Source: Northwest Indiana serial killer refused to talk with CPD detectives

CHICAGO — Greater than two years after the Chicago Police Division introduced a assessment of greater than 50 unsolved strangulation murders — principally of Black ladies on Chicago’s South and West sides — CPD detectives hit the highway for the Wabash Valley Corrections Facility in Southern Indiana.

They needed to talk with Darren Vann, a serial killer who, in 2018, was sentenced to life in jail after he pleaded responsible to murdering seven ladies in Northwest Indiana.

The detectives’ June 2021 go to, although, would show fruitless. Vann refused to reply any of their questions, in line with a supply accustomed to the investigation.

Vann, now 51, was taken into custody in October 2014, simply hours after the stays of Afrikka Hardy had been found in a room on the Motel 6 in Hammond. Hardy was working as a prostitute, and Vann advised police that he strangled Hardy after she hit him as the 2 had been having intercourse.

Video footage of Vann’s preliminary interview with Hammond detectives, obtained by way of the Freedom of Data Act, was made public final yr. In the course of the interview, Vann claimed to have “far more” victims in Illinois.

Vann’s legal professional didn’t reply to inquiries in search of remark. A CPD spokesperson additionally declined to touch upon detectives’ efforts to interview Vann.

Ultimately, Vann would lead investigators to the places of six extra of his victims, whose our bodies had been hidden in vacant buildings all through Gary. Vann claimed to have murdered a number of extra individuals in several states over a number of a long time, however he wouldn’t disclose any specifics, apparently in an effort to keep away from additional prosecution.

“I actually can’t provide you with Illinois as a result of Illinois most likely has an entire lot of … They’ve greater than Indiana, let’s put it like that,” Vann advised Hammond detectives in 2014. “They’ve far more than Indiana.”

Amid mounting public stress, former CPD Supt. Eddie Johnson introduced in April 2019 that detectives would start a assessment of 51 unsolved murders of girls courting again to 2001.

Across the similar time, Thomas Hargrove of the non-profit Homicide Accountability Venture, despatched a letter to Chicago’s Metropolis Council that stated there was a excessive probability of at the very least one serial killer being accountable for the killings. In 2010, Hargrove reached out to police in Gary to inform them {that a} serial killer was doubtless within the space. He by no means acquired a response.

To this point, CPD officers preserve that there isn’t any proof to recommend the work of a serial killer.

Lt. Steven Kellogg, a spokesman for the Hammond Police Division, stated that Hammond detectives did inform police companies in Illinois — together with the CPD — about Vann’s declare of “extra victims” on the opposite aspect of the state line.

Nevertheless, Kellogg couldn’t say precisely when that info was relayed, simply that the message was delivered “as quickly because it was sensible within the investigation.”