He killed five children here
Repost
online
edition of The St. Louis Post-Dispatch newspaper:
Sunday, March 12, 2000
He killed five children here
By Denise Hollinshed And Michael Shaw
Of The Post-Dispatch
He was the killer no one saw.
As if invisible, Lorenzo Fayne killed children for four years, most of
them in
the forlorn Parkside neighborhood of East St. Louis and Centreville.
Yet no one -- not police, not residents of the neighborhood, not the
news media
-- realized that a serial killer who targeted children was at work. It
was only
after Fayne, arrested in the killing of a 17-year-old girl, confessed to
four
other killings that the scope of his brutality became apparent.
At five murders, he is the St. Louis area's most notorious serial killer
of
children. And police suspect him in a sixth killing.
Yet few people recognize his name.
The reasons have a lot to do with time and place: the time -- 1989 to
1993 --
was a period of record murder in East St. Louis, and the place,
Parkside, was
and is an area of run-down ranch houses with barred windows and little
social
cohesion.
The East St. Louis Police Department was at its nadir in manpower and
equipment; still, the police chief did not call for outside help from
the Major
Case Squad.
"You don't think of a small town having a serial killer," said Gerald
Crenshaw,
a former East St. Louis detective, when asked why police never linked
the
murders. "I think of a serial killer as John Wayne Gacy or Wayne
Williams. But
I guess he is the closest thing we have had to a serial killer."
Actually, Fayne meets the standard definition. Police say he killed
multiple
times over an extended period, without any other motive than sexual
gratification.
Scott Decker, criminology professor at the University of Missouri at St.
Louis,
said most police departments are unprepared to deal with serial killers
because
they are so rare.
"To see the links between cases requires much more attention than some
departments are able to give them," he said.
Fayne, 28, will never be a free man. He is in the Menard Correctional
Center in
Chester, Ill., serving a sentence of life without parole that was
imposed in
his first murder trial.
He is awaiting his second murder trial, rescheduled from last month to
September.
And he will have a third and a fourth and a fifth murder trial, if
necessary,
as State's Attorney Robert B. Haida has vowed to try Fayne until a jury
agrees
to execute him.
Two cousins at play
On July 13, 1989, two 6-year-old boys, Aree Hunt and his cousin, were
playing
outside their homes in the Parkside neighborhood.
A man approached and asked them if they wanted to make some money. Aree
accepted and followed the man to nearby Frank Holten State Park.
Aree never returned.
Late that night, the cousin, who didn't follow the man, told his
relatives
about the encounter.
A police search ensued. About 2 a.m. the next day, police found Aree's
body in
the park, near the viaduct that carries Interstate 255, in Centreville.
Aree had been viciously beaten, his head smashed against the concrete
underpass. The killer had had sex with his lifeless body.
The Centreville police called in the Illinois State Police violent
crimes unit,
and its detectives believed at the time that they had a good shot at
catching
the killer.
First, the killer must have been familiar with the Parkside neighborhood
because he had mentioned Aree's brother by name. Second, police found a
bloody
thumbprint on the inside of Aree's thigh.
State Police investigators canvassed the neighborhood, taking
fingerprints from
every man who lived there.
But the killer, Lorenzo Fayne, had left town. He was back in his
hometown of
Milwaukee.
Fayne would later tell a court psychologist that he was out looking for
sex
with "somebody, anybody," when he came upon Aree. Killing the boy was
another
impulsive decision. In his confession to police, he said he wanted to
hear the
sound of a neck snapping.
Violence grips a community
Lorenzo Fayne first came to East St. Louis in the spring of 1989 at age
18 to
stay with his grandmother for the summer. He left a history of crime and
a
brutalized childhood behind in Milwaukee.
He arrived in a community teeming with violence. During the period that
Fayne
killed, East St. Louis logged an average of 57 murders a year, more than
twice
last year's rate.
East St. Louis had 284 murders in those five years. In 1989 and 1991,
its
per-capita homicide rate was the highest in the nation. By comparison,
University City, a city similar in population to East St. Louis, had 13
murders
in that period.
