Vernon Lee Clark

Vernon Lee Clark (December 28, 1955 – August 12, 2025) was an American serial killer who sexually assaulted and murdered at least four women in the Greater Baltimore area during the 1980s. For his known crimes, he was sentenced to multiple terms of life imprisonment, and remains a suspect in several cold cases.

Early life Vernon Lee Clark was born on December 28, 1955, in Elkridge, Maryland. He attended Elkridge Elementary School, then Waterloo Middle School, and finally Howard High. Clark was known by friends and acquaintances as getting into trouble at school and with the law in his teen years, and usually kept to himself. His criminal tendencies followed him to adulthood, and was convicted of crimes including drug possession, burglary, and assault.

Murders Clark's first victim was Rebecca H. "Dolly" Davis, a 70-year-old woman from Elkridge. Born in 1909, Davis attended Bryn Mawr College in Philadelphia and graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1932. She later taught art at The Baldwin School in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania. At the same time, she studied painting at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts. In 1937, Davis traveled to Europe to visit art museums. She returned to the United States a year later, and moved to Baltimore.

In 1989, Clark borrowed a shotgun from the Bruan Carroll Co. animal rendering plant where he worked. On July 4, 1989, Clark broke into the apartment of 23-year-old Kathleen Patricia Gouldin, sexually assaulted her, and then shot her to death with the gun.

Arrest While investigating Gouldin's murder, police located a pizza box outside her apartment, which contained the name of a woman Clark had been chatting with hours before Gouldin's murder. The woman told investigators that Clark took the box home along with a few slices, but by the time it was located it was empty. He was immediately considered a suspect, but at the time, no other evidence linked him to the crime, so for the time being, he remained free. Detectives learned from neighbors that they had seen someone prowling around the complex around the time Gouldin was killed.

Trial and imprisonment Before his trial, Clark depended on his heavy usage of drugs as a defense. He stated on the night of Gouldin's murder, he had been doing drugs with prostitutes. He also attempted to use racism and discrimination as the factors that led to his arrest.

Based on the evidence presented, on April 17, 1991, the jury found Clark guilty of murder. In August, his sentencing was delayed after an anonymous letter was mailed to the judge, in which the writer claimed that he was a witness in the murder and claimed Clark was innocent. However, Clark ended up being sentenced to life imprisonment anyway.

On March 10, 1999, DNA evidence identified Clark as the killer of Evelyn Dieterich. Around this time, he became a suspect in Iva Watson's murder, but again, at the time he could not be identified.