Lorenzo Gilyard

Lorenzo Jerome Gilyard, Jr. (born May 24, 1950), known as the Kansas City Strangler, is an American serial killer.

Lorenzo Jerome Gilyard, Jr., was born on May 24, 1950, in Kansas City, Missouri, one of five children born to Lorenzo Gilyard, Sr., and his wife Laura (née Brown).

From an early age, Lorenzo exhibited aggressive behavior.

During his school years, he played on sports teams with his brothers.

As he was larger than most of his peers, he physically assaulted smaller children and earned a reputation as a bully.

In the mid-1960s, he met a young woman named Rena Hill, with whom he soon began a relationship.

On November 20, 1968, Gilyard and Hill married after the latter learned that she was pregnant.

Following the marriage, Gilyard began to indulge in crime and to exhibit deviant sexual behavior towards women.

In January 1969, Gilyard was arrested on charges of assaulting and raping a girl he knew, but was later released when a reconciliation agreement was reached between the two parties with the victim retracting the charges after Lorenzo apologized to her.

In 1970, Gilyard's father was convicted of rape.

Two years later, Gilyard himself was arrested again for raping and assaulting another woman, with the victim claiming that he had choked her into unconsciousness.

She identified Gilyard as the culprit from a lineup, but her testimony was considered questionable and the charges were subsequently dropped.

In the late 1970s, Gilyard married a third time.

In 1973, Gilyard was arrested for assaulting his wife, with Hill telling police that he had been physically and sexually abusive for all the years they had been married.

Ultimately, he was forced to pay a fine and to divorce his wife.

In February 1974, Gilyard was arrested for raping a 25-year-old exotic dancer who identified him as her attacker from a photograph, but yet again the charges were dropped when the two parties reached a reconciliation agreement.

Five months later, he was arrested again for raping the 13-year-old daughter of a friend on the banks of the Missouri River.

As the victim changed her testimony, the rape charges were dropped, but Gilyard was convicted of sexual acts with a minor and received a 9-month sentence in the Jackson County jail.

After his release Gilyard married a second time, but his wife soon left him and filed for divorce, claiming that, like Rena Hill, she was beaten and sexually abused by her husband.

A former trash-company supervisor, Gilyard is believed to have raped and murdered at least 13 women and girls from 1977 to 1993.

In addition to this, he was also linked through circumstantial evidence to the killings of at least six more women, killed between April 1977 and January 1993: all of them were between the ages of 15 and 36 and were strangled with various items, including nylon stockings, laces, and wire.

Their bodies were found dumped in various areas around Kansas City in landfills, snowdrifts, abandoned buildings, vans, fields, and parking lots.

In 1979, Gilyard was arrested on charges of assaulting a young couple, raping the girl, and threatening to kill her fiancé.

Despite the fact that the victims identified him as their attacker, Gilyard was acquitted by jury verdict at his September 1980 trial due to lack of evidence.

A few months later, he was arrested for aggravated assault on his third wife, but got away with an administrative fine and a divorce.

In February 1981, Gilyard attacked his ex-wife on two separate occasions; in the first one, he knocked out her front teeth, and in the second, he stabbed her in the hand with an ice pick.

He was arrested and charged with third-degree assault, but was let go on a suspended sentence and probation.

In November 1981, Gilyard was arrested for theft but was released on $3,500 bail.

That same spring, he received a 4-year prison sentence for violating his probation.

During his incarceration, his sister, Patricia D. Dixon, a prostitute, was convicted of murdering a client in 1983 and sentenced to 11 years imprisonment in addition to being implicated in the murder of another prostitute.

On January 10, 1983, Gilyard was paroled, but was soon returned to prison after he was arrested in Wyandotte County, Kansas, for making bomb threats.

He was released again in late 1985 and in January 1986, he got a job as a garbage man at the Deffenbaugh Disposal Service, where his father worked in the maintenance department.

On December 23, 1987, Gilyard was arrested and interrogated as a potential suspect in the murder of 36-year-old Sheila Ingold, during which his blood sample was taken, but he was released due to lack of evidence.

After examining the blood sample taken from Lorenzo Gilyard, the investigation team conclusively connected him to the murders of six women in the area, including Sheila Ingold, for whose murder he was considered a suspect back in 1987.

In 1991, Gilyard married for a fourth time, and was promoted to company supervisor, granting him control of several garbage-disposal teams in various parts of Kansas City.

Aside from this incident, Gilyard is not known to have committed any crimes after 1993, with his friends and acquaintances speaking of him in a positive manner.

In July 1996, Gilyard's neighbor went to the police, claiming that she had been sexually harassed by him since September 1995; no charges were brought against him, and the woman moved away soon after.

In 2001, the Kansas City Police Department received a multimillion-dollar federal grant aimed at re-examining cold cases using new DNA technology.

He was convicted of six counts of murder on March 16, 2007.

Due to his lack of discipline, poor academic performance, and chronic absenteeism, Lorenzo was forced to drop out of school after the 10th grade.