Part of the Parkside neighborhood is in Centreville, which had crime
problems
of its own. One-fifth the size of East St. Louis, Centreville had 29
murders in
the 1989-93 period. The small Centreville Police Department regularly
called in
the Illinois State Police to investigate its homicides. So the string of
killings eventually attributed to Fayne would be divided between two
departments.
While crime was off the charts in East St. Louis, the city's Police
Department
could not afford radios for its police cars. The city's revenue jackpot,
the
Casino Queen gambling boat, had not yet opened.
The Illinois State Police was lending the city six officers a day for
routine
patrols, yet East St. Louis police officers complained of being
overwhelmed.
Still, Isadore Chambers, East St. Louis police chief at the time,
believed that
his detectives did not need outside help from the Illinois State Police
or the
St. Louis Major Case Squad, with its 80 percent solution rate.
"We had investigators that were capable of solving the crimes," Chambers
said.
"We had our own fingerprint identification section. Surrounding police
departments were coming to us for help."
Chambers called in the Major Case Squad just four times in his 11-year
tenure
as chief. But he said he had a strong relationship with the squad and
allowed
his officers to serve on it.
Crenshaw, then a detective who investigated two of the killings, wished
he had
had help.
"That's a lot of murders for six or seven detectives," said Crenshaw,
who,
along with Chambers, now works for the Alorton police. "The body count
was
pretty serious in those days. There were times we could've used (Major
Case
Squad) help."
Fayne killed Aree Hunt about the time that two other young children were
murdered by other killers.
Carl E. Officer Jr., mayor of East St. Louis at the time, did not see
evidence
of a serial killer.
"We're certainly not looking at anywhere near an Atlanta situation," he
said at
the time, alluding to Atlanta child murderer Wayne Williams, who was
eventually
charged with 21 murders. (The two other murders of children in 1989 in
East St.
Louis were quickly solved.)
In a recent interview, Officer said his faith in the East St. Louis
Police
Department was as strong as Chambers', but he said he would have called
in the
Major Case Squad if he had been advised that a serial killer was at
work.
Officer added that the addition of police officers was no guarantee that
the
murders would be solved. Officer said the investigation of the Wayne
Williams
case had been hindered by a law enforcement "circus."
Debra Powell, who became mayor of East St. Louis a year ago, said the
city is
different from when Fayne roamed the Parkside neighborhood.
"I think what we've probably learned is to be more conscious of
everyone's
children," she said.
"I would hope nothing like that will ever occur again.
"That was a horrible time in our lives."
A fateful walk home
On Oct. 4, 1989, nearly three months after Aree Hunt was killed, the
body of
Nicole Willis, 16, was found lying face up and beaten on the head in a
vacant
lot. The spot was a block from where Aree had been abducted.
Nicole was making the 10-minute walk home from a Bi-State bus stop after
returning from Cahokia High School, where she was an honor-roll student.
Nicole had been raped, then mutilated with a stick.
Some detectives suspect Fayne killed Nicole, but they have been unable
to track
his movements enough to put him in Parkside at the time of the killing.
While
admitting to five other murders, Fayne has vehemently denied any
involvement in
Nicole's death.
Early the next year, Fayne was back in Milwaukee. He stole a car there
and went
to prison for 19 months, starting in April. He returned to East St.
Louis in
early 1992.
The killing resumed.
Death of a runaway
East St. Louis police knew Fayne was one of the last people to see
runaway
Latondra Dean, 14, alive on March 20, 1992. They questioned him but
could not
link him to the crime.
Fayne had been playing cards with a group of people, including Latondra,
on the
day she died.
Fayne would later tell a court psychiatrist that he followed her to the
home
where she stayed with a friend and listened to some music with her on
the
couch. When he went to get a drink of water, he noticed a knife in the
kitchen,
took it and forced Latondra into a bedroom.
He raped her, stabbed her 21 times, then washed her body, possibly to
remove
evidence of the crime, and left her in a bathtub.
Murder at a high school
Just four months later, East St. Louis police were questioning Fayne
again in a
killing that outraged East St. Louis.
It was the murder on July 20, 1992, of Fallon Flood, 9.
When she didn't return home from a summer lunch program at East St.
