Since 2001, dozens of women have been found strangled or suffocated in Chicago, most of them Black women on the city's South and West Sides, and most of the killings have never been solved. In 2019 a small national nonprofit, the Murder Accountability Project, said that 51 of these deaths, from 2001 to 2018, had the characteristics of serial murder. Its founder, the retired journalist Thomas Hargrove, said it was very unlikely that the 51 women had been killed by 51 different men.
The Chicago Police Department does not accept that conclusion. Under pressure from families, activists and elected officials, it put the cases before a team of homicide detectives working on an FBI violent crimes task force in April 2019. Police said that DNA evidence from 21 of the cases came from 21 different men, and that nothing linked the cases to each other. Their stated position since then has been that there is no evidence of a serial killer and that each case is being investigated on its own.
"The Chicago Strangler" is a popular name for the theory, not for any known person. No one has been charged with a series of these killings. In one case on the list, the death of Diamond Turner in 2017, a man was charged with murder in 2020, and police said he did not appear to be linked to the other women.
Chicago had faced the question before. A police task force formed in the late 1990s and early 2000s, when dozens of women's bodies were found in the city, solved the killings of 40 women before it was disbanded, according to a 2018 Associated Press report. The Chicago Sun-Times recalled in 2019 that Andre Crawford was convicted in 2009 of killing 11 women, seven of them linked by DNA.
In January 2018 the Chicago Tribune published its own count. According to the Associated Press summary of that investigation, the Tribune found that at least 75 women had been strangled or smothered in Chicago over about 17 years. The newspaper's analysis of medical examiner records and public crime reports found that the women ranged in age from 18 to 58 and that most were African American. Many had struggled with drugs or with prostitution, and some had no arrest record at all. Arrests had been made in only about a third of the cases: of the 75, 25 were closed, with 13 men arrested, and 67 percent remained unsolved.
Police told the Tribune they had found no evidence of a serial killer. After the newspaper contacted them, officials reviewed more than a dozen of the cases and sent three to cold case detectives. Melissa Staples, then the chief of detectives, said the violence of the crimes troubled her but that she was not sure the old task force needed to be brought back. The Cook County state's attorney, Kim Foxx, said restoring it was worth considering, to raise the urgency of clearing the cases. Kaethe Morris Hoffer, executive director of the Chicago Alliance Against Sexual Exploitation, called the number staggering. She said people become numb to the killing of women, especially marginalized women, when the deaths are spread out over years instead of happening all at once.
The Murder Accountability Project was founded by Hargrove and is based in Alexandria, Virginia, according to NBC Chicago, though one Fox 32 report described it as based in Washington, D.C. It works from national homicide data reported to the FBI. In a 2019 interview with WBEZ, Hargrove explained that the project's computer program takes about 769,000 murder records and sorts them into more than 10,000 groups, by the sex of the victim, the method of killing and the place, a metropolitan area or a county. It then looks for groups with unusually low clearance rates. A serial killer, he said, drags down the police solve rate in the group where his victims fall. The project concentrates on women because, according to the FBI, serial killers most often target women, and because most murders of women, even in Chicago, are solved.
Hargrove called the program a serial killer detector. He had a record to point to. The Sun-Times reported that in 2010 he flagged 15 unsolved strangulations in northwest Indiana. In 2014 Darren Deon Vann was arrested in Hammond, Indiana, and later led investigators to the bodies of more women in Gary; he pleaded guilty and was sentenced to life in prison in 2018 for murdering seven women, according to WGN. Hargrove said he had warned Gary police in 2010 and received no response. In Cleveland, according to the Associated Press, the project's data led police to form a task force examining the deaths of up to 60 women.
In Chicago the program picked out the strangulations and asphyxiations of women. Hargrove first presented his findings to Chicago police in 2017, the Associated Press reported. A CBS 2 investigation by the reporter Pam Zekman brought the issue to a wide audience in February 2019, when the station asked the project to review more than 50 unsolved cases dating to 2001. In March 2019, the Sun-Times reported, Hargrove gave his findings to Police Superintendent Eddie Johnson, to Alderman Pat Dowell of the 3rd Ward and to State Senator Patricia Van Pelt. WGN later reported that around that time he wrote to the City Council, arguing that there was a high likelihood that at least one serial killer was responsible.
The project's figures were reported in several outlets in 2019. Hargrove told NPR's All Things Considered in April 2019 that 74 percent of the murders of women by strangulation or asphyxiation in the group were unsolved, which he called unusual. At a public forum in June 2019 he said that 94 percent of the 51 women had been found outdoors, that 76 percent were African American, and that 75 percent of the killings had a clear sexual component. "Murder tends to be an indoor sport," he told NPR, but these cases were entirely out of doors.
