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| Suspected Serial Killer's DNA Missing |
| By cbsnews.com |
| Published: 09/10/2009 |
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The state Justice Department will investigate what happened to an alleged serial killer's missing DNA sample. Police arrested Walter Ellis on Saturday after they obtained DNA that they say links him to a string of cold-case homicides in Milwaukee from 1986 to 2007. Police Chief Ed Flynn has suggested that if they had Ellis' DNA profile sooner they may have been able to prevent at least one death. The Department of Corrections says it obtained a tissue sample from Ellis while he was in prison in 2001. The corrections department was supposed to send it to the Department of Justice's crime lab, which would have developed a DNA profile from it. But the DOJ says it never received the sample. Ellis was anything but unknown in his north side neighborhood in Milwaukee - a mix of condemned and run-down houses with some nicer, newer homes. Even as the bodies of suspected prostitutes began turning up in garbage bins and abandoned buildings near his home, the stocky Ellis had regular - sometimes violent, often friendly - interaction with neighbors and family, and more than a dozen run-ins with police. Officers even stopped him while investigating several of the nine slayings that went unsolved. Now those who know the 49-year-old are trying to come to grips with the fact that the man everyone knew as "Wadell" stands charged in two of the deaths and could face more charges Thursday. "Who wants to say ... 'I grew up with a serial killer,' not on God's green Earth. Who would ever fathom such a thought," said ViAnna Jordan, 51, who grew up a block from Ellis. Ellis, who moved to the neighborhood from Mississippi as a child, is described in court documents as an unemployed laborer without a high school diploma. He made his first court appearance on Wednesday, when a court commissioner set his bond at $1 million. Police have said Ellis' DNA matches that found on nine women ages 16 to 41 who were killed in the area from 1986 to 2007. He has been charged with two counts of first-degree intentional homicide in the deaths of Joyce Mims in 1997 and Ouithreaun Stokes in 2007. A preliminary hearing was scheduled for Sept. 23. Ellis's attorney, Alejandro Lockwood, did not immediately return a telephone call for comment. Investigators believe eight of the women were prostitutes and died by strangulation and one was a runaway whose throat was cut by someone other than Ellis - though they think he was at the scene. Court documents indicate that officers were looking for "possible ligatures" to be used for strangulation when they searched his house. A search warrant also notes that the person who attacked Stokes and Mims was likely injured because blood was found at the scene. It says Ellis had scars on his back and face consistent with stab wounds and cuts. Read More. |
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