Louis High
School, her mother went looking for her at the school. A gym teacher
found the
girl strangled, hanging from a belt inside a gymnasium locker room. Her
underwear was pulled down to her ankles.
Fallon and another girl had been playing when a man approached. The man
told
Fallon to follow him and told the other girl to go away.
Fallon's killing, because of its nature and its occurrence in a school,
stunned
East St. Louis. A $5,500 reward was offered for finding the killer, and
police
were under heavy pressure to find the person responsible.
Fayne was working as a janitor at the school. Although he was
questioned, Fayne
was not the main suspect. That was Charles King, 17, whose IQ was
measured at
57.
He was also a janitor at the school. And, like Fayne, he fit the general
description of the suspect.
King was arrested without ever being identified by the girl who was with
Fallon.
Police questioned King for several days before he signed a confession.
But
according to some observers, King seemed unsure of what was happening
around
him. He would ask jailers when his coloring books were going to arrive
at the
St. Clair County Jail.
While King, an innocent man, sat in jail, Fayne returned to Milwaukee.
(King
was released a year later, after Fayne confessed to killing Fallon.)
Failing to make a connection
Fayne didn't just elude police. Parkside residents didn't draw a
connection
between the murders.
"It's not a tight neighborhood," said Mark O'Donnell, former Centreville
police
chief.
"We banged on a lot of doors. There was a lot of drug activity in that
area and
a lot of transients. Fayne just walked around and did his thing."
Parkside resident Ernestine Slaughter knew children had been murdered,
but she,
like police, considered the crimes isolated and didn't fear for her
family.
"At the time I really didn't think about it," she said. "I didn't think
somebody was targeting kids."
Her daughter, Glenda Jones, 17, was Fayne's next victim.
On June 25, 1993, Fayne, just back from Milwaukee, spotted Glenda
cutting
across a field behind Martin Luther King Junior High School.
Fayne stabbed her to death, and sexually assaulted her before and after
killing
her.
Tracking a trail of blood
A month after Glenda was killed, firefighters responded to a fire at the
home
of Annette Davis. While putting out the fire, they found the body of
Davis'
daughter, Faith, 17. She had been stabbed to death.
Police, including Detective Crenshaw, later noticed a trail of blood
leading
around the back of the house. Police dogs followed the trail to the home
of Lee
Fayne, Lorenzo's aunt.
She told them that Fayne had gone to St. Mary's Hospital in East St.
Louis for
a cut on his hand. When police checked, no one named Fayne had checked
into the
hospital.
But paramedics said they had picked up an Adam Smith at Lee Fayne's
house and
had taken him to the hospital for what he said was a cut he received on
a
broken mirror. The man had since returned home.
It didn't take long for police to learn Fayne had used the false name of
a
neighbor who was in juvenile detention at the time. They arrested Fayne
at his
grandmother's house the day of Davis' killing.
Fayne later gave this account of the killing: He said he had been
burglarizing
the Davis house, passing items out the window to others, when Faith
Davis
confronted him with a knife. He cut his hand grabbing for the knife,
then took
it from her and stabbed her repeatedly.
He then went outside and told his two accomplices what had happened.
Scared,
they ran off.
Fayne went back inside and sexually assaulted Davis' body. He set the
fire to
try to destroy evidence.
A serial killer speaks up
Investigators had a serial killer in custody without knowing it.
East St. Louis police called in the Illinois State Police to work on a
confession, and Fayne took to one officer in particular, Special Agent
Joe
Bates.
Bates went about building a case against Fayne in the Faith Davis
killing when,
10 days after Fayne's arrest, the match on the bloody thumbprint on Aree
Hunt's
leg came through.
Confronted with the evidence, Fayne said he had more to tell.
It was the first time police realized a link between the killings. Bates
cut
short a vacation and spent two separate days talking with Fayne in
detail about
the murders, collecting five confessions.
Crenshaw says now, "Realistically, he could still be killing if he
hadn't cut
his hand."
Families want death penalty
Gloria Flood cannot shake the image of her daughter being led to her
death down
a hallway into the locker room at East St. Louis High. Thinking back,
she
rambles at times to fill the silence.
