Viswa Vanapalli
Chester Dewayne Turner is considered one of the most prolific serial killers in history, given that he’s been convicted of killing 14 women during the 1980s and 1990s. The authorities were only able to arrest him years later after biological evidence linked him to the cases. Investigation Discovery’s ‘Evil Lives Here: I Was His First Victim’ chronicles Chester’s early life and has Felecia Collier, an ex-girlfriend, talk about how it was living with a serial killer. So, let’s find out more about what happened and where they might be today then, shall we?
Where is Chester Dewayne Turner Now?
Chester was born in Warren, Arkansas, and was about five years old when his parents separated, moving to Los Angeles, California, after that. But his killing went undetected until September 2003, when a DNA match spurred a cold-case unit into looking at Chester closely. In February 1998, 38-year-old Paula Vance was found partially nude at the back of a business. She had been raped and strangled to death. While surveillance cameras captured the act, the footage was too grainy to identify the culprit.
The case remained unsolved until foreign DNA from the evidence was extracted and sent for comparison many years later. The profile was entered into CODIS and matched a known offender at the time, Chester. He had been in prison serving an eight-year sentence for a rape in 2002. Chester sexually assaulted a woman for hours and threatened to kill her if she went to the police. The authorities then looked into his history and realized there could be more murder victims he was responsible for.
While living in Los Angeles, Chester was known to have temper issues and regularly got into fights. He had a history of violent relationships and was in and out of jail for theft and drug possession. In 1991, Chester was arrested for lewd conduct, getting out of prison in 1992. However, he was arrested within hours for indecent exposure. Once the authorities began to compare Chester’s DNA to evidence from other unsolved murders when he lived in Los Angeles, a deadly map of slayings emerged.
The police connected Chester to several murders that occurred between 1987 and 1998, one of whom was Regina Washington, who was six months pregnant when she was killed. Her body was discovered in 1989, and the unborn child’s death was ruled a homicide. The victims were primarily women who traded sex for drugs, with almost all the murders taking place within a four-block radius. In April 2007, Chester was convicted of killing ten women and an unborn child and was later sentenced to death.
Three murders for which another man was wrongly convicted were later confirmed to have been committed by Chester. In June 2014, Chester, then 47, was found guilty of killing four other women and handed down the death sentence again. A few years later, in December 2020, the California Supreme Court overturned the conviction for the unborn child’s death. Prison records indicate that Chester remains on death row at San Quentin State Prison in Marin County, California.
Where is Felecia Collier Now?
Felecia met Chester when they were children. At the time, they lived across the street from one another, and she tutored him. As per the show, Felecia had a daughter in high school and eventually moved in with Chester and his mother. She talked about how he was helpful with her daughter’s upbringing initially, leading her to develop a liking for him. In 1992, they began dating and eventually had a son together.
However, the relationship soon began to crumble when Chester showed another side of him. Felecia said on the show that he used to be possessive, got violent with her, and even raped her at one point. While she stopped seeing Chester, things got out of hand during one confrontation when one of her relatives shot him. Felecia eventually moved on, not hearing about Chester until he was accused of the murders. On the show, she stated she was happy Chester was put to death. Today, Felecia seems to be doing well. She lives in Los Angeles and is a grandmother.
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