The crimes

Most, if not all of the victims were prostitutes. All were found shoeless and dumped in secluded spots around Kansas City. Most had cloth or paper towels stuffed into their mouths and ligature marks around their necks.

The trial

Lorenzo J. Gilyard Jr.

Early 2004, Kansas City police knew that a serial killer had strangled at least a dozen women from 1977 to 1993. But the key clue - a blood sample stored on a freezer shelf for more than 15 years - finally enabled them to arrest the man they said was responsible for strangling at least 12 women.

Police began following Lorenzo J. Gilyard, Jr. on April 12, 2004, when DNA linked him to the 12 murders. They said Gilyard didn't do anything unusual during the five days they tracked him.

He went to work early, came home early and spent most of his time inside his house in the 8300 block of Kenwood Ave.

The plan was to watch Gilyard to ensure public safety while detectives tied up loose ends in the investigation and then arrest him on Monday 19 april. But as officers tailed Gilyard Friday night (16 april), they became concerned that he knew he was being followed.

Officers walked into the Denny's restaurant at 1400 Burlington St. in North Kansas City Friday night and quietly asked him to come with them, which he did. He had gone there with a female co-worker from Deffenbaugh Disposal Service. She was briefly questioned and then had to find her own way home. Police said information they received later made them believe Gilyard was unaware he was being followed.

Prosecutors on 17 april, charged Gilyard with 10 counts of first-degree murder and two counts of capital murder in connection with the deaths of 11 prostitutes and one mentally ill woman. All were strangled. Eleven were sexually assaulted. Nine were found nude, many of the bodies were posed and several appeared to have been bound at the wrists.

Six victims had items tied around their necks. The items included a shoe string, an electrical cord and the victims' clothing. The killer apparently used whatever was handy. Five other victims showed signs of being strangled, but no objects were found on their necks.

Gilyard is not charged with any of a series of prostitute murders in which the victims were found in the Missouri River. Those cases from the 1980s and 1990s remain unsolved. Gilyard is not connected to the recently publicized "BTK" murders in Wichita, police said. Those victims were bound, tortured and killed.

Kansas City Police Detective Mike Luster said the latest re-investigation into the unsolved killings began in 2001, when he looked at the deaths of two women that were linked to the same unknown suspect through DNA.

Over the years, he looked for cases with similar victims to see if they were linked. He worked closely with the crime lab, where experts tested about 75 DNA samples from potential suspects and victims, and eventually linked the 12 victims.

Then in april 2004, the crime lab found a suspect whose DNA matched the evidence from all 12 crime scenes.

Gilyard was one of several men who gave blood samples during investigations into women's murders. He provided blood voluntarily in 1987 in the investigation of the death of Shelia Ingold, one of the 12 women he has been charged with killing. Police said Gilyard's name had come up in the investigation.

"This is a victory for DNA testing," Jackson County Prosecutor Mike Sanders said. "It's another example of what DNA can do for us in law enforcement."

Kansas City Police Detective Mike Luster was "ecstatic" when he heard a suspect was matched to the victims.

"We had put months and years into these investigations," he said, adding that since the murders occurred, dozens of other detectives had put in a lot of work on the cases.

The 12 women Lorenzo Gilyard is accused of killing over 16 years lived hard lives and died hard deaths.

Despite their troubled lives, they were good people whom their families hated to lose to such violence.

Most were known by Kansas City police to be prostitutes. Many came from difficult circumstances. Family members said some were addicted to drugs.

Gilyard is accused in these 12 cases, according to police and court records:

1. Stacie L. Swofford, 17 years-old, she was Found murdered, April 17, 1977

2. Gwendolyn Kizine, 15, years-old, she was Found murdered, Jan. 23, 1980

3. Margaret J. Miller, 17, years-old, she was Found murdered, May 9, 1982

4. Catherine M. Barry, 34, years-old, she was Found murdered, March 14, 1986

5. Naomi Kelly, 23, years-old, she was Found murdered, Aug. 16, 1986

6. Debbie Blevins, 32, years-old, she was Found murdered, Nov. 27, 1986

7. Ann Barnes, 36, years-old, she was Found murdered, April 17, 1987

8. Kellie A. Ford, 20, years-old, she was Found murdered, June 9, 1987

9. Angela M. Mayhew, 19 years-old, she was Found murdered, Sept. 12, 1987

10. Shelia Ingold, 36, years-old, she was Found murdered, Nov. 3, 1987

11. Carmeline R. Hibbs, 30, years-old, she was Found murdered, Dec. 19, 1987

12. Connie Luther, 29, years-old, she was Found murdered, Jan. 11, 1993

Born May 24, 1950, in Kansas City, Gilyard grew into a troubled young adult. Marrying for the first time at age 18, he fathered 11 children with several wives and girlfriends.

In the past he was in and out of jail and prison in the late 1970s and the 1980s on charges ranging from molestation and sexual abuse to burglary and assault.

