In 2005, Darren Deon Vann, a registered sex offender in Indiana, moved to Austin, Texas. Two years later a prosecutor in Texas charged Vann with aggravated rape. After pleading guilty to that charge in 2009, the judge sent the rapist to prison where he served five years. Upon his release from the Texas penitentiary in June 2013, the 42-year-old sex offender returned to northern Indiana. At some point the ex-Marine acquired a wife.
On Friday October 17, 2014, through a website that served the Chicago area called backpage.com, Vann arranged to meet a prostitute at a Motel 6 in Hammond, Indiana, a town ten miles west of Gary. The website "facilitator" sent 19-year-old Afrika Hardy to the motel to meet the john. Hardy had recently moved to Indiana from Aurora, Colorado where she had recently graduated from high school.
When the prostitution facilitator texted Hardy to check on the progress of the trick, the message that came back caused the facilitator to believe that it hadn't been sent by Hardy. The facilitator and another woman went to the motel to check on the prostitute. In the motel room they found signs of a struggle, and in the bathtub, Hardy's dead body.
Officers with the Hammond Police Department responded to the murder scene. (The Lake County coroner would later report that Hardy had been strangled to death.) Using a phone number provided by the website facilitator, detectives tracked down the john, Darren Deon Vann.
On Friday October 17, 2014, in Gary, Indiana, police officers arrested Mr. Vann who said he wanted to cooperate with the authorities in hopes of making a deal. In the early morning hours of the next day, Vann led detectives to three abandoned houses in Gary where they found the bodies of three women. Vann said he had strangled these prostitutes to death.
Anith Jones, 35, from Merrillville, Indiana, was the only Gary murder victim who had been reported missing. She had disappeared on October 8, 2014. Jones had moved to Indiana from Chicago ten years earlier and had operated a stand at a Gary flea market. It would later be determined that Jones had been murdered by ligature strangulation.
The other two murder victims discovered on Saturday October 18, 2014--Teaira Batey, 28 and 36-year-old Christine Williams--had also been strangled to death and found in abandoned houses in the blighted Gary neighborhood. Vann had killed his victims elsewhere and disposed of their bodies in the vacant sometimes fire-damaged homes.
Later that Saturday night, Darren Vann led Gary police detectives to three more female bodies left to decompose in vacant houses.
A local Indiana prosecutor, on October 20, 2014, charged Darren Vann with the murder of Afrika Hardy at the Motel 6 in Hammond. In his on-going discussions with homicide investigators, Vann confessed to the murders of women that went back twenty years. At this point in the case it was anybody's guess how many women this man has murdered. Vann's wife told detectives that she had no idea she was married to a serial killer.
The prosecutor in charge of the Vann murder case announced that he would seek the death penalty.
Due to Darren Vann's legal challenge of Indiana's death penalty law, his trial was postponed four times. By 2017, he had been charged with killing and beheading seven women. The Indiana prosecutor hoped to bring the serial killer to trial sometime in 2018.
On May 25, 2018, to avoid the death sentence, Darren Vann pleaded guilty to murdering seven women. The judge sentenced him to life without parole. Investigators believed that Vann had murdered at least another eleven women.
On Friday October 17, 2014, through a website that served the Chicago area called backpage.com, Vann arranged to meet a prostitute at a Motel 6 in Hammond, Indiana, a town ten miles west of Gary. The website "facilitator" sent 19-year-old Afrika Hardy to the motel to meet the john. Hardy had recently moved to Indiana from Aurora, Colorado where she had recently graduated from high school.
When the prostitution facilitator texted Hardy to check on the progress of the trick, the message that came back caused the facilitator to believe that it hadn't been sent by Hardy. The facilitator and another woman went to the motel to check on the prostitute. In the motel room they found signs of a struggle, and in the bathtub, Hardy's dead body.
Officers with the Hammond Police Department responded to the murder scene. (The Lake County coroner would later report that Hardy had been strangled to death.) Using a phone number provided by the website facilitator, detectives tracked down the john, Darren Deon Vann.
On Friday October 17, 2014, in Gary, Indiana, police officers arrested Mr. Vann who said he wanted to cooperate with the authorities in hopes of making a deal. In the early morning hours of the next day, Vann led detectives to three abandoned houses in Gary where they found the bodies of three women. Vann said he had strangled these prostitutes to death.
Anith Jones, 35, from Merrillville, Indiana, was the only Gary murder victim who had been reported missing. She had disappeared on October 8, 2014. Jones had moved to Indiana from Chicago ten years earlier and had operated a stand at a Gary flea market. It would later be determined that Jones had been murdered by ligature strangulation.
The other two murder victims discovered on Saturday October 18, 2014--Teaira Batey, 28 and 36-year-old Christine Williams--had also been strangled to death and found in abandoned houses in the blighted Gary neighborhood. Vann had killed his victims elsewhere and disposed of their bodies in the vacant sometimes fire-damaged homes.
Later that Saturday night, Darren Vann led Gary police detectives to three more female bodies left to decompose in vacant houses.
A local Indiana prosecutor, on October 20, 2014, charged Darren Vann with the murder of Afrika Hardy at the Motel 6 in Hammond. In his on-going discussions with homicide investigators, Vann confessed to the murders of women that went back twenty years. At this point in the case it was anybody's guess how many women this man has murdered. Vann's wife told detectives that she had no idea she was married to a serial killer.
The prosecutor in charge of the Vann murder case announced that he would seek the death penalty.
Due to Darren Vann's legal challenge of Indiana's death penalty law, his trial was postponed four times. By 2017, he had been charged with killing and beheading seven women. The Indiana prosecutor hoped to bring the serial killer to trial sometime in 2018.
On May 25, 2018, to avoid the death sentence, Darren Vann pleaded guilty to murdering seven women. The judge sentenced him to life without parole. Investigators believed that Vann had murdered at least another eleven women.
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