Letters from prison lead to more murder charges

ST. LOUIS—A St. Louis-area man already imprisoned for two murder convictions is now under investigation for other killings of women, due in large part to letters he penned while behind bars.

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reports that police now believe that 49-year-old Theodis Hill of Jennings killed at least five women—three in St. Louis and two in a small Arkansas town, Forrest City, where he went apparently went to help relatives fix up a home.

Police say Hill has written letters to St. Louis detectives and a prosecutor in Arkansas, admitting to killings in both states. Police believe some of the victims were killed after doing drugs with the killer.

Hill has been at the state prison in Charleston, Missouri, since 2010 after pleading guilty to strangling Fanny Mae Hill, 56, of St. Louis, in 2006. While in prison, he pleaded guilty to killing Marissa Lowe, 40, in Forrest City, Arkansas, in 2009, and was sentenced to 40 additional years. Then he began writing letters. He wrote to a deputy prosecutor in Arkansas in March 2014, admitting that he killed another woman in the Forrest City area about two weeks before Lowe's body was found. He said he used a pillow to suffocate her after smoking crack cocaine. He now faces a murder charge in the death of 48-year-old Katherine Dawson. Prosecutors dropped charges against another man who had been suspected in that case.

Hill also wrote to St. Louis homicide detective Scott Sailor, offering information about the death of 22-year-old Sierra Sullivan, whose body was found wrapped in a sheet in a vacant St. Louis lot in the summer of 2009. She, too, had been strangled.

Sailor said Hill also admitted killing Janice Mayhew in St. Louis in 2008. Mayhew, 46, was strangled.

St. Louis prosecutors charged Hill on Oct. 6 with the killings of Sullivan and Mayhew. Authorities said Hill knew details about both crimes that convinced them he was the killer.

St. Louis Assistant Circuit Attorney Mary Pat Carl said the motive for the crimes remains unclear. She credited Sailor with piecing together information in cases from several years ago.

"The police don't give up on these," Carl said. "Families suffering, watching days tick by, this is a testament to not give up hope."

Tiffany Mayhew, one of Janie Mayhew's daughters, thought police had dropped her mother's case. She and her sister, who found their mother's body, moved to Las Vegas to escape the bad memories.

"I've been searching all these years for an answer," Tiffany said. "Because we found her, it's like a nightmare that keeps playing over and over."

Authorities are now trying to determine if Theodis Hill is a suspect other unsolved killings of women in St. Louis and Arkansas.