In the spring of 1997, a chilling discovery was made in a lot behind an auto repair shop in Newark, New Jersey. On April 4, the body of a 37-year-old woman named Valerie Wilson was found abandoned in the weeds. An autopsy would later reveal the violence she had endured; the medical examiner determined her death was a homicide caused by strangulation and multiple sharp and blunt force injuries to her head, neck, and chest.
Valerie, a mother known to struggle with addiction, became another victim in a terrifying pattern of killings that had been plaguing Essex County for years.
Her death was linked by investigators to a string of at least 14 unsolved homicides that occurred between 1993 and 1998, which became known as the "Essex County prostitute killings." The victims were all Black women, many of whom, like Valerie, were living on the margins of society. The killer, or killers, used varying methods, including strangulation, stabbing, and suffocation, leaving a trail of fear through the communities of Newark, Irvington, and East Orange. In March 1998, the Essex County prosecutor’s office formed a special task force to investigate the alarming number of murders, but the cases proved difficult to solve.
The investigation into Valerie’s murder uncovered crucial forensic evidence. Investigators collected fingernail clippings and a blood sample from beneath her fingernails. For more than a year, her case remained cold, another file in a growing stack of unsolved slayings. The break finally came when a man named Freddie Dizly, an acquaintance of a local man named Harrison Hogue, came forward to the police. Dizly told investigators that he had witnessed Hogue strangle Valerie after the two of them had smoked cocaine together.
Based on this information, police brought the 59-year-old Hogue in for questioning in October 1998. Hogue, who was known and suspected by other women in the area, admitted to knowing Valerie and carrying knives but denied seeing her on the day she was killed. He was arrested and charged with her murder and weapons offenses. The legal proceedings that followed were complex. Hogue was initially found incompetent to stand trial, but after a 30-day psychiatric evaluation, he was declared competent in January 1999.
On June 13, 2000, a jury found Harrison Hogue guilty of the murder of Valerie Wilson. He was sentenced to a term of 35 years in prison, with a 30-year period of parole ineligibility. This verdict made Valerie's case the only one in the series of Essex County prostitute killings to be officially solved. Despite the conviction, Hogue and his defense team continued to fight the verdict, focusing on the blood evidence found under Valerie’s fingernails.
During his appeal, Hogue, who had Type O blood, sought to have DNA testing performed on the Type A blood found at the scene, arguing it could prove his innocence. In 2003, the New Jersey Supreme Court granted him the right to have the test conducted. However, the results did not lead to his exoneration. In a 2004 letter, Hogue’s own appellate attorney informed the court that the DNA test results "did not warrant a new trial motion." Subsequent appeals and petitions for post-conviction relief were denied, and his conviction was upheld.
Today, Harrison Hogue remains incarcerated for the murder of Valerie Wilson. While her case is closed, the deaths of at least 13 other women targeted in the same timeframe remain unsolved, their files gathering dust in the cold case archives of Essex County. For their families, and for the community that was terrorized for half a decade, there are still no answers and no justice. Valerie’s story stands as a lone, somber resolution in a much larger, and still unfinished, chapter of New Jersey history.
