Mark Profit

His father left the family in the late 1960s, leaving Profit's mother to raise him and his sister by herself.

Mark Profit was born in 1963 in an impoverished area of Minneapolis, Minnesota.

The young boy showed no interest in studying, and by the mid-1970s, he dropped out of school and turned to a life of crime.

By 1978, Profit had been arrested about 30 times on various felony charges, and often committed burglaries.

The following year, the then-16-year-old was arrested for robbing a woman with a sawed-off shotgun whom he had tied up and gagged, for which he would later be convicted and sentenced to 2 years imprisonment.

Profit was released in 1981, and within six weeks of his release, he assaulted three girls at knifepoint and attempted to bind his victims on two occasions.

On September 2, Profit threatened a 15-year-old girl in northeast Minneapolis with a knife and forced her to follow him to his apartment, where he undressed her, tied her up, and raped her.

On September 10, Profit attacked a woman at a day care center in northern Minneapolis - during the attack, he tore off her clothes, tied her up, and raped her.

The final attack occurred on the following day, where he committed a similar attack on a 16-year-old girl.

Profit was convicted for these crimes in 1982 and, as a repeat violent felon, was sentenced to 21 years imprisonment.

However, he was paroled in January 1996 after serving 14 years.

Initially, he was ordered to reside at a social rehabilitation facility for former prisoners until May 6, when he was allowed to return to live at his mother's house.

The series of murders began on May 23, 1996, when the body of 30-year-old Renee Bell was found in Bassett Creek at Theodore Wirth Park.

She was last seen alive on May 21, and was strangled with a tan elastic band, one end of which was in her mouth and used as a gag.

Bell was a prostitute who looked for customers on Broadway Avenue in Minneapolis, and an autopsy determined that she had used crack cocaine hours before her death.

The forensic examiner found no signs of sexual assault or biological traces from the perpetrator, but did not rule out the possibility that Bell may have been raped, as her corpse had been in the waters of the creek for a long time.

On June 3, the charred remains of a woman were discovered on the grounds of Theodore Wirth Park, with an autopsy later determining that the decedent was 43-year-old Deborah LaVoie.

An exact date and cause of death could not be established, but it was concluded that LaVoie was last seen alive on May 23.

On June 19, the body of 36-year-old Avis Warfield, a homeless woman who engaged in prostitution, was found near Profit's home.

The woman had been stabbed in the heart, after which her killer had made an unsuccessful attempt to set her on fire to destroy evidence.

While examining the crime scene, officers found a cigarette butt which they surmized likely belonged to the perpetrator.

Warfield's acquaintances later gave conflicting testimony regarding when they had last seen her alive, as some claimed that it was on the day prior to her body being found, while others said that they had seen her alive and well long after she her body was found.

Due to this, the exact date of her disappearance and death could not be established.

On July 20, the charred remains of another woman were discovered in Theodore Wirth Park, later identified as 21-year-old transsexual Keooudorn Photisane, who was last seen alive in the early hours of that day.

An autopsy concluded that she had been stabbed in the neck, after which her killer doused her in gasoline and set the body on fire.

Officers located three children as potential witnesses, with them stating that they saw a suspicious-looking, middle-aged black male setting a fire in the park, exactly where the victim's body would later be found.

From their testimony, an identikit was developed of the suspect.

On August 31, a woman named Phynice Johnson was attacked in Theodore Wirth Park.

Like all previous victims, she was a drug addict who prostituted herself on Broadway Avenue.

She later claimed that a man, later identified as Mark Profit, stopped next to her at around 11 PM and offered to have sex with her.

Johnson said that they smoked crack cocaine for 20 minutes, after which Profit drove her to Theodore Wirth Park, where he sexually assaulted her.

During the struggle, he ripped off her T-shirt, but Johnson managed to get out of the car - Profit followed after her, demanding that she return the drugs and threatening to kill her.

He eventually caught up with her and pulled down her pants, but at that time, a married couple - Joan Demeules and George Barrett - were driving through the park when they noticed the attack.

The pair got out of the car and went to help her, with Demeules saying that she hit the attacker with an ice scraper while Barrett hit him with a bag full of tomatoes.

Profit eventually let go of Johnson, fled back to his car, and sped away.

Demeules and Barrett were later awarded a Citizen Medal of Valor for their actions.

Mark Antonio Profit (1963 – September 27, 2001) was an American murderer and rapist who was convicted of the 1997 murder of prostitute Renee Bell in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

Bell was one of four victims attributed to a serial killer called The Theodore Wirth Park Killer, named for the fact that all were killed in Minneapolis' Theodore Wirth Park.

Although never charged in any of the murders besides Bell's, Profit remained the prime suspect and was widely considered responsible for all four killings.

He died behind bars in 2001, still protesting his innocence.