In the summer of 1983, the city of Louisville, Kentucky, was unsettled by a series of brutal killings. One of the victims was a young Black/African American woman named Yolanda Sweeney, who was 21 years old at the time of her death. On June 13, 1983, her body was discovered in a backyard on Greenwood Avenue. She had been shot in the head and was found partially naked, with her purse missing.
Investigators learned that Sweeney, an employee of the National Processing Company, had last been seen leaving a nightclub called 'Mr. D's Inferno' with an unidentified man.
The circumstances of Sweeney's murder bore a chilling resemblance to another recent case in the city. Just a few weeks earlier, on July 7, 22-year-old Deborah Miles was found dead in her apartment, also having been shot in the head. The similarities between the two crimes led police to believe they were dealing with a serial offender. Their investigation soon pointed them toward a 25-year-old man named Larry Lamont White. Evidence against White began to mount, including a. 38 caliber Smith & Wesson revolver he had pawned, which ballistics testing matched to the bullets used in the killings. Furthermore, clothing belonging to White was found to have bloodstains that were identified as belonging to Yolanda Sweeney. White also had a prior conviction for sexual assault from the previous year.
On August 9, 1983, Larry Lamont White was arrested in connection with the murders of both Yolanda Sweeney and Deborah Miles. During the subsequent trial, he confessed to both killings. In 1985, a jury convicted him and sentenced him to death. However, in a turn of events, his death sentence was overturned in 1987. The Kentucky Supreme Court ruled that his confession was inadmissible because he had been questioned by police without a lawyer present while he had other pending charges. Following this ruling, White entered a guilty plea and received a reduced sentence of 29 years, with the possibility of parole.
In 2001, after serving a portion of his sentence, Larry Lamont White was released from prison. His freedom was short-lived, as he was arrested multiple times for various misdemeanors in the following years. In 2006, he was convicted of being a felon in possession of a firearm and was sentenced to 15 years in prison. It was during this period of incarceration that new evidence came to light. DNA evidence linked White to the 1983 murder of another woman, Pamela Armstrong, whose case had remained a cold case for decades. In 2014, White was convicted of Armstrong's murder and was once again sentenced to death. He currently remains on death row.
