New Jersey serial killer Khalil Wheeler-Weaver sentenced to 160 years in prison

BERGEN, N.J. — The notorious North Jersey serial killer Khalil Wheeler-Weaver, whose frenzied crime spree in 2016 left three women dead, will spend the rest of his life in jail after being sentenced to 160 years in prison, a judge ruled Wednesday.

With the strike of a gavel, Superior Court Judge Mark Ali heeded pleas from prosecutors and family of the victims to sentence the 25-year-old man for the rest of his life. The judge said no punishment could atone for the tragedy Wheeler-Weaver left in his wake — three slain women, their grieving families and a fourth surviving victim who narrowly escaped his grasp. But the sentence is a start, he said.

“The purpose of this sentence is that this defendant never walks free in society again,” Ali said to sighs of relief and light applause in the Newark courtroom.

Wheeler-Weaver, who has remained jailed in Essex County since his December 2016 arrest, will be eligible for parole after 140 years, according to the ruling.

Those who spoke at Wheeler-Weaver’s sentencing Wednesday pulled no punches in their harsh words. Prosecutors called his crimes “heinous, cruel and depraved.” The judge declared him a “sociopath.” And relatives of the three murdered women, who confronted Wheeler-Weaver for the first time in court, said they took solace in knowing he will never kill again.

“I hope you can find it in your heart to give him the longest, maximum sentence,” Montclair father Walter Butler, whose daughter Sarah was found strangled to death in West Orange, New Jersey, said in court. “I hope that he lives for a very long time. And that he suffers every night, like he made our girls suffer.”

The long-awaited sentencing, which suffered delays due to the pandemic, came nearly two years after Wheeler-Weaver stood trial in a sprawling case that ended with multiple convictions for murder, kidnapping and sexual assault. Authorities said Wheeler-Weaver preyed on his female victims with a consistent modus operandi: arrange encounters for sex with women before attacking them, wrapping their faces in tape and strangling them with articles of clothing.

He mostly targeted young, wayward women in the sex trade, with few contacts who might report them missing, prosecutors said. The deadly escapade stopped only after the friends and family of one victim conceived a fake online profile to lure him to police.

Wheeler-Weaver sat in court Wednesday wearing handcuffs over a blue button-down shirt and khakis. He cast his eyes forward, away from the family members during their statements. But at his chance to speak, he ditched the quiet, reserved demeanor shown during trial and launched into a defiant speech accusing the court of framing him for the murders.

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“I do feel sympathy for the victims. My heart goes out to their family and friends. However, I was not the person who committed these crimes,” he said.

Ali responded that a mountain of evidence, including 42 witnesses and 1,000 exhibits shown over a two-month trial, proved otherwise.

Prosecutors presented incriminating Google searches on how to make homemade poison and a videotaped police interview in which he was caught in lie after lie about his exploits. Authorities also pulled geolocation data from Wheeler-Weaver's phone that tracked his whereabouts during meetings with the four women.

He could be traced to the scenes where he met each victim, and later to sites where their bodies were found, according to testimony. Two hours was all a jury needed to convict him on every count he faced.

“This defendant absolutely lacks remorse,” Ali said.

Of Wheeler-Weaver's four victims, one woman, Tiffany Taylor, escaped to live. Three others — Sarah Butler of Montclair, New Jersey, Robin West of Philadelphia, and Joanne Brown of Newark, New Jersey, — did not.

The stories of Wheeler-Weaver's victims and their families were explored in a special report from NorthJersey.com, part of the USA TODAY Network, after the trial ended in December 2019.

“The four were bright lights. Three had their lights extinguished forever. The fourth, while she survived, has forever had her life changed,” acting Essex County Prosecutor Theodore N. Stephens II said in a statement after the sentencing. “Today, they and their families received a measure of justice.”

Stephens couldn’t rule out the possibility of other victims. The Prosecutor’s Office has opened cases with similar patterns in search of ties to Wheeler-Weaver, though no announcements are forthcoming, he said.

The killing spree began with the disappearance of West on Aug. 31, 2016. The 19-year-old's body was discovered a month later in an abandoned building in Orange, New Jersey, that had been set ablaze by Wheeler-Weaver, to cover his tracks. Another victim, 33-year-old Brown, was found strangled on Dec. 5, 2016, at a vacant home in Orange not far from where Wheeler-Weaver lived.

“Was she alive? Did she fight? What were her last words?” West’s mother, Anita Mason, said Wednesday, telling the court she is haunted by the thought of her daughter’s final moments.

Authorities started connecting the dots while investigating the disappearance of Butler, a 20-year-old Montclair college student, who vanished while home for Thanksgiving break in November 2016. She had connected with Wheeler-Weaver through the social media site Tagged, and arranged to pick him up in her parents' minivan the night she was last seen, according to court testimony. Before their meetup, she texted him the fateful message "You're not a serial killer, right?"

Butler's body was later found in Eagle Rock Reservation in West Orange beneath a pile of sticks and leaves.

“We just wanted everyone home for Thanksgiving,” Aliyah Butler, Sarah’s sister, said through tears on Wednesday. “She never got the chance to show the world what she could really do, because her life was cut short.”

Prosecutors credited Butler’s family with playing a key role in the case, after they discovered Wheeler-Weaver's Tagged profile while searching through Sarah's social media accounts after her disappearance. Butler's other sister and a friend arranged a meeting with Wheeler-Weaver at a Panera Bread restaurant in Glen Ridge, New Jersey. When he arrived, Montclair police were waiting for him.

The women were “instrumental in leading the Montclair police to identify Khalil Wheeler-Weaver as a person of interest,” Adam Wells, an assistant prosecutor in Essex County, said after the sentencing.

Wheeler-Weaver managed to avoid police detection with a couple of savvy moves during the killings, prosecutors said. He wore gloves for his meetings with women and used condoms during sex, leaving behind almost no DNA evidence, according to court testimony. The only DNA matching Wheeler-Weaver's was found beneath Butler's fingernails. None was recovered from the other victims.

The sole eyewitness to Wheeler-Weaver’s attacks was Taylor, who met with him on Nov. 15, 2016. During the trial, she testified that she awoke in the back seat of her friend's vehicle with Wheeler-Weaver's hands around her neck. She said she convinced him to return to the Ritz Motel in Elizabeth, New Jersey, where they had met, to retrieve her cellphone.

Once there, she locked herself alone inside a motel room and called police. Wheeler-Weaver fled.

Taylor gave her story to Elizabeth police that night, but they declined to follow up. Seven days later, Wheeler-Weaver killed Butler, according to prosecutors.

On Wednesday, Taylor appeared stunned by his denial of guilt, despite her identifying him to jurors as the man who sexually assaulted and nearly killed her.

“He’s not sorry at all about what he did,” Taylor said in court. “If he had a chance, he would do it again.”

Follow Tom Nobile on Twitter @tomnobile

This article originally appeared on NorthJersey.com: Khalil Wheeler-Weaver, New Jesey serial killer, sentenced to 160 years