GUILTY IN - DARREN DEON VANN, 43, Gary, body count at seven, more expected

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Blount, who is accused of fatally shooting Gary police officer Jeffrey Westerfield, and Darren Vann, accused of slaying seven women, are each facing the death penalty in cases before the Lake County Superior Court.

They each have argued in recent court filings that Indiana's death penalty law is unconstitutional.

On Thursday, their attorneys presented their arguments before a judge.

While the two defendants have separate, unrelated cases, their attorneys made many of the same arguments, even playing off what happened in the other's hearing. Lawyers on both sides got into the nitty gritty of their arguments, with Judge Samuel Cappas flipping through a reference book as the attorneys referenced stacks of court cases.
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http://www.chicagotribune.com/subur...-penalty-hearings-st-0923-20160923-story.html
 
A new roundup of the case and other potential victims:

Within hours police traced Vann’s SUV, seen on motel security footage, to his home in Gary and arrested him. Immediately, Vann began telling a detective about his other victims. Vann then led the cop on a grisly tour of some of the 10,000 abandoned homes in Gary where the the killer had stashed the bodies of six other women he had strangled to death.

But authorities in Gary had been warned there was almost certainly a serial killer on the loose four years before.

In 2010 a journalist wrote a letter to police with the names of 15 women found strangled to death whose murders were unsolved.
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http://www.thedailybeast.com/articl...-of-his-victims-but-did-he-show-them-all.html
 
In addition to the suspected strangler victims compiled by Thomas Hargrove at the Scripps News Service ( https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/1341945/gary-letter.pdf ), the Daily Beast has identified four unsolved murders in Austin, Texas and four additional strangling victims in Gary, Indiana during times when Vann lived in each place.

They did not name the Austin victims (and police did not make contact with the Daily Beast), but here are the four Gary victims who were not on Hargrove's list:

  • Arlinda Smith, 46
  • Debra J. Brzinski, 36
  • Johnice “China” White, 15
  • Cleaster “Precious" McNeil, 29
There's no reported evidence linking Vann to any murders beyond the seven he admitted to, but there is a gag order in place about his case, so even if there is evidence or he confessed to more, we won't know until he goes to trial. The four above were all killed in 1995, when another strangler, Eugene Britt, was active in Gary.

Here's an old news article about some of the murders: http://www.nwitimes.com/uncategorized/police-seek-pattern-in-gary-killings-detectives-launch-probe/article_28daa07b-c55b-50f5-a702-169ae2e78083.html
 
Was it ever determined if Vann committed more murders than the seven known in Gary? I remember when this case broke he claimed some cases went back 20 years.

Does anyone also know the the gag order is still present in this case? If so, that would obviously explain why we haven't heard anything else.
 
Vann's trial was set to begin with jury selection in February, with presentation of evidence beginning in March. But his defense team asked those dates be moved back as they are behind schedule in selecting a jury and still had evidence to go over in the case.

The trail is now scheduled to begin jury selection in September, with evidence starting the following month, court records show.

In April, the Indiana Supreme Court turned down Vann's appeal to look at the constitutionality of the state's death penalty statute.

Vann, 46, would have to appear in court on Nov. 9 so that he could be notified in person of this change.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/subur...n-trial-continued-st-1021-20171020-story.html

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Judge decides subpoenas in death penalty case of Darren Deon Vann are not 'overly broad'
The jail, U.S. Marine Corps and an Ohio high school can decide for themselves if the state's subpoenas are overly broad in the death penalty case of Darren Deon Vann , a judge decided.

(...)

Last month, prosecutors filed notice of third party subpoenas sent to Lake County Jail, the Marine Corps and Lima Senior High School in Lima, Ohio, court records show.

The defense filed a motion for a protective order, taking issue with the wording in the subpoenas. Phrases including "any and all" are too broad, Matthew Fech, one of Vann's defense attorneys, argued Friday.
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Judge gives FBI more time in alleged serial killer case

"A judge has given the FBI more time to pull data from cellphones collected during its probe of a Gary man accused of killing seven women.

Darren Vann's attorneys had argued in a motion filed last month that authorities were being slow in providing them with data collected from three cellphones collected in the FBI's investigation into Vann, The (Northwest Indiana) Times reported ....

Vann is scheduled to stand trial Oct. 22 in the strangulation deaths of 19-year-old Afrika Hardy and 35-year-old Anith Jones.

Hardy's body was found in a Hammond motel room in October 2014. After Vann was arrested in her death, he allegedly admitted to killing six other women, including Jones, whose body was found in an abandoned Gary house.

Trials in the five other slayings haven't been scheduled...."

http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/judge-fbi-time-alleged-serial-killer-case-53822805
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Attorneys address possible sentencing with jurors in Darren Vann's death penalty case
The defense team for a man accused of killing seven women want jurors to know what could potentially happen at sentencing in his death penalty case, court records show.

Last month, Darren Vann’s attorneys filed three pages of proposed paragraphs for juror questionnaires explaining what they’d be tasked with if Vann were found guilty.

These types of paragraphs are something Indiana death penalty experts said they’ve seen before.

“Anything that would reveal a prospective juror’s attitudes toward capital punishment is, at least potentially, fair game — because that is what the juror may be asked to decide at the end of the case,” Joe Hoffmann, an Indiana University law professor, said in an email.

Vann, 47, is scheduled for trial in October, with jury selection beginning in September, in the deaths of Afrikka Hardy, 19, of Chicago, and Anith Jones, 35, of Merrillville, records show.
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Vann has plead guilty to 7 murders in exchange for life in prison.
 
Two down. Three to go.

The second of five abandoned, blighted homes tied to notorious serial killer Darren D. Vann has been demolished.

Another house made infamous by serial killer Darren Vann is gone

Suspected serial killer Darren Vann is officially charged with the deaths of Tearia Batey, Anith Jones, Afrika Hardy, Tracy Martin, Kristine Williams, Sonya Billingsley and Tanya Gatlin.
 
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