A drifter who resided in twenty-three states during his last decade of freedom, Vernon Brown had settled in Indianapolis by 1980, serving time for molesting a 12-year-old girl. On August 25, nine-year-old Kimberly Campbell was found, raped and strangled, in a vacant house owned by Brown's grandmother. Brown had been seen with the child on August 24, but in the absence of solid evidence no indictment was filed. A year later, warrants were issued charging Brown with six counts of child molestation and he promptly skipped town. In March 1985, Synetta Ford, 19, was stabbed and strangled in her St. Louis apartment. Virgil Brown, working at the complex under an alias, was arrested in April, after his wife told police he had claimed responsibility for the murder. Charges were later dismissed, as Missouri law forbids spousal testimony in cases where victims are eighteen or older. On October 25, 1986, nine-year-old Janet Perkins disappeared from her home in St. Louis. Her lifeless body was discovered near Brown's home the following day, and he was picked up for questioning, offering police a confession in which he blamed the crime on uncontrollable side effects of PCP intoxication. Indianapolis police questioned Brown in April 1987, and a warrant has been issued charging Brown with the murder of Kimberly Campbell in 1980. He is also suspected in the murder of 15-year-old Tracey Poindexter, killed in Indianapolis during April 1985, and in another local homicide from August of that year. Authorities in more than twenty states are studying their "open" files for crimes that match the lethal drifter's modus operandi