He described a geography. On WBEZ he said the body recovery sites fell into three clusters, on the West Side, the South Side and the Far South Side, and that the largest, on the South Side, ran in a north to south line. That, he suggested, could mean a killer or killers who found victims along a route they often drove. In 2021 he told NBC Chicago that the project had found eight or nine recovery sites near the CTA Green Line elevated tracks. "We don't think that's a coincidence," he said.
He also described a pause. The killings in the group dropped off in 2014 and resumed in 2017, continuing into 2018, according to CBS 2 and the Associated Press, and Hargrove suggested the gap could mean that the killer had been unavailable, perhaps in prison. At the June 2019 forum he said the median age of the victims had risen gradually over 15 years, which he said could fit one offender growing comfortable with older victims as he aged. He said women in Chicago who did sex work or used drugs regularly were being targeted, and he urged them to take precautions.
His conclusions were stated as probabilities, not as findings. He told NPR it was "extremely unlikely" that 51 separate men had committed the killings. He told VICE that he believed there were probably more than one serial killer active in Chicago, and in 2021 he told NBC Chicago, "We believe that we're dealing with two or three serial killers." When the cases were put together, he told the Associated Press, "it just screams serial killer." He also told NPR that he agreed with Superintendent Johnson that there was not yet evidence of a serial killer, because much of the evidence had not been tested and the crime labs were backlogged. He blamed what he called linkage blindness: detectives working separate cases, he said, may not see what the cases share.
The press has named only some of the 51 women. Little has been written about most of them beyond their names.
In May 2019 the nephew of Winifred Shines told the Associated Press that she had been strangled almost 19 years earlier. He was a teenager when she died, and he said she had been addicted to crack cocaine. "I say I've moved on from what happened, put it in God's hands," he said. "But deep down I know I haven't." Her son had recently begun seeing a therapist for grief he had carried for years. "I'm not at peace because he's still out there," he said.
Gwendolyn Williams was born on October 6, 1957, in Montgomery, Alabama, and came to Chicago with her mother in 1965, according to a profile by John W. Fountain and Samantha Latson for the Roosevelt University project Unforgotten 51. She was the eldest of six children. Her sisters remembered a protective, loyal big sister with a heart of gold, small and tough, who loved to dance and to cook and who went to church. As a girl she babysat and helped raise her younger siblings, and she once stood up for them at church when other girls threw spitballs. She was 44 when she was found strangled in Chicago on June 12, 2002. The night before, she had stayed with one of her sisters, who was recovering from surgery. Their mother died in 2018 without seeing the case solved. "You can't have closure when your wound is still open," one sister said. Another argued that labels such as "prostitute" made Black women's lives and deaths seem smaller.
In February 2019 CBS 2 reported that Chicago police had matched DNA from her case to a man with a 1980 armed robbery conviction in Detroit, and that he had been arrested in Tampa, Florida, on a first-degree murder warrant. He denied killing her or ever being in Chicago, CBS reported, though further tests confirmed he had been with her. According to the station, the Cook County state's attorney's office decided not to have him brought back to Illinois. He has not been charged, and her sisters have kept pressing for an arrest.
Nancie Carolyn Walker, called Carolyn by those closest to her, was born on August 15, 1947, in Birmingham, Alabama, the eldest of six sisters, and her family moved to Chicago in 1961, according to Unforgotten 51. She captained her high school cheerleading squad, studied at Columbia College and attended Roosevelt University. She wanted to be an entrepreneur so that she would never have to work for anyone else, and she became one: she opened a dance studio in Englewood, where she taught yoga and jazzercise, and she owned residential buildings, a beauty salon and a trucking company. She loved to dance, especially to step. Her sister told Fox 32 that she was a perfectionist who did not trust strangers.
She disappeared in January 2003. Her family said police at first showed little urgency, and her sister told Fox 32 that officers questioned Nancie's character once they learned she was from Englewood. A longtime friend, a former television reporter, helped organize a press conference, and police began to take the case seriously after the friend, Alderman Dorothy Tillman and the Cook County Board commissioner Toni Preckwinkle took it up, the sister said. Her remains were found in Chicago on March 19, 2003, seven weeks after she was reported missing. She was 55. Fox 32 reported that she had been strangled. Her sister said that after the loss she could not function and spent five years in therapy. No one had been arrested as of 2022.
