In the spring of 1998, the death of a woman in Flint, Michigan, marked the beginning of a serial killer's violent timeline that would instill fear in the community for years. Patricia Ann Peeler, a 34-year-old woman known to her loved ones as "Tresa," was found deceased on May 13, 1998. She was a daughter and a sister, and her life ended in a way that would not be fully understood until nearly a decade of investigative work had passed.
On that Wednesday in May, Patricia's body was
discovered dumped near Avenue A in Flint. Initially, authorities did not suspect foul play, believing she may have died from a cocaine overdose. However, the subsequent autopsy by the medical examiner, Dr. Ljubisa Dragovic, told a different story. The examination revealed that Patricia had likely been smothered to death. Critically, investigators also recovered a male's DNA from the scene, a piece of evidence that would prove invaluable years later.
For more than a year, Patricia's case remained unsolved. Then, on October 8, 1999, the body of another woman, 31-year-old Lisa Marie Price, was found in a yard on Susan Street. She had been strangled. When DNA from that crime scene was tested, it matched the sample recovered from Patricia's case. This link led investigators to a chilling conclusion: a serial killer was at work in Flint. The fear was compounded on January 20, 2001, when a third victim, 34-year-old Deena Brown, a mother of three, was found strangled outside a local academy. DNA evidence from all three women was now linked to the same unknown man.
Years passed, and the cases grew cold, but the DNA evidence held the key. The break finally came from an unrelated case. In March 2006, a man named Ivan Lee Page was convicted on cocaine and weapons charges. While serving his sentence in a state prison camp, he was required to submit a DNA sample for inclusion in the FBI's Combined DNA Index System (CODIS). In August 2007, the system registered a match: Ivan Page's DNA was a match to the DNA found on Patricia Peeler, Lisa Marie Price, and Deena Brown.
The arrest of Ivan Lee Page, born in 1969, brought long-awaited answers. Following the DNA match, Page was charged with the three murders. The case against him was strengthened when a former cellmate, Jerome Currie, came forward. Currie told investigators that Page had often bragged about "choking hos" and "killing those hos." Another man also told police that he had been with Page and Deena Brown the night before her body was found and that Page had become upset with her.
In 2008, Ivan Lee Page went on trial, but only for the first-degree premeditated murder of Deena Brown. His defense attorneys argued that the presence of his DNA only proved he'd had sex with her, not that he had killed her. The jury was not convinced. In December 2008, they found him guilty. The following month, Page was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. Due to the life sentence, prosecutors decided not to try Page for the murders of Patricia Peeler and Lisa Marie Price, believing justice had been served and acknowledging the difficulty of proceeding with older cases. While the legal chapter is closed, the families of Patricia "Tresa" Peeler and Lisa Marie Price were left without a specific conviction for the loss of their loved ones.
