A serial killer set Detroit on edge. Police missteps over 15 years allowed him to roam free

The serial killer lured women one by one into vacant homes to be murdered, posing their nude or partially clothed corpses amid cheap booze pints, crumbling sheetrock and hypodermic needles.

The slayings set Detroit on edge, prompting authorities to dispatch crews on overtime to scour the city’s decrepit stock of abandoned properties for more bodies. When the killer was charged in 2019, the police chief at the time told reporters that his department had been “very diligent, relentless” in solving the crimes.

But now, a year after DeAngelo Martin was sent to prison for committing four murders and two rapes, it’s clear that police were hardly diligent or relentless.

Over 15 years, Detroit police failed to follow up on leads or take investigative steps that may have averted the eventual killing spree, despite having received repeated warnings that Martin was a violent predator, an Associated Press investigation has found.

The files reveal that the bungling started in 2004, when evidence from the rape of a 41-year-old woman was stored in a kit — and then forgotten for years in a warehouse, along with thousands of others. When police finally reopened the investigation, the victim had long been dead.

The lapses continued all the way into 2018, when police arrested the wrong man in a strangling. Even after a state crime lab linked Martin’s DNA to the death, police only sought his arrest weeks after he had raped a woman in his grandmother’s basement in 2019 and had killed thrice more.

Detroit’s internal affairs branch issued a 247-page report that found the agency’s sex crimes unit did not properly handle DNA hits. Officers were confused about what number of assaults would define a serial rapist, and they were also reluctant to re-approach victims to persuade them to cooperate.

No mistakes rose “to the level of criminality,” the report said, but several officers had “neglected their duties.” Two were briefly suspended. An internal affairs supervisor summed up the debacles as a “total systemic breakdown.”

“That’s one way of categorizing it,” Detroit Police Commander Michael McGinnis told the AP.

McGinnis said the department has since changed the way it deals with crime victims and manages DNA leads. Supervisors and command staff now are more involved, he said, especially in cases with a serial offender.

“We learn from our mistakes,” McGinnis said, “and we resolve to do better.”

Lisa Hohnstreiter, the daughter of Martin’s second victim, Nancy Harrison, said she was overwhelmed by the information obtained by the AP. “My mom’s death could definitely have been prevented,” she said.

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DNA LINKS

Martin, 38, had several run-ins with police over the years. He had at least two convictions by 2009, including one for receiving a stolen car, and, as a result, his DNA profile was on file in a national database.

He first was connected to a potential sexual assault in 2012. That’s when a state crime laboratory alerted Detroit police that a national database had matched Martin’s DNA to evidence collected in the 2004 rape of Sylvia Sampson.

Sampson, 41, told police she was walking down a deserted street when a gold-colored car pulled up, and the gun-wielding driver demanded she get inside, reports show. He drove Sampson to a nearby field strewn with tires where he warned her to “do what I say or I’ll snap your neck.” After the rape, Sampson told police, her assailant kicked her in the face and took $10 from her coat.

Police collected evidence in a rape kit, which was stored in a warehouse. Five years later, prosecutors discovered that untested kit and more than 11,000 others in the building, sparking a push by Wayne County prosecutor Kym Worthy to clear the backlog.

Her office said the testing initiative concluded last year, having identified 841 serial offenders while netting 239 convictions. Worthy’s efforts were highlighted in a 2017 documentary, “I Am Evidence,” that explored similar backlogs of untested rape kits across the country. The film was produced and narrated by Mariska Hargitay, the star of NBC’s “Law and Order: Special Victims Unit.”

It does not appear that police at first did anything about the “hit” linking Martin to Sampson’s assault. Four years after receiving it, records show, detectives looked into the assault and determined that Sampson was dead.

Without a living victim, they closed the case.

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THE FIRST KILLING

The first homicide attributed to Martin took place in February 2018, though police initially arrested the wrong man.

It was a Monday afternoon when two Detroit police officers were flagged down by Rudolph Henderson, a 43-year-old vagabond. At Henderson’s feet was a dead, naked woman.

Detectives arrested Henderson on murder charges after discovering security video that showed him dragging Annetta Nelson, 57, from a vacant house where she had been strangled and beaten to death.

Henderson told police that he had stumbled across Nelson’s corpse in the living room as he was looking for crack cocaine. He said he decided to move the body because he didn’t think anyone would find it otherwise.

Henderson was released a week after his arrest when police uncovered other video evidence that prosecutors described as proving the homeless man “was not the perpetrator.”

Two months later, records show, the state crime lab linked Martin’s DNA to evidence collected from Nelson’s vagina. A scientist even told police they could find his name in other case files. Henderson, meanwhile, was cleared by the same DNA testing.

The case files do not indicate what police did with the information, though the internal affairs report suggests Detective Jesus Colon created a reward flyer seeking information about him. The detective declined an interview request.

His remarks to internal affairs investigators, like most others made by officers, were redacted in the report.

After obtaining the DNA hit, police dispatched an “apprehension team” to search for Martin, according to McGinnis, the police commander.

Two law enforcement experts — and the Detroit police chief at the time — say police missed an opportunity by not aggressively pursuing the lead.

At the very least, detectives should have obtained a search warrant to obtain a DNA sample from Martin to confirm the database match, according to Julianne Himelstein, who spent more than a decade prosecuting sex offenders in Washington, D.C.

The warrant would have alerted other departments to detain Martin if they came across him, she said, and given Detroit police the chance to interrogate him.

“That is just crazy they didn’t get that warrant,” said Himelstein, a former federal prosecutor. “Confirming that link is step one in Investigations 101.”

In an interview with the AP, Detroit’s police chief back in 2018, James Craig, said the DNA hit was “compelling” evidence and would have been enough to “to try to detain” Martin. He could not say why police didn’t take that step.

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CITY ON EDGE

The day after Martin was released after an unrelated arrest, a woman’s body, Trevesene Ellis, was found in a Detroit house. She was murder victim No. 3. Authorities could not determine a cause of death, though Martin would later admit to having killed her.

The corpse of a fourth victim, Tamara Jones, 55, was found on June 5 in a vacant house on Mack Avenue. She had been beaten to death.

Martin’s DNA was later linked to both crimes, as well as to Harrison’s slaying in March.

The discovery of the bodies shook Detroit, especially after police warned that the culprit was likely a serial killer.

At a June 7 news conference about the slayings, Mayor Mike Duggan and his police brass pledged that they were racing to inspect buildings for more bodies and scrambling to board up 2,000 properties.

Later that day, police named Martin a person of interest in the killings. Detectives obtained a warrant charging him with the rape in his grandmother’s basement and arrested him without incident that night at a bus stop.

Prosecutors subsequently charged him in the four homicides and the two 2019 rapes after DNA testing linked him to all the crimes. Police declined to say whether they suspected Martin in other killings, but reports and court files suggest he was suspected in at least one disappearance and another death.

Martin eventually pleaded guilty to killing Nelson, Harrison, Ellis and Jones. He also admitted he raped two women.

At his sentencing last year, Martin said he wanted to apologize but in the next breath denied wrongdoing. His lawyer acknowledged “these crimes were horrible, demeaning,” and a prosecutor described Martin as a serial killer and rapist who brought immeasurable pain into the world.