"For someone to hang you in a locker like you were nothing," she said
from a
darkened living room, just a few feet from a picture of her daughter. In
the
picture, Fallon wears a bright floral dress, shows a shy smile and has
her arm
around her brother.
"My daughter was just a baby. He just took everything away from her."
Flood, 39, lives in the same house where she was raised and where she
raised
Fallon. The East St. Louis School District made a settlement with her
over her
daughter's murder. The undisclosed amount is enough that she never has
to work
again.
She, like most of the other relatives of Fayne's victims who were
interviewed,
want Fayne put to death.
Latondra Dean's mother, Mary Dean, said: "If Fayne gets the death
penalty, I
would like to be the one who pulls the cord ending his life."
Aree Hunt's mother, Dessie Whigham, moved away from Parkside not long
after he
was killed.
She was unaware that her son's killer had lived just a few blocks from
her. In
the absence of a suspect, she trusted no one.
"When I would go places and see people, I would wonder if they had done
it,"
she said, in a voice so small it seems to get lost in her throat.
Whigham, who has lost all three of her children to violence, has learned
to
deal with tragedy, but her eyes still mist when talking about Aree, her
youngest.
Whigham works in a textile plant in Columbia, Ill., and lives in a
small, frame
house in Cahokia. All the pictures of Aree have been put away except
one, which
hangs over her bed.
Twice a year, Whigham goes to Jefferson Barracks National Cemetery,
where Aree
is buried. Aree's father, Robert Hunt, is in the armed forces, stationed
elsewhere.
She sat through Fayne's trial for the murder of her son and heard the
reading
of Fayne's confession.
Sometimes she feels singled out.
"I feel like I haven't done anything bad in my life," she said, looking
into
the distance. "I feel like I was a good mother. It's hard to question
the Lord.
Sometimes I feel like I've been cheated."
-----------------------------------------
Sunday, March 12, 2000
Murderous "recipe" was there for Fayne, his attorney says
By Roy Malone
Of The Post-Dispatch
How did Lorenzo Fayne become a serial sex killer?
"The recipe is there," says his attorney, John O'Gara. "As a child he
suffered
physical and sexual abuse and grew up with violence. His stepfather
would tie
him to a pole and beat him.
"He was a throwaway child when he was in his mother's womb. His parents
showed
him not love, but hatred."
O'Gara, of Belleville, has known Fayne, 28, for more than six years,
since he
began defending him as a public defender. O'Gara helped Fayne escape the
death
penalty in a trial in 1994 and will try to do the same with an insanity
plea in
September, when Fayne is scheduled to be tried in another killing.
O'Gara has seen the horrible pictures of Fayne's victims.
The perpetrator, O'Gara said, came out of a childhood of brutality and
neglect,
producing a man with brain damage, an IQ of 68 and a relentless appetite
for
violence.
From testimony in the first trial, statements by family members,
interviews of
Fayne by psychologists, and reports of investigators and institutions,
here is
what is known about Fayne's background:
He was born in 1971 in Milwaukee, the oldest of five children of Juanita
Fayne
Smith. When she got pregnant with Lorenzo at age 18, she was already a
drug
addict and alcoholic, sometimes drinking to the point of
unconsciousness.
Lorenzo's father left the family shortly after Lorenzo's birth. The
father was
subsequently treated in a hospital for post-traumatic stress related to
his
military service in Vietnam and has no memory of his ex-wife or Lorenzo,
an
investigator said.
Juanita Smith worked as a dancer. To discipline Lorenzo, she would beat
him
severely on the head. She said she didn't know it was harmful until she
was
told so by a social worker, who told her to stop it.
When Lorenzo was 4, Juanita Smith remarried.
Lorenzo's life went from bad to much worse. The man, also an alcoholic,
beat
Smith and Lorenzo with his fists, sticks, electric cords or anything
else
handy, family members said. Smith would fight back, hitting him once
with a
sledgehammer and once stabbing him.
When Lorenzo was 8, and wanted crackers from the refrigerator, his
stepfather
choked him until he passed out, relatives said.
