Lee Boyd Malvo, also known as John Lee Malvo, is a Jamaican convicted murderer who, along with John Allen Muhammad, committed a series of murders dubbed the D.C. sniper attacks over a three-week period in October 2002. Malvo was aged 17 during the span of the shootings. He is serving multiple life sentences at Red Onion State Prison in Virginia, a supermax prison. Muhammad was executed in 2009.
Following the historic Lindbergh kidnapping, the United States Congress passed a federal kidnapping statute—known as the Federal Kidnapping Act, 18 U.S.C. § 1201(a)(1) —which was intended to let federal authorities step in and pursue kidnappers once they had crossed state lines with their victim. The act was first proposed in December 1931 by Missouri Senator Roscoe Conkling Patterson, who pointed to several recent kidnappings in the Missouri area in calling for a federal solution. Initial resistance to Patterson's proposal was based on concerns over funding and state's rights. Consideration of the law was revived following the kidnapping of Howard Woolverton in late January 1932. Woolverton's kidnapping featured prominently in several newspaper series researched and prepared in the weeks following his abduction, and were quite possibly inspired by it. Two such projects, by Bruce Catton of the Newspaper Enterprise Association and Fred Pasley of the Daily News of New York City, were ready for publication within a day or two of the Lindbergh kidnapping. Both series, which ran in papers across North America, described kidnapping as an existential threat to American life, a singular, growing crime wave in which no one was safe.
The Southern Ohio Correctional Facility is a maximum security prison located just outside Lucasville in Scioto County, Ohio. The prison was constructed in 1972. As of 2023, the warden is Cindy Davis.
Alton Coleman was an American serial killer who, along with accomplice Debra Brown, committed a crime spree across six states between May and July 1984 that resulted in the deaths of eight people. Coleman, who received death sentences in three states, was executed by the state of Ohio in 2002. Brown was sentenced to death in Ohio and Indiana, but the sentences were later reduced to life imprisonment without parole and 140 years, respectively.
The Cincinnati Strangler was the name given to an American serial killer responsible for the murder of seven women in Cincinnati, Ohio, between December 1965 and December 9, 1966. During the investigation, a local resident, Posteal Laskey Jr., was declared the main suspect in the killings and was arrested on December 9, 1966, for one of the murders for which he was subsequently convicted. Although he was never charged with the other murders, the media and police blamed him for the other deaths since according to the official version of the investigators, the murders ceased after his arrest.
This is a list of notable overturned convictions in the United States.
Channon Gail Christian, aged 21, and Hugh Christopher Newsom Jr., aged 23, were from Knoxville, Tennessee, United States. They were kidnapped on the evening of January 6, 2007, when Christian's vehicle was carjacked. The couple were taken to a rental house. Both of them were raped, tortured, and murdered. Four males and one female were arrested, charged, and convicted in the case. In 2007, a grand jury indicted Letalvis Darnell Cobbins, Lemaricus Devall Davidson, George Geovonni Thomas, and Vanessa Lynn Coleman on counts of kidnapping, robbery, rape, and murder. Also in 2007, Eric DeWayne Boyd was indicted by a federal grand jury of being an accessory to a carjacking, resulting in serious bodily injury to another person and misprision of a felony. In 2018, Boyd was indicted on state-level charges of kidnapping, robbery, rape, and murder.
Donald Harvey was an American serial killer who claimed to have murdered 87 people, though official estimates are between 37 and 47 victims. He was able to do this during his time as a hospital orderly. His spree took place between 1970 and 1987.
Chillicothe Correction Institution, or CCI, is a state-run medium security prison on the west bank of the Scioto River just outside Chillicothe, Ohio. It is located adjacent to Ross Correctional Institution and Hopewell Culture National Historical Park. The prison is a former military camp, named for Civil War general William Tecumseh Sherman. It later became a federal penitentiary and has housed several high-profile prisoners including Charles Manson in 1952, bootlegger and future NASCAR driver Junior Johnson, and serial killer Anthony Sowell.
