If you’ve read at least a third of Never Saw Me Coming, you’ve probably touched upon a certain serial killer, so I thought I would do a post on real DC serial killers. There’s actually a fairly high murder rate in DC (some years feel more like a spike than others)— in 2015, the per capital murder rate in DC was higher than those of Philadelphia, Chicago, or Atlanta. But most of those murders are the more standard type (related to crime more broadly, and not serial killing).
The DC Sniper (Beltway Sniper)
This occurred in October 2002, during a year I happened to not be living in DC. But friends reported back to me the general fear they had walking around, hurrying to their cars if they were in a parking lot, or feeling paranoid around their own neighborhoods. Someone was randomly shooting people in random locations—there was no apparent reason and no apparent connection between victims. In that sort of senselessness, this always reminded me of the Zodiac Killer: with no clear motive or clear selection of victim, it seemed like someone was just killing for the sake of killing. Near one of the crime scenes, police found a note (decorated with Halloween stickers..) that said, amongst other things, “Call me God,” and “you’re children are not safe.” There was a brief national obsession with white vans (assumed to have been used to commit the attacks), but this turned out to be wrong. It always truck me as odd that the “Sniper” turned out to be two people, a 40-something year old veteran, John Allen Muhammad, and a 17 year old Lee Boyd Malvo. JAM met Malvo when he (JAM) kidnapped his own children and brought them to Antigua. (JAM’s ex-wife believed the killings were linked to a plan to get his children back). He got the death penalty and Malvo got multiple life sentences.
The Freeway Phantom
This was a killer in the early seventies who has never been identified or caught. At least half a dozen young women / girls went missing while in transit (walking to/ from a store, riding buses, at the like) and were later found dead. One victim had on her a creepy note from someone identifying himself as the “Freeway Phantom,” which also said “this is tantamount to my insensitivity to people especially women.” Gosh.. it’s great to be a girl.
The Princeton Place Murders
In the 90s, when DC already had a high murder rate, Darryl Donnell Turner could fly under the radar. He killed a few women, and even stashed the body of one victim a few doors down from his apartment on Princeton Place (this is in Petworth, if you’re familiar with DC). The police did not think the killings were linked—residents disagreed. (and in the process of researching this I discovered that the Post reporter who covered the murders went on to write a novel based on them!) Turner was caught when DNA linked him to the crimes.
Samuel Little
Little (possible the America’s most prolific serial killer?) can’t be claimed as being a “DC” serial killer—his murders were literally spread across the country in a terrifying map. Interestingly, I’m fairly patched-in with true crime stuff, but I hadn’t heard of Little until I saw a documentary told from the perspective of his neighbors a few years ago. For whatever reasons, some serial killers are more famous than other, but honestly I think Little is not as famous because most of his victims were minorities, often low income women who could slip between the cracks of society, or be blamed for their own disappearances. Little had 60 murders confirmed by the FBI, although he claimed that the real number was close to 100. The following is devastating and tragic, but he did drawings of women that he remembered killing and turned these over to the FBI, who released them in hopes that family members of the deceased would recognize them and they could close out missing person cases. One such woman is a still-unidentified woman from NW DC. If you’re interested about this case, there area couple different true crime documentaries, and this longform article from the Post.
Unsolved Killings in SE DC- possible serial killer?
In April 2018, construction workers working on renovations discovered human remains in a crawlspace. Soon after, two more bodies were discovered buried nearby in shallow graves. All three victims were female. By August, police were able to identify the three women by using forensics to narrow down their ages, cross referencing with missing persons reports, and using the DNA of family members to make a match. As far as I know the murder remains unsolved.
Other notable murders
Chandra Levy: I was here for this. It was a big deal. Chandra Levy was a Congressional intern who worked in Congressmen Gary Condit’s office. She was reported missing in May and then everyone was talking about Condit, whom she was having an affair with. News at the time was nonstop Condit-Chandra Levy and it probably would have dragged on all year OJ Simpson style if 9/11 hadn’t happened, and then the public forgot about it… till a year later when her body was discovered in Rock Creek Park. I don’t want to give Rock Creek Park a bad name—it is a nice park but even on the park’s website it says, “don’t come here alone if you’re female.” It’s really pretty but there are times when you realize how isolated you are. Anyhoo, the case gets pretty complicated and people other than me are probably better experts: the police’s fixation on Condit made them not investigate this other guy, Ingmar Guandique, who had been attacking women in Rock Creek. A few years later, because of a Washington Post investigation, the police went back to investigating Guandique, who was already in prison for the other attacks. But over the course of many years and multiple court actions, the case fell apart because jailhouse informants were revealed to be as such, or got caught on tape saying they were lying, and various other things. Eventually they said they did not have enough evidence to go on with another trial, and Guandique was deported. Did Guandique actually do it? I don’t know. All I know is that after Levy disappeared, police looked at her last few internet searches and one of them was “Baskin Robbins.” Ok, according to Google maps, there are two Baskin Robbins in DC: at at George Washington University and one in Capitol Hill. The one at GW didn’t exist in 2001 (it sits in a dorm that wasn’t built until 2004). Levy’s apartment was in Dupont Circle, which is in NW DC, more or less smack in the center of the NW quadrant of the city. I’m not sure if the Capitol Hill Baskin Robbins was open in 2001, but if it was why would she go there? It would take at least half an hour, a considerable distance in a place like DC where there are plenty of places that would be walking-distance away. (Dupont probably had better non-chain ice cream options within walking distance.) Wonder what Gary Condit is up to? After he lost his bid to be reelected, he left Congress in 2003 and moved to Arizona… where he runs two Baskin Robbins stores.
Abraham Lincoln: Obvi. Shot at Ford’s Theater (kitty corner to what is now a Sephora) in Chinatown and died across the street.
James Garfield: assassinated at a train station in NW DC. Despite Lincoln having been assassinated, people were like, that was the Civil War, it’s totally not going to happen again, and the President’s whereabouts were publicly reported. He was shot by a man named Guiteau who thought that because he did some work for the Republican Party to get Garfield elected, he was then entitled to a desirable posting in Paris. He was told no, and like some people, thought that this entitled him to commit murder. Sadly, Lincoln’s son was happened to at the train station during the shooting and was disturbed by what happened. (As I’ve mentioned, DC is a small city.) Garfield survived for a few more months, but various doctors had poked their unclean hands into his wound and it likely got infected. Despite an attempt by Alexander Graham Bell to find the bullet via metal detector, Garfield died.