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Between December 1986 and January 1987, five black women from the District of Columbia were murdered and their bodies dumped near Suitland, in Prince Georges County, Maryland. By September 1987, at least four more women were murdered in Washington, but the conviction of a suspect in one case has brought authorities no closer to solution of the rest. The first victim , 20-year-old Dorothy Miller, was found in the woods near Suitland's Bradbury Recreation Center, on December 13, 1986. Killed by an apparent drug overdose, Miller had also been violently sodomized, a fact that linked her death with those of four other victims discovered a month later. On January 11, 1987, young patrons of the recreation center noticed women's clothing hanging in a tree, nearby. Investigating, they discovered the body of 25-year-old Pamela Malcolm, missing from her Suitland home since October 22. An autopsy revealed she had been sodomized and stabbed to death. On January 12, a team of 50 police recruits swept through the forest north of the U.S. Census Bureau's headquarters, seeking more clues in the two homicides. Instead of evidence, they found two more corpses, identified as 22-year-old Cynthia Westbury and 26-year-old Juanita Walls. Both had been reported missing from the District of Columbia - Westbury in mid-November - and both were sodomized, before or after they were stabbed to death. Number five, 22-year-old Angela Wilkerson, was found near Suitland on January 13, and authorities reported that four of the victims had lived within a one mile radius of each other, in Southeast Washington. All four of the D.C. victims were unemployed, and at least two had frequented the same restaurant, on Good Hope Road. On January 15, another "profile" victim, 20-year-old Janice Morton, was found naked and beaten and strangled to death in a Northeast Washington alley. That investigation was still underway in April 5, when a nude "Jane Doe" was discovered near Euclid and 13th Street, Northwest, her body dumped in a secluded driveway. A 31-year-old suspect, Alton Alonzo Best, was indicted for Norton's slaying in April 7, and he confessed to the crime on June 9. Authorities say Best knew two of the Maryland victims, but the fact remains that his conviction did not stop the killing. On April 10, with Best in jail, an unknown suspect in a van attempted to abduct a 25-year-old woman one block from the home of Suitland victim Pamela Malcolm. Police were still checking the facts five days later, when another black victim, Donna Nichols, was beaten to death in a Washington alley. On June 24, 21-year-old Cheryl Henderson was found in a wooded area of Southeast Washington, less than two miles from Suitland, with her throat slashed from ear to ear. Another female victim was discovered on September 21, at a Southeast Washington apartment complex, authorities refusing to discuss the cause of death or possible connections to their other "open" cases. At this writing, the Maryland-Washington series of murders remains unsolved, the killer(s) still at large. His preference for blacks has led to speculation that the "Freeway Phantom" may have surfaced, after fifteen years of inactivity, but homicide detectives have revealed no evidence of a connection to the early unsolved crimes. |
