Associated Press (via Fox News.com)
MILWAUKEE — Within a 3-square-mile area of Milwaukee's north side an unknown man strangled six women police say were prostitutes between 1986 and 2007. But it wasn't until this past week that the city's top cop said recent DNA tests had linked the killings.
Some people in the community, including the women's' families, wonder why it took police so long to discover the DNA link and announce it, and whether some officers' biases against the victims' lifestyles and race kept them from focusing their attention on the crimes.
"Crack whores," is how some officers in past decades referred to prostitutes, said LaVerne McCoy, who retired as a sergeant in January after 25 years in the Milwaukee Police Department.
"They are forgetting that crimes are being committed and this person is continuing to do this because of our attitudes about the victim and that's what our priorities should be: Get this murdering criminal off the street," McCoy said.
Suspicions of a serial killer had swirled for years. A 1997 Milwaukee Journal Sentinel article said then-Chief Arthur Jones assigned officers to investigate strangulations of women on the north side after Joyce Mims was found dead in a vacant house.
Last Monday, Police Chief Ed Flynn said DNA tests in the past couple of weeks had linked her death and at least five others to the same unknown man. He said the same person had sex with a 16-year-old runaway whose throat was slashed, but that someone else likely killed her.
To read more, follow link below:
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,521477,00.html
MILWAUKEE — Within a 3-square-mile area of Milwaukee's north side an unknown man strangled six women police say were prostitutes between 1986 and 2007. But it wasn't until this past week that the city's top cop said recent DNA tests had linked the killings.
Some people in the community, including the women's' families, wonder why it took police so long to discover the DNA link and announce it, and whether some officers' biases against the victims' lifestyles and race kept them from focusing their attention on the crimes.
"Crack whores," is how some officers in past decades referred to prostitutes, said LaVerne McCoy, who retired as a sergeant in January after 25 years in the Milwaukee Police Department.
"They are forgetting that crimes are being committed and this person is continuing to do this because of our attitudes about the victim and that's what our priorities should be: Get this murdering criminal off the street," McCoy said.
Suspicions of a serial killer had swirled for years. A 1997 Milwaukee Journal Sentinel article said then-Chief Arthur Jones assigned officers to investigate strangulations of women on the north side after Joyce Mims was found dead in a vacant house.
Last Monday, Police Chief Ed Flynn said DNA tests in the past couple of weeks had linked her death and at least five others to the same unknown man. He said the same person had sex with a 16-year-old runaway whose throat was slashed, but that someone else likely killed her.
To read more, follow link below:
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,521477,00.html
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