Mark Profit,convicted of 1 murder in MN,but almost certainly serial killer of at least 4,gives media interview,asks to be prosecuted for 2nd killing
Joe1orbit
Okay folks, this is my FINAL post. I am leaving on my monthly trip in 10
minutes time, and shutting off the 'puter right after I make this post. Sure
wish I could offer up a long commentary on this FASCINATING serial murder case
out of Minneapolis, Minnesota, but unfortunately I am totally OUT of time.
Still, I feel OBLIGATED to give Mark Profit as much attention as I can, by
posting this update on him. Mark liked to BURN his victims, inside of a park in
Minneapolis, although it's not clear if they were STILL alive when set on fire.
You can view a GREAT color photo of Mark, taken just a few days ago in
prison, looking QUITE confident and healthy and strong, nice hairstyle too, at
the following URL:
http://www2.startribune.com/stOnLine/cgi-bin/article?thisStory=80713241
A couple of photos of his victims can be found at the above URL as well.
As we learn below, Mark, probably wanting to receive OFFICIAL credit for all
his serial killings, is actually ASKING prosecutors to put him on trial for
MORE murders. He SAYS he is innocent, and will plead innocent, and there ARE
advantages to be had if he is ACQUITTED of this second murder, Could give him
better grounds to appeal his first conviction. Right now, he is only CONVICTED
of one murder, and has received a Life sentence. Police and detectives seem
CERTAIN that Mark serially killed at least FOUR gals in a 1996 spree, and now
DNA evidence conclusively links him to a second one, out of the 4 murders, and
Mark wants to go to trial.
Just read the details of Mark's LIFETIME of abuse, and how he was THROWN into
ADULT prison at age FIFTEEN. Yup, your diseased society did a FINE job of
incubating and feeding Mark's justifiable rage and hate, until it finally
exploded in justified serial murder vengeance.
Stay Strong, Mark!
This is Joe1...@aol.com, ENDING yet another month of brilliantly insightful
and dedicated crime news posting activity. I'm off on my trip now, but WILL
return fairly soon, refreshed and ready to resume a new monthly posting spree.
Bye-Bye!
Take care, JOE
The following appears courtesy of the 6/30/99 online edition of The
Minneapolis Star Tribune newspaper:
Published Wednesday, June 30, 1999
Suspected serial killer wants to be tried for another murder
Margaret Zack and Joy Powell / Star Tribune
Mark Profit is serving life for one north Minneapolis murder, and now a new DNA
testing process provides more evidence that links him to one of the three other
1996 killings in which he has long been the suspect.
In an interview at Oak Park Heights prison last week, Mark Profit says he was
in jail when Avis Warfield was killed. New evidence suggests otherwise.
Profit, 35, has spent more than half of his life in prison for rapes,
robberies, assaults and now, murder. Because of his 1997 convictions for the
first-degree murder of Renee Bell and the attempted rape of another woman, he
won't be eligible for parole until he's 93.
Though new DNA tests on a cigarette butt have linked him more closely to Avis
Warfield's death, Profit said in an interview last week that he wants to be
charged with her murder. She was one of four people slain in or near Theodore
Wirth Park in 1996.
Profit has little to lose by seeking a trial in the slaying. He and one of his
lawyers, Robert Miller, say Profit would get a chance at an acquittal, which,
if successful, could help him seek a new trial in the 1997 Bell case.
It's undisputed that Profit was in jail when Warfield's stabbed and burned body
was discovered on June 19, 1996, in front of a house where he once lived. What
is disputed is whether Profit was locked up on a parole violation when she was
stabbed. He insists he was in the Hennepin County jail; authorities say he had
not yet been arrested.
At issue is the time of death, which the medical examiner can't pinpoint, and
exactly when the 36-year-old was last seen alive.
Last month, a new form of DNA testing concluded that a cigarette butt found
near Warfield's body produced a match with Profit's DNA profile.
Despite the new evidence, the county attorney has made no decision to prosecute
the Warfield case. Prosecutors are considering Profit's long sentence already:
two consecutive life terms, amounting to at least 60 years total, for murdering
Bell and trying to rape a prostitute on Aug. 31, 1996.
The findings by the state Bureau of Criminal Apprehension say there's only a 1
in 1.9 billion chance that someone in the general population would have the
same DNA profile. Two previous DNA tests, using a different process, were
inconclusive.
The type of DNA testing done with the cigarette has yet to be used in a
Minnesota trial. That means it would have to be shown that it is accepted
scientifically.
It has been deemed reliable in other states, County Attorney Amy Klobuchar
said.
The results of other types of DNA testing have been admissible in Minnesota
trials since 1989 and were first used in a 1990 double homicide case.
Prison interview
"I was in jail when she was killed," Profit said at the Oak Park Heights prison
last week. "I was in jail when her body was dumped."
But authorities say they have reinterviewed witnesses and can place Profit on
the streets during a time range when Warfield was slain.
