On Monday, a man who confessed to killing a total of seven woman has been charged with murder in five of the brutal slayings. With this charge, the man is currently facing death penalty in each of the cases.
The man identified, as 44-year-old Darren Vann, hails from Indiana and has been filed with the deaths of 28-year-old Teaira Batey, 41-year-old Tracy Martin, 36-year-old Kristine Williams, 53-year-old Sonya Billingsley, and 27-year-old Tanya Gatlin. The bodies of his victims were found in abandoned buildings in northwest Indiana in 2014. Vann faced the charges filed against him by the Lake County Prosecutor's Office in Indiana.
ABC News reported that, while Vann was already charged with the murder of these five women, he is still facing charges in the strangulation deaths charge in the murders of 35-year-old Anith Jones and 19-year-old Afrikka Hardy. Hardy was found strangled to death inside a motel room by Hammond police, where they were able to arrest Vann a day after. The last women to be identified were Gatlin and Billingsley, who were named four months after their killer was arrested.
On a report made by Toronto Sun, shortly after the women's bodies were discovered by the police, Vann had confessed to the murder of the five women but not for the deaths of Jones and Hardy. Court documents, however, show that detectives found Jones' DNA on a pair of Vann's shoes, as well as a brown cord that contained the DNA from both women. The prosecutors believed this was the cord Vann used to strangle both women and left them dead. The NWI Times reported that prosecutors are asking for Vann to be prosecuted in all the seven cases with the death penalty.
An attorney of the serial killer, Gojko Kasich, admitted that he has not yet seen the documents by the court. Because of this, Kasich declined to comment on the new charges given to his client. There is still no word on how the new charges against Vann would affect his trial date on July 25th.