For the younger Gilyard, the 1970s were marked by periodic scrapes with the law - a weapons charge, disturbing the peace, lying to police officers - that usually netted him short jail time and small fines.

Court records and newspaper accounts reveal that during a six-month period in 1974 he was twice arrested for rape. In February of that year, he was accused of raping a 25-year-old exotic dancer near 27th Street and Troost Avenue. Later she identified Gilyard's Chevrolet convertible and picked him out of a lineup.

Prosecutors never obtained a conviction in the incident.

The following July, he was charged with raping a friends 13-year-old sister near the Missouri River.

Gilyard was charged with beating and raping the 13-year-old girl. He told police that she was lying. Ultimately he pleaded guilty to molesting the girl and received a nine-month sentence in the Jackson County Jail.

According to Jackson County court records, Gilyard was accused in 1979 of kidnapping a couple and raping the woman while holding her boyfriend hostage at gunpoint. Although the boyfriend picked Gilyard from a police lineup and hairs from the victim were found in the building where Gilyard worked as a maintenance worker, jurors acquitted him of rape in September 1980.

That same year, he was convicted of aggravated assault for threatening to shoot his third-wife. She divorced him in January 1981. The next month, Gilyard assaulted his ex-wife twice -- beating and pistol-whipping her during one attack and breaking her front teeth and stabbing her in the arm with an ice pick in the second attack. He was convicted of third-degree assault in each case. He mainly served probation for the crimes.

In November 1981, Gilyard earned his first sentence to a state prison in Missouri when he was sentenced to four years for second-degree burglary.

He began serving that sentence on May 17, 1982, eight days after the body of Margaret J. Miller, authorities now suspect he killed was found. He was released on parole on Jan. 10, 1983, but returned to prison after violating the terms of his release.

Following a complaint from Wyandotte County authorities in 1983, Gilyard was sentenced to a Missouri prison for up to four years for making a bomb threat.

On his return, Gilyard appeared to settle down. He went to work for the company that had employed his father in its maintenance department, Deffenbaugh Disposal Service.

Gilyard began working in residential trash collection for the company on Jan. 2, 1986. He began his career on the back of a trash truck and worked his way up to driver and then two years ago was promoted to supervisor.

Company spokesman Tom Coffman said Gilyard was a reliable employee. "He had respect for his peers and was even-tempered and friendly," Coffman said. "He would bring gifts to people here regularly, like on their birthdays."

People close to Gilyard, described him as reliable, friendly, helpful, hard working and "quick to make a joke."

Gilyard, neighbors described Gilyard also as friendly and helpful. Once, when he picked up trash on his street, he knocked on a neighbor's door because the neighbor had forgotten to put out his trash.

Neighbors said he was proud of his job and the two Mercedes automobiles he babied and drove on weekends and that he sometimes hit golf balls in his backyard.

On Gilyard's front door hangs a wood sign engraved with "Gilyard" and below the names "Lorenzo" and "Jackie." Though he has been married several times, the latest marriage has lasted about a decade.

Neighbor Lee Weldon said "I'm shocked, he's a real nice guy, a nice neighbor."

Gilyard's name jumped to police attention again in March 1989.

One night he helped a neighbor load a bicycle into her car and later invited her to an omelet dinner in his home, according to court records. After three or four glasses of wine, Gilyard reached across the table and began pulling at the woman's top, saying he wanted to see her breasts.

She recoiled and backed through the studio apartment, landing on a bed with Gilyard straddling her waist.

"I kept telling him that all I wanted to do was go home," the woman said later in a deposition. "Let me go home. Let me go home."

And the entire time, Gilyard said that "he was going to kill himself," the woman recalled. Gilyard took a kitchen knife and placed it at his own throat and then at the woman's.

Afterward, Gilyard let the woman leave, records show. She immediately called police. Authorities charged Gilyard with forcible sodomy, sexual abuse and assault. The case appeared headed for trial, but Gilyard pleaded guilty to everything except the sodomy charge on Oct. 30, 1989.

The victim agreed to the plea bargain because she did not want her mental health history debated before a jury, according to a transcript of the hearing. She also did not want to admit in court that she had been drinking before the incident.

The deal had something for Gilyard, too. He was placed on probation for three years and was required to seek counseling for sexual abuse and anger control. The victim supported the plea agreement.

One of Gilyard's other neighbors had also troubles with him.

According to court records, Gilyard approached the woman in September 1995 and began describing intimate details about her. She began to suspect that Gilyard was stalking her.

For months, Gilyard made unwanted advances that included lewd gestures, the neighbor reported in court filings.

"I have pointed out to him that he is married, to which he simply shrugs and indicates that what his wife doesn't know won't hurt her," the neighbor wrote in court records.

Gilyard tried to act like a friendly neighbor by bringing her wine or firewood, she said, but "I felt there was a control game at issue here."