Sgt. Richard Edinger, a homicide detective, said he is sure that Profit killed
all four victims. He said the man Profit was fingering as the killer passed
several polygraph exams "with flying colors."
More than three months earlier -- on May 23, 1996 -- Bell's body had been found
floating in Bassett Creek in Wirth Park. That July, a Golden Valley police
officer found Profit's wallet in the mud at that location.
During his 1997 trial, Profit and one of his attorneys, Charles Amdahl, argued
unsuccessfully that Profit's wallet was planted at the Bell murder scene. They
blame a man named Paul Kelly Jr.
Now, Profit contends that Kelly planted the cigarette butt near Warfield's
body. Profit offers no reason why Kelly would frame him except to say there was
trouble between the two because Kelly was dating Profit's sister.
Profit also says a sketch of a man whom children saw carrying and then torching
the body of slaying victim Keooudorn Phothisane resembles Kelly.
"[Kelly] knew the brands [of cigarettes] that I smoked," Profit said. "He had
access to the ashtrays in the car, in my house and in my mother's house."
All of the slaying victims were suspected prostitutes or drug users who were
killed in or near Wirth Park. The grisly slayings in the spring and summer of
1996 frightened many, especially on the North Side, where the four bodies were
found.
Prosecutors have not developed the evidence needed to consider charges in the
killings of two of the four, Deborah Lavoie and Phothisane.
Warfield was the third slaying victim. Her partly burned body was found under
bushes about a half-block from Wirth Park, clad only in a bra. Like two of the
other bodies, Warfield's had been doused with gasoline and partly burned in
what police think was an attempt to destroy evidence.
A boy spotted her body under bushes just before 6 p.m. on June 19, 1996. Profit
says he wouldn't have had time to kill Warfield, pointing out that witnesses
told police that she was last seen alive at 2 p.m. June 18.
Her family members say they last talked to Warfield, the mother of four girls,
on Monday, June 17, 1996. That's when the medical examiner reports that she was
last seen alive.
Authorities say Profit would have had the opportunity to kill her between the
time that witnesses now say she was last seen and when Profit was arrested and
jailed for 13 days on a parole violation at 4 p.m. on June 18.
Against his attorney's advice, Profit spoke last week about the cases, in which
he has always stuck to the contention that he was being framed.
A college-educated convict, he sat between his attorneys last week and declined
to be specific when questioned about where he was when Warfield was killed. A
few minutes later, one of his attorneys requested an end to this area of
questioning.
Family wants answers
Warfield's daughters say they want Profit charged. They want to know what
happened to their mother, who had recently completed a month in drug treatment
and had begun attending Baptist church services.
On the last day she saw her mother alive, 17-year-old Lenita Warfield asked her
mother whether she would ever start up again with crack cocaine.
" 'No,' " Lenita recalls her mother saying. " 'I gave my life up to God.' "
Lenita added: "I feel that she's not resting peacefully now because her
killer's not been brought to justice."
Her twin, Lavita, said that about six months after their mother was killed, the
prostitute who had survived the attack by Profit spoke to Lavita and her young
sister, Lenora. The woman said Profit had offered her a lot of crack and then
attacked her in the park, saying he would kill her.
Even though Profit says he didn't know any of the victims, the families of
Warfield and Bell say the women were previously introduced to him.
Warfield's eldest daughter, Dawn, 22, said she doesn't believe Profit's account
that he was framed. "C'mon now," Dawn said. "Nobody's going to take a cigarette
butt and put it there."
Profit knows the legal system from the inside. By 15, he had 30 felony arrests
or charges on his record. Facing more counts, he agreed to plead guilty to
aggravated assault with a weapon -- a sawed-off shotgun -- and be sentenced as
an adult to two years. Eight counts were dropped. He was the youngest
Minnesotan sent to prison, and since then he's never had more than a year of
freedom.
Seventeen days after Profit's release from a Minneapolis halfway house, Bell
was murdered during what appeared to be a sexual assault. Fibers found in a tan
elastic band used to gag and strangle her matched some found in the trunk of a
car that Profit drove.
This year the state Supreme Court affirmed his conviction and sentence. Two
weeks ago his attorneys asked the U.S. Supreme Court to review the case,
arguing that important defense information was excluded from the trial. The
jury never heard about the three other homicides.
Once Profit was locked up, the killings in and around Wirth Park stopped.
Profit in prison
He passes his days in the maximum-security prison that houses the state's most
dangerous prisoners. He works making photo albums, studies the laws that were
used to incarcerate him and reads the Bible, which he began doing in jail
during the Bell case.
As his favorite verse, Profit points to John 8:32: "And ye shall know the
truth, and the truth shall make you free."
After the killings, police had secretly watched Profit as he walked to trash
cans in north Minneapolis, dumping his clothing. Last week, when asked about
that, Profit leaned back in his chair and answered:
"I started putting things together in my mind, and it was at that point that I
figured that he was trying to set me up. And that's getting to the part that I
don't really want to talk about right now because hopefully it'll come out
later in trial."
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