Walter E. Ellis: Murders, Wrongful Convictions, and Prison Death

Walter E. Ellis, known as the Milwaukee North Side Strangler, murdered at least seven women on the north side of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, between 1986 and 2007, and went undetected for more than two decades in large part because another inmate submitted a DNA sample in his name while he was in prison. He was arrested in September 2009 after cold-case DNA testing linked a single genetic profile to killings a decade apart, pleaded no contest to seven homicides in February 2011, and received seven consecutive life terms without the possibility of parole. He died in a South Dakota prison in December 2013.

The Victims and the Pattern

Ellis’s known victims were women, most of them engaged in sex work, who lived on or near Milwaukee’s north side. He strangled them; at least one was also stabbed. Investigators recovered semen from six scenes and blood from a can of pepper spray at a seventh, the physical evidence that eventually tied the cases to one person.¹

The seven women Ellis was charged with killing were:

Deborah L. Harris, 31, killed in 1986
Tanya L. Miller, 19, killed in 1986
Irene Smith, 25, killed in 1992
Sheila Farrior, 37, killed in 1995
Florence McCormick, 28, killed in 1995
Joyce Mims, 41, killed in 1997
Ouithreaun Stokes, 28, killed in 2007

Ellis’s DNA was also recovered from two additional victims — Carron D. Kilpatrick, 32, killed in 1994, and 16-year-old Jessica Payne, killed in 1995 — but he was not charged in those deaths because other people had already been prosecuted for them.² Payne’s throat was cut rather than strangled, and authorities believed someone else may have been responsible for her death.³

One killing showed how little the system slowed him. In late November 1992, Ellis bribed his way out of a prison halfway house long enough to murder Irene Smith, then returned.⁴ Before his arrest for the serial murders, he had more than a dozen encounters with police and had been imprisoned for beating his girlfriend with a hammer.⁵ Officers even stopped him while they were actively investigating several of the homicides later attributed to him.⁶

How He Stayed Free: The DNA Swap and Wisconsin’s Missing Profiles

A 2000 Wisconsin law required all convicted felons to have DNA samples on file. Ellis, serving time for the hammer assault, should have been sampled. Instead, another inmate posed as Ellis and let his own mouth be swabbed under Ellis’s name. Ellis later said he paid the inmate to do it. According to Department of Corrections Secretary Rick Raemisch, the Department of Justice was told the sample had been submitted under someone else’s name, but nothing was done with that information.⁵

The effect was direct. When investigators ran DNA from a 2003 homicide against the state database, no match came back for Ellis, because his true profile was never in it. Police Chief Ed Flynn later said that if the sample had been handled properly, “at least one woman might still be alive.”⁴

The audit prompted by the Ellis case showed the problem went far beyond one prisoner. Wisconsin’s DNA databank was missing somewhere between about 12,000 and nearly 17,700 convicted-felon profiles, depending on the estimate and the period reviewed, including at least 400 belonging to registered sex offenders.⁷⁸ Another roughly 14,000 inmates or probationers had never submitted required samples at all.⁵ Governor Jim Doyle attributed the gaps to “confusion over the laws during the early days and no clear idea of who was in charge.”

The state deployed a task force of retired officers to track down felons whose samples were missing and had collected roughly 6,315 of them by March 2010.⁸ Broader reform came with 2013 Wisconsin Act 214, which required DNA collection from anyone convicted of any misdemeanor and from those arrested for a violent felony, with arrest-based samples held until a judge found probable cause. Officials projected the change would raise annual collections from about 12,000 to 77,000.⁹

How He Was Finally Caught

In 2009, Milwaukee’s Homicide Task Force Cold Case Unit applied improved DNA testing to old evidence and found that samples from the bodies of Joyce Mims and Ouithreaun Stokes, killed a decade apart, came from the same person. Investigators ultimately linked nine homicides to a single profile.¹⁰

That May, Milwaukee police announced publicly that they were hunting a serial killer.⁴ To narrow the field, detectives reviewed 16,000 sexual assault investigations and 6,000 prostitution-related arrests across 23 years and submitted hundreds of names for DNA profiling.¹¹ Ellis’s name kept surfacing. Because he was not in the state database despite being a convicted felon, officers obtained a search warrant and seized a toothbrush and razor from his home on August 29, 2009. The DNA on the toothbrush matched the crime-scene profile.¹⁰

An arrest warrant was issued September 4, 2009. The next day, an officer in suburban Franklin spotted Ellis’s car at a motel, and he was arrested after a struggle.¹² By September 10, prosecutors had filed seven murder charges.¹¹

Plea and Sentence

Ellis initially pleaded not guilty, and twice signaled he would change his plea before backing out. On February 18, 2011, during what was scheduled as a routine motion hearing, the 50-year-old Ellis appeared in court shackled and in a wheelchair and entered no-contest pleas to all seven charges. Milwaukee County Circuit Judge Dennis Cimpl confirmed he understood he was waiving his right to a trial and found him guilty of five counts of first-degree intentional homicide and two counts of first-degree murder.¹³¹⁴

