Francisco Acevedo, 41, now accused of raping and strangling three women in a New York suburb starting 21 years ago was never even suspected until he submitted a DNA sample after a drunken-driving arrest last year.

A Yonkers, NY detective John Geiss says he finally solved the case after “nine long years” of looking at over 100 suspects in connection with the deaths of three women who were raped and strangled in 1989, 1991, and 1996. He said at a news conference Thursday that his department never gave up investigating these murders. The killings were linked to each other by DNA and other evidence, but Francisco Acevedo was never even a suspect until he submitted a DNA sample after a drunk driving arrest last year, apparently as part of an application for parole.

Two of his victims, Maria Ramos, 26, killed Feb. 5, 1989, and Tawana Hodges, 28, killed March 28, 1991, lived in the Bronx and the third Kimberley Moore, 30, killed May 24, 1996, lived in Westchester. All were found naked, bound at the hands and facing up. Geiss said the three killings constituted the last unsolved multiple slaying in his cold-case files, though he still has 28 other cases ranging back to 1986.

Acevedo, who was already imprisoned upstate on the DWI charge, apparently had no idea detective in Yonkers were finally closing in on him and seemed surprised when he was arrested in an upstate prison on the murder charges. “I didn’t think we’d see the day that we’d come to the point we’re at now,” said detective John, “He wasn’t very happy to see us.”

Acevedo was indicted Wednesday on six counts of murder, three of which also allege rape. He pleaded not guilty. If convicted, he could be sentenced to life in prison with no hope of parole.

-article by Carlin DeGuerin Miller rewritten and adapted by admin-

The Hamilton County jury that convicted serial killer Anthony Kirkland, 41, of his fourth and fifth murders last week recommended the death penalty, after three and a half hours of deliberation.

The 41-year-old Kirkland pleaded guilty at the trial’s start to murdering Mary Jo Newton – 45, and 25-year-old Kimya Rolinson, whose badly decomposed remains were discovered in June 2008 – about 18 months after her death – in North Fairmount. Those tow murders did not carry possible death sentences but he received ultimate punishment in the deaths of two teen girls, Casonya “Sharee” Crawford, 14, and Esme Kenney, 13. He was convicted of their murders along with several other charges, including gross abuse of a corpse and attempted rape, that were used as aggravating circumstances by prosecutors as cause for the death penalty. “I don’t know how to handle a lot of stress,” Kirkland tearfully told the detective. “I’m not into drama. I don’t know how to – I lash out. It gets to the point where it’s overbearing.

Kirkland told the detective that he gave Crawford (his 14 years old victim) $60, but the teen became angry when he asked for sex and threw the money at him and called him names. “When she got mad, I got mad,” Kirkland told the detective. He chased her down a hillside to Victory Parkway, Kirkland admitted, where he strangled her. He then carried her body to a vacant lot on Blair Court, where he used lighter fluid to burn her remains. Kirkland also admitted using a rag and his hands to strangle 13-year-old Esme Kenney to death after sexually assaulting her in March of 2009. He said used the rag because his hands hurt from being out in the cold. He said he choked the girl with his hands, but couldn’t grab well enough and pulled a blue rag from his back pocket. “She was still living and gasping,” he said. “I was behind her. She was on her stomach.”

Kirkland stared straight ahead as he heard the words “death penalty” and said nothing as he left the courtroom headed to the Justice Center to await the actual sentencing on Wednesday, March 31 at 9 a.m. Hamilton County Prosecutor Joe Deters said it was the right decision. “I think I’ve prosecuted four serial killers and there is a particular horrible type of evilness about this defendant,” Deters said. “I think it’s because the victims he preyed on were either drug-addicted, helpless women or they were little girls.”
“Some people might think (the jury) did this because of the horrendous crimes and the emotions involved in it,” said the elected jury’s foreman, “But the verdict that we reached was based on the facts and the law.”

Judge Kubicki will issue his sentence on March 31. If he accepts the jury’s recommendation and Kirkland is sentenced to death, the appeals process will likely prevent the lethal injection from taking place anywhere from 12 to 20 years. There are currently 161 inmates on Ohio’s death row with 33 sentenced from Hamilton County. Kirkland would become the 34th.

-articles from various news sources adapted by admin-

Rodney Alcala, 66 years old former Los Angeles Times typesetter and amateur photographer, alleged serial killer with a genius IQ, is on trial for the murder of four women and a young girl between 1977 and 1979.

