The Wayne Count Medical Examiners Office announced on Dec. 31 that they had identified the third body found in a car trunk this month in Detroit, as well as made a tentative identification of the fourth, according to the Detroit Free Press. Both the third and fourth victims found on the East side of town in December were burned beyond recognition, requiring dental records to aid investigators working on the car trunk case.
While Detroit Police Chief Ralph Godbee told the public that three of the four female victims had an adult website in common (Backpack.com), and that it may have played a role in their deaths, the females have other things in common as well.
Victimology shows more commonalities
Two of the four victims were about to celebrate their birthdays. All four women were in their 20s. And three of the four women had children, with Natasha Curtis, the last victim to be tentively ID'd, just a few weeks into her third pregnancy per her boyfriend of nine years, Cortez Wingfield.
The four female victims include 23-year-old Renisha Landers, an assembly line worker at Chrysler's Sterling Heights plant, and the owner of the 300 Chrysler in which her and her cousin, 24-year-old Demesha Hunt, were found lying inside on Dec. 19.
The other two victims, Vernithea McCrary, aged 28 (and the most recent body ID'd), and her friend Natasha Curtis, aged 29, were the two victims found burned beyond recognition on Christmas Day. The last two victims were found at the 14900 block of Lannette, which is only a few blocks from the first victims discovered, at the 14900 block of promenade.
Work of serial killer suggested
If, as some in the public are speculating, the cases are the work of a serial killer, than any commonality could be the tie that bound them to their killer. And a thorough victimology will help to provide police with even more commonality leads to consider.
Personal information about each woman is crucial for a criminal profiler to have when performing a victimology report on the victims of an unsolved homicide case. It helps lead the profiler into directions that can help police narrow down their suspect pool and eventually apprehend their killer.
Serial killer hypothesis off?
But victimologies can also help show detectives what is not pertinent, preventing them from going in the wrong direction. A good case in point is the fact that while these four women were all found in the trunk of a vehicle within blocks of one another--and died within a week of one another--they were not all burned beyond recognition.
In addition, one of the first victims, Demesha Hunt, had two male cousins die in June of this year in suspicious circumstances as well. Martez Norwood and Charles Ried's burned bodies were found in a vacant home that had been set on fire at Westmoreland.
It isn't typical to see a family lose four related members in double homicides just months apart under suscipious circumstances, and for the crimes to occur within the same city.
It is also unusual to see the same killer move from killing two victims without fire to using the method less than a week later, in another double homicide. But anything is possible, as killers do make changes, if possible, to avoid capture. And they are always attempting to perfect their "techniques," unfortunately.
References: Detroit Free Press
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