Theresa Bunn was 21 and was looking forward to the birth of her first child. She was found dead in Chicago on November 12, 2007. Hazel Marion Lewis, 52, a mother and grandmother, was found dead in Chicago on November 14, 2007. Both had been strangled, according to Unforgotten 51; the Sun-Times reported that they were found a day apart and that Theresa Bunn was eight months pregnant. The student reporters were unable to reach either woman's family.
Velma Howard was found dead in Chicago in 2014, according to VICE, which cited a neighbor's account to the Tribune that the community felt overlooked.
Diamond Turner was 21. She was found dead in Chicago on March 3, 2017. Unlike many of the other women, she had no history of prostitution arrests, CBS 2 reported.
Catherine Saterfield-Buchanan died in 2017; the Associated Press placed her death in June 2017 and treated it as the point at which the killings in the group resumed. Valerie Marie Jackson, Lora Dawn Harbin and Nicole Lynell Ridge were among the women killed in 2017 and 2018 whose deaths the medical examiner ruled homicides, CBS 2 reported in February 2019. NBC Chicago, citing the Tribune, reported in 2019 that four more women had been found between May and September 2018, outdoors on the South and West Sides.
Reo Renee Holyfield was 34. She was found dead in Chicago in September 2018. The Cook County medical examiner could not determine a cause of death; CBS 2 reported that her case was classed as a suspended death investigation. Her cousin became one of the most visible relatives in the campaign for answers. "She was an individual, separate from everybody," he told WBEZ. "And if you ever, ever encountered her, she would put a mark on you." Student reporters wrote of her singing voice and her love of the Fourth of July. Her family and independent investigators believe she belongs with the others; whether she does depends on a cause of death that was never established.
The CBS 2 reports set off a series of public meetings. At one in February 2019 a group read aloud the names of 50 women. State Senator Van Pelt said police had assured her there was no evidence of a serial killer, but that the station's reporting raised the question again. She said 3,700 pieces of DNA evidence in Illinois had not been analyzed, more than 700 of them from murders. Alderman Dowell said she would call for City Council hearings. At the time, the department said it had no "actionable evidence" of a serial killer.
The activist Greg Greer, a minister who founded Freedom First International, raised the project's report at a Police Board meeting in April 2019 and urged police to issue public alerts. On April 11, 2019, the Sun-Times reported that the department had begun reviewing the unsolved killings of 51 women since 2001 to determine whether a serial killer was responsible. Superintendent Johnson said there was no evidence linking the killings and that no serial killer had been identified, but that detectives had begun a review. The department's chief spokesman, Anthony Guglielmi, said detectives were taking inventory of the evidence and auditing forensic material, and that the process could take a long time. Hargrove said he was relieved.
The size of the group was not fixed. In May 2019 the department confirmed to the Tribune that it was examining the deaths of 55 women, the Associated Press reported, with a team of up to six detectives re-examining the forensic evidence. Deputy Chief of Detectives Brendan Deenihan, who oversaw the detectives, told the Associated Press that he did not believe "one or two bad guys" were responsible, though he said he would not be surprised if several killers were involved or if the count rose above 51. He argued that the common thread might be what he called a high-risk lifestyle rather than a single killer, and he disputed the claim that the cases received less attention because of who the women were. He also questioned the racial pattern as evidence of one killer, saying it made no sense for a killer to skip white sex workers to kill Black women.
Representative Bobby Rush, whose district included many of the sites, asked the FBI to join the investigation and help process evidence. On May 30, 2019, activists and clergy asked the newly elected mayor, Lori Lightfoot, to order a stronger investigation. Johnson said, "If there were a serial killer in Chicago, I would be the first one to acknowledge it." Lightfoot said the number of Black women murdered in the city was a concern and that better clearance rates would help answer the question. Among the parents who spoke that day was the mother of Shantieya Smith, 26, who had gone missing and was found dead in June 2018 and whose killing remains unsolved; Unforgotten 51 later wrote that she was not one of the 51.
On June 3, 2019, Reo Renee Holyfield's cousin led volunteers who posted flyers at the places where women had been found, asking anyone with information to come forward. "It's about time," he said of the police review. "This ain't the Magnificent Mile," he told WBEZ, describing neighborhoods where residents did not expect wrongdoers to be caught quickly. Johnson had said there was "simply nothing" to suggest a serial killer was operating in the city.
On June 6, 2019, Rush convened a forum of police, prosecutors and criminologists, attended by about 40 people. There Chief of Detectives Staples said the 51 cases had been given to a team of 10 Chicago homicide detectives serving on an FBI violent crimes task force, who were reviewing all of the evidence. "We have no DNA at this time that links these cases together," she said.
