Khalil Wheeler-Weaver

What the record shows

Khalil Wheeler-Weaver is an American serial killer who was convicted by an Essex County, New Jersey, jury in December 2019 of murdering three women in the autumn of 2016 and of attempting to murder a fourth woman, who survived. He was 20 at the time of the killings and lived in Orange, New Jersey. On October 6, 2021, Superior Court Judge Mark S. Ali sentenced him in Newark to 160 years in prison, and a state appeals court upheld the convictions and sentence in January 2024. In 2022 he was also charged with the 2016 murder of a 15-year-old Newark girl; that charge is an allegation only, he is presumed innocent of it, and it was reported as pending in 2024. He has denied all of the killings and said he was framed.

According to the Essex County Prosecutor's Office, the three women he was convicted of killing were Robin West, 19, a Philadelphia native living in Union Township; Joanne Brown, 33, of Newark; and Sarah Butler, 20, a Montclair resident who was a college student in Jersey City. Prosecutors said he contacted the women through dating and social media apps and arranged to meet them for sex. The Associated Press, in reporting carried by NBC News, said West was seen getting into his car on August 31, 2016, and was killed within hours; the prosecutor's office gives her date of death as September 1. Her body was left in a vacant house in Orange near his home, and the house was set on fire. Identifying her remains took about two weeks.

Brown was killed on October 22, 2016, and her body was found on December 5 in a vacant home in Orange. Butler disappeared around Thanksgiving; the prosecutor's office dates her killing to November 22, 2016, and her body was found on December 1 in Eagle Rock Reservation in West Orange. Both Brown and Butler had been strangled with clothing, according to the AP. The killings spanned 84 days, NorthJersey.com reported. The Wikipedia article states that he wore gloves and condoms and left little physical evidence, although a small amount of his DNA was recovered from one victim.

The case turned on the work of Butler's friends. According to prosecutors and the AP, they got into her social media accounts, set up a fake profile, lured Wheeler-Weaver to a meeting in Montclair, and notified police. Records from his phone then placed him where the victims disappeared and where their bodies were found. He pleaded not guilty in 2017. The surviving victim, Tiffany Taylor, testified at the trial; the prosecutor's office described her as a 34-year-old woman who was kidnapped, sexually assaulted and nearly killed. The Wikipedia article says the attack began at a motel in Elizabeth and that she escaped and called 911, but that police did not initially believe her account.

The trial lasted about two months. At its close, his public defenders argued that he had arranged sexual encounters with the women but dropped them off unharmed. The jury deliberated for less than three hours before convicting him on all counts on December 19, 2019: three counts of murder, three counts of desecration of human remains, aggravated arson, and kidnapping, aggravated sexual assault and attempted murder in the attack on Taylor. At sentencing, West's mother and Butler's father addressed the court, and Taylor said the attack had left her paranoid. The Wikipedia article reports parole eligibility after 140 years.

On appeal, he argued that each victim's case should have been tried separately, that the jury had been wrongly instructed, that police had violated his right to remain silent, and that the sentence was excessive. A three-judge Appellate Division panel rejected those claims in January 2024. It found fault with the judge's Miranda instruction but held that the error did not amount to plain error requiring a new trial, and wrote that the length of the sentence was justified by the nature of the crimes.

In March 2022, Essex County prosecutors charged him with the murder of Mawa Doumbia, 15, of Newark, who was last seen leaving her home on October 7, 2016. Her remains, which showed signs of strangulation, were found in a house in Orange in May 2019 and identified in late 2021. Prosecutors allege he met her online and strangled her. He was due for arraignment in Newark in October 2022, and Patch described the case as pending in January 2024. Wheeler-Weaver grew up in Orange and had worked as a security guard; the Wikipedia article says his stepfather is a police detective in East Orange.