Lyndon Fitzgerald Pace

Lyndon Fitzgerald Pace (born July 1964) is an American serial killer and burglar. Between 1988 and 1989, he robbed and killed elderly women primarily in Atlanta's Vine City neighborhood. Among his burglary victims was Coretta Scott King, Martin Luther King Jr.'s widow. Pace was convicted of four murders, but was not tried for a fifth, and was sentenced to death for his crimes.

Murders The first victim was 86-year-old Lula Bell McAfee, an elderly lady living at 321 Simon St. S.E in southeast Atlanta. A boarder found her nude body in the kneeling position on the bed, sexually assaulted and strangled with a combination of her bra and a rag. Police theorized that she had been killed between the early evening of August 27, 1988, and the early morning of the following day.

Not long after, 78-year-old Mattie Mae McClendon on September 10, 1988, who lived near the Atlanta University Center and was found dead in her apartment by her sister. She was facing the pillow. The official cause was later determined to be asphyxiation by suffocation. Authorities were called by her younger sister, Ruth Lindsey, as she had not returned her phone calls.

Roughly a month later, on March 4, 42-year-old Ann "Annie" Kate Britt was found naked and strangled with a sock by her sister. Like with the previous cases, she was living alone, and her home had been broken into and subsequently ransacked. With this death, all four recorded deaths so far were treated as part of one murder series. All available physical evidence was sent for examination by the GBI.

Arrest, trial and imprisonment On October 3, 1992, Lyndon Fitzgerald Pace was arrested for multiple burglaries in the Vine City neighborhood. He had previous convictions for drug possession and burglaries; his most notable burglary being the December 28, 1990, burglary of Coretta Scott King's home, from which he stole a radio. He pled guilty to these charges on February 15, 1991, and served several months in prison, where he was described as a model inmate. He was released on July 11, 1991, due to problems with prison overcrowding. Authorities started focusing on him after the September 30, 1992, robbery of 83-year-old Susie Sublett in Vine City, in which the intruder, later identified as Pace, threatened to shoot her with a .22 caliber pistol he found under a pillow.

On November 25, 1992, Atlanta Police Chief Eldrin A. Bell announced that Lyndon Pace was now the prime suspect in the Vine City killings.

On March 5, 1996, Lyndon Pace was convicted of the murders and other crimes, including the attempted rape of a 12-year-old girl in 1987 and the 1990 break-in of King's home. Despite pleas from the perpetrator's family and the objections of the defense attorney, Lyndon Fitzgerald Pace was sentenced to death, not showing any emotion during the sentencing.