Suspected Serial Killer Faces More Charges

Last updated at 5:34 p.m. Eastern

A suspected serial killer has been charged in the slayings of five more women in Milwaukee.

Milwaukee County District Attorney John Chisholm said Thursday that he filed the additional charges against Walter E. Ellis, who now faces five counts of first-degree intentional homicide and two counts of first-degree murder - the equivalent charge that was state law when the deaths occurred.

The state Justice Department said it will investigate what happened to an alleged serial killer's missing DNA sample.

Police arrested Walter Ellis on Saturday after they obtained DNA that they say links him to a string of cold-case homicides in Milwaukee from 1986 to 2007. Police Chief Ed Flynn has suggested that if they had Ellis' DNA profile sooner they may have been able to prevent at least one death.

The Department of Corrections says it obtained a tissue sample from Ellis while he was in prison in 2001. The corrections department was supposed to send it to the Department of Justice's crime lab, which would have developed a DNA profile from it. But the DOJ says it never received the sample.

Ellis was anything but unknown in his north side neighborhood in Milwaukee - a mix of condemned and run-down houses with some nicer, newer homes.

Even as the bodies of suspected prostitutes began turning up in garbage bins and abandoned buildings near his home, the stocky Ellis had regular - sometimes violent, often friendly - interaction with neighbors and family, and more than a dozen run-ins with police.

Officers even stopped him while investigating several of the nine slayings that went unsolved.

Now those who know the 49-year-old are trying to come to grips with the fact that the man everyone knew as "Wadell" stands charged in two of the deaths and could face more charges Thursday.

"Who wants to say ... 'I grew up with a serial killer,' not on God's green Earth. Who would ever fathom such a thought," said ViAnna Jordan, 51, who grew up a block from Ellis.

Ellis, who moved to the neighborhood from Mississippi as a child, is described in court documents as an unemployed laborer without a high school diploma. He made his first court appearance on Wednesday, when a court commissioner set his bond at $1 million. Police have said Ellis' DNA matches that found on nine women ages 16 to 41 who were killed in the area from 1986 to 2007.
Ellis is suspected in a string of killings from 1986 to 2007. Police said the 49-year-old's DNA was found on the bodies of nine women ages 16 to 41.

Investigators believe eight of the women were prostitutes who were strangled, and one was a runaway whose throat was cut.

His attorney, Alejandro Lockwood, did not immediately return a message seeking comment.

Court documents indicate that officers were looking for "possible ligatures" to be used for strangulation when they searched his house.

A search warrant also notes that the person who attacked Stokes and Mims was likely injured because blood was found at the scene. It says Ellis had scars on his back and face consistent with stab wounds and cuts.

Ellis was not a stranger to law enforcement, with 15 arrests since 1978. He's received probation or fines for burglary, delivery of a controlled substance and retail theft. He also has faced charges of soliciting prostitutes, battery, robbery and recklessly endangering safety, all of which were later dismissed. He received a 3-year prison sentence for drug possession in 1981.

It was in 1988 that he pleaded no contest to second-degree reckless injury. According to the criminal complaint, he hit his ex-girlfriend in the head several times with a claw hammer, causing her to get 30 staples and more than 22 stitches. The complaint said the woman woke and found him standing over her, smelling of alcohol and accusing her of cheating. She got out of bed, they struggled, and he hit her with the hammer, it said.

It was during that prison sentence that Ellis was supposed to have DNA taken before his release in 2001, under a state law that mandated taking samples from convicted felons.