Walter Ellis

What the record shows

Walter Ellis, known in Milwaukee as the North Side Strangler, was convicted of killing seven women in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, between 1986 and 2007. He was identified in 2009 after a police cold case review found that one DNA profile linked a series of unsolved homicides. In February 2011 he pleaded no contest to five counts of first-degree intentional homicide and two counts of first-degree murder, and Milwaukee County Circuit Judge Dennis Cimpl sentenced him to seven consecutive life sentences without parole. Ellis died on December 1, 2013, at age 53, while serving his sentence in South Dakota.

The seven charged homicides spanned 21 years. According to Associated Press reporting carried by CBS News, the victims were Deborah Harris and Tanya Miller, killed in October 1986; Florence McCormick, found dead in April 1995; Sheila Farrior, killed in 1995; Joyce Mims, killed in June 1997; and Ouithreaun Stokes, killed in April 2007. The seventh, Irene Smith, was killed in November 1992, according to the Wikipedia article on the case. All seven were strangled, by hand or with a rope or clothing, and one was also stabbed. Police said most were sex workers, which some families disputed.

In May 2009 the Milwaukee Police Department's cold case unit announced that DNA testing had linked seven unsolved deaths to a single unidentified man whose profile was in no database. CBS News reported that the unit sifted through thousands of cases and tested the DNA of more than 100 people. Police Chief Edward Flynn said investigators focused on Ellis after his name surfaced in several of the killings. Ellis was arrested on September 5, 2009, after police obtained his DNA; according to Wikipedia, officers seized a toothbrush from his apartment when he failed to appear for a court-ordered DNA collection, and he was taken into custody at a motel in Franklin, a Milwaukee suburb.

The Associated Press reported that his DNA matched semen from six victims and blood on a pepper spray can at the seventh scene. On September 10, 2009, District Attorney John Chisholm brought the charges to seven counts, and bond was set at one million dollars. Police said Ellis's DNA had in fact been matched to evidence from nine women, aged 16 to 41, though only seven deaths were charged.

The investigation exposed a failure in Wisconsin's DNA database. The Department of Corrections said it had taken a sample from Ellis in prison in 2001, but the state Justice Department said its crime laboratory never received it; authorities later said Ellis had persuaded a fellow inmate to submit a sample in his place. Chief Flynn said an earlier profile might have prevented at least one death, and the case prompted a full review of the state database.

Ellis first pleaded not guilty. On February 18, 2011, during a motion hearing, he unexpectedly entered no contest pleas, which carry a mandatory life sentence but do not admit guilt. Judge Cimpl, who could have allowed parole eligibility, declined and imposed seven consecutive life terms on February 24, 2011. The Wisconsin Supreme Court declined to hear his appeal in 2013, according to the Associated Press.

The DNA findings also unraveled two other convictions. FOX6 Milwaukee reported that Chaunte Ott and William Avery had each been convicted of a murder later linked to Ellis and were subsequently freed. According to Wikipedia, Ott served 14 years for the 1995 death of 16-year-old Jessica Payne before his 2009 release, and Avery was exonerated after Ellis's DNA was matched in 2010 to the 1998 killing of Maryetta Griffin. Ellis was never charged in either death.

Ellis was moved to South Dakota in June 2011 under an interstate compact and died in a Sioux Falls hospital on December 1, 2013, of what officials called natural causes; he never explained the killings. Born in Milwaukee on June 24, 1960, he left school after the eighth grade and, according to Wikipedia, built a record of robbery, theft, drug and assault offenses and served as a police informant in the 1990s.