Serial Killer Suspect Left Trail Of Escalating Offenses
(CBS) -- Darren Vann has a history of run-ins with police across the country going back 20 years.
2 Investigator Pam Zekman has been checking into his background.
It's a record that spans four states, escalating from speeding tickets to sexual assaults. Somewhere along the line, police say the 43-year-old Vann became a serial killer.
His life is now under a microscope, with authorities saying his killing spree could go well beyond the bodies of Anith Jones, Afrikka Hardy and five other women he has led them to.
Vann's run-ins with police go back as far as 20 years, starting in 1993, with tickets for speeding and driving without a license in North Carolina, and in Calumet City, he pleaded guilty to aggravated fleeing from police.
The Chicago Sun-Times reported Monday that Vann tried to set himself and his then-girlfriend on fire in April 2004.
Vann doused himself and his victim with gasoline in Gary, wrapped one arm under the woman's throat, and held a lighter in his opposite hand. He threatened to set them both on fire, Joe Hamer, who was a Gary patrol officer at the time, tells the newspaper.
Hamer, today chairman of the critical incident and memorial team for the Indiana Fraternal Order of Police, says Vann had this warning for officers who responded to the scene: "I'll light both of us up and kill us both."
Hamer says he stalled the suspect while a SWAT team got in place, and Vann was taken down before he could harm the woman or himself.
For incident, Vann was convicted of misdemeanor residential entry, the Sun-Times said, citing court records. CBS 2 has learned Vann served 90 days in jail for that offense.
In 2008, he was charged in Austin, Texas, and sentenced to five years in prison for aggravated sexual assault.
His alleged actions in that case -- as described in an affidavit obtained by CBS 2 -- seem to foreshadow what we know so far about the Indiana murders.
It says when the victim in Texas responded to a "service call from her employer … Vann then attacked her, began to strangle her" and "yelled at her that he could kill her."
The document says Vann then forced her to have oral sex and then raped her.
Vann was registered as a sex offender in Texas after he was convicted in that case. As required by state law, he then registered as a sex offender in Gary when he got out of prison in 2013.
Just last month, the Lake County, Ind. Sheriff's Office checked on him at his Gary address, confirmed he was living there and saw nothing suspicious.