Serial Killer: Timothy Wilson Spencer

Timothy Wilson Spencer

Timothy Wilson Spencer was a truly evil man. Known as the southside strangler, he took the lives of at least 4 women in the mid 1980s and was the first criminal in Virginia to be convicted using DNA evidence. His dna evidence also connected him to multiple other heinous crimes, but the results were not conclusive. Spencer’s MO was to break into his victims home and assault them before strangling them using a ligature such as the belt that was found around the neck of Dr Susan Hellams. The youngest to fall prey to the depraved monster was a 15 year old girl named Diane Cho. Spencer was already on polices radar from previous burglaries and he was arrested when it was discovered that he had signed out of the halfway house he was staying in for each of the homicides. He would be sent to the electric chair and his sentence was carried out on April 27th 1994.

Timothy Wilson Spencer was born on March 17, 1962 and grew up in Arlington county Virginia. He described his childhood as structured with the family eating meals together though his parents divorced when he was young.

Timothy’s younger brother Travis said that he was fiercely protective over him but also that Timothy started his life of crime early. Despite a relatively stable childhood, he began shoplifting and burglarizing house in the neighborhood.

Travis said his brother had a reputation as one of the neighborhood trouble makers and a thief. But timothy tried to keep his younger brother on the straight and narrow, scolding him when he was caught shoplifting, despite his own 3 arrests for burglary as a juvenile. By the time Timothy was 21 years old he was out stealing and breaking into homes. On some occasions he would even attack the female occupants when he broke in. But in 1984 he crossed the line to homicide.

Carolyn Hamm was a 32 year old attorney, committed to her job and very dependable. So on January 25th 1984, when she failed to show up to work for the second day in a row, her colleagues noticed. Her secretary called Carolyn’s friend, Darla Henry, and asked if she could check on Miss Hamm. What Darla found would scar her for the rest of her life.

Carolyn’s car was in the driveway and the front door to the house was slightly open. Realizing something was wrong, Darla searched the home and discovered Carolyn’s body. She was deceased lying facedown in the garage with a rope around her neck. The rope had been thrown over a pipe and tied onto the bumper of her car, as if the vehicle was used to suspend her in the air.

The laundry window was left open and it is suspected that this was how her assailant got into the house. A neighbor said that Carolyn had been complaining about a neighborhood man named David Vasquez. This led to an extended interrogation and eventually Vasquez confessed after investigators claimed to have his fingerprints and he was sentenced to 35 years in prison.

After this first homicide, there would be a pause before Spencer struck again. Meanwhile he continued to rack up arrests for burglary and trespassing. But on Saturday September 19, 1987, another victim was discovered. The abandoned car of 35 year old Debbie Dudley Davis was left running parked a block away from her home, leading to a call to police from a concerned neighbor.

When police entered her apartment they found her. She was topless lying facedown on her bed. Davis had been bound using shoelaces and a wool sock was twisted around her neck with a vacuum cleaner tube used as a tourniquet to tighten it and cut off her air passage. Police found that a rocking chair that had been moved from a neighbors porch so that someone could climb into Davis’s front window.

They were also able to collect a sample of the biological materials the assailant left behind in the apartment. Evidence indicated that the attack had not been quick and that her attacker had strangled Davis to the point of losing consciousness repeatedly as he assaulted her. Absolutely heinous.

2 weeks later police were called to the home of Dr Susan Hellams on the southside of Richmond Virginia. Her husband had gotten home a bit before 2am. He heard noises and assumed it was his wife sleeping and so quietly showered before heading into bed. However, when he entered the room he saw the his partially nude wife lying on the floor.

Hellams had been strangled with 2 belts hooked together and left dangling from her neck and her hands had been bound with an extension cord. Her dress was pulled up as evidence of the vicious assault committed against her. Not only had she been strangled but in this case the creature had also beaten her bloody.

The blood vessels in her eyes had burst, showing that she had been strangled for an extended period of time, just like Ms Davis. Investigators determined her attacker had used a fence to climb into a second floor window. The obvious connection between the Hellams and Davis crimes struck fear into the community as it became clear that they had a serial killer in their midst.

On the night of November 21 1987, 15 year old Diane Cho was sleeping in her own bed, when Spencer broke in through a window. Her brother was asleep in the next room yet the creature was brazen enough to attack her anyway. She was silenced with duct tape over her mouth and strangled. There was little evidence to point to who her attacker was aside from a hair found in her bedding.

On december 1st, the body of 44 year old Susan Tucker was found in her condo about 100 miles away in Arlington Virginia. Her husband had been on a business trip leaving her alone. The crime scene made it clear that the same monster who had taken the lives of Davis, Hellams, and Cho was also behind this homicide.

She had been bound with a rope leading from her feet and hand to her neck. Like the previous victims she had been brutally assaulted before she was strangled. A blanket was found outside the condo with biological evidence smeared on it from her assailant. Because of the similarities, investigators from Arlington met with their Richmond counterparts to solve the series of homicides.

They soon discovered that a man named Timothy Spencer had been arrested for burglary shortly after the Hamm crime and was released shortly before the other homicides. He was on parole living in a halfway house in Richmond. To keep track of the parolees the house requires them to sign in and out. The log showed that Spencer had signed out for each of the crimes.

Police found that he had a history of violence against women. That he had started with breaking into homes then attacking their occupants. When he was brought into custody he stood up to a 12 hour interrogation without giving an inch. But then they took a dna sample and sent it in for comparison. After a few weeks it came back as a match to that found at the Tucker, Davis, and Hellams crime scene.

It was not a perfect match for the Cho crime but it was enough for a conviction when looked at with his history and the other crimes. It was also not conclusive for the Hamm homicide due to the original sample degrading over time but it was close enough and Mr Vasquez was released from prison.

By early 1989, Spencer had been found guilty in the Tucker, Davis, Hellams, and Cho homicides and sentenced to death. Despite there not being a trial and conviction for the crime against Carolyn Hamm, investigators were satisfied that Spencer was guilty.

He sat in prison appealing his convictions for 5 years until April 27th 1994. On that day, his sentence was carried out at Greensville Correction center in Jaratt Virginia. Without giving a final statement Timothy Wilson Spencer was escorted to the electric chair and pronounced deceased at 11:13pm.

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