Between the summers of 1999 and 2000, women who worked the streets of Williamsburg and Bedford-Stuyvesant in Brooklyn were found strangled, each with whatever lay to hand: two with their own shoelaces, one with a drawstring from a pair of sweatpants, two with electrical wire, one probably with a scrap of cloth. The killer tied the bodies with the ligatures and left them where they died, two on rooftops and one in a vacant lot in Williamsburg, two in apartments in Bedford-Stuyvesant, and one in a utility room under the Williamsburg Bridge. The victims had arrest records for prostitution and drugs and were addicts themselves. The press called the killer the Brooklyn Strangler.
The Brooklyn North Homicide Task Force picked up some thirty men known to deal with the women. One of them, a homeless man, was arrested and then cleared by DNA. Afterward he befriended the detectives and told them about another homeless man he smoked crack with who seemed fixated on sadomasochistic sex. He pointed him out: Vincent Johnson, born January 6, 1969, five foot three and 130 pounds, who sometimes slept on a cot in that utility room under the bridge. Johnson refused to give a DNA sample and denied knowing any of the women. A detective watched him spit on the street, collected the saliva, and sent it to the medical examiner. On August 3, 2000, the result came back: it matched DNA from four of the victims. He was arrested on August 5.
He confessed to five killings: Laura Nusser, forty-four, found under the Williamsburg Bridge in February 2000, whom he called his first, Patricia Sullivan, Rhonda Tucker, Joanne Feliciano and Vivian Caraballo. He remained a suspect in the death of a sixth woman, Katrina Niles, and still denied it in 2006. He said he hated his mother. Three of the women, and probably a fourth, were killed on a Thursday, and he said Thursday was his mother's one day off work. He showed little guilt. Of Patricia Sullivan he said, "I didn't see strangling her as doing something wrong at the time," though after killing Laura Nusser he said he had felt sorry and wanted to apologize to her family.
To avoid a possible death sentence he pleaded guilty to one count of first-degree murder and five counts of second-degree murder, and in the spring of 2001 was sentenced to life without parole; the date is given as March 10 and as April 8. He is held at Wende Correctional Facility in Alden, New York. The hunt was followed in the Court TV series Brooklyn North.