She answered her doorbell one early morning and found Gilyard standing there with a newspaper, she said. "He eyed me in his robe, and made an obscene sexual gesture "I yelled, ‘I'm not interested.'"

Other times she saw him looking in her window, she said, and she twice saw him lurking outside her rented home at night.

"As a deaf single woman living alone," the woman said, "I fear for my safety and security in my house."

In July 1996, the neighbor filed for an order of protection and then moved out of town.

Other neighbors said that they also had qualms about Gilyard.

Penny Bradley said she and her husband were moving a new television into their home in the fall of 2001 when they backed a truck into Gilyard's driveway. He came out and confronted them about being on his property, which is marked with signs that warn against trespassing. A sign posted on a large tree in Gilyard's front yard says, "Private Driveway. Do Not Enter."

Her husband then went inside Gilyard's home to talk, Bradley said. While there, Gilyard displayed two guns, Penny Bradley recalled.

The couple filed a police report. Other neighbors confirmed that the Bradleys had reported to them that they had trouble with Gilyard.

Bradley, though, said she seldom saw Gilyard or his wife, except when he was washing his Mercedes and a Land Rover.

But when news broke about Gilyard being charged with 12 murders, Karen Drake, who lives several doors from Gilyard's home, was shocked.

Drake said her daughter recently sold and delivered Girl Scout cookies to Gilyard, whom she described as a friendly, good neighbor. "He was just really a nice guy," Drake said. "He bought three boxes."

Gilyard's ex wife, Rhena Hill, has also a story to tell.

Rhena Hill, now 53 years-old, married Gilyard in 1968 after she became pregnant. They divorced after what Hill described as "five years of torture."

"He's destroyed my life, Now it's crept back up. It's horrible."

Hill agreed to be interviewed on the condition that she be identified only by her maiden name.
She has remarried and tried to put her life with Gilyard behind her.

Hill and Gilyard met in high school and attended dances together. She described him as fun. But that changed when they married. The physical and mental abuse was almost continuous.

"He beat me and raped me, He threatened me and said he'd kill me."

Gilyard wouldn't let her use all the rooms of their home.

"He loves nice things, pretty things, But you can't use them. He made me live in one room, the bedroom, for five years."

Hill has received psychiatric help for the abuse she suffered during the marriage. But her nerves have been bothering her since Gilyard's arrest.

Trouble in Gilyard's family is not unusual.

In 1970, his father, Lorenzo S. Gilyard, was convicted of assault with rape and sentenced to six months.

His brother Daryle Gilyard is serving life without parole in the murder of a friend in a drug deal.

A woman who has the same mother as Gilyard also is serving a life sentence for murder. While working as a prostitute in 1983, Patricia D. Dixon, now 45, fatally stabbed a Johnson County customer 11 times in a dispute over $35.

A clerk at an adult bookstore at 34th and Main streets saw the attack. He told police that the victim had yelled, "Stop!" and the woman with the knife replied, "Go to hell!"

That year, Dixon was sentenced to 11 years in prison for assault and theft for an incident at a Denny's Restaurant at 1600 Broadway.

She also was charged in the January 1983 death of another Kansas City prostitute, but those charges were dropped.

Lorenzo J. Gilyard, Jr., the man accused of strangling a dozen women in what may be the state's largest serial murder case lived in a modest, single-story home at the end of a dead-end street.

police went to his home in the 8300 block of Kenwood Avenue hoping to find "souvenirs or trophies" from the victims, those are items that the offender will take out from time to time to enhance his fantasy when reliving the murders.

In Friday's [16 april 2004] search, officers reported that they seized audio tapes, videocassette tapes and a minicassette recorder. Returning on Saturday with a new warrant, police seized a gray floor safe, a key, a combination lock, a computer, shoes, bras and a pair of women's panties.

Police also searched Gilyard's 2002 Land Rover and a white Ford Ranger pickup truck but apparently found little of interest.

Investigators did not find some items they had sought, including a white scarf, jewelry and other items from the victims.

Authorities accused Gilyard of raping several women, but they never convicted him of rape. They charged him with armed robbery and sodomy. He defeated those accusations, too. He was, however, convicted of molestation, sexual abuse and assaults.

And now police allege he is also a serial killer, a man who preyed for 17 years on women who walked the streets. They say he killed 10 women and two girls from 1977 through 1993.

If convicted of all 12 charges, Gilyard, would be the worst serial killer in Missouri history. He would join an infamous list that includes Ray Shawn Jackson, who admitted strangling six women in or near Gillham Park in 1989 and 1990; John E. Robinson, who killed eight women in Johnson and Cass counties in the 1980s and `90s; and Bob Berdella, who committed six torture murders of men in Kansas City in the 1980s.

Gilyard is being held without bail.
He has pleaded not guilty to the 12 murder charges.