and he had not been physically abused, though he said two officers threatened him. The judge rejected his claim that he had asked for an attorney and ruled that the statements were voluntary. The jury heard them.
The first trial concerned a killing from 2002, AP reported. A woman who survived one of the attacks testified that Brooks had sexually assaulted her. On March 8, 2007, AP reported that the jury had convicted him of first-degree murder that week, a conviction that carried an automatic sentence of life without parole. The AP story described Brooks as "one of the worst serial killers in Detroit history" and said he was suspected in 13 other killings dating back to 1999.
The 2008 opinion of the Court of Appeals reviewed the conviction in case 06-010881-01; it does not name the victim. The evidence included DNA linking Brooks to the victim and his own statements to detectives, including his account of a dispute with her over payment. The medical evidence and his statement differed on some points, and the appeals court treated that as a question of credibility for the jury.
The jury also heard about the six other women, and the surviving woman testified. The judge told the jurors that the evidence about other attacks could not be used as proof of bad character.
Brooks testified in his own defense and denied killing anyone. The jurors did not believe him, the Associated Press reported in 2025, looking back on the trials.
The jury returned two verdicts in the case, first-degree premeditated murder and second-degree murder. The second-degree conviction was vacated at sentencing, leaving the first-degree conviction and its life sentence.
The second trial, in another of the charged deaths, also ended in a conviction for first-degree murder, and Brooks received a second sentence of life in prison without parole. The Associated Press, citing state records, summed up the outcome in 2025: Brooks was tried in two deaths, convicted and sentenced to life in prison.
Brooks appealed the conviction in case 06-010881-01 as of right. A three-judge panel of the Michigan Court of Appeals, with Judge Whitbeck presiding and Judges O'Connell and Kelly, decided the case in an unpublished per curiam opinion on June 24, 2008. He raised three issues, and the court rejected each.
First, he argued that the evidence of the other attacks should not have been admitted. The panel held that the evidence was offered for proper purposes, intent, motive and scheme, and that the attacks were similar enough to be relevant. It found that the danger of unfair prejudice did not substantially outweigh the evidence's value, especially since the jury had been instructed not to use it as character evidence. Such a decision, the court wrote, "is within the trial court's discretion and will only be reversed where there has been a clear abuse of discretion."
Second, he argued that his ten statements were involuntary. The panel reviewed the trial court's findings: the rights forms signed before each session, the corrections he made, his ability to communicate, his prior experience with police, the absence of injury, illness or intoxication, and the jail records that did not match his account. "The trial court's findings were not clearly erroneous," the court held.
Third, he argued that the evidence did not prove premeditation. Because the second-degree conviction had been vacated, the panel considered only the first-degree verdict. It pointed to the autopsy finding of repeated blows and held that the time between them gave him the opportunity to take a "second look," which is enough for premeditation under Michigan law. The differences between his statement and the physical evidence, and his denial at trial, were credibility questions for the jury.
The panel affirmed the conviction and the life sentence.
Brooks was charged with seven killings and convicted of two. The remaining cases did not go to trial. "The other cases were no longer pursued in court after Brooks' lifetime imprisonment was assured," Maria Miller of the Wayne County prosecutor's office told the Associated Press in January 2025.
The deaths that were never tried remain charged killings. By the court's account he described the attacks to police, but no jury reached a verdict on them, and they are not convictions.
The woman found in Detroit in June 2006 went unidentified for nearly two decades. In April 2022, the Detroit Police Department turned to Othram, a private forensic laboratory in The Woodlands, Texas, for help. Othram said it used forensic evidence to build a DNA profile through genome sequencing, carried out genealogy research and gave investigators new leads. The testing and genealogy work were paid for by NamUs, which is funded and administered by the National Institute of Justice.
The leads took investigators to members of her family. Detroit police announced the identification in January 2025 and said her family had been notified. "Technology is amazing," a Detroit police spokesperson, Jackson Vidaurri, told the Associated Press. Othram said it was the tenth case in Michigan in which officials had announced an identification made with its technology.
The AP report linked her death to Brooks, who it said had been charged in 2006 with killing seven women and was blamed for at least seven deaths. Othram called her a confessed victim of his.
How many women. Brooks was charged with seven killings and convicted of two. UPI reported in 2006 that he was suspected in seven more; the AP in 2007 gave the number of other suspected killings as 13, dating back to 1999. The court record does not address these further deaths, and none was ever charged.
The strangled woman. The prosecution wanted the jury to hear about a woman who had been strangled. The trial judge excluded that evidence, and the court record does not tie her death to Brooks.
The confessions. Brooks claimed that he had been questioned day after day under threat and that he had asked for a lawyer. The trial court rejected those claims after a hearing, and the Court of Appeals upheld that ruling. At trial he denied killing anyone.
The motive. Worthy said in 2006 that he seemed to believe he was killing his mother again. The court record gives the motive in his own words to police, as disputes over payment. The opinion makes no separate finding on either account.
Brooks was sentenced to life in prison without parole on each first-degree murder conviction. As of January 2025, the Associated Press, citing state records, described him as serving a life sentence.
2002: The killing tried first in 2007 took place (AP, 2007).
June 2006: A woman, later identified as Darylnn Washington, was found dead in Detroit; her death was ruled a homicide (Othram).
July 30, 2006: Police arrested Brooks after a tip from a woman who had survived an attack (UPI).
2006 (UPI dateline August 30): Prosecutors charged him with raping and killing seven women over five years; he was held without bail (UPI, dateline August 30).
September 11, 2006: Preliminary hearing set on the rape and assault charges in the survivor's case (UPI).
Before trial: The trial court admitted evidence of six other attacks, excluded a strangling case and ruled his ten statements voluntary after a Walker hearing (Court of Appeals, 2008).
March 2007: A Detroit jury convicted him of first-degree murder in a 2002 killing; the conviction carried a mandatory life sentence without parole (AP, March 8, 2007).
2007: A second trial ended in a first-degree murder conviction; life sentence (AP, 2025).
June 24, 2008: The Michigan Court of Appeals affirmed the conviction and sentence in Wayne Circuit case 06-010881-01, No. 277652.
April 2022: Detroit police began working with Othram on the unidentified woman found in June 2006.
January 2025: Detroit police announced her identification as Darylnn Washington; the prosecutor's office said the other cases were not pursued after his life imprisonment was assured (AP; Othram).