Police see pattern in 4 deaths
Repo...@home.net
Flint
Journal newspaper:
Police see pattern in 4 deaths
Saturday, October 9, 1999
By Laura Bailey
JOURNAL STAFF WRITER
Flint police will work with the Flint office of the FBI to profile a
possible
serial killer they believe has slain four women in the city since
February.
The fourth body was found by a passerby Friday morning in a yard on
Susan
Street and Mott Avenue on Flint's east side.
Police are withholding the victim's identity until family is notified,
said
Flint police Lt. Jody Matherly. She is from Flint.
Police are being cautious about releasing details, but said similar
circumstances prompted them to link the four deaths. An autopsy on the
latest
victim was completed Friday, but police are not releasing a cause of
death.
All of the victims have been black women found in or near abandoned
houses or
fields. Police said all have been involved in prostitution, drugs or
both.
• On Feb. 15, Helene Fails, 38, was found in an abandoned home at 630 E.
Rankin. She had been strangled. The owner of the home found the body. An
autopsy indicated the woman may have been there as long as 24 hours.
• On Aug. 22, Brenda Millender, 27, was found by police inside a house
at 609
E. Genesee St. after a couple told neighbors they believed somebody was
dead
inside the home.
• On Sept. 29, Hermetta Harris, 33, was found by a man walking his dog
in the
southwest portion of Whaley Park on Flint's east side. Police believed
the body
had been there for at least three days.
• Then on Friday, the body was found on Susan Street near Mott Avenue.
Matherly said a task force of FBI and Flint police criminal
investigations will
review the crimes together, and the FBI behavioral sciences unit will
study
details of the crimes to try to devise a profile of the killer.
The special operations bureau of the Flint police department is also on
"heightened alert" to identify and apprehend people attempting to
solicit
prostitutes. The special operations bureau does vice work, including
prostitution enforcement.
Police are also reviewing the possibility that other recent assaults on
women
have some connections.
Rape suspect Jack D. Hall - arrested in connection with the attack of
two Clio
sisters in July - is also under investigation in connection with a July
2
slaying of a Saginaw woman and the rape of a woman in Thetford Township.
Hall was recently cleared through DNA testing of the slaying of Wanda
Musk, 19,
of Genesee Township, who was kidnapped from her convenience store job
and
sexually assaulted in 1993.
But Hall's DNA will be tested for possible connections to the slaying of
Anne
M. Paetz, of Saginaw and an employee of the Ligon Learning Center who
was raped
in April of 1993. The two incidents occurred within 1 1/2 mile of each
other,
police said.
In the Clio case, Hall is charged with two counts of first-degree
criminal
sexual conduct and attempted murder in connection with the attack of two
girls,
ages 8 and 14, on a bike path near their apartment complex.
Laura Bailey is the afternoon police and fire reporter. She can be
reached at
(810) 766-6331.
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