CRIME HUNTER: Serial killer of squalor terrorized most vulnerable women

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Afrikka Hardy’s dreams of opening up a daycare died in a sleazy Motel 6 in Hammond, Indiana.

Hardy, 19, had recently moved back to the Chicago area after living with her mother in Colorado for several years.

No one knew about the pretty teen’s life in the shadows of the once-thriving steel town that was the hometown of the Jackson 5.

“She could walk into a room and just light it up with her smile and her laugh and just her presence,” her mom, Lori Townsend, told CNN. “Afrikka never met a stranger. She loved everybody. And that was kind of part of her problem. She was a little naive about trusting people.”

***

Afrikka Hardy had begun advertising sexual services on Backpage.com. She arranged to meet a man named Darren Deon Vahn for sex at the Motel 6. She would not leave the hotel room alive.

“She had plans on going back to school, and we talked about it numerous times,” one cousin told the Chicago Tribune. “But I guess she started hanging with different people and it took her towards another way.”

On Oct. 17, 2014, Hardy was discovered dead in the hotel room’s bathtub.

***

Cops in Indiana were more than familiar with Darren Deon Vann. Born in 1971, he joined the U.S. Marines in 1991 and was kicked out two years later in what was called an “other than honourable” discharge.

Vann was married for 16 years to a woman named Maria Vann, who was 30 years older than him. Cops say he threatened to kill her and did 90 days in the county jail.

Vann was also convicted and sentenced to five years in a Texas prison for a sexual assault in Austin.

Maria Vann had finally had enough of her hubby by the summer of 2009, and the union was dissolved in 2011.

***

At least one man believed there was a serial killer operating in Gary, Indiana. Reporter Thomas Hargove used an algorithm that proved his hunch. He urged cops to probe 15 suspicious deaths between 1980 and 2008.

But his theory was pooh poohed with only a deputy coroner agreeing with his thesis.

***

Afrikka Hardy had been strangled to death. Her phone records led cops to Vann and more key evidence.

Under interrogation by detectives, Vann broke and admitted killing the vivacious young woman. And he told them there were more victims – many more.

In fact, he confessed to six additional murders of young women.

Gary is a ghost town with scores of abandoned buildings (10,000 of them) and it was in these wrecks, that Vann stashed his victim’s bodies. He led investigators into the decrepit structures and to the bodies.

“It disgusts me, because it’s seven bodies,” said Ronnie Williams, a resident of the Gary neighbourhood where most of the victims were found.

The son of his former wife added: “The guy is a nutcase. He is. And I’d watch him. I’d never allow him near my kids or in my home, because he just freaked me out.”

“Experts” said that Vann was considered a “low risk” sex offender. Not at all.

***

In addition to Hardy, six other women were murdered. Vann played show-and-tell with cops.

He led them to the bodies of Anith Jones, 35, of Gary, who was last seen alive Oct. 8, 2014; Teaira Batey, 28, of Gary, who left to meet a friend on Jan. 13, 2014, and never returned; Kristine Williams, 36, of Gary, who was a mother of four and employed at the time of her death in February 2014; Tracy Martin, 41, of Gary, who was reported missing on June 26, 2014; Sonya Billingsley, 53, of Gary, who was reported missing on Feb. 7, 2014, and her body was found in an abandoned house with that of Tanya Gatlin, 27, who had been missing since January 2014.

Investigators later said they feared there were more victims. They also said Vann was stunned that he was arrested so quickly.

Now, Vann was facing the death penalty via lethal injection at Indiana State Prison in Michigan City. He opted to plead guilty and was sentenced to life in prison without the chance of parole.

“This is all unbelievable to me,” his wife told reporters. “A total shocker. I never knew him to be violent, never. He was so protective of those around him. He was a real friendly person.”

SERIAL KILLERS FOR SUMMER?

John Wayne Gacy remains one of the most terrifying serial killers in history. For nearly a decade he terrorized suburban Chicago, kidnapping, torturing and raping young men and boys before murdering them.

The Killer Clown got the big adios in 1994, but some of his victims remain unidentified. And cops always believed there were more than the 33 known victims.

In my book, Inside the Mind of John Wayne Gacy: The Real-Life Killer Clown (www.amazon.ca), I update the story.

Love, money and sex are the three big-ticket items for homicide. And they’re all there in my first book, Cold Blooded Murder: Shocking True Stories of Killers and Psychopaths (www.amazon.ca).

FYI: Both books were rated 4.5 out of 5 stars.

bhunter@postmedia.com

@HunterTOSun