Deenihan gave the numbers. Testable DNA existed in 21 of the cases, which meant that more than half of the 51 had none. The DNA from those 21 cases produced 21 separate profiles, all of men unknown to police. Every available item had been processed, he said: "every single swab, every single fingernail, everything has been worked up." Earlier, the Sun-Times had reported that some cases yielded more than one profile, which police suggested could reflect the women's multiple partners. Chicago police submit DNA from unsolved homicides to national databases, the Associated Press noted, so that a future conviction elsewhere could produce a match.
Rush said the evidence did not allow police to rule out a serial killer. Brenda Stewart of the Dreamcatcher Foundation, which works with sex workers in Chicago, said the women she worked with were afraid and felt they had no help. Many in the audience said they believed police cared less because most of the victims were Black and were thought to be sex workers. Staples rejected that. "Any uncleared murder, unsolved murder, is a concern to us absolutely," she said.
Hargrove told the same forum that the women's median age had risen over the years and warned again that the killer or killers might be targeting sex workers and women with drug addictions. Reo Renee Holyfield's cousin told law enforcement not to dismiss the possibility. Another speaker described a woman on the list who left behind an 11-year-old son who asked every day whether police had found his mother yet.
Diamond Turner was last seen in March 2017, and she was found dead in Chicago days later. An autopsy found that she had been beaten to death, ABC7 reported; the student reporters of Unforgotten 51 wrote that she had been beaten and strangled.
Her family did their own investigating. In November 2017 the ABC7 I-Team reported that a man who had been seen with her the night she disappeared, A.H., had asked to meet the family about three weeks after her death, and that they had secretly recorded the meeting. In it he blamed his roommate, who denied any part in her death. Police said at the time that they were waiting on evidence from the state crime lab.
The wait became a dispute between agencies. According to the Illinois State Police timeline reported by ABC7, Chicago police sent evidence to the state lab in March 2017, the lab issued a DNA report in January 2018, police sent more evidence in November 2018, and the lab finished analyzing it in March 2019. A Chicago police spokesman blamed about a year of delay on the lab; a state police spokeswoman said the lab had sent its report almost a year before the arrest. Police said a warrant was issued in October 2019, and that A.H. could not be found because he was on the run for a probation violation.
A.H., 52, was arrested and, on January 30, 2020, charged with one count of first-degree murder. A Cook County judge ordered him held without bond. Prosecutors said Diamond Turner had been his girlfriend, and police said he told detectives that this was why his DNA was present. Interim Superintendent Charlie Beck said that as soon as the DNA came back, the warrant was served. In 2018 A.H. had been convicted of concealing a homicidal death in a separate case, and prosecutors said they were looking at him in a third killing; he had not been charged in it. Police said they would recheck DNA from the other unsolved cases against his.
The charge did not settle the larger question. "Shouldn't take three years," her aunt said of the delay. Unforgotten 51 wrote in December 2020 that hers was the only case among the 51 in which a suspect had been arrested and charged with murder, and that police said the suspect did not appear to be linked to the other 50 women. The outcome of the case against A.H. was not reported.
In August 2021 the podcast producer Ben Kuebrich, who had made a series called Algorithm about the project's method, obtained through a public records request about 14 hours of recorded interviews that Hammond police detectives conducted with Darren Vann over four days in October 2014. NBC Chicago reported that in the recordings Vann said he had killed more people across the state line in Illinois. "They have more than Indiana," he said. He said he went to Chicago often, that he rode the train or bus to get away from his family when he felt himself "slipping," and that his victims were "all random."
Hargrove told NBC Chicago that he thought Vann could be one of the two or three serial killers he believed were active in Chicago. He noted that Vann had served a five-year sentence in Texas for sexual assault in a period NBC Chicago gave as July 2008 to July 2013, and that unsolved strangulations of women in Chicago had dropped sharply in 2009 and afterward. Chicago police repeated that there was no evidence linking the cases to each other or suggesting a serial killer.
WGN reported in May 2022, citing a source, that Chicago detectives had traveled to the Indiana prison where Vann is held in June 2021 hoping to question him, and that he refused to answer any questions. A Hammond police lieutenant said Hammond detectives had passed his claims of more victims to Illinois agencies, including Chicago police, as soon as it was practical. A Chicago police spokesperson declined to comment. Vann has not been charged in Illinois, and no evidence linking him to any Chicago death has been reported.
For many relatives the dispute over a single killer mattered less than the number of deaths that had gone unsolved. Activists and families argued that the women received less attention because they were Black, because they were poor, and because many were labeled as sex workers or drug users. Several families said that label was wrong or beside the point. "Even if she was, so what?" Samantha Latson said of one woman whose family disputed it. "She was still a human being."
