Between August 1985 and April 1990 eight or nine women were stabbed to death in and around Frankford, a working-class district in north-east Philadelphia. Most were older women, several were alcoholics who drank in the same handful of bars along Frankford Avenue, and most were killed in their own homes or in the streets and alleys nearby, stabbed many times and left partially undressed.
Witnesses in the bars described a thin white man in his forties with glasses who had been seen with several of the women.
In 1990 Leonard Christopher, a fish-shop worker, was arrested for the last of the killings, that of Carol Dowd. He was Black and did not match the description, no physical evidence tied him to the scene, and the case rested largely on witnesses whose accounts changed. He was convicted and sentenced to life, and has maintained his innocence for over thirty years. He was never charged with any of the earlier deaths.
The killings stopped after his arrest, which the prosecution has always cited and which the defence has always pointed out proves nothing either way. The series is unsolved and the conviction is disputed.