In the early spring of 2022, a shadow fell over Sarasota, Florida, as a series of brutal killings began to unfold. The second victim of this violence was Vicky Levitch, a 59-year-old woman. On the afternoon of March 10, 2022, her body was discovered near the shore of Whitaker Bayou, along the northern stretch of the Tamiami Trail. At the time of her death, Vicky was experiencing homelessness, a circumstance that rendered her particularly vulnerable.
An autopsy would later reveal she had been brutally beaten and died from blunt force trauma and strangulation.
The discovery of Vicky’s body came just two weeks after another woman, 48-year-old Kelliann Ripley, was found murdered in a nearby wooded area on February 25. The similarities between the two cases were immediately apparent to investigators. Both women were unhoused, both had been killed with extreme violence, and their bodies were left in locations not far from each other. The Sarasota Police Department quickly suspected the two homicides were connected, sparking fears of a serial killer preying on the city's homeless community.
The investigation intensified as police worked to identify a suspect. The day after Vicky's body was found, a man named William Jeffrey Devonshire, 52, was arrested for trespassing and drug possession in a local park. Devonshire was a transient with a long and violent criminal history stretching across several states, including a prior murder conviction. In 2005, he was convicted of murdering a man in Delaware but his charge was later reduced to second-degree murder, and he was paroled in 2013.
While Devonshire was in custody for the minor offenses, investigators were working to connect him to the recent homicides. He voluntarily provided a DNA sample to the police on March 15. The results from the Florida Department of Law Enforcement (FDLE) came back quickly, linking his DNA to evidence collected from the body of Kelliann Ripley. On March 26, Devonshire was charged with her murder. At a news conference, police announced that he was also a "strong suspect" in the killing of Vicky Levitch.
Detectives were in the process of building their case against Devonshire for Vicky’s murder when the investigation took an unexpected turn. On May 17, Devonshire, who had epilepsy, suffered a seizure in the Sarasota County Jail. He fell, hit his head, and sustained a severe brain injury. Though he had surgery, he was returned to the jail under hospice care and died on June 5, 2022, before he could be formally charged with Vicky Levitch's murder.
Following Devonshire's death, the criminal cases against him were closed. However, the Sarasota Police Department continued to seek definitive answers for Vicky's case. "We had indisputable evidence that linked Devonshire to both homicides that occurred in February and March," said Captain Johnathan Todd of the Sarasota Police Department's Criminal Investigations Division. That indisputable evidence arrived in October 2022, when the FDLE confirmed that DNA found on clothing belonging to Devonshire was a match to Vicky Levitch.
The posthumous DNA confirmation officially identified William Jeffrey Devonshire as a serial killer, responsible for the deaths of at least three people. For investigators, it was a bittersweet resolution, confirming their suspicions but eliminating the possibility of a trial. The cases of Vicky Levitch and Kelliann Ripley were officially closed, their killer identified not by a court of law, but by the certainty of science after his own death.
