In the early morning hours of Tuesday, June 5, 2007, authorities in St. Louis, Missouri, were called to an alleyway in the 4500 block of Maffitt Avenue where a gruesome discovery had been made. There, police found the lifeless body of 36-year-old Beranda Hunt, a Black female resident of the city who lived just a block away on Palm Street. Investigators determined that Hunt had been beaten severely in the head, and her body was discovered completely nude. Police surmised that the attack had likely taken place at a different location before her remains were transported and dumped in the alley where she was found around 6:30 a.m.
As homicide detectives began their work, they immediately noted striking similarities between Hunt’s death and another recent killing in the same North St. Louis neighborhood. Just ten days prior, on May 27, the body of 49-year-old Sherion R. Evans had been discovered in an alley in the 4400 block of Lee Avenue, less than a mile from where Hunt was found. Like Hunt, Evans was found nude and had suffered a fatal beating, along with a puncture wound to her neck. The proximity in time and location, combined with the specific condition of the bodies, led police to publicly investigate the possibility that the two murders were connected and potentially the work of the same perpetrator.
Despite the disturbing pattern and the intense scrutiny that followed the discovery of two women killed in such a similar manner within days of each other, the investigation faced significant challenges. Authorities struggled to identify a specific suspect linked to the crimes. In the years following the murders, reports analyzing homicide clearance rates in major American cities listed Beranda Hunt among the thousands of victims whose cases had gone without an arrest, leaving her murder officially unsolved.
