In the spring of 2019, the body of 55-year-old Trevesene Ellis was discovered in a vacant house on Linhurst Street on the east side of Detroit. Her discovery was part of a grim series of events that unfolded between February 2018 and June 2019, during which the bodies of three other women were found under similar circumstances in abandoned homes across the city.
Investigators were able to link the deaths of Trevesene Ellis, Annetta Nelson, 57, Nancy Harrison, 52, and Tamara Jones, 55, to one man: Deangelo Martin. Evidence from the scenes showed a disturbing pattern; each of the women was found facedown, and a used condom was discovered near their bodies. While the cause of death for two of the victims was determined to be blunt force trauma, the advanced state of decomposition of Trevesene Ellis's body, as well as Tamara Jones's, made it impossible for the medical examiner to determine a specific cause of death.
Deangelo Martin, who was 34 at the time, was identified as the suspect and was already in custody on separate assault charges when he was charged with the murders. In September 2022, Martin pleaded guilty to second-degree murder for the deaths of all four women. He also pleaded guilty to sexually assaulting two other women. Following his plea, he was sentenced to 45 to 70 years in prison for the murders, with concurrent sentences of 20 to 40 years for the sexual assault charges.
