Cops: Man Fatally Shot by Escort Had "Kill Kit," List of Six More Women
A West Virginia woman may have stopped a serial killer this month when she killed an attacker authorities say is potentially linked to 10 other victims, CNN reports.
According to police, 45-year-old Neal Falls was shot to death with his own gun on July 18 after he tried to strangle the escort he arranged to meet online.
“I knew he was there to kill me,” the woman told KPTV. “I could tell that he had already done something because he said that he was going to prison for a long time. And that’s when I knew he was gonna kill me.”
During a subsequent search, police say they found a “kill kit” containing handcuffs, knives, axes, a sledgehammer, a machete, a bulletproof vest, a gun, a shovel and bleach in the man’s car and a list of six other escorts in Falls’ pocket.
“These types of items are not something you run across very often,” Charleston Police Lt. Steve Cooper told WSAZ. “We receive a lot of training over the years as investigators as to what to look for in the cases of sexual predators or potentially even serial killers, and a lot of those items were there.”
Authorities are now reportedly exploring whether Falls is connected to 10 dead or missing women in Ohio and Nevada. From NBC News:
Police in West Virginia and Nevada are investigating possible links between Falls and three Las Vegas-area prostitutes who were killed from 2003 to 2006, when he was living in nearby Henderson. A fourth case, that of a prostitute who disappeared about the same time and has never been found, is also under investigation.
And a task force from Ross County, Ohio, arrived Monday in Charleston to investigate whether Falls also may have been connected to the deaths of four women and the disappearances of two others in the town of Chillicothe.
Police have yet to establish a definitive link between the women and Falls, but at least one officer is nonetheless relieved.
“Whatever happened in the apartment last week ended whatever crime spree he may have been on and whatever his intentions were,” Cooper said on Monday. “There will be no more victims.”
[Images via Charleston West Virginia Police Department/WSAZ//h/t The Daily Dot]