Robert Smallwood

Robert Franklin Smallwood Jr. (born December 1973) is an American convicted serial killer who strangled three women to death in Lexington, Kentucky, from 1999 to 2006. The killings were thought to be unrelated until August 2006, when they were linked together through DNA testing. Smallwood was arrested the following month, pleaded guilty to each murder, and was sentenced to life imprisonment in 2007.

Early life Smallwood was born in December 1973 in Lexington. He had one sister, Elizabeth, who moved to North Carolina in her early adult years. There, she became the eighth murder victim of the Edgecombe County serial killer, who is currently still unidentified. In 1997, Robert married a woman named Neisha, and fathered five children. The couple later separated at an unknown date.

Crimes Smallwood committed his first serious crime in 1993, when he entered the home of 83-year-old retired schoolteacher Viola Green. Inside the house, he attacked Green, bound her wrists, and raped her, before leaving the house. Green survived with no injuries but later died from natural causes in 1998, never knowing the identity of her attacker. In 1998, Smallwood was arrested for a different sexual assault, that of a woman found tied to a tree, after his DNA was found on her purse. Smallwood was tried, but his defense argued that since the victim was a prostitute she must have consented to the sex, and he was acquitted a year later. Murders Following his acquittal, Smallwood continued committing assaults. In December 1999 he broke into the apartment of 48-year-old Dorris Ann Roberts. He gagged and strangled Roberts with her own clothing until her death. Roberts had a history of alcohol abuse and domestic violence, and weeks before her murder, her roommate, Raymond Bean, had suffered a heart attack and died.

Three years later, Smallwood murdered his second victim, 29-year-old Sonora Allen. Allen was a Lexington native and mother of four daughters and two sons. She had also struggled with drug abuse. In August 2002, Allen met with her family on Fourth Street. Days later, on August 15, her body was found in the Fortune Pizza parking lot. It was ruled that she had been killed hours before; during that time, Smallwood had either strangled or smothered her to death due to her body showing no obvious wounds.

In May 2005, Smallwood was arrested for obtaining illegal substances, and in September of that year pleaded guilty to possession of drug paraphernalia and first-degree possession of a controlled substance. Following the breakthrough police alerted the public of the at-large serial killer and urged anyone with further information to come forward. The police department formed a task force with about 20 people to investigate. In an attempt to locate the killer, DNA from him was submitted in national databases, but no matches were found. Lexington Police Chief Anthony Beatty said that a series of murders linked to a serial killer was unprecedented in the city. Smallwood pleaded not guilty, which meant he could have gone to trial for these crimes the following year. He eventually pleaded guilty, and, in 2007, received a life sentence without the possibility of parole.