Paul Durousseau is an American serial killer who murdered seven young women in the southeastern United States between 1997 and 2003. German authorities suspect he may have also killed several local women when he was stationed there with the United States Army during the early 1990s. Typically, Durousseau would gain the victim's trust, enter the victim's home, tie their hands, rape, then strangle them to death. All of his known victims were young, single African-American women.
Anthony Edward Sowell was an American serial killer and rapist known as The Cleveland Strangler or The Imperial Avenue Murderer. He was convicted in 2011 of murdering 11 women whose bodies were discovered at his Cleveland, Ohio, home in 2009. After being sentenced to death for the murders, Sowell died in prison from a terminal illness.
Michael Madison is an American convicted serial killer and sex offender from East Cleveland, Ohio who is known to have committed the murders of at least three women over a nine-month period in 2012 and 2013. He was arrested and charged with the crimes in 2013 and was sentenced to death in 2016. Madison is currently being held on death row.
David Alan Gore was an American serial killer who confessed to, and was convicted of, six murders in Vero Beach and Indian River County, Florida in the 1980s. Gore was executed by lethal injection in 2012, having been on Florida's death row for 28 years.
Anthony Cook and Nathaniel Cook are American serial killer brothers who committed a series of at least 9 rapes and murders of mostly couples in Toledo, Ohio, area between 1973 and 1981. Their guilt was established in the late 1990s thanks to DNA profiling, after which both brothers were convicted and sentenced to long terms of imprisonment.
Shawn Michael Grate is an American serial killer and rapist who was sentenced to death for the murders of five young women in and around northern Ohio from 2006 to 2016. Grate was convicted on two counts of aggravated murder on May 7, 2018, in Ashland County, pleaded guilty to two additional murders on March 1, 2019, in Richland County, and pleaded guilty to an additional murder on September 11, 2019, in Marion County.
On October 12, 2012, Ryan Carter Poston, an American attorney from Fort Mitchell, Kentucky, was shot to death by his on-again off-again girlfriend Shayna Michelle Hubers. After a trial in the Campbell County circuit court, Hubers was convicted of murder on April 23, 2015. She was sentenced to 40 years in the Kentucky Department of Corrections on August 14, 2015, with parole eligibility after 20 years. On August 25, 2016, Hubers' conviction was overturned on appeal when one of the jurors in her murder trial was revealed to be a convicted felon. Hubers was convicted of murder during her second trial on August 28, 2018. On October 18, 2018, she was sentenced to life imprisonment with parole eligibility after 20 years.
Samuel Little was an American serial killer who confessed to murdering 93 people, nearly all women, between 1970 and 2005. The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI)'s Violent Criminal Apprehension Program (ViCAP) has confirmed Little's involvement in at least 60 of the 93 confessed murders, the largest number of confirmed victims for any serial killer in United States history.
Larry M. Ralston is an American serial killer and rapist who kidnapped and killed between four and five girls and young women in Ohio from 1975 to 1977. Originally sentenced to die in the electric chair, Ralston's sentence was later commuted to four life sentences with a chance of parole, although all of his applications have been denied.
On March 31, 2015, Marie Belcastro, aged 94, was murdered in her Niles, Ohio home by Jacob Larosa, her 15-year-old neighbor. Larosa, who had numerous prior cases in juvenile court, had been released from a juvenile detention facility hours before. He broke into Belcastro’s residence, and, using a MAG flashlight, beat her to death. Larosa also attempted to rape Belcastro. In 2018, Larosa pleaded no contest to charges of aggravated burglary, aggravated robbery, attempted rape, and aggravated murder. Later that year, he was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. In 2021, a new Ohio law, Senate Bill 256, retroactively reduced his sentence, making him eligible for parole after 25 years. The change to Larosa’s sentence has led to controversy and calls for changes to Senate Bill 256. As of 2022, Larosa’s parole hearing is scheduled for 2040.
Norman Keith Flowers is an American serial killer who killed three women by beating and strangling them in their Las Vegas apartments from March to May 2005. DNA left at each crime scene eventually linked him to the killings and he was arrested. Flowers was tried in 2008 and convicted, receiving a life sentence without parole. He entered an alford plea for the remaining charges in 2011 and received two more life sentences.
