Della Mae Liggens was a 69-year-old Black/African American woman whose life ended violently in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, on July 19, 1979. She was stabbed to death inside the city during what would later be recognized as the beginning of a series of killings attributed to David Allen Van Dyke. Liggens is identified in accounts of the case as Van Dyke’s first known murder victim, although the connection to him was not established until investigators began tying together a succession of similar
killings that occurred across Milwaukee over the following months.
Her killing initially stood on its own, but the circumstances eventually became part of a much larger investigation. Between July 1979 and April 1980, six people were killed in their residences in northern Milwaukee. Investigators determined that the same offender was responsible for a pattern of attacks in which victims were approached at their homes, sometimes under the pretense of needing to use a telephone or bathroom. Once inside, the assailant attacked his victims and frequently burglarized their homes afterward. Various weapons found in or around the victims' residences were used during the series. Liggens' stabbing on July 19 marked the earliest known killing in that sequence.
For months after Liggens' death, additional Milwaukee residents were killed. Florence Burkard was stabbed in August 1979, Helen Wronski was beaten to death that November, and further attacks followed in 1980. The repeated violence eventually led detectives to suspect that several seemingly separate homicides could be connected. Investigators compared fingerprints recovered during the homicide investigations with those of known burglary suspects, a process that ultimately focused attention on David Van Dyke.
The break in the investigation came on May 23, 1980, when Van Dyke was arrested in connection with an attempted burglary. His fingerprints were compared with evidence from the homicide investigation and produced a match. Police questioned him for several hours, and accounts of the investigation state that he confessed during the interrogation. Authorities subsequently charged him with six counts of first-degree murder, along with attempted murder and armed robbery stemming from the broader series of attacks. Della Mae Liggens' killing was among the murders prosecutors attributed to him.
Van Dyke went to trial in February 1981. A woman who had survived one of his attacks testified against him, providing jurors with a firsthand account of the violence associated with the series. Van Dyke also took the witness stand despite the advice of his attorney. He acknowledged committing numerous burglaries but denied being responsible for the murders and argued that police had fabricated or manufactured his confessions. His explanations failed to persuade the jury. After approximately four and a half hours of deliberations, jurors found him guilty on all of the charges presented against him.
Van Dyke was ultimately sentenced to six life sentences for the murders, with additional punishment for the attempted murder and armed robbery convictions, producing a sentence described at the time as the longest imposed in Wisconsin history. The conviction formally resolved the killing of Della Mae Liggens as part of Van Dyke's Milwaukee murder series. What had begun with her stabbing in July 1979 was eventually recognized as the first known act in a string of six killings that continued until April 1980, ending only after Van Dyke's arrest and the fingerprint evidence that connected him to the crimes.
