KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) A supervisor for a trash-collection company has been charged with strangling 12 women or girls from 1977 to 1993 and police are investigating his possible links to other killings.
Lorenzo J. Gilyard, 53, was charged Saturday with 10 counts of first-degree murder and two counts of capital murder, the law in effect at the time of two of the killings. If Gilyard is convicted of all the murders, he would be the worst serial killer in the city’s history, police said.
He was being held without bail.
DNA comparisons prompted investigators to link Gilyard to the killings April 12, according to a probable cause statement filed in Jackson County Circuit Court. He was arrested Friday, authorities said.
The victims’ ages ranged from 15 to 36. Eleven were prostitutes, according to court records. The 12th victim was mentally ill and often walked the streets and accepted rides from strangers.
Nine of the victims were found nude or nearly nude; some were bound or had something tied around their necks; some were found wearing only shoes and socks. Eleven of the dead were sexually assaulted and some of the bodies were posed.
Officials said Gilyard was married, lived in south Kansas City and worked as a supervisor for a trash-collection company in Kansas.
Gilyard had worked for Deffenbaugh Disposal Service since 1986, starting out on a trash crew and working his way up to supervising several crews, said company spokesman Tom Coffman.
Coffman described him as reliable, friendly, hard working and “quick to make a joke.”
“These allegations just don’t square with the Lorenzo we all know, and it’s pretty difficult to get your arms around this situation,” Coffman said.
A blood sample was taken from Gilyard in 1987, but the technology to link him to the killings did not exist until 2000, officials said. Police would not say why the sample was taken from Gilyard in 1987, when he was one of several men from whom blood samples were collected.
▲6 | reblogSlivko killed his first victim, an unidentified homeless boy he estimated to be around 15 years old, in 1964. Slivko claimed this particular victim was killed unintentionally. Upon being unable to revive this boy once he was unconscious, Slivko dismembered the boys body and buried him. He also destroyed the film and photographs he had taken of this particular victim. Nine years later, on November 14, 1973 a 15-year-old boy named Aleksander Nesmeyanov disappeared in Nevinnomyssk, southern RSFSR.
Two years later, on May 11, 1975, an 11-year-old boy named Andrei Pogasyan vanished. The boy’s mother told the police that a man had made some video recordings in a nearby forest and that her son was going to participate, but the police didn’t do anything to prevent this because they knew the man and he had won awards for some of his videos. The man’s name was Anatoly Slivko and he had a club for boys named Chergid.
In winter 1975, a prison inmate claimed he knew where Aleksander Nesmeyanov was buried, but the police searched the area and found nothing, proving the claim was false. Five years later, in 1980, a 13-year-old boy named Sergei Fatsiev disappeared; as with Nesmeyanov and Pogasyan, he was a member of Chergid.
The next victim was a 15-year-old named Slava Khovistik, who was killed in 1982. On July 23, 1985, Slivko killed his final victim, a 13-year-old boy named Sergei Pavlov. He disappeared after telling a neighbour he was going to meet the leader of Chergid.
Sexual sadist and pedophile Anatoly Slivko (Russia) was convicted of the sexual murder of seven boys. He was hanging his victims… some of them till their death. He videotaped all his “executions”.
