Mark Profit

Mark Antonio Profit (1963 – September 27, 2001) was an American murderer and rapist who was convicted of the 1997 murder of prostitute Renee Bell in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Bell was one of four victims attributed to a serial killer called The Theodore Wirth Park Killer, named for the fact that all were killed in Minneapolis' Theodore Wirth Park.

Although never charged in any of the murders besides Bell's, Profit remained the prime suspect and was widely considered responsible for all four killings. He died behind bars in 2001, still protesting his innocence.

Early life and crimes Mark Profit was born in 1963 in an impoverished area of Minneapolis, Minnesota. His father left the family in the late 1960s, leaving Profit's mother to raise him and his sister by herself. The young boy showed no interest in studying, and by the mid-1970s, he dropped out of school and turned to a life of crime.

By 1978, Profit had been arrested about 30 times on various felony charges, and often committed burglaries. The following year, the then-16-year-old was arrested for robbing a woman with a sawed-off shotgun whom he had tied up and gagged, for which he would later be convicted and sentenced to 2 years imprisonment. Profit was released in 1981, and within six weeks of his release, he assaulted three girls at knifepoint and attempted to bind his victims on two occasions.

1981 assaults On September 2, Profit threatened a 15-year-old girl in northeast Minneapolis with a knife and forced her to follow him to his apartment, where he undressed her, tied her up, and raped her. On September 10, Profit attacked a woman at a day care center in northern Minneapolis - during the attack, he tore off her clothes, tied her up, and raped her. The final attack occurred on the following day, where he committed a similar attack on a 16-year-old girl. Initially, he was ordered to reside at a social rehabilitation facility for former prisoners until May 6, when he was allowed to return to live at his mother's house. The woman had been stabbed in the heart, after which her killer had made an unsuccessful attempt to set her on fire to destroy evidence. While examining the crime scene, officers found a cigarette butt which they surmized likely belonged to the perpetrator. Warfield's acquaintances later gave conflicting testimony regarding when they had last seen her alive, as some claimed that it was on the day prior to her body being found, while others said that they had seen her alive and well long after her body was found. Due to this, the exact date of her disappearance and death could not be established. He eventually caught up with her and pulled down her pants, but at that time, a married couple - Joan Demeules and George Barrett - were driving through the park when they noticed the attack.

Arrest Since almost all of the victims had been burned post-mortem, Minneapolis police assumed that they had all been killed by the same perpetrator and that they had a serial killer on the loose. A task force was formed to investigate the murders, consisting of investigators from Minneapolis, Golden Valley and the Hennepin County Sheriff's Department.

In the middle of summer, police were contacted by a man named Paul Kelly Jr., who was the boyfriend of Profit's sister. He said that Profit had asked to borrow a gas can from him on July 20, after which he disappeared for an hour and a half to two hours. Upon returning home, Kelly said that Profit immediately began washing his clothes and temporarily wore some of Kelly's own clothing, as well as requesting that he help him clean the interior of his car. Ultimately, Kelly claimed that Profit had confessed to him in private, saying that he had killed all the girls in Theodore Wirth Park. Following his arrest, the police searched the house where he lived in and the interior of his mother's car, a Pontiac Grand Am. After vacuuming the interior upholstery and analyzing some debris, it was revealed that the purple-colored fiber from the car's upholstery matched that of the elastic bandniquet used to strangle Renee Bell. Not long after, Profit was charged with the murder of Bell and the rape of Phynice Johnson, who by then had positively identified him as her assailant. He was initially charged with second-degree murder, which was later upgraded to first-degree murder.

Trial The trial began on April 14, 1997. During the trial, Profit maintained that he was innocent, with him and one of his attorneys, Charles Amdahl, claiming that Kelly was the actual killer, and that he had planted the wallet found near Bell's body and the cigarettes that Profit smoked near Warfield's body. In addition, the attorneys pointed out that their client regularly met with his parole officer and had restrictions on his liberty, making it supposedly impossible for him to engage in criminal behavior without alarming law enforcement. To counter this, the prosecution provided the court with witness testimonies from two of Profit's acquaintances, in which they claimed that he had discussed at various times a variety of methods to commit the perfect murder. His wife, Sherri, claimed that he had been depressed for the last few months of his life and often talked about killing himself, suggesting that Profit most likely died by suicide.

A week before his death, he had been found guilty of assaulting a prison guard and another inmate, and likely faced an additional 20 years imprisonment to be served concurrently with his two life sentences.