In January 2020 John W. Fountain, a Roosevelt University journalism professor and former national correspondent for The New York Times and chief crime reporter for the Chicago Tribune, set his students to write about the women. Sixteen student journalists worked on the project over the spring and fall semesters of 2020, according to Block Club Chicago, tracking down families, some of whom were eager to talk and some of whom refused. The result, Unforgotten 51, published profiles under the heading Portraits of Life, along with podcasts. "Our job was not to solve the case, but to shine light on the case," Fountain told TheGrio. "These are 51 women and we should care." Latson, a senior from Matteson who edited the project, said the women should be remembered because "they were loved."
Rosie Dawson of the Westside Health Authority told Block Club that Black women are "always being marginalized in every form." West Side leaders launched a campaign called Stop Taking Our Girls, pushing police and prosecutors to put violent crimes against Black women first.
In June 2022 a Chicago police spokesman, Tom Ahern, told Fox 32 that detectives detailed to the FBI's violent crimes task force had reviewed each case, that "there is no evidence linking the cases to each other," and that there was no indication a serial killer was responsible. Detectives were investigating each case individually. No arrests had been reported in the Walker case or in the wider group, and the investigations remained open.
As of that June 2022 report, no one had been charged with a series of killings, police maintained that the cases were not linked, and the Murder Accountability Project maintained that one or more serial killers were likely responsible. One case, Diamond Turner's, had led to a murder charge.
Whether one killer exists. This is the central dispute. The Murder Accountability Project's claim rests on statistics: a low clearance rate, a shared method, a shared kind of victim and clustered geography. Police say the physical evidence points the other way, since the DNA from 21 cases produced 21 different male profiles with no matches among them. Hargrove has said both that the 51 women were very unlikely to have been killed by 51 different men and that he believed two or three serial killers were active. Neither claim has been tested in court.
How many women. The number has moved. The Tribune counted at least 75 strangled or smothered women since 2001, and found 67 percent of those cases unsolved. The project's group is 51; NBC Chicago in 2021 reported Hargrove as studying 50; police confirmed in May 2019 that they were examining 55. The groups were built in different ways and are not the same list.
Whether every woman belongs. Diamond Turner's death was reported by ABC7 as a beating; Reo Renee Holyfield's cause of death was undetermined. Both are counted in public discussions of the group.
The gap. The project pointed to a pause from 2014 to 2017 as a sign of a killer who was locked up. The reported start and end points differ: the Associated Press put the last killing before the pause in February 2014 and named Diamond Turner, whose body was found in March 2017 according to the other reports, and put the resumption in June 2017 with Catherine Saterfield-Buchanan; CBS 2 put the resumption in March 2017.
Darren Vann. His recorded claims of more killings in Illinois are not supported by any charge, and he refused to talk to Chicago detectives.
Late 1990s to early 2000s: a Chicago police task force on the deaths of women solves 40 killings before it is disbanded (AP, 2018).
2001: the first year in the Murder Accountability Project's group of 51 cases.
June 12, 2002: Gwendolyn Williams, 44, is found dead in Chicago.
March 19, 2003: Nancie Carolyn Walker's remains are found in Chicago, seven weeks after she was reported missing.
November 2007: Theresa Bunn and Hazel Marion Lewis are found dead in Chicago.
2009: Andre Crawford is convicted of killing 11 women (Sun-Times).
2010: Hargrove flags 15 unsolved strangulations in northwest Indiana.
October 2014: Darren Vann is arrested in Hammond, Indiana.
March 3, 2017: Diamond Turner, 21, is found dead in Chicago.
2017: Hargrove presents his findings to Chicago police.
January 2018: the Chicago Tribune reports at least 75 women strangled or smothered since 2001.
September 2018: Reo Renee Holyfield, 34, is found dead in Chicago.
February 2019: CBS 2 reports on more than 50 unsolved cases reviewed by the project.
March 2019: Hargrove gives his findings to Superintendent Johnson and city and state officials.
April 11, 2019: the Sun-Times reports that Chicago police have begun a review of 51 cases.
May 2019: police confirm they are examining the deaths of 55 women.
June 6, 2019: at a forum convened by Representative Rush, police say DNA from 21 cases came from 21 different men and none links the cases.
January 30, 2020: A.H. is charged with first-degree murder in the death of Diamond Turner.
2020: Roosevelt University students publish Unforgotten 51.
June 2021: Chicago detectives try to question Darren Vann in prison; he refuses.
August 25, 2021: NBC Chicago reports Vann's recorded claims of more victims in Illinois.
June 30, 2022: Chicago police tell Fox 32 there is no evidence linking the cases.