Forgotten NJ serial killer targeted women police ignored. New investigation tells victims’ stories

An investigation revisits New Jersey serial killer Khalil Wheeler-Weaver’s 2016 murders, highlighting how overlooked Black women victims and persistent families — not police — ultimately exposed his crimes.

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A new investigation has revisited the crimes of convicted serial killer Khalil Wheeler-Weaver, exposing how several murders in Newark, New Jersey, went largely unnoticed for years because the victims were women society too often overlooked.

The reporting project, led by journalists at NJ Advance Media, centers on four victims — Robin West, 19; Joanne Brown, 33; Sarah Butler, 20; and 15-year-old Mawa Doumbia — along with a fifth woman who survived a brutal assault in 2016.

Investigators say Wheeler-Weaver, then a 20-year-old security guard from a law enforcement family, targeted Black girls and women he believed would not trigger immediate alarm. Some victims were sex workers and one was an immigrant, factors that reporters argue contributed to delayed police attention and limited media coverage.

Crimes hidden in plain sight

Authorities later determined Wheeler-Weaver lured victims using dating apps, assaulted them, and disposed of bodies in abandoned buildings. One victim’s body was burned. Despite repeated encounters with police during the crime spree, he was overlooked multiple times.

The case only turned when relatives and friends of the victims began conducting their own searches and pushed investigators to act. A surviving victim helped identify him, ultimately leading to his arrest and conviction.

A story about victims, not the killer

The investigation — and accompanying podcast Someone’s Hunting Us — focuses primarily on the lives behind the headlines rather than the killer himself.

Families described the victims as daughters, sisters and friends whose stories were never fully told. Loved ones said the reporting offered empathy they had not previously experienced from authorities or media coverage.

Journalists behind the project say the goal was to highlight broader issues, including policing failures and racial disparities in missing-person attention — sometimes called the “missing white woman syndrome.”

Lasting impact

Reporters concluded that the case demonstrates how community persistence, particularly by women connected to the victims, ultimately stopped the killer after official efforts stalled.

The renewed coverage aims to ensure the women Wheeler-Weaver tried to erase are remembered — and to spark conversation about how certain victims can be ignored in the criminal justice system and news cycle.