The trial against 66-year-old Rodney Alcala is winding down after more than a month of testimony that included several bizarre twists in which the accused murderer questioned himself on the stand – Alcala is acting as his own attorney. Alcala is currently facing five counts of murder, with special circumstance allegations of murder in the commission of rape, torture and burglary. He is accused of the 1970’s brutal rape-murders of 27-year-old Malibu nurse Georgia Wixted, 21-year-old Pasadena key punch operator Jill Parenteau, 32-year-old Santa Monica legal secretary Charlotte Lamb, 18-year-old New York runaway Jill Barcomb, and 12-year-old Huntington Beach ballet student Robin Samsoe. Twice, Alcala has been found guilty of murdering Samsoe, but both convictions were overturned on appeal.

“He is not hunting deer or pheasants,” said Orange County Senior Deputy District Attorney Matt Murphy. “He is hunting people. You’re talking about a guy who is hunting through Southern California looking for people to kill because he enjoys it. Murphy told the packed courtroom that Alcala took his time terrorizing his victims by choking them with his bare hands, waiting for them to wake up at least once, then strangling them again — sometimes using shoelaces or panty hose. “It is a staggeringly horrific way to die,” exclaimed Murphy. “There is ample evidence the women put up some resistance….He gets off on it. It was fun.”

Alcala has pleaded not guilty to five counts of first-degree murder for the slayings of four Los Angeles County women and 12-year-old Robin Samsoe from Huntington Beach in the late 1970s. At the center of the prosecution’s case is a gold ball earring that prosecutors and Samsoe’s mother say belonged to the 12-year-old girl with Alcala’s DNA on it. Prosecutors say the earring was found in a jewelry pouch in a Seattle storage locker rented by Alcala. He has focused much of his defense on the earring and has argued that it was his. In a bizarre twist, Alcala showed jurors clips of himself as the winning contestant in a 1970s episode of the TV show “The Dating Game” to prove that he was wearing the gold ball earrings before Samsoe’s death:

“You’ll see my hair go up over my left ear and you’ll see a little flash of gold,” he told jurors. “You need to look closely, but there are two little specks there.” In one of the strangest moments, Alcala said the earring wasn’t Lamb’s. Instead, “It was an earring with Charlotte Lamb’s DNA” on it. The jury should begin deliberating on Tuesday.

Alcala has been in custody since his arrest and has remained in prison while prosecutors appealed both overturned convictions. He was one of the first inmates to arrive on death row after California reinstated capital punishment. Did he really kill all five women and was he trying to say the police planted evidence to convict him remains unclear. Even if they can’t link him to the murder of 12 years old Samsoe, there are still four other deaths.

-articles by Carlin DeGuerin Miller and Christine Pelisek rewritten and adapted by admin-

Kang Ho-soon, 38, a South Korean serial killer, suspected of murdering seven women, was arrested on Januray 25th, for murdering a female university student. Last Friday,he confessed to the slaying and to fatally strangling six other women, who went missing between December 2006 and November 2008, with stockings in one of South Korea’s worst serial murder cases.

“Appearances are often deceiving”. This saying can be used no better to describe a serial killer Kang, whom his neighbors and co-workers described as kind and faithful. He was also good-looking and affable. His smiling face, appearing in some newspapers, is enough to belie the brutal nature of his crime. The suspect was apparently dexterous in hiding his true identity behind his docile appearance.

His first homicide allegedly took place Dec. 13, 2006, when he strangled a 45-year-old karaoke bar employee to death after the two had sex. He killed four other women by Jan. 7, 2007. Twenty-two months later, Kang reportedly killed a 48-year housewife in Suwon on November 19, 2008 and a 20-year-old student in Gunpo a month later.

Investigators found four bodies on Friday and sent them to the National Institute of Scientific Investigation for DNA analysis, said Na Won-ho, another police official involved with the case. Another body was found last year. Investigators have not found the body of one victim. Kang said he buried it in an area that has undergone terrain changes since a golf training facility was built there, Na said.

Kang is also suspected in the 2005 arson deaths of his fourth wife and her mother (which he denied), police said in a statement. Police also said he told investigators he felt “helpless” after his wife’s death and developed the urge to kill about a year later.

Investigators, crime experts and the public are wondering what motivated Kang to go on a killing spree. Criminal psychologists point out that Kang might be a typical psychopath, lacking feelings of compunction and guilt. He told police he approached his victims for sex — or with the intent to rape them — and then strangled them with a pair of stockings, Park said at a briefing Friday. He said he then buried their bodies. “I couldn’t suppress my urges after committing the first murder,” investigators quoted Kang as saying.

-articles from The Korea Times and FoxNews rewritten and adapted by admin-