If there’s any saving grace to the unfathomable murders perpetrated by Timothy Spencer, it’s how the case threw a spotlight on a relatively new tool in criminal investigations at the time—DNA testing.
Throughout the fall of 1987, Spencer prowled the streets of Richmond and Arlington in Virginia, breaking into homes and ambushing the women who lived there.
He would strangle his victims, then slip away into the night leaving few physical clues, authorities said.
Police were stymied with one exception—an Arlington County detective whose instincts and legwork connected the dots, leading to Spencer’s arrest.
But a major hurdle remained. “There was no direct evidence or a confession,” former Virginia assistant attorney general Rick Conway tells A&E True Crime.
It took an emerging technology to convince a jury Spencer was guilty, making him the first U.S. serial killer convicted through DNA evidence.
‘Cold-Blooded’
Spencer, a career burglar, usually broke into houses through a window. His typical M.O. was to sexually assault his victims, tie their hands and wrap rope, belts or socks around their necks, enabling a slow, excruciating strangulation, according to court documents.
“He was as cold-blooded as anyone I ever saw,” says Conway, who represented the state in Spencer’s death penalty appeals to the Virginia Supreme Court.
“I’ve tried a lot of murderers, and some of them were pretty brutal. But Spencer—he got off on torturing women in their own homes, where they should feel the safest.”
Lives Interrupted
Spencer’s victims included Susan Tucker of Arlington, 44, and Richmond residents Debbie Dudley Davis, 35, and Dr. Susan Hellams, 32. The youngest was Diane Cho, 15, of Chesterfield County near Richmond.
Davis, a magazine account manager, was a frank, warm person who loved Bruce Springsteen and mystery novels, coworkers said. Her body was discovered in her apartment by police on September 19, 1987, after her abandoned car was found with the engine running a few blocks away.
Hellams was a dedicated neurosurgical resident. Her husband found her brutalized body October 3, 1987, in their bedroom closet.
Cho, 15, was an honors student who sang in the high school chorus and loved to draw, attorney Paul Mones wrote in his book Stalking Justice. She went to bed the night of November 21, 1987, and was found dead in her bedroom the next day by her parents. An infinity symbol was painted on her hip with nail polish.
Spencer had climbed into Cho’s room through a window and gagged her, police said.
Susan Tucker, an editor with the U.S. Forest Service, was a dedicated worker who was planning to move to Wales with her husband. Police conducting a well-being check uncovered her decomposed body December 1, 1987.
A Serial Killer At Large
The Richmond slayings panicked residents. Pressure mounted on police to find the killer, but Spencer had covered his trail well.
Initially, authorities in Arlington County and Richmond didn’t connect the murders. However, Arlington County Detective Joe Horgas pinpointed a pattern of behavior in all four crimes, according to Stalking Justice.
Similarities included the facts that someone had broken into Tucker’s home through a window, her hands were bound with a rope that was also tied around her neck, and she was raped.
Horgas also was reminded of a similar burglary and murder three years ago in Arlington.
Carolyn Hamm, 32, was an attorney at a prestigious Washington law firm. She was found dead in her home on January 25, 1984.
Someone had entered through a basement window, raped Hamm, bound her hands with rope and hanged her from a water pipe, the Washington Post reported.
David Vasquez, a 28-year-old man who lived near Hamm, was charged with her murder and convicted in 1985. After being assigned to the Tucker case, a curious Horgas interviewed Vasquez and became convinced he was innocent, Mones recounted in his book.
Connecting the Dots
With no viable suspects as of late December 1987, Horgas put his faith in a pioneering technology and submitted semen samples from the Tucker and Hamm crime scenes to a New York-based lab, Lifecodes, for DNA testing.
Horgas also consulted with FBI profilers who suggested the gap between the murders occurred because the killer might have been incarcerated between 1984 and 1987.
In early January 1988, Horgas and a partner were pouring over probation records. Amid the search, a name popped into his head—Timmy Spencer, a troubled teen he’d investigated for burglary years ago.
Database searches revealed Spencer was convicted of burglary in late January 1984, sent to prison, then released on parole to a Richmond halfway house in September 1987.
Police also learned Spencer went to his mother’s house in Arlington for Thanksgiving 1987.
Justice Delivered
Armed with a timeline, Arlington and Richmond police converged on Spencer at his halfway house on January 20, 1988. They found an infinity symbol drawn on his mattress.
A sample of Spencer’s blood was sent for analysis. But Spencer never admitted to any wrongdoing, and detectives worried whether there was enough physical evidence to prove their case, according to Stalking Justice.
On March 16, 1988, the test results came back. Spencer’s blood matched the semen sample found at Tucker’s home. It also matched samples from the Davis and Hellams’ crime scenes. Scientists found the chances of the semen being from anyone other than Spencer were one in 135 million. That number was later updated to one in 705 million, Conway notes.
The game-changing DNA analysis not only riveted the courtroom during Spencer’s first trial for Tucker’s death in July 1988—it resonated across the U.S.
“You can understand the dynamics, the impact of that on a jury,” Conway says.
“It’s pretty much the same as saying, ‘hey, it’s his DNA, he left his DNA.'”
Spencer was convicted in separate trials of killing Cho, Davis, Hellams and Tucker. He was implicated in Hamm’s death but never tried. After a series of unsuccessful appeals, Spencer, 32, was executed in 1994.
Meanwhile, David Vasquez was exonerated and pardoned in 1989.
What Makes a Serial Killer?
“I always question if serial murderers are born vs. made, and I’ve always believed there’s no such thing as a born serial killer,” forensic psychologist and author Joni Johnston tells A&E True Crime. “No baby comes out destined to be a serial killer.”
But Spencer “comes as close as I’ve seen, in the sense that it seems like he had a loving mom and there does not seem to be any serious trauma” in his childhood, Johnston says.
Would Spencer have been convicted without DNA evidence?
“Absolutely not,” criminologist and police detective sergeant Stephen Jones tells A&E True Crime. “Yes, he had a certain modus operandi, a certain paraphilia [abnormal sexual desires beyond the scope of a consenting partner]. This guy’s a serial sexual sadist because his M.O. is to torture—he binds his victims, he more or less plays with them as a toy until they die.”
But “there’s a lot of homicides and sexual assaults that are similar in nature that you can’t just definitely prove who did it. In this case, his DNA did him in,” notes Jones.
DNA evidence not only aided in convicting Spencer but would serve as a critical part of most murder convictions in subsequent years.
“It changed the whole world of crime fighting,” Conway says.
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