Nineteen-year-old Chrishana Logan lived in half of a duplex on Robinwood Avenue in Toledo, Ohio, and worked as a dancer at a strip club called Platinum Showgirls, performing under the stage name of Vegas. She worked most nights, but she had the night of April 14th, 2000 off, and presumably stayed home. And home was where she was found dead, just before dawn on the morning of the 15th.
Chrishana’s neighbor, who was also the owner of the duplex, discovered the young woman’s body in the living room; she had been raped and strangled. There was no sign of forced entry, leading investigators to initially believe that she had been killed by someone she knew.
To this end, they arrested a former boyfriend of Chrishana’s, a man named Izell Brown. He maintained his innocence, and seven months later, DNA evidence eliminated him from suspicion. What police didn’t know then, though, was that Chrishana was the first in a series of three victims of a serial rapist.
In late August of 2000, in fact, a seventeen-year-old girl was walking back to her home in South Toledo at around five-thirty p.m. when she was snatched off the street, dragged to a secluded area, and sexually assaulted. And in early October, a thirteen-year-old girl on her way to school was likewise grabbed by an assailant and raped.
During the course of the investigation into these crimes, it was discovered that the DNA found on both rape victims, as well as the body of Chrishana Logan, came from the same man, though at that time, the DNA matched no other criminal on file.
Upon learning of the match, however, authorities re-interviewed both rape victims and were able to put together a detailed description of the suspect: he was a light-to-medium-skinned black male, possibly in his early forties at the time of the attacks, standing around five-foot-seven, with a bald or shaved head and a moustache. At the time the crimes were committed, both rape victims asserted the man had a large, protruding stomach, smelled of cigarettes and beer, had scars or blotchy coloring on his cheeks, and appeared very dirty and unkempt. One of the victims also stated that the man may have had a tattoo on his upper left arm, but she hadn’t gotten a good look at it. Significantly, both young women also confirmed that the assailant was not circumcised.
A renewed push to find the unknown rapist and murderer was undertaken in 2013, and in 2021, a CODIS hit on the perpetrator’s DNA profile finally led to the arrest of Kenneth Marshall, of Hammond, Indiana. In August of 2022, Marshall was convicted of the murder of Chrishana Logan, as well as the rapes of the two minors, and was sentenced to life in prison with parole only available after one-hundred-thirty years.
Crime Immemorial 