Darlie Lynn Peck Routier is an American woman from Rowlett, Texas, who was convicted and sentenced to death for the murder of her five-year-old son Damon in 1996. She has also been charged with capital murder in the death of her six-year-old son, Devon, who was murdered at the same time as Damon. To date, Routier has not been tried for Devon’s murder.
A home invasion, also called a hot prowl burglary, is a sub-type of burglary in which an offender unlawfully enters into a building residence while the occupants are inside. The overarching intent of a hot prowl burglary can be theft, robbery, assault, sexual assault, murder, kidnapping, or another crime, either by stealth or direct force. Hot prowl burglaries are considered especially dangerous by law enforcement because of the potential for a violent confrontation between the occupant and the offender.
Gary Michael Heidnik was an American murderer and serial rapist who kidnapped, tortured, and raped six women, murdering two of them, while holding them captive in a self-dug pit in his basement floor, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He was sentenced to death and executed by lethal injection in July 1999, currently the last person to be executed in the state. Heidnik was one of the inspirations for the Jame "Buffalo Bill" Gumb character in The Silence of the Lambs.
Aimee Ellen Willard was a college lacrosse player who was murdered by Arthur Bomar near Philadelphia on her way home from a night out with friends. Her car was left running, with the lights on and driver's side door open, on the Exit 5 off-ramp of Interstate 476. Her body was found the next day in North Philadelphia, 17 miles away. She had been beaten to death with a tire iron. The beating was so savage that her skull had multiple fractures. The then-unsolved crime was featured on Unsolved Mysteries and later as a solved one on Cold Case Files and The New Detectives. The story of her murder and investigation was also featured on an episode of Forensic Files as well as in the film The Dark Side of Parole.
Joseph James DeAngelo Jr. is an American serial killer, serial rapist, burglar, and former police officer who committed at least 13 murders, 51 rapes, and 120 burglaries across California between 1974 and 1986. He is responsible for three known separate crime sprees throughout the state, each of which spawned a different nickname in the press, before it became evident that they were committed by the same person.
Antoni Imiela was a German-born convicted serial rapist who grew up in County Durham, England. He was found guilty of the rape of nine women and girls, and the indecent assault, and attempted rape, of a 10-year-old girl whom he repeatedly punched and throttled. The crimes took place in Surrey, Kent, Berkshire, London, Hertfordshire and Birmingham, and the press dubbed the offender the M25 Rapist after the M25 motorway that passes in the vicinity of all those areas except Birmingham. He died in HM Prison Wakefield on 8 March 2018.
Elizabeth "Liz" Donnelly is a fictional character from the NBC crime drama Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, portrayed by Judith Light. She made her first screen appearance during the third season episode "Guilt", which was broadcast on March 29, 2002.
FamilyTreeDNA is a division of Gene by Gene, a commercial genetic testing company based in Houston, Texas. FamilyTreeDNA offers analysis of autosomal DNA, Y-DNA, and mitochondrial DNA to individuals for genealogical purpose. With a database of more than two million records, it is the most popular company worldwide for Y-DNA and mitochondrial DNA, and the fourth most popular for autosomal DNA. In Europe, it is the most common also for autosomal DNA. FamilyTreeDNA as a division of Gene by Gene were acquired by MYDNA, Inc., an Australian company, in January 2021.
John Floyd Thomas Jr. is an American serial killer, serving a life sentence without the possibility of parole for the murders of seven women in the Los Angeles area during the 1970s and 1980s. Police suspect Thomas committed 10 to 15 more murders.
The Batman rapist is an unidentified English serial sex offender who committed at least seventeen sexual assaults on women in the city of Bath, Somerset, between 1991 and 2000. He is the subject of Britain's longest–running serial rape investigation, codenamed Operation Eagle, and has now eluded capture for more than thirty years. Detective Inspector Paul James of Avon and Somerset Constabulary, leading the operation, said it is "one of the most complicated and protracted investigations" that the force has ever undertaken. In January 2001, the Forensic Science Service used the Low copy number (LCN) DNA profiling technique to isolate the rapist's DNA "fingerprint". They then began the process of taking swabs for comparison from all the men, believed to be around 2,000 individuals, whose names had come up during the course of the investigation.
Larry Murphy is an Irishman who was jailed in January 2001, having been convicted of kidnapping, repeatedly raping, and attempting to murder a young Carlow woman on 11 February 2000, in the Wicklow Mountains.
Faryion Edward Wardrip is an American rapist and serial killer who assaulted and murdered a total of five women. Four of the women were killed in Wichita Falls, Texas, and the surrounding counties. One woman was murdered in Fort Worth, approximately a two-hour drive southeast of Wichita Falls. Wardrip's killing spree began at the end of 1984 and lasted until the middle of 1986. All of his female victims were white, were between the ages of 20 and 25, weighed less than 120 pounds (54 kg), and were under 5+1⁄2 feet (170 cm) tall.
Marvin Charles Gabrion is an American murderer, rapist, and suspected serial killer convicted of the 1997 kidnapping and murder of 19-year-old Rachel Timmerman, of Cedar Springs, Michigan. Timmerman and her 11-month-old daughter, Shannon, disappeared two days before Gabrion was set to stand trial on rape charges filed by Rachel the previous summer. Rachel's body was found in Oxford Lake, weighted down by cinder blocks. Shannon remains missing, but is presumed deceased. Although Gabrion was not tried for killing Shannon, court documents describe her murder as “virtually undisputed.”
CeCe Moore is an American genetic genealogist who has been described as the country's foremost such entrepreneur. She has appeared as a guest on many TV shows and as a consultant on others such as Finding Your Roots. She has helped law enforcement agencies in identifying suspects in over 50 cold cases in one year using DNA and genetic genealogy. In May 2020, she began appearing in a prime time ABC television series called The Genetic Detective in which each episode recounts a cold case she helped solve.
Rotherham shoe rapist is a media epithet given to convicted British serial rapist James Desmond Lloyd from Rotherham, a metropolitan borough of South Yorkshire, England. After attacking his victims, Lloyd stole their footwear and jewellery to keep as trophies. Lloyd was known to be active between 1983 and 1986 when his offending suddenly stopped. He was arrested in 2006 after a familial DNA profile linked him to the crimes. He pleaded guilty to four rapes and two attempted rapes, and was sentenced to fifteen years in prison.
Parabon NanoLabs, Inc. is a company based in Reston, Virginia, that develops nanopharmaceuticals and provides DNA phenotyping services for law enforcement organizations.
The murder of Angela Samota occurred on October 13, 1984, when she was attacked while in her apartment, raped and killed. The case remained unsolved until DNA evidence surfaced in the 2000s, following which charges were brought against a convicted rapist, Donald Andrew Bess Jr, who was subsequently tried and received a death sentence. He died of natural causes while awaiting execution in October 2022.
In the early hours of August 13, 2018, in Frederick, Colorado, American oil field operator Christopher Lee Watts murdered his pregnant wife Shanann (34) by strangulation, and their two children Bella (4) and Celeste (3) by smothering them. He buried Shanann in a shallow grave near an oil-storage facility, and dumped his children's bodies into crude oil tanks. Watts initially maintained his innocence in his family’s disappearance, but was arrested on August 15 after confessing to murdering Shanann in an interview with detectives. He later admitted to murdering his children.
The Kauai serial killer is an unidentified serial killer and rapist who murdered two women and injured another on the island of Kauai, Hawaii, between April and August of 2000. Despite a composite sketch of the perpetrator and the availability of his DNA, he was never caught, and the murders remain unsolved.
