CRIMINAL COLD CASES-FUGITIVES FINALLY BROUGHT TO JUSTICE-2-DANNY KEITH HOOKS

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IN COLD BLOOD
Murder is always shocking, but there are certain murders that seem, for whatever reason, to be more lurid than most. These are the cold cases where it is the crime, not the killer, that remains in the public imagination.
The Crack House Murders is a sordid tale in which addict Danny Keith Hooks killed five women in a crack house where women came to sell sex for drugs, after apparently attempting to involve them in an orgy. His crime went undetected for five years, but eventually he was picked up for rape, and his DNA profile was found to match that of samples recovered from the scene of the crime. In the case of the Lady in the Lake, victim Carol Park's relatives had to wait twenty-one years before finding out what happened to her. Her body was found by scuba divers in Coniston Water, a beauty spot in the north of England, which eventually led to the conviction of her ex-husband, Gordon, for her murder.
The Bone Breaker is the tale of a deranged teenager, Joe Clark, who enjoyed hearing his victims' bones break before killing them; it was only when one of his victims escaped that he was caught and put behind bars. In the Slaughter of the Innocents, we look at the Schuessler-Peterson case, in which three young boys were brutally murdered after an innocent trip to the cinema in Chicago; here, the murderer Kenneth Hansen was brought to book after several of his ex-lovers and friends testified against him. Finally, we investigate the bizarre case of the Woman in the Box, in which victim Carol Smith was kept captive as a slave for seven and a half years by a couple named Janice and Cameron Hooker. She was only rescued when Janice Hooker became jealous of her, and tipped off the police.

DANNY KEITH HOOKS: THE CRACK HOUSE MURDERS
ONE OF THE MOST SHOCKING MULTIPLE MURDERS TO OCCUR IN THE 1990S WAS THAT OF FIVE BLACK WOMEN, WHO WERE STABBED TO DEATH IN A CRACK HOUSE IN THE NORTH-EAST AREA OF OKLAHOMA CITY. THE MURDERS OCCURRED IN 1992, BUT IT WAS NOT UNTIL FIVE YEARS LATER THAT THE AUTHORITIES CAUGHT UP WITH THE PERPETRATOR, WHO HAD MANAGED TO STEER CLEAR OF THE LAW, EVADING ALL RESPONSIBILITY FOR SUCH A TERRIBLE CRIME UP UNTIL THAT TIME.

On 16 May 1992, police were called to a crack house to find a horrifying scene. It was one of carnage: five women lay dead, butchered by an unknown assailant. They were all found naked, lying in pools of blood; and four of the victims were also found to have been sexually assaulted. The victims were 47-year-old Phyllis Adams, 35-year-old Sandra Thompson, 37-year-old Carolyn Watson, 30-year-old LaShawn Evans, and 34-year-old Fransill Roberts.

Butchered in a crack house
Samples of blood were taken from some of the women's clothing, including two shirts and a jacket, as well as a bloody handprint that was found on a curtain. However, the murder investigation launched at the time yielded no results, and no suspect was named. The multiple murders shocked the local community, and the police were criticized for failing to find the killer. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) accused the law enforcement agencies of racism, saying they were not making enough effort to find the culprit because the victims were black and were frequenting a crack house. (The house was known as a place where penniless drug addicts, mostly women, came to sell sex in return for drugs.) Many commentators from the black community felt that because of the house's bad reputation, very little was being done to bring the killer of these women to justice.

Storing DNA profiles: people who have committed crimes in earlier years now stand a very good chance of being linked to their past if they offend again, thanks to DNA evidence

It was not until five years later that police ran the DNA profile of Danny Keith Hooks into their computer database. Hooks had been picked up on a charge of rape. To their surprise, it matched the samples taken from the scene of the crime at the crack house. The evidence was compelling, and Hooks was soon brought to trial and charged with the five murders.
At the trial, Hooks claimed that the bloody handprint on the curtain was the result of a cut on his hand that he had sustained from riding his bicycle. He admitted that he had smoked crack at the house earlier that day with the five women, and that he had had sex with two of them. However, he said that he had then decided to leave the house and it was only when he returned later that he had found the dead bodies. The prosecution alleged that to the contrary, Hooks had killed the women in a frenzy of violence. He was a crack addict who had become mentally unstable as a result of his addiction, and had tried to force the women into a sex orgy with him. When they had refused and tried to leave, he had attacked them, killing all five women.

Death penalty
The jury in the case deliberated for fourteen hours, over a period of two days. What held their deliberation up was the fact that it was hard to understand how five women could have been killed – apparently easily – by one man, but in the end they decided that that was what had happened. They therefore returned a verdict of guilty. On hearing the verdict, Hooks showed no reaction. He was convicted of five counts of first-degree murder and sentenced to death. Commenting on the death penalty for Hooks, the daughter of victim Phyllis Adams, Barbara Booker, said ‘I don't think he deserves to live because those women did not have a choice'.

Guilty: Danny Keith Hooks received five separate death sentences for the murders