On February 24, 2011, Judge Cimpl sentenced Ellis to seven consecutive life terms without the possibility of parole. Ellis declined a pre-sentence investigation, saying he “wanted to get it done,” and stayed silent through sentencing. Cimpl acknowledged that the plea spared victims’ families a trial but called that benefit “a feather against thousands of pounds of bad things.” District Attorney John Chisholm called Ellis “one of the few defendants he’d ever seen who truly deserves to be called evil.”¹⁵

The People Wrongly Convicted for His Crimes

Because Ellis stayed off the DNA database for so long, other people were prosecuted for killings he committed. After his arrest, Chisholm ordered a review of 2,100 Milwaukee County homicide cases dating back to 1992. The review confirmed three prosecutions of other people in cases where Ellis’s DNA was later found. The Wisconsin Innocence Project said it had flagged at least seven other convictions it believed warranted further DNA testing.¹⁶

Chaunte Ott

Chaunte Ott was convicted of the 1995 rape and murder of Jessica Payne. No physical evidence tied him to the scene; the case relied on two witnesses, Richard Gwin and Sammy Hadaway, who later recanted. Ott’s later lawsuit alleged that Milwaukee detectives had coerced the false testimony.¹⁷ In 2007, the Wisconsin Innocence Project obtained DNA retesting that excluded Ott, Gwin, and Hadaway and later matched the profile to Ellis.¹⁸ Ott was released in 2009 after 13 years in prison, and prosecutors declined to retry him.¹⁹ A state board later found “clear and convincing evidence” of his innocence and awarded him $25,000, and in 2015 the City of Milwaukee settled his federal civil rights suit for $6.5 million.

Sammy Joseph Hadaway

Hadaway, who has severe cognitive and intellectual disabilities, cerebral palsy, and seizure disorders, was arrested in October 1995 in the Payne case. Court filings say police threatened him with prison rape and 80 years unless he implicated Ott, and he ultimately pleaded guilty to attempted robbery tied to the homicide. After the DNA retesting excluded him and identified Ellis, an appeals panel led by Judge Timothy G. Dugan ruled in August 2018 that Hadaway could withdraw his plea, finding the original trial judge would not have accepted it had the DNA been known. Prosecutors dropped the case that year. In May 2021, the Wisconsin Claims Board awarded Hadaway $25,000, citing his “clear innocence.”¹⁸²⁰

William D. Avery

William D. Avery had been convicted in 2005 of the murder of Maryetta Griffin. He was ordered released in 2010 after DNA linked the killing to Ellis.¹⁶

Death in Prison

Ellis was transferred from Wisconsin to the South Dakota State Penitentiary in Sioux Falls under an interstate compact in November 2011.²¹ He was hospitalized on November 26, 2013, with what officials described only as an “advanced disease,” and died on December 1, 2013, at a Sioux Falls hospital. Corrections officials said the cause appeared to be natural but did not specify the illness.²² He was 53 and had served less than three years of his seven life sentences.

1
NBC News. Milwaukee Strangler Dies Three Years Into Life Sentence
2
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. Walter E. Ellis Charged With Seven Murders
3
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. Ellis Linked to Nine Victims
4
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. Walter E. Ellis Case Coverage
5
NPR. DNA Mix-Up Kept Suspected Serial Killer Free
6
CBS News. Suspected Serial Killer Faces More Charges
7
CBS News. Gaps in DNA Banks Helped Alleged Serial Killer Leave a Trail of Bodies
8
Prison Legal News. 17,698 DNA Profiles Missing From Wisconsin Database
9
GRGB Law. New DNA Collection Law Wisconsin
10
CNN. Suspect Arrested in Wisconsin Serial Killings
11
NPR. Did Missing DNA Thwart Hunt for Serial Killer
12
NBC News. Milwaukee Man Held in Deaths of Nine Women
13
CBS News. Walter Ellis Convicted of Being Milwaukee Serial Killer
14
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. Walter Ellis Pleads No Contest
15
Wisconsin Law Journal. Man Gets Life Sentence in Slayings of 7 Women
16
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. Review of 2,100 Milwaukee County Homicide Cases
17
Loevy and Loevy. Chaunte Ott Wrongful Conviction
18
Wisconsin Innocence Project. Appeals Panel Sides With Innocence Project Client in Case Linked to North Side Strangler
19
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. Innocence Project Pushes to Exonerate Man Caught Up in Serial Killer’s Wake
20
Fox 11. Claims Board Gives Man $25,000 for 1995 Wrongful Conviction
21
Fox 6 Milwaukee. South Dakota DOC Says Convicted Milwaukee Serial Killer Walter Ellis Dead
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CBS News. Wisconsin Serial Killer Dies in South Dakota