A few years later, Lorenzo was raped by a boy five years older, his
grandmother
said. His parents saw him bleeding but did not call police. Instead, the
stepfather took Lorenzo to the attic, stripped him naked, tied him to a
pole,
and beat him, as punishment for letting himself be raped, according to
Lorenzo's sister, Lawanda, who still recalls his screams.
Lorenzo and his siblings often roamed the streets of Milwaukee, begging
for
food and stealing, while their mother was in her drug world.
Often his only escape to normality were his visits to his maternal
grandmother,
Nellie Willis, who lived nearby in Milwaukee. When Willis asked what was
wrong,
he would cry. She'd take him in for the night and see that he got to
school the
next day. "He really needed somebody," she testified at his trial.
A neighbor of the family said: "He badly wanted a mother."
But Willis moved to East St. Louis, where she had a job offer from her
cousin.
Fayne told a psychiatrist he first had consensual sex at age 9 and his
first
homosexual experience came at 11.
His mother told an interviewer Lorenzo started "acting a little weird"
at age
10, and that she sometimes kicked him out of the house.
His criminal record began at age 11, when he was charged with criminal
damage
to property. He later committed thefts, robberies and burglaries.
At 13, he was placed in a group home. Just 5 feet and 90 pounds, he was
raped
by an older resident within a few days, according to a report. Later, he
was
seen having sex with another resident. He was hyperactive and was given
Ritalin, but it didn't help.
From age 13 to 18 he was in and out of group homes, committing a variety
of
offenses in the homes and during his releases.
One facility said he would make inappropriate sexual comments in group
situations. At 15, he was charged with robbery and battery in the
beating of
another boy, whom he kicked in the face.
Drawn to his grandmother
His mother did not stay in touch with him, but she later told an
investigator,
"I love him and I always will."
Lorenzo did stay in touch with his grandmother.
"If I ever turn the age of 18, I'm coming to where you are," he wrote to
her.
By Wisconsin law, he had to be released from custody by his 18th
birthday, on
April 2, 1989. Fayne headed for East St. Louis and his grandmother and
his
aunt.
Three months later he killed Aree Hunt, 6.
Fayne later told a psychiatrist for the state he had an impulse to have
sex
with anyone and Aree "was just there."
Early in 1990, Fayne returned to Milwaukee and stole a car. He served 19
months
in prison.
After his release, he returned to East St. Louis, and murdered more
children.
Fayne, now in the Menard Correctional Center in Chester, Ill., married a
woman
from Wisconsin who had contacted him in prison and visits him. He has
been
written up for altercations involving other inmates and a guard, his
lawyer
said.
---------------------------------------
Sunday, March 12, 2000
Even after five victims, Lorenzo Fayne's pattern went unnoticed
A prosecutor's fight to have Lorenzo Fayne executed is putting the
spotlight
back on one of the most brutal killers of children ever in the St. Louis
area.
Lorenzo Fayne was convicted in 1994 for the murder and sexual assault of
6-year-old Aree Hunt. Fayne has confessed to killing four other children
between 1989 and 1993. Police call him the prime suspect in a sixth
murder.
At the time, nobody noticed that a serial killer was at work. The crimes
were
lost in a torrent of murder and violent crime that inundated the poor
Parkside
neighborhood of Centreville and East St. Louis a decade ago.
Only Fayne's confession made the police, the press and the community
aware of
the murder spree.
Fayne is back in the news today because of an ongoing struggle over his
life
between St. Clair County state's attorney Robert B. Haida and Fayne's
attorney,
John O'Gara.
O'Gara succeeded once in keeping Fayne off death row, in the killing of
Aree
Hunt, and pledges to continue that mission. O'Gara says Fayne was
insane.
Haida says Fayne's crimes were so despicable and heinous that they
demand the
death penalty. Haida has vowed to try Fayne for the four other murders
he has
confessed to until a jury orders the death penalty.
The next trial, in the murder of Faith Davis, 17, is scheduled for
September.
Meanwhile, Fayne is in the Menard Correctional Center in Chester, Ill.,
serving
the life term he got in the trial in 1994. Throughout the Metro East
area, he
has left